This must-read for business leaders provides a fresh perspective on transforming the hiring process.
If a company wants to win “the talent war,” it should take a cue from the military’s special operations recruiting process, according to this debut business book.
When it comes to finding—and molding—the best talent, few organizations are more effective than the United States special operations forces. Those who become Navy SEALs or Army Rangers have gone through a rigorous, battle-tested assessment process to identify high performers who “share a common set of attributes” (including drive, resiliency, and humility) that position them for success. In their laser-focused work, Sarraille, a former Marine and Navy SEAL; Randle, a one-time Army officer; and Cotton, a senior management consultant, draw on their diverse experiences to make a persuasive case for why companies large and small should rethink outdated, ineffective hiring practices and embrace an approach similar to that used by the special operations forces. When hiring managers narrowly focus on hard skills or fail to look beyond the basic facts of a candidate’s resume, they may not see talent that is hiding in plain sight, the authors argue. And when they don’t nurture talent where it already exists, they risk losing it to competing organizations. In three sections, the authors clearly outline what most businesses get wrong about hiring (and what special operations forces get right); explain how to create a “talent acquisition plan” to engage and retain the best people; and offer guidance on the nuts-and-bolts of recruiting. One innovative idea: temporarily take “A-players” away from their regular duties and put them on “the front line of the talent war.” Nonmilitary folks will learn plenty about special operation forces’ surprising approach to candidate selection, where the focus is less on brawn and more on brains and character. While the authors readily admit that no company can (or should) re-create the SEALs’ infamous “Hell Week,” they draw on their experiences as consultants to show how other tests can identify candidates most likely to drive a business forward. A mix of war stories and insider military information separates this effort from the average business book. But there’s no shortage of practical, actionable advice in these pages, whether readers are CEOs or midlevel managers tasked with filling empty positions.
This must-read for business leaders provides a fresh perspective on transforming the hiring process.Pub Date: Nov. 10, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5445-1557-1
Page Count: 294
Publisher: Lioncrest Publishing
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.
A helpful guide to working effectively with people from other cultures.
“The sad truth is that the vast majority of managers who conduct business internationally have little understanding about how culture is impacting their work,” writes Meyer, a professor at INSEAD, an international business school. Yet they face a wider array of work styles than ever before in dealing with clients, suppliers and colleagues from around the world. When is it best to speak or stay quiet? What is the role of the leader in the room? When working with foreign business people, failing to take cultural differences into account can lead to frustration, misunderstanding or worse. Based on research and her experiences teaching cross-cultural behaviors to executive students, the author examines a handful of key areas. Among others, they include communicating (Anglo-Saxons are explicit; Asians communicate implicitly, requiring listeners to read between the lines), developing a sense of trust (Brazilians do it over long lunches), and decision-making (Germans rely on consensus, Americans on one decider). In each area, the author provides a “culture map scale” that positions behaviors in more than 20 countries along a continuum, allowing readers to anticipate the preferences of individuals from a particular country: Do they like direct or indirect negative feedback? Are they rigid or flexible regarding deadlines? Do they favor verbal or written commitments? And so on. Meyer discusses managers who have faced perplexing situations, such as knowledgeable team members who fail to speak up in meetings or Indians who offer a puzzling half-shake, half-nod of the head. Cultural differences—not personality quirks—are the motivating factors behind many behavioral styles. Depending on our cultures, we understand the world in a particular way, find certain arguments persuasive or lacking merit, and consider some ways of making decisions or measuring time natural and others quite strange.
These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.Pub Date: May 27, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-61039-250-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: April 15, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2014
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.
“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.
It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty, 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
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