Who: The A Method for Hiring | 
| Authors: Geoff Smart, Randy Street
Publisher: Ballantine Books
List Price: $24.00
Buy New: $12.00
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Rating:  21 reviews
Sales Rank: 2895
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Pages: 208
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.9
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 5.6 x 1.1
ISBN: 0345504194
Dewey Decimal Number: 658.311
EAN: 9780345504197
ASIN: 0345504194
Publication Date: September 30, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Brand New. 100% money back guarantee. All books shipped from Strand Bookstore, New York City, USA.
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Product Description
In this landmark book, Geoff Smart and Randy Street provide a simple, practical, and effective solution to what The Economist calls “the single biggest problem in business today”: unsuccessful hiring. The average hiring mistake costs a company $1.5 million or more a year and countless wasted hours. This statistic becomes even more startling when you consider that the typical hiring success rate of managers is only 50 percent.
The silver lining is that “who” problems are easily preventable. Based on more than 1,300 hours of interviews with more than 20 billionaires and 300 CEOs, Who presents Smart and Street’s A Method for Hiring. Refined through the largest research study of its kind ever undertaken, the A Method stresses fundamental elements that anyone can implement–and it has a 90 percent success rate.
Whether you’re a member of a board of directors looking for a new CEO, the owner of a small business searching for the right people to make your company grow, or a parent in need of a new babysitter, it’s all about Who. Inside you’ll learn how to
• avoid common “voodoo hiring” methods
• define the outcomes you seek
• generate a flow of A Players to your team–by implementing the #1 tactic used by successful businesspeople
• ask the right interview questions to dramatically improve your ability to quickly distinguish an A Player from a B or C candidate
• attract the person you want to hire, by emphasizing the points the candidate cares about most
In business, you are who you hire. In Who, Geoff Smart and Randy Street offer simple, easy-to-follow steps that will put the right people in place for optimal success.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 16 more reviews...
 Fantastic Book on Hiring September 30, 2008
Clint Greenleaf (Austin, TX)
12 out of 13 found this review helpful
I just finished reading a pre-release copy of the book Who by Geoff Smart and Randy Street. Wow, it's good. Really good.
Geoff and his father Brad Smart are well known as the team that popularized Topgrading, a thorough interview process that takes the success rate for new hires from the average of about 50% to just over 90%. I don't know of a business owner alive who wouldn't love to increase the effectiveness of the interview and hire more effectively.
Smart and Street are experts in their field - they are paid huge sums of money to do this for some of the biggest and best companies in the world. Their research estimates that the average hiring mistake costs employers 15 times the salary of the incorrect hire. The number sounds absurdly high, but when you include salary, lost productivity and opportunity costs, it's plausible. Frightening.
Who is a fast and simple read, but is heavy on content. It begins with a discussion of what they call voodoo hiring, or the process most business owners use during the interview process, and it was painful for me. I'm guilty of voodoo hiring and I'm guessing most of you are, too. Much of my process is guessing and gut feel, and is done over too short of a period of time. It's not hard to see the need for a change.
Next comes a simple explanation of why hiring "A" players is so important. They define an "A" player as the right superstar for the job, a talented person who fits in well with your company culture. B and C hires cost you money; A's make you rich.
The meat of the book is about the four keys to what they call the A Method : Scorecard, Source, Select and Sell. I can't do justice to the brilliance of the system in this short review, but here are the basics. The scorecard is your blueprint for the job - not a description, but the criteria you will be using to judge the person who is ultimately hired. Source is how you find your candidates, primarily referrals and recruiting. Select goes over the four interviews that need to be conducted - screening, Topgrading, focused and reference. Sell is important and often overlooked, selling your top candidate on taking the job. With great people in demand, you need to fight for your best people.
Many of us have read Topgrading - it's a long read but describes the theory well. Even so, countless managers still have trouble implementing the system. Who bridges that gap and helps us see the whole process - then implement it well. This book just became required reading at Greenleaf Book Group, and the process is our new hiring process. I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to improve hiring practices and remove a huge piece of the risk.
Clint Greenleaf
CEO, Greenleaf Book Group
Insightful and Encouraging for Business Owners October 9, 2008
Jo Ana Starr (USA)
7 out of 7 found this review helpful
If you run a business in which there are employees other than yourself, then chances are that you've hired the wrong person a time or two. It can be a huge disappointment when that happens- a time consuming and costly one, and one that takes its toll on the employee as well as on the company. The authors reveals how to avoid the time and the upset by hiring the right person on the first go-round. Although this book focuses on the hiring of middle and upper management individuals, their advice translates for hiring down through the ranks as well.
You will learn how to define your outcome for each hiring campaign, how to interview more effectively, and how to motivate the ideal candidate to join your company. There are other books on Amazon with similar subject matter, but none with the extensive research that supports the findings presented by the authors here.
Like other reviewers, I wish I'd had this book about 8 years ago. If this book only helps you to make one great hire, it will have paid for itself 1000's of times over.
 Save your money - get "Hire With Your Head" instead. November 20, 2008
Eric William (Michigan)
6 out of 8 found this review helpful
Within the hiring world, there is a split:
* Interviews can predict great hires,
* Assessments (like IQ tests) can predict great hires.
This book is all about longer and more complex interviewing.
The book focuses on hiring CEOs and top management, so remember that when looking at this book.
This book is useless for hiring college grads, IT professionals (Software Developers, Project Managers or Business Analysts). In fact, as I specialize in hiring tech people, I find this system goes against best practices for hiring technical people in any field as the book focuses on interviewing direct reports (people the candidate manages).
The main problem that I had was the that the book (nor the website) provided their research for review. Interviewing as the main stay of hiring has been PROVEN to be the WORST predictor of hiring success. However, this book suggest the main solution is to do more stringent interviewing.
The book supports three questionable interviewing techniques. The first is to THREATEN the candidate. The books suggest that the interviewer use phrases like, "WHEN I speak with your last boss, what will they tell me your strengths are." The author suggest that the use of "WHEN" lets the candidate know you will be speaking with their past manager. This, and other suggestions, seems a little heavy handed.
Then their is a lack of transparency in this hiring process. This system is quite manipulative and an experienced candidate could be turned off. One technique is to get the candidate to agree to the compensation early in the process. Any shewed candidate that wants to hold off salary negotiations until they know enough about the position, is toss out. In fact, the book authors brag about only hiring one person in 500 (at their web site) This is NOT a useful metric.
More bothersome is the suggestion that the interviewer find out about the candidate's spouse. This can be all sorts of illegal as martial status can be grounds for discrimination law suits. The book suggest that the candidate's spouse, and family, must be sold the job as well. While I agree that a candidate may decline an offer if their spouse objects to moving, a company needs to be VERY careful how they ask this question. "Would you and your family be comfortable with moving?" would be a much better way to ask this question. If the book's advice is followed, an inexperienced HR manager may ask, "would your SPOUSE be comfortable with relocation?" This is all kinds of bad.
The author's website says they have only a 97% client satisfaction rate. That is not all that good given the author's suggestion of the success of their technique.
To end on a positive note, ...
There is research that suggests that interviewing is only 50% predictive in hiring. That is, you could flip a coin and do as well as if you interviewed a candidate and chose. I am of this camp, I am a believer in cognitive assessments. But, if you are going to use interviews as your main screening method, I suggest "Hire With Your Head". A much better system.
Practical, straightforward, highly valuable October 9, 2008
The Good Manager (new jersey)
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
I like this book because it sets out a clear point of view--that most of us have been neglecting a key component to business success: hiring in a rigorous manner. It then proceeds to offer a method for correcting this problem. I haven't yet tried the method itself, but I intend to. My preliminary reaction is that it makes intuitive sense, but that it's going to take a fair amount of time to implement successfully. The authors anticipate this response and argue that more time now saves an inordinate amount of time later. I'll add more once I've tried the method, but first response is positive.
A must read for any business September 30, 2008
L. A. Cozzillio (Valley Forge , Pa)
3 out of 5 found this review helpful
Excellent treatment of a critical craft for any enterprise ...Eminent, yet readable and immediately usable...If you are cognizant of the power of human capital, and either employ or influence those who hire...
R E A D T H I S B O O K.
Larry Cozzillio
President,The Andre Group
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