The Rare Find: Spotting Exceptional Talent Before Everyone Else [Hardcover]

George Anders (Author)

Book Description

Release date: October 18, 2011

One of the nation's biggest music labels briefly signed Taylor Swift to a contract but let her go because she didn't seem worth more than $15,000 a year. At least four book publishers passed on the first Harry Potter novel rather than pay J. K. Rowling a $5,000 advance. And the same pattern happens in nearly every business.

Anyone who recruits talent faces the same basic challenge, whether we work for a big company, a new start-up, a Hollywood studio, a hospital, or the Green Berets. We all wonder how to tell the really outstanding prospects from the ones who look great on paper but then fail on the job. Or, equally important, how to spot the ones who don't look so good on paper but might still deliver extraordinary performance.

Over the past few decades, technology has made recruiting in all fields vastly more sophisticated. Gut instincts have yielded to benchmarks. If we want elaborate dossiers on candidates, we can gather facts (and video) by the gigabyte. And yet the results are just as spotty as they were in the age of the rotary phone.

George Anders sought out the world's savviest talent judges to see what they do differently from the rest of us. He reveals how the U.S. Army finds soldiers with the character to be in Special Forces without asking them to fire a single bullet. He takes us to an elite basketball tournament in South Carolina, where the best scouts watch the game in a radically different way from the casual fan. He talks to researchers who are reinventing the process of hiring Fortune 500 CEOs.

Drawing on the best advice of these and other talent masters, Anders reveals powerful ideas you can apply to your own hiring. For instance:

• Don't ignore "the jagged résumé"-people whose background appears to teeter on the edge between success and failure. Such people can do spectacular work in the right settings, where their strengths dramatically outweigh their flaws.
• Look extra hard for "talent that whispers"- the obscure, out-of-the- way candidates who most scouting systems overlook.
  
• Be careful with "talent that shouts"-the spectacular but brash candidates who might have trouble with loyalty, motivation, and team spirit.

Each field that Anders explores has its own lingo, customs, and history. But the specific stories fit together into a bigger mosaic. In any field, there's an art to clearing away the clutter and focusing on what matters most. It's not necessarily hard, but it requires the courage to take a different approach in pursuit of the rare find.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“George Anders is himself a rare find. A superb writer, he brings piercing intellect and persistent curiosity to examine the single most important leadership skill: finding and picking the right people. By turning his own talent upon this vital and elusive question, Anders has done a great service.”

—Jim Collins, author of How the Mighty Fall and Good to Great

 

“How do you find brilliant performers? The first step is to read this remarkable, groundbreaking, profoundly useful book—which is not so much a book as a detailed map of the newly revealed landscape of modern talent hunting. Quite simply, the best book on the subject I’ve ever read.”

—Daniel Coyle, author of The Talent Code

 

“George Anders combines deep reporting, vivid storytelling, and keen analysis to help unravel the mysteries of talent. Whether you’re running a large organization or managing a small team, The Rare Find is that rare book—a must-read.”

—Daniel H. Pink, author of Drive and A Whole New Mind

 

“George Anders finds the deep truth about choosing people right. You’ll never make these supremely important decisions the same way again.”

—Geoff Colvin, author of Talent Is Overrated

 

“Resilience, curiosity, and self-reliance are strengths that don’t show up in HR hiring manuals. In The Rare Find, George Anders shows that they lead to fresh ways to hunt for talent. More power to him for daring to advocate that which is not obvious.”

—Andrew S. Grove, former chairman and CEO of Intel Corporation and author of Only the Paranoid Survive

 

“Well researched, useful, and entertaining . . . The book not only shows how to find and hire top talent, it also provides valuable advice for anyone looking to enhance his or her own performance.”

—Steven N. Kaplan, Neubauer Family Professor of Entrepreneurship and Finance, University of Chicago Booth School of Business

About the Author

George Anders is a contributing writer at Forbes, where he writes about management, talent and innovation. He spent two decades as a top feature writer for The Wall Street Journal, where he was part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize for national reporting. He also has written for Fast Company, Bloomberg View, Parade, and Harvard Business Review. He is the author of three previous books, including the New York Times bestseller Perfect Enough, an account of upheaval at Hewlett-Packard. He lives in northern California with his wife and two children.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Portfolio Hardcover; 1 edition (October 18, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1591844258
• ISBN-13: 978-1591844259
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.3 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (23 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #366,345 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

I've been writing about dreamers, idealists and rascals since 1981. Look for my journalistic work these days at forbes.com and Forbes magazine. Other writing homes over the years have included The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg View and Fast Company magazine. I've also launched a travel blog, written five books and spun out several hundred bedtime stories for our kids.

In 1997, I shared in the Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting.

I grew up on the South Side of Chicago. As an adult, I spent time in New York City, London, Cambridge MA and Washington DC, before settling in northern California. I'm a slow but stubborn hiker. Adventures over the years have included making it to the top of Mt. Fuji, Mt. Whitney and the Thorung La pass in Nepal. Some of my favorite writers include Thomas Boswell for sports; William Manchester for biographies; Caroline Baum for financial commentary and Michael Craig for poker.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 24 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A Rare Book About Hiring in Today's Intelligent World October 18, 2011

By Kevin G. Salwen

Format:Hardcover

I've hired a bunch of people in my time, and I've learned this: Hiring a "B" player is easy; hiring an "A" is much tougher. So, I'm always looking to understand how to find that haystack needle -- the person who's going to help lead my little organization into places I hadn't even considered. After all, most of us aren't making widgets any more, but we're paid to think and create.

Frankly, that's why I love this book. Anders, a former Wall Street Journal reporter and editor, takes us into hiring environments we never would see -- the U.S. Army's Special Forces, Facebook's puzzlers, a casting director. There's fun story-telling here (I love how the hiring director of the Special Forces provides exhausted soldiers with too few pieces of chicken at the end of the day to see how they will work together).

More importantly, with a palette that colorful, Anders teaches us critical ways of viewing potential hires. While some of the info he gleans isn't all that new (i.e. appreciating failures), most of The Rare Find is filled with smart, fresh tips. My favorite is the "jagged resume," which takes us to the heart of the modern, thinking economy. Anders shows how smart managers recognize the elements a potential hire has garnered from detours, missteps, even vacations. Each of those nuggets contributes to how the best, most thoughtful hires will bring critical skills to a new job.

My copy of this book is filled with underlines and dog-ears. Don't ask to borrow it -- I'm keeping this one.

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars The Many Faces of Rare Talent. October 30, 2011

By AdamSmythe

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

I wasn't sure I would enjoy reading "The Rare Find." Yes, the subject matter--finding remarkably talented people overlooked by others--interested me, but I was concerned the book might present a one-size-fits-all recipe for success. I also wondered just how interesting author George Anders could make the topic. Well, to get to the point, my concerns proved to be unfounded. I not only discovered this book to be very useful and informative, but quite interesting, too. It's a real page-turner.

I suppose I should have known better. Having read Michael Lewis' "Moneyball" (which I recommend) about the use of innovative approaches in finding exceptional baseball players overlooked by most major league teams, I should have realized that the topic can be made compelling. Like Lewis, Anders has woven the real-life stories of people and organizations into his discussions of what works in finding rare talent.

For example, when the U.S. Army's elite Special Forces look for those soldiers who will become effective Green Berets, they don't simply look for the most exceptional cases of physical strength and endurance. Physical capabilities are essential, of course, but they aren't necessarily enough. It turns out that watching small teams of Special Forces candidates try to move an old, rusted trailer a few miles can be very revealing about the leadership, persistence and flexibility components of the job. As the reader of this book becomes engrossed in the descriptions of the soldiers' efforts, through their stories the reader learns something about finding the key components of success.

This book is literally one seemingly unique (yet pattern-forming) story after another. There's the story of the remarkable success of the University of Utah's legendary graphics team, composed in large part of people who didn't fit well elsewhere. There's the story of how innovative organizations like Facebook found creative ways to compete with much larger companies that could devote countless hours to interviewing potential employees. For example, faced with the need to rapidly scale up their company, Facebook created innovative programming challenges ("puzzles") that it posted on its website. These puzzles were not like the famous brainteasers reportedly used years ago by big software companies (for example, "How many gold balls could you fit in a Boeing 747?"). Rather, Facebook's puzzles took hours of creative, innovative programming, and that's exactly what they were looking for. Unsurprisingly, they found a number of overlooked people in unexpected places, like Portland, Maine, for example. Indeed, a central message of this book is that exceptional talent doesn't always look to be quite so exceptional, until you look much closer.

The stories just keep on coming. Some involve people you may have heard of, like Yankees relief pitcher Mariano Rivera, Harry Potter author J. K. Rowling, or country singer Taylor Swift. These exceptionally talented people were not obvious stars from the beginning. Their stories are fascinating, and through them the reader continues to learn about the process of finding rare talent. Some of the organizations described by Anders, like Teach for America or Johns Hopkins Hospital, are also well known, and their stories about finding exceptional talent are also compelling. There's more--much more--but hopefully you can see how the author has used a lot of research regarding rare individuals in order to weave a compelling narrative. If the subject of finding rare talent interests you, this book is worthy of your consideration.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars A Person's Core Character Central to Sniff out Talented New Hires October 25, 2011

By Serge J. Van Steenkiste

Format:Hardcover

George Anders sets himself the goal to show his audience how to discover what he calls the "Rare Find" before somebody else discovers him/her. For this purpose, Mr. Anders comes up with a process that is articulated around three premises:
1. Widen one's view of talent;
2. Find inspirations that are hidden in plain sight; and
3. Simplify one's search for talent.

The candidate's core character is central to this quest. The nine character traits that matter the most to the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) when choosing new agents are a good template to be used in this quest. These nine character traits are initiative, perseverance, compatibility, discipline, trainability, judgment, loyalty, leadership, and maturity. Mr. Anders often touches on these personality traits when he examines how the best talent recruiters from the public and private sectors proceed to find these rare "birds" that make all the difference between success and failure. Mr. Anders relates the experience of recruiters from the Green Berets, the music industry, new start-ups, multinationals, or hospitals, to name a few sectors of activity.

In summary, Mr. Anders gives some useful tips to his readers to broaden their horizon while being systematic in their search for the "Rare Find" that is too often hidden in plain sight.