Recruit Rockstars: The 10 Step Playbook to Find the Winners and Ignite Your Business


Jeff Hyman - 2017
    If you’re filling your company’s vacant positions with B-players, you’re playing with fire. Instead, hire Rockstars to build an organization with limitless potential. Recruit Rockstars shows you how to find, hire, and keep the best of the best. Top-tier executive recruiter Jeff Hyman has hired more than three thousand people over the course of his career. Now, he reveals his bulletproof 10-step method for landing the very best talent, based on data instead of gut feel. From sourcing and interviewing to closing and onboarding, you’ll learn how to attract winners like a magnet and avoid the mistakes that result in bad hires. Assembling a team of driven and innovative Rockstars is the most powerful competitive advantage you can have in today’s ever-changing business world. Recruit Rockstars will help you nail your numbers, impress your investors, and crush your competitors.

Who: The A Method for Hiring


Geoff Smart - 2008
    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 mostIn 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.

Powerful: Building a Culture of Freedom and Responsibility


Patty McCord - 2018
    McCord helped create the unique and high-performing culture at Netflix, where she was chief talent officer. In her new book, Powerful: Building a Culture of Freedom and Responsibility, she shares what she learned there and elsewhere in Silicon Valley.McCord advocates practicing radical honesty in the workplace, saying good-bye to employees who don’t fit the company’s emerging needs, and motivating with challenging work, not promises, perks, and bonus plans. McCord argues that the old standbys of corporate HR―annual performance reviews, retention plans, employee empowerment and engagement programs―often end up being a colossal waste of time and resources. Her road-tested advice, offered with humor and irreverence, provides readers a different path for creating a culture of high performance and profitability.Powerful will change how you think about work and the way a business should be run.

Great Leaders Grow: Becoming a Leader for Life


Kenneth H. Blanchard - 2012
    Leadership must be a living process, not a title on a business card, and life means growth. As Ken Blanchard and Mark Miller write in the introduction, “the path to increased influence, impact, and leadership effectiveness is paved with personal growth.… Our capacity to grow determines our capacity to lead. It’s really that simple.” Great Leaders Grow shows leaders and aspiring leaders precisely which areas to focus on so they can remain effective throughout their lives.As the book opens, Debbie Brewster, an accomplished leader herself, becomes a mentor to Blake, her late mentor’s son, as he begins his career. Debbie tells Blake, “How well you and I serve will be determined by the decision to grow or not. Will you be a leader who is always ready to face the next challenge? Or will you be a leader who tries to apply yesterday’s solutions to today’s problems? The latter will ultimately fail. The difference: the decision to grow. And not a short-term decision but a decision to grow throughout your career and throughout your life. This single decision is a game changer for leaders.”Over the next several weeks Debbie reveals what this means in practical terms. She and Blake explore four ways that leaders must continue to grow, both on the job and off, because who you are as a leader is inextricably connected to who you are as a person. Whether you’re a CEO or an entry-level employee, you’ll be inspired to reflect on your own life and to design your own unique long-term growth plan, leading to not only continuing professional success but personal fulfillment as well.

EntreLeadership: 20 Years of Practical Business Wisdom from the Trenches


Dave Ramsey - 2011
    These are the men and women doing battle daily beneath the banner that is your brand. Are they courageous or indecisive? Are they serving a motivated team or managing employees? Are they valued? Your team will never grow beyond you, so here’s another question to consider—are you growing? Whether you’re sitting at the CEO’s desk, the middle manager’s cubicle, or a card table in your living-room-based start-up, EntreLeadership provides the practical, step-by-step guidance to grow your business where you want it to go. Dave Ramsey opens up his championship playbook for business to show you how to: -Inspire your team to take ownership and love what they do -Unify your team and get rid of all gossip -Handle money to set your business up for success -Reach every goal you set -And much, much more! EntreLeadership is a one-stop guide filled with accessible advice for businesses and leaders to ensure success even through the toughest of times.

HR on Purpose: Developing Deliberate People Passion


Steve Browne - 2017
    Read this book to rekindle your passion for a field that is vibrant and vital and touch the lives of everyone your encounter with HR on Purpose!!”

The 3 Big Questions for a Frantic Family: A Leadership Fable... about Restoring Sanity to the Most Important Organization in Your Life


Patrick Lencioni - 2008
    As a husband and the father of four young boys, Lencioni realized the discrepancy between the time and energy his clients put into running their organizations and the reactive way most people run their personal lives. Having experienced the stress of a frantic family firsthand, he and his wife began applying some of the tools he uses with Fortune 500 companies at home, and with surprising results.

Work Rules!: Insights from Inside Google That Will Transform How You Live and Lead


Laszlo Bock - 2015
    "We spend more time working than doing anything else in life. It's not right that the experience of work should be so demotivating and dehumanizing." So says Laszlo Bock, head of People Operations at the company that transformed how the world interacts with knowledge. This insight is the heart of WORK RULES!, a compelling and surprisingly playful manifesto that offers lessons including:Take away managers' power over employeesLearn from your best employees-and your worstHire only people who are smarter than you are, no matter how long it takes to find themPay unfairly (it's more fair!)Don't trust your gut: Use data to predict and shape the futureDefault to open-be transparent and welcome feedbackIf you're comfortable with the amount of freedom you've given your employees, you haven't gone far enough. Drawing on the latest research in behavioral economics and a profound grasp of human psychology, WORK RULES! also provides teaching examples from a range of industries-including lauded companies that happen to be hideous places to work and little-known companies that achieve spectacular results by valuing and listening to their employees. Bock takes us inside one of history's most explosively successful businesses to reveal why Google is consistently rated one of the best places to work in the world, distilling 15 years of intensive worker R&D into principles that are easy to put into action, whether you're a team of one or a team of thousands. WORK RULES! shows how to strike a balance between creativity and structure, leading to success you can measure in quality of life as well as market share. Read it to build a better company from within rather than from above; read it to reawaken your joy in what you do.

The Alliance: Managing Talent in the Networked Age


Reid Hoffman - 2014
    Think of them instead as allies.As a manager you want your employees to help transform the company for the future. And your employees want the company to help transform their careers for the long term. But this win-win scenario will happen only if both sides trust each other enough to commit to mutual investment and mutual benefit. Sadly, trust in the business world is hovering at an all-time low.We can rebuild that lost trust with straight talk that recognizes the realities of the modern economy. So, paradoxically, the alliance begins with managers acknowledging that great employees might leave the company, and with employees being honest about their own career aspirations.By putting this new alliance at the heart of your talent management strategy, you’ll not only bring back trust, you’ll be able to recruit and retain the entrepreneurial individuals you need to adapt to a fast-changing world.These individuals, flexible, creative, and with a bias toward action, thrive when they’re on a specific “tour of duty”—when they have a mission that’s mutually beneficial to employee and company that can be completed in a realistic period of time.Coauthored by the founder of LinkedIn, this bold but practical guide for managers and executives will give you the tools you need to recruit, manage, and retain the kind of employees who will make your company thrive in today’s world of constant innovation and fast-paced change.

Start: Punch Fear in the Face, Escape Average and Do Work that Matters


Jon Acuff - 2013
    But three things have changed the path to success:Boomers are realizing that a lot of the things they were promised aren't going to materialize, and they have started second and third careers.Technology has given access to an unprecedented number of people who are building online empires and changing their lives in ways that would have been impossible years ago.The days of "success first, significance later," have ended.While none of the stages can be skipped, they can be shortened and accelerated. There are only two paths in life: average and awesome. The average path is easy because all you have to do is nothing. The awesome path is more challenging, because things like fear only bother you when you do work that matters. The good news is "Start" gives readers practical, actionable insights to be more awesome, more often.

How Successful People Lead: Taking Your Influence to the Next Level


John C. Maxwell - 2013
    Maxwell explains how true leadership works.It is not generated by your title. In fact, being named to a position is the lowest of the five levels every effective leader achieves. To be more than a boss people are required to follow, you must master the ability to inspire and invest in people. You need to build a team that produces not only results, but also future leaders. By combining the advice contained in these pages with skill and dedication, you can reach the pinnacle of leadership-where your influence extends beyond your immediate reach for the benefit of others. Derived from material previously published in the Wall Street Journal bestseller The 5 Levels of Leadership.

HR from the Outside In: Six Competencies for the Future of Human Resources


Dave Ulrich - 2012
    Lawler III, Professor, University of Southern California"This book is a crucial blueprint of what it takes to succeed. A must have for every HR professional."--Lynda Gratton, Professor, London Business School"One single concept changed the HR world forever: 'HR business partner'. Through consistent cycles of research and practical application, Dave and his team have produced and update the most comprehensive set of HR competencies ever."--Horacio Quiros, President, World Federation of People Management AssociationsPacked with facts, evidence, and prescriptive advice. It is about being a business leader first, and an HR professional second."--Randy MacDonald, Senior Vice President, Human Resources, IBM CorporationThe concepts and competencies presented in this book provide HR leaders with new insights.--Gina Qiao, Senior Vice President, HR Lenovo"Powerful, relevant and timely! Defines new HR in a pragmatic way. This book is a must for leaders and HR folks who seek to create sustainable competitive advantage."--Satish Pradhan, Chief, Group Human Resources, Tata Sons Limited"You can't argue with the data! This book is a definitive and practical guide to learning the HR competencies for success."--John Lynch, Senior Vice President, HR, General Electric"A must read for any HR executive. This research-based competency model is particularly compelling because it is informed by the perspective of non-HR executives and stakeholders."--Sue Meisinger, Distinguished speaker and author, former CEO of SHRMRead this book for a unique long-term perspective on where HR competencies have brought us and must take us in future.--John Boudreau, Professor, University of Southern California and Research Director, Center for Effective Organizations

Read to Lead: The Simple Habit That Expands Your Influence and Boosts Your Career


Jeff Brown - 2021
    It's responsible for unlocking limitless creativity and influence. It's known to reduce stress, improve decision-making skills, and make you a better leader. What is it? Reading. And it's the single best thing you can do to improve yourself professionally.Reading more and better books creates opportunities for you to learn new skills, rise above your competition, and build a successful career. In Read to Lead you'll learn- why you need to read like your career depends on it- the five science-backed reasons reading will help you build your career- how to absorb a book into your bloodstream- a technique that can double (or triple!) your reading speed- tips on creating a lifetime reading habit- and moreIf you want to lead a more satisfied life, have more intelligent conversations, and broaden your mind, you need to read to lead!

Hire with Your Head: Using Performance-Based Hiring to Build Great Teams


Lou Adler - 2002
    Lou Adler's Performance-based Hiring is more powerful than ever! We have chosen Performance-based Hiring because it's a comprehensive process, it's behaviorally grounded, managers and recruiters find it easy to use, and it works. -Marshall Utterson, Director Staffing, AIG Enterprise Services, LLC Everyone's looking for the perfect means to make effective hiring decisions. A trained interviewer armed with the right tools is the best solution. Performance-based Hiring is a proven methodology to get these results. -John Ganley, Vice President and Chief Talent Officer, Quest Software Any staffing director that doesn't send all of their people through Performance-based Hiring training is missing out on top talent, plain and simple. This should be the standard throughout the industry. -Dan Hilbert, Recruiting Manager, Valero Energy Corporation Performance-based Hiring has been the most successful recruitment tool that we have added to our organization over the past few years. In fact, these tools have not only produced amazing outcomes-in terms of selecting the best fit in an extremely tight labor market-but with a level of success among our operations customers that I have rarely seen with other HR products. -Trudy Knoepke-Campbell, Director, Workforce Planning, HealthEast(r) Care System

HR from the Heart: Inspiring Stories and Strategies for Building the People Side of Great Business


Libby Sartain - 2003
    They bridge the gaps between the individual and the collective, the person and the purpose. The most successful and effective HR professionals see their careers as a calling, and their work, though driven by corporate goals, is graced by a sense of purpose, a profound generosity, and a love for what they do and the constituencies they serve.HR from the Heart is a book for HR practitioners who love their jobs -- or want to. Libby Sartain, one of the country's top human resources executives, reveals how HR professionals create a synergy between business objectives and the needs and wants of employees. This inspiring book is equal parts motivational message and how-to, confessional and career guide. Filled with stories from Sartain's considerable experience, HR from the Heart offers a first-hand perspective on forging relationships, selling HR to the company, taking diversity beyond ""by the book,"" keeping policy in perspective, and more -- all while making the right career moves, staying engaged, and forwarding the strategic goals of the company."