A solid, if brief, addition to business bookshelves that makes a compelling case for a new approach to employee recruiting.
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
An extraordinary true tale of torment, retribution, and loyalty that's irresistibly readable in spite of its intrusively melodramatic prose. Starting out with calculated, movie-ready anecdotes about his boyhood gang, Carcaterra's memoir takes a hairpin turn into horror and then changes tack once more to relate grippingly what must be one of the most outrageous confidence schemes ever perpetrated. Growing up in New York's Hell's Kitchen in the 1960s, former New York Daily News reporter Carcaterra (A Safe Place, 1993) had three close friends with whom he played stickball, bedeviled nuns, and ran errands for the neighborhood Mob boss. All this is recalled through a dripping mist of nostalgia; the streetcorner banter is as stilted and coy as a late Bowery Boys film. But a third of the way in, the story suddenly takes off: In 1967 the four friends seriously injured a man when they more or less unintentionally rolled a hot-dog cart down the steps of a subway entrance. The boys, aged 11 to 14, were packed off to an upstate New York reformatory so brutal it makes Sing Sing sound like Sunnybrook Farm. The guards continually raped and beat them, at one point tossing all of them into solitary confinement, where rats gnawed at their wounds and the menu consisted of oatmeal soaked in urine. Two of Carcaterra's friends were dehumanized by their year upstate, eventually becoming prominent gangsters. In 1980, they happened upon the former guard who had been their principal torturer and shot him dead. The book's stunning denouement concerns the successful plot devised by the author and his third friend, now a Manhattan assistant DA, to free the two killers and to exact revenge against the remaining ex-guards who had scarred their lives so irrevocably. Carcaterra has run a moral and emotional gauntlet, and the resulting book, despite its flaws, is disturbing and hard to forget. (Film rights to Propaganda; author tour)
Pub Date: July 10, 1995
ISBN: 0-345-39606-5
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The memoir of George Dawson, who learned to read when he was 98, places his life in the context of the entire 20th century in this inspiring, yet ultimately blighted, biography. Dawson begins his story with an emotional bang: his account of witnessing the lynching of a young African-American man falsely accused of rape. America’s racial caste system and his illiteracy emerge as the two biggest obstacles in Dawson’s life, but a full view of the man overcoming the obstacles remains oddly hidden. Travels to Ohio, Canada, and Mexico reveal little beyond Dawson’s restlessness, since nothing much happens to him during these wanderings. Similarly, the diverse activities he finds himself engaging in—bootlegging in St. Louis, breaking horses, attending cockfights—never really advance the reader’s understanding of the man. He calls himself a “ladies’ man” and hints at a score of exciting stories, but then describes only his decorous marriage. Despite the personal nature of this memoir, Dawson remains a strangely aloof figure, never quite inviting the reader to enter his world. In contrast to Dawson’s diffidence, however, Glaubman’s overbearing presence, as he repeatedly parades himself out to converse with Dawson, stifles any momentum the memoir might develop. Almost every chapter begins with Glaubman presenting Dawson with a newspaper clipping or historical fact and asking him to comment on it, despite the fact that Dawson often does not remember or never knew about the event in question. Exasperated readers may wonder whether Dawson’s life and his accomplishments, his passion for learning despite daunting obstacles, is the tale at hand, or whether the real issue is his recollections of Archduke Ferdinand. Dawson’s achievements are impressive and potentially exalting, but the gee-whiz nature of the tale degrades it to the status of yet another bowl of chicken soup for the soul, with a narrative frame as clunky as an old bone.
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-375-50396-X
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1999
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