A recruiter advises readers to change the hiring process for corporate success.
In this debut business book, Lowisz, an experienced recruiter, lists common myths about hiring. He proposes that recruiters adopt a more targeted and personalized method in order to successfully build strong workforces and satisfy both employers and employees. The author argues that despite the development of LinkedIn and online job sites, recruiting has fundamentally changed little since it was developed in the 1940s and often does a poor job of filling employers’ needs. The book’s recommendations include instituting a more holistic approach to evaluating candidates—in Lowisz’s terms, assessing “head, heart, and skills” rather than the traditional appraisal of skills alone—and rethinking how hiring managers determine what they need in a new employee. Other suggestions include forging genuine connections in relevant fields, improving internal data management, and understanding the role of marketing in the recruiting process. Lowisz is clearly knowledgeable about the strengths and weaknesses of corporate recruiting, and the volume is an informative one although the text is fairly short. The work is at its strongest when giving concrete tips, such as examples of questions to ask in interviews and techniques for establishing credibility with communities of potential recruits (“Emphasize that you want to know more about them as a person and the next steps they foresee in their career”). The inclusion of the trademark symbol in the many references to “Results-Based Interviewing™” is excessive, but aside from that annoyance the writing is generally strong. Lowisz does not hesitate to indict his fellow recruiters as needed: “Recruiters are making decisions for people without talking to people, and they’re basing those decisions on the assumption that what matters to the candidate is money and title (extrinsic motivators), not intrinsic motivation”; “Looking at a resume or a LinkedIn profile for a few seconds is not enough.” In addition to this forthright examination of the mechanics of recruiting, the book leaves readers with a fair amount of actionable advice.
A solid, if brief, addition to business bookshelves that makes a compelling case for a new approach to employee recruiting.Pub Date: June 28, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5445-0173-4
Page Count: 118
Publisher: Lioncrest Publishing
Review Posted Online: Aug. 9, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Categories: GENERAL NONFICTION
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A New York Times columnist and editorial board member delivers a slim book for aspiring writers, offering saws and sense, wisdom and waggery, biases and biting sarcasm.
Klinkenborg (Timothy; or, Notes of an Abject Reptile, 2006), who’s taught for decades, endeavors to keep things simple in his prose, and he urges other writers to do the same. (Note: He despises abuses of the word as, as he continually reminds readers.) In the early sections, the author ignores traditional paragraphing so that the text resembles a long free-verse poem. He urges readers to use short, clear sentences and to make sure each one is healthy before moving on; notes that it’s acceptable to start sentences with and and but; sees benefits in diagramming sentences; stresses that all writing is revision; periodically blasts the formulaic writing that many (most?) students learn in school; argues that knowing where you’re headed before you begin might be good for a vacation, but not for a piece of writing; and believes that writers must trust readers more, and trust themselves. Most of Klinkenborg’s advice is neither radical nor especially profound (“Turn to the poets. / Learn from them”), and the text suffers from a corrosive fallacy: that if his strategies work for him they will work for all. The final fifth of the text includes some passages from writers he admires (McPhee, Oates, Cheever) and some of his students’ awkward sentences, which he treats analytically but sometimes with a surprising sarcasm that veers near meanness. He includes examples of students’ dangling modifiers, malapropisms, errors of pronoun agreement, wordiness and other mistakes.
Analyzing his craft, a careful craftsman urges with Thoreauvian conviction that writers should simplify, simplify, simplify.Pub Date: Aug. 7, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-307-26634-7
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 14, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2012
Categories: GENERAL NONFICTION
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BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
With this detailed, versatile cookbook, readers can finally make Momofuku Milk Bar’s inventive, decadent desserts at home, or see what they’ve been missing.
In this successor to the Momofuku cookbook, Momofuku Milk Bar’s pastry chef hands over the keys to the restaurant group’s snack-food–based treats, which have had people lining up outside the door of the Manhattan bakery since it opened. The James Beard Award–nominated Tosi spares no detail, providing origin stories for her popular cookies, pies and ice-cream flavors. The recipes are meticulously outlined, with added tips on how to experiment with their format. After “understanding how we laid out this cookbook…you will be one of us,” writes the author. Still, it’s a bit more sophisticated than the typical Betty Crocker fare. In addition to a healthy stock of pretzels, cornflakes and, of course, milk powder, some recipes require readers to have feuilletine and citric acid handy, to perfect the art of quenelling. Acolytes should invest in a scale, thanks to Tosi’s preference of grams (“freedom measurements,” as the friendlier cups and spoons are called, are provided, but heavily frowned upon)—though it’s hard to be too pretentious when one of your main ingredients is Fruity Pebbles. A refreshing, youthful cookbook that will have readers happily indulging in a rising pastry-chef star’s widely appealing treats.
Pub Date: Oct. 25, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-307-72049-8
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Clarkson Potter
Review Posted Online: Jan. 13, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2011
Categories: GENERAL NONFICTION
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