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Recruit or Die: How Any Business Can Beat the Big Guys in the War for YoungTalent
 
 
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Recruit or Die: How Any Business Can Beat the Big Guys in the War for YoungTalent [Hardcover]

Chris Resto (Author), Ian Ybarra (Author), Ramit Sethi (Author)
4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)


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Book Description

August 2, 2007
Microsoft, McKinsey, and Goldman Sachs will get 100 Résumés for every one that Your Company Receives. SO WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO ABOUT IT?

The recruiting game has changed. It now takes more than simply attending a campus career fair, hosting an information session, and posting job descriptions to draw the best young talent to work for your organization. Companies often make simple mistakes that cost them recruits. They schedule information sessions on exam night.They are unclear about their most attractive features and often highlight the wrong ones.

Recruit or Die provides a powerful, inside look at the entry-level college recruiting game. You don’t have to be the biggest and most well known company to scoop up the best and the brightest on campus. Small, young, or even nonprofit companies can also get top graduates—without a Wall Street budget—if they learn the secrets of America’s top recruiters. Based on surveys and interviews of more than one thousand students, Recruit or Die provides dozens of anecdotes and case studies to show how successful recruiters work their magic and how unsuccessful recruiters blow it.

Straight from the front lines of elite recruiting, Recruit or Die shows how any company can conquer the campus.


Editorial Reviews

Review

“Recruiting exceptionally talented and accomplished college candidates has never been more competitive or more important. Recruit or Die provides proven, practical solutions that will help any company, including Microsoft, compete with the strongest college recruiting organizations.”
— Kerry Olin, senior director for college recruiting, Microsoft

Recruit or Die should be a college recruiter’s bible! Everyone on the IBM team will get a copy!”
— Eletta Kershaw, IBM Universit y recruiting and relations

“If you want a great organization, you need to hire amazing people. These days, if you want amazing people, you need to earn them. This book shows you how. I can’t imagine hiring on campus without a copy.”
— Seth Godin, bestselling author, The Dip

“Great recruiting takes great relationships. Recruit or Die is chock-full of ways to build trust on campus and recruit the best.”
— Keith Ferrazzi, bestselling author, Never Eat Alone

Recruit or Die is a thorough and complete guide to successful recruiting for companies large and small. Recruiting is an ongoing process that does not stop once the candidate arrives for their first day of work, and this book drives home that important point.”
— Aaron G. Flores, Ph.D., director, Cordis Cardiology, a Johnson & Johnson Company

“If your company believes in recruiting and growing young talent, this book will provide you with insights on how to do just that.”
— Rajesh Setty, serial entrepreneur, investor, and author, Beyond Code

"A detailed guide to attracting and winning top entry-level job candidates. Their advice rings true ..."
Kirkus

"Recruit or Die offers strategies that can help level the playing field between Wall Street darlings and companies with lower profiles and lesser budgets."
Washington CEO

About the Author

CHRIS RESTO, founding director of MIT’s largest professional development and internship program, the Undergraduate Practice Opportunities Program (UPOP), has advised hundreds of companies and thousands of college students on recruiting. Previously, he recruited and managed new graduates for Capgemini.
IAN YBARRA, a recent MIT graduate, assisted Resto with UPOP as an undergraduate and has since written for publications such as Inc., Forbes.com, and FastCompany.com.
RAMIT SETHI, a recent Stanford graduate, is cofounder and vice president of marketing for the online start-up PBWiki and writes a personal finance blog for young people.

Product Details

  • Hardcover: 288 pages
  • Publisher: Portfolio Hardcover; 1 edition (August 2, 2007)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 1591841615
  • ISBN-13: 978-1591841616
  • Product Dimensions: 6.3 x 1.1 x 9.3 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
  • Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #710,812 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
11 of 11 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
It just makes so much sense. If you want new customers to buy your product or service, you start by understanding your potential customers.

This is the only book I've read on recruiting that start inside the heads of top recruits (1000 of them interviewed for the book). Only knowing their perspective can you sell top talent on working for you.

The first part of RECRUIT OR DIE does a great job of telling you exactly what you need to know about today's young people to successfully recruit them. And the authors back up their points with stories straight from the mouths of current students and recent grads.

The second part of RECRUIT OR DIE lays out the recruiting process from start to finish--including what to do AFTER THEY ACCEPT YOUR OFFER to make them more productive and happier at work to give you the best chance of keeping them in your company.

The best part is that Resto and his co-authors demonstrate how effective recruiting should be as rigorous as sales. In fact, you could probably just replace "recruit" with "customer" and the book becomes a sales management handbook! And a pretty good one at that.
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
If you recruit for your company in any capacity, you need this book. It is literally a step-by-step guide to recruit the best talent from universities around the country.

Here are few of my favorite parts:

1. "Their Lives are Their Careers" - This section calls out the fact that recent college grads don't draw a bold line between work/life balance; WORK IS LIFE for this new generation, and in order to recruit the best talent, you must embrace this new way of life in your company. The authors suggest rotational programs, special project assignments, and an informal work culture to bring out the best in your new recruits.

2. "Gossip Hounds and Constant Communicators" - Ah, word of mouth! These guys have been doing their reading. The authors accurately assess that with online social networks you can bet that your recruits are talking about their experience with you the second they leave your boardroom. In fact, they may be doing it WHILE THEIR IN YOUR BOARDROOM!!! In order to make sure they're telling their freinds about the good stuff, you have to pay attention to details. It ends up being the most topical stuff that makes a big impression: the money, the perks, powerful people, execution of the recruiting process (call them back on time!)

3. "Improving Your Recruiting Staples" - This truly is a step-by-step, highly detailed section that will allow you to fine-tune your career fair booth, information sessions, and job postings. Some VALUABLE ADVICE from this section: (1) All about location, (2) Have recruits RSVP, (3) Get the RIGHT speaker, (4) Talk up the glamour, (5) Haul in the Alumni, (6) Be clear about next steps. This is just a taste - this section really lays it out for anyone participating in recruiting activities.

I have a lot of exposure to recruiting at my company, and everyone that has read this book (about half of our recruiters at this point) seems to "get it". We have changed our approach to campus recruiting in many ways, and I truly recommend that you get this book if you are serious about recruiting the best talent to your company.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
If your company recruits new hires by going to college campuses, you need to read Recruit or Die, no matter how good you think you are at recruiting. If you have a formal recruiting program or even if you just attend job fairs looking for good new employees, this will still be a valuable book for you.

The good advice begins in the Introduction, where the authors ask and answer the question: "Why Microsoft, McKinsey and Goldman Sachs?" They point out that all three of these favorite places for graduates to seek employment have a great brand. But other companies do, too.

What sets these three apart from the pack is what they do. The authors identify four things.

They won't settle for anyone other than exactly the recruits they want.
They work harder and smarter than their competitors to know their target audience: the recruits.
They sell themselves better than their competitors do.
They present a united front.

That's strategy. Tactically, the authors tell you that contact is king, that you should sell your people first and your company second and that courtesy and class go a long way.

The authors suggest that if you follow the kind of diligent process that the recruiting stars follow, you'll get great results. I think they're right.

Years ago, when police departments suddenly found themselves facing massive retirements with few recruits showing up at the door, I designed recruiting programs for police departments. Almost everything I learned that's positive is here plus a ton of details that I wish I'd known at the time. You can cut your recruiting learning curve by reading Recruit or Die and applying its lessons.

You'll learn to think, for example, about your company and the jobs you're offering from three perspectives. You'll ask yourself what the differences are between what you have, what recruits think you have, and what recruits want. That set of distinctions, alone, can help you sharpen your offerings and your process.

Again and again you're reminded to build on your strengths. You're reminded to meet the questions and needs of the people you want to recruit. That's all good, but there are some things I wish were different.

There's too much emphasis on "talent" as "people who've done well in school." Sometimes the young person who's dramatically improved performance late in school is a better choice for your company. One Fortune 200 company used that as part of its target recruit profile for years.

There's also way too much emphasis on big schools, big companies and the east and west coasts. Scan the schools whose students are quoted in the book and you're hard pressed to find any schools in the Midwest or in the South below Chapel Hill.

There are virtually no smaller company examples even though the lessons of the book are adaptable to small companies. And there are virtually no small schools represented either.

The fact is that the bulk of college graduates will be something other than first-tier brains and come from something other than first-tier schools. They will go to work at companies of all sizes, all over the country.

I wish the book reflected that reality better. But even if you're a small company recruiting at a small state school in a Midwestern state, there's a lot of good practical nuts-and-bolts advice in this book. You'll find a wealth of information on the operational details of attending job fairs, effective job postings, following up with recruits.

The bottom line is that if you need to recruit, you need to read Recruit or Die.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Book geared to employers seeking elite students but still usfeul...
The sub-title to this book is "how any business can beat the big guys in the war for young talent". However, the book itself is geared to those recruiters (i.e. Read more
Published on March 20, 2010 by Yoda
Reality check of recruitment practices
Well I have just got the book but feel so fascinated as each page moves. It has reinforced my understanding also. Read more
Published on November 24, 2007 by RK Dhanvada
Great book on how to be successful in college recruiting!
I have gone through the interview process three times at MIT, twice as a student and once while an employee at Microsoft. Read more
Published on October 25, 2007 by Larry
Also a great read for a recent college grad
I graduated college a couple years ago and I think the viewpoints on college students and grads are dead on. Read more
Published on October 5, 2007 by F. Lee
Dead On
I was very excited to read this book, and it didn't disappoint. I am a leading edge member of the millenial generation and I work for a college in career services, so this book is... Read more
Published on September 30, 2007 by L. Neidert
Recruiting on campus? Read this first!
This is an excellent how-to for turning your college recruiting process into an efficient "recruiting machine. Read more
Published on September 9, 2007 by Jeffrey Kuo
A Must Read for anyone seeking to hire great young talent
This book hits the nail on the head in terms of what it now takes to recruit great young talent on college campuses today. Read more
Published on August 28, 2007 by Rod A. Beckstrom
Spot On!
I have been a consultant in the field of college recruiting for many years, and, as part of my professional practice, conduct surveys and focus groups with graduating students on... Read more
Published on August 19, 2007 by Mary E. Scott
Recruit or Die is a life saver
When I heard about Recruit or Die, I ordered it immediately. I finished the book in only a couple days. It was an easy and pleasant read. Read more
Published on August 18, 2007 by William M. Franzen
An Excellent Contribution
Recruit or Die is a fantastic read with a fresh perspective on recruiting. In fact, it's the only work I've seen that covers college recruiting so comprehensively. Read more
Published on August 11, 2007 by James Ngai
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First Sentence:
On any fall Saturday afternoon, take a stroll through campus at Florida State, Notre Dame, or any other school with a great football program, and you witness a classic collegiate scene: masses of students, with school colors from head to toe, making their way to the stadium. Read the first page
Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
free consulting, gladly dazzled, top college graduates, target recruits, past interns, recruiting machine, company mentor, talent pipeline, top recruits, recruiting team, recruiting season, recruiting process
Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Goldman Sachs, The Long Honeymoon, Extreme Blue, Making the Sale, Improving Your Recruiting Staples, Wall Street, Their Lives Are Their Careers, New York, Gemini Consulting, University of California, United States, Stanford University, Morgan Stanley, Thomson West, Office Space, The Feedback Loop, Teach For America, Los Angeles, Georgia Tech, University of Pennsylvania, Applied Materials, Silicon Valley
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