Customer Reviews

Competing for Talent: Key Recruitment and Retention Strategies for Becoming an Employer of Choice

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Competing for talent should be required reading for anyone interested in learning new approaches for hiring qualified employees in today's very competitive work environment. I work for a state university system that has restrictive limits on what we can pay. Competing for Talent provided me with useful real world solutions to attracting and retaining qualified employees. This book had a positive and immediate impact on our hiring success.

Employers are continually concerned about competing with each other to hire and hold the best employees they can find. Sometimes this competition becomes a frenzy, since the best people-qualified, experienced-are in high demand. It's essential, to compete well, to become an Employer of Choice. Ahlrichs, in her preface, observes that employers of choice "know that their 'choice' status is a significant achievement attained through consistent application of comprehensive strategies and tactics, as well as top-bottom organizational responsibility for retention.

This book is divided into three important sections: the big picture, recruiting, and retention. In Part One, How Employers of Choice are Winning the Talent Wars, the three chapters focus on Learning from Employers of Choice, Employer of Choice Foundation Strategies, and Building and Communicating a Top Employer Reputation. These writings present a good overview and insight into how Employers of Choice are operating. The orientation is to understand what these companies are doing, rather than a how-to approach. There is a lot to learn here.

The second part, Creative Strategies for Recruiting Top Talent, offers the readers four chapters, starting with How Employers of Choice are Redesigning Recruitment. The next chapter, Only You Will Do, has a little more instructional tone, but still primarily takes a third person view. This chapter concludes with a helpful Orientation Checklist. Chapter 6, Surfing for Recruiting Results Online does provide a healthy amount of how-to. While this field is changing almost daily, there is a lot of value here for the reader. Plenty of website domains are included. The last chapter in this section, Finding New Hires in Unlikely Places, is filled with good ideas. Here I felt a lot more of the how-to I was looking for.

The third section is entitled Comprehensive Strategies for Retaining Top Performers. Here the chapters are titled Understanding Why Employees Leave; Managing and Leading for Retention; Retrain, Develop, and Profit; and New Compensation and Benefits Strategies. There is a lot of value in these chapters-lots of ideas and perspectives. An exit interview guide will be helpful to those companies that have not taken advantage of this tool. The author seems to really hit her stride in providing ideas for readers in this section. The same holds for her conclusion, Becoming an Employer of Choice.

The book is well-written, filled with valuable information for the reader. The solid chapters are supplemented with a good resource guide and an index. I'd recommend this book for company owners, senior executives, and human resource professionals. As an ethical reviewer, I must share with you that I am co-author of "How to Become an Employer of Choice," a competing title in the same field. With that perspective, I would be quite comfortable recommending my clients read "Competing for Talent" as a supplement to my book.

An easily understood, quickly assimilated read. I read the entire 200-page book at one sitting, and shared ideas with the co-owners of my company right away. Usually, business management textbooks are full of jargon. Competing for talent is in plain english, and can be applied immediately.

This book offers "heads up" competitive intelligence that will work for any company or organization that wants to attract and retain a high quality workforce. I have seen bits and pieces of this information as we have worked with our own corporate culture. Having "Competing for Talent" in my hands five years ago would have saved us a great deal of research.

Let's face it: The same challenges that confronted HR in the 80s and 90s, still confront HR today. We all know them now; everything from viewing human resources in a strategic framework vice a functional framework; measurable impacts via metrics and measures that prove the value of the role of HR; the right way to measure performance; the right way to counsel employees; the challenges of compensation and benefits, and just how to correctly develop leaders that have the soft and hard skills needed by the workforce.

One long-standing challenge of human resources/human capital management is just how to recruit and retain your best talent. This is a challenge that dates to the early 1990s when unemployment (historically speaking) was at an all time low and baby-boomers started aging, replaced by a more independent and balanced Generation Xer. Now the problems are even more complicated, but solid recruiting and retention strategies remain consistent. Nancy Ahlrichs' book 'Competing for Talent' remains a key source of reference for good ideas and in some cases can even provide the foundation of reevaluating your recruiting efforts. Delivery systems and technology have changed - at the time of Ahlrichs' work the Internet as a recruitment tool was emerging vice being mature, and the Web 2.0 and social media concept was not even a blip on the screen. However, the over-arching strategies (and tactics) are still very relevant - so relevant that this work is still listed as a core reference for SPHR/PHR certification. Some concepts that Ahlrichs covers are as follows:

*Creativity in recruiting sources: This includes collaborating with colleges (meaning prior to job fairs) in an innovative and mutual benefiting way. Also includes searching for employees from strategic partners/joint ventures, professional associations, unemployment offices, and re-recruiting ex-employees and retirees.

*Positioning your company to be an Employer of Choice (EOC): Ahrichs hits this point throughout the book for she knows that becoming an EOC is no easy task and losing status as an EOC is not difficult. Covered within this work includes aggressive and proactive public relations strategies, leveraging community involvement, consistent branding (internal and external). Positive relations with vendors, clients-customers, and rigorous reviews of communication strategies.

*You Got Them - Now What?: Many would think that a down-market would make this work almost obsolete. Nothing could be further from the truth. Frankly, this is the time to really intensify your efforts to become an EOC. The pool is deep and having an ability to connect with the right job candidate is even more crucial because you have "noise." However, what do you do for viable candidates that are selected? Communicate and let them know that you are on their minds and that they may be considered when the right opportunity comes along (if that is the case). Also, for the candidate that did get selected, the on boarding-orientation process, and other engagement efforts will still be just as important - especially in the areas of career development and a fair rewards package. Remember that generational considerations are still present and job markets shift and not all industries are impacted the same - this book is a useful reference for those reasons.

In summary: 'Competing for Talent' is an engaging and valuable source of recruiting information from an HR professional's perspective. Everything from compensation strategies, calculating "rough" turnover to catch a "snapshot" in time, and ensuring that your employees feel valued, remain motivated, and continue to provide value are hallmarks of HR that will remain with us for quite some time. Buy this book alone with 'Managing for Employee Recruitment,' and you are off to a good start in building your HR library - no matter what your position is within the organization.

Amazing source for talent management covering the most important HR functions to be fully utilized for building a sound strategy. Full of case studies, role models, statistics,. It is a source so valuable to use and keep for reference