Hire, Fire, and the Walking Dead: A Leader's Guide to Recruiting the Best Review

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(More customer reviews)I actually really enjoyed reading this book. I'm glad I was able to come across this book on the publisher's website and really research the book more. Any who,...I try to keep it handy in the office and available to some of the other leaders/ managers and really anyone in a hiring position. The book has valuable information that makes you think and improving your hiring capabilities, hence improving the productivity overall through better employees. I especially would recommend this book to anyone in a hiring position that wants to improve their company in big ways!

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Why do you keep hiring the wrong people? In this book, the negative behaviors that lead to human resource nightmares and, therefore, business nightmares are identified. It presents workable solutions to develop a sound, proven recruiting strategy. This means there will be fewer problems for you, and you will have the foresight to keep it that way. Learn to be more proactive than reactive and confident that any small glitch can be fixed with a little common sense, creativity and good, old-fashioned elbow grease. This book is about the individual pursuit of excellence and how managers of an enlightened workforce, must foster this reality. World-class organizations are built by preparation, execution and accountability, not by luck. Each and every hiring, one candidate and one hiring decision at a time build them. Hire, Fire & the Walking Dead is a tactical recruiting guide for the hiring manger as an analogy to the sales process. In an easy to follow and implement format, it lays out the five critical steps to consistently build the pipeline of talent necessary to raise the standards of the hiring process and avoid desperation hires. In this book learn how-to consistently: -Define the market and build a pipeline of high potential candidates; position the "product" (career opportunity) against the competition-Deliver the message with impact to potential candidates-Prospect for talent where competitors are not looking ... in the "hidden candidate market"-Rigorously qualify (screen) potential hires-Close the sale and deliver the star performer every timeIf you or your managers are willing to accept accountability for hiring top talent and reduce headhunter and hiring costs in the process, Hire, Fire & the Walking Dead is for you.

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The Chief Learning Officer: Driving Value Within a Changing Organization Through Learning and Development (Improving Human Performance) Review

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Borrowing a phrase from Charles Dickens, for those involved in enterprise learning initiatives, these are "the best of times, the worst if times." Never before throughout human history has there been more and better information available than there is now, nor has it been easier to obtain or disseminate it. However, information needs are constantly and rapidly changing, especially in what has become (in Thomas Friedman's apt phrase) a "flat world," one without borders. Moreover, many executives have developed what Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert I. Sutton so aptly characterize as a "knowing-doing gap." As a result, chief learning officers (CLOs) or their equivalent have an abundance of opportunities but they also face a number of significant challenges. In this volume, Tamar Elkeles and Jack Phillips provide information and counsel that suggest how to drive value within a changing organization through learning and development. They take various challenges into full account while responding to key questions such as these, devoting a separate chapter to each:
1. Insofar as the CLO is concerned, what are the most significant trends and issues?
2. How to devise a program that links strategy to learning?
3. How to set an appropriate investment level?
4. How to align the learning enterprise with business needs?
5. How to complete a transition to performance improvement?
6. How to create value-based delivery?
7. How to manage for value?
8. How to demonstrate and quantify the ROI of learning?
9. How to manage talent for value?
10. How to establish and then sustain productive management relationships?
Then in the final chapter, "The Voices of CLOs," Elkeles and Phillips include brief but insightful commentaries by 17 prominent chief learning officers, excerpted from interviews of them by Elkeles. (I wish it were possible to read each interview in its entirety.) "They are exceptional at what they do, well-known, and highly respected for their views. More importantly, they offer realistic perspectives about how the CLO function in the organization is managed. To varying degrees, the interviewees comment on some aspect of nine issues (listed on Page 287) that represent the focus of this book.
Readers will especially appreciate Elkeles and Phillips' skillful use of various reader-friendly devices, notably the provision of Figures (e.g. Figure 1-1, "CLO Roles to meet business challenges," Page 3), Tables (e.g. Table 3-2, "Turnover Cost Categories," on Page 62 and Table 5-4, "Core Competencies Associated with Performance Improvement Work," on Page 120), dozens of boxed quotations inserted throughout the narrative that are relevant to the given context, a "Final Thoughts" section at the conclusion of most chapters, and dozens of Checklists (e.g. "Steps for Needs Assessment and Analysis" on Page 98 and "Benefits of Management Involvement" on Page 276). These and other devices will facilitate, indeed accelerate a review of key points long after the book has been read.
Although this book was primarily written for chief learning officers (with or without a formal title), I think it is also a "must read" for other C-level executives and especially for board members and CEOs. I agree with Peter Drucker that everyone involved in an organization (whatever its size or nature may be) must be knowledge workers. Only then can effective leadership be developed at all levels and in all areas, thereby ensuring that the organization can achieve and then sustain a competitive advantage. The combined costs of failing to do that are incalculable. Hence my selection of Derek Bok's comment to serve as the title of this review.
Congratulations to Tamar Elkeles and Jack Phillips on a brilliant achievement.
Those who share my high regard for this book are urged to check out Jay Cross's Informal Learning: Rediscovering the Natural Pathways That Inspire Innovation and Performance as well as Return on Learning: Training for High Performance at Accenture co-authored by Donald Vanthournout and his associates on Accenture's Capability Development team. Also Edward Lawler's Talent: Making People Your Competitive Advantage, Also, John Hager and Paul Halliday's Recovering Informal Learning: Wisdom, Judgement and Community, Dean Spitzer's Transforming Performance Measurement: Rethinking the Way We Measure and Drive Organizational Success, and Enterprise Architecture as Strategy: Creating a Foundation for Business Execution co-authored by Jeanne W. Ross, Peter Weill, and David Robertson.

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What to Do with The Rest of Your Life: America's Top Career Coach Shows You How to Find or Create the Job You'll LOVE Review

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(More customer reviews)I gave the book three stars rather than four or five because it doesn't deliver what the title promises and the cover is all hype -- but the book does deliver some very worthwhile guidance.
What to Do (WTD) will be best suited to the midlife career changer with valuable skills -- self-motivated folks who just need direction. I like the book's down-to-earth no-nonsense tone.
Good parts:
List of career-killers -- not new to anyone who's been out in the world, but well-stated and worth reviewing
Discussion of interviewing for information and network: very realistic
Discussion of internet job search is right on!
Discussion of starting a business is better than average (but I like my own "are you ready" checklist better!)
Salary negotiations section is excellent
Weak parts:
Self-assessment (lists of values and skills were very ordinary and won't be helpful to most)
Recommendation to take tests: rarely useful for mid-career managers or professionals
Relocation section: My book on this topic, Making the Big Move, is two hundred pages long -- two pages can't do justice to the topic and may be misleading.
I wish the author had focused more on interview and resume strategies; interestingly, she does not include a discussion of resumes at all. I suspect that her strength lies in the nuts-and-bolts of job search and I wish she had included more on those topics.
I had to smile when I read her section on how to find a career counselor. Everyone who writes a book includes a list of "must have" qualifications for an advisor and, amazingly, those qualifications are all held by the author!
With a degree in counseling, this author urges us to find a vocational counselor. However, vocational counseling experience helps younger job seekers. Midlife, mid-career professionals need different sources of help. Recent books that target this market tend to be written by experienced professionals who have advanced degrees and life experience.
There are valuable nuggets here and I wish the author would write a meaty book, based on what she knows well, rather than an overview that is too sketchy in some places to be a useful guide.

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Stuck in a job that's going nowhere? Hate going to work? Pounding the pavement looking for an opportunity? Bored? Whether you are caught in a career crisis, a victim of corporate downsizing, or suffering from old-fashioned burnout, you need America's #1 career coach, Robin Ryan. Robin has the answers. She will show you that your perfect career is waiting for you no matter what your age or income. Most important, Robin Ryan provides great advice for the millions who feel trapped in their jobs and need a change but also need to maintain their income.

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