A compact, well-constructed, and self-contained playbook for novice and experienced hiring managers.
A strong debut that aims to demystify the talent acquisition process for hiring managers.
Weyerhauser, a professional executive recruiter, has more than two decades of executive search experience, mostly at large firms, and he has an intimate knowledge of what it takes to hire top people. In this work, he shares his wisdom in clear, well-organized prose, presenting a logical, thorough approach to talent acquisition. He begins with the notion that it’s the hiring manager, and no one else, who must take ultimate responsibility for securing the right person for a particular position. The author intriguingly notes that some managers remain disengaged because “if the search fails, blame can be shifted to HR and the recruiters.” Active commitment on the part of the hiring manager is essential, he says, because it leads to improved decision-making, “drives focus, energy, and momentum,” and also motivates candidates. In addition to commitment and engagement, one must also embrace a methodical approach, which is the strength of this book. It covers what the author calls “the physics” of search, discussing such things as how to analyze candidates and the job market; it also offers a smart way to select a recruiter and outlines a 12-step search process, including “likely problems” and “solutions” for each step. The author also addresses, in comprehensive detail, which characteristics of a position are most important for the manager to understand as well as how to “craft a compelling value proposition” for candidates. The section on creating a position description may be one of the most valuable in the book, as it includes examples of both “standard” and “enhanced” descriptions that one may use as models. Weyerhauser’s wise counsel regarding candidate interviews is also helpful; instead of just listing typical questions to ask, he delves into the psychological aspects of the process, such as how to assess emotional intelligence, how to ask about behavioral issues, and how to evaluate the questions that candidates ask interviewers. The author’s authoritative advice about references could also come in handy; he says that he prefers to think of them as “referees” instead of “references” because they keep “the issue of objectivity close to mind.” Weyerhauser deftly wraps up the book by noting two additional, important areas: First, he talks about the art of compromise when making a job offer, and then he discusses how managers can approach talent acquisition in a broadly strategic manner. For instance, he believes that hiring managers shouldn’t overestimate the importance of the time and cost of the hiring process, because these aspects “diminish over time, while the quality of the hire remains important in perpetuity.” Throughout this book, Weyerhauser offers several useful tools to help hiring managers do their jobs, and he articulates them clearly. As a result, the members of his target audience will not only want to engage more fully in the recruitment process—they’ll also better understand the importance of their own roles.
A compact, well-constructed, and self-contained playbook for novice and experienced hiring managers.Pub Date: June 1, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-9915908-0-3
Page Count: 266
Publisher: Kensington Stone
Review Posted Online: Aug. 24, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
From the national correspondent for PBS's MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour: a moving memoir of her youth in the Deep South and her role in desegregating the Univ. of Georgia. The eldest daughter of an army chaplain, Hunter-Gault was born in what she calls the ``first of many places that I would call `my place' ''—the small village of Due West, tucked away in a remote little corner of South Carolina. While her father served in Korea, Hunter-Gault and her mother moved first to Covington, Georgia, and then to Atlanta. In ``L.A.'' (lovely Atlanta), surrounded by her loving family and a close-knit black community, the author enjoyed a happy childhood participating in activities at church and at school, where her intellectual and leadership abilities soon were noticed by both faculty and peers. In high school, Hunter-Gault found herself studying the ``comic-strip character Brenda Starr as I might have studied a journalism textbook, had there been one.'' Determined to be a journalist, she applied to several colleges—all outside of Georgia, for ``to discourage the possibility that a black student would even think of applying to one of those white schools, the state provided money for black students'' to study out of state. Accepted at Michigan's Wayne State, the author was encouraged by local civil-rights leaders to apply, along with another classmate, to the Univ. of Georgia as well. Her application became a test of changing racial attitudes, as well as of the growing strength of the civil-rights movement in the South, and Gault became a national figure as she braved an onslaught of hostilities and harassment to become the first black woman to attend the university. A remarkably generous, fair-minded account of overcoming some of the biggest, and most intractable, obstacles ever deployed by southern racists. (Photographs—not seen.)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-374-17563-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1992
Necessarily swift and adumbrative as well as inclusive, focused, and graceful.
A light-speed tour of (mostly) Western poetry, from the 4,000-year-old Gilgamesh to the work of Australian poet Les Murray, who died in 2019.
In the latest entry in the publisher’s Little Histories series, Carey, an emeritus professor at Oxford whose books include What Good Are the Arts? and The Unexpected Professor: An Oxford Life in Books, offers a quick definition of poetry—“relates to language as music relates to noise. It is language made special”—before diving in to poetry’s vast history. In most chapters, the author deals with only a few writers, but as the narrative progresses, he finds himself forced to deal with far more than a handful. In his chapter on 20th-century political poets, for example, he talks about 14 writers in seven pages. Carey displays a determination to inform us about who the best poets were—and what their best poems were. The word “greatest” appears continually; Chaucer was “the greatest medieval English poet,” and Langston Hughes was “the greatest male poet” of the Harlem Renaissance. For readers who need a refresher—or suggestions for the nightstand—Carey provides the best-known names and the most celebrated poems, including Paradise Lost (about which the author has written extensively), “Kubla Khan,” “Ozymandias,” “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” Wordsworth and Coleridge’s Lyrical Ballads, which “changed the course of English poetry.” Carey explains some poetic technique (Hopkins’ “sprung rhythm”) and pauses occasionally to provide autobiographical tidbits—e.g., John Masefield, who wrote the famous “Sea Fever,” “hated the sea.” We learn, as well, about the sexuality of some poets (Auden was bisexual), and, especially later on, Carey discusses the demons that drove some of them, Robert Lowell and Sylvia Plath among them. Refreshingly, he includes many women in the volume—all the way back to Sappho—and has especially kind words for Marianne Moore and Elizabeth Bishop, who share a chapter.
Necessarily swift and adumbrative as well as inclusive, focused, and graceful.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-300-23222-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Feb. 8, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
