Hire With Your Head: Using POWER Hiring to Build Great Teams, 2nd Edition (Hardcover)

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Editorial Reviews

Product Description

Revised and updated for the new millennium, this indispensable guide has shown tens of thousands of managers and human resources professionals how to find the perfect candidate for any position. Lou Adler’s POWER Hiring® process is back and better than ever . . .

"The POWER approach to hiring detailed in this book is a pragmatic, performance-oriented process that will be invaluable for future searches."
–Denny Brown, President, Clarkson University

"Hire with Your Head provides a clear, useful, step-by-step description of how to recruit, interview, and hire the best people for every role. I recommend it to the CEOs whom I coach and the MBAs whom I teach. I think it will become the standard for excellent hiring."
–Ann Graham Ehringer, PhD, Director, Family and Closely-Held Business Program; Associate Professor, Marshall School of Business,
University of Southern California

"Lou Adler brings a results and performance focus clearly into the hiring process and has produced a useful and practical guide that will help entrepreneurs and managers alike avoid costly people mistakes. Hire with Your Head is the POWER approach to hiring effective employees and is destined to become the people’s choice!"
–Alfred Osborne, PhD, Director, The Harold Price Center for Entrepreneurial Studies, The Anderson School at UCLA

"Lou Adler’s insights regarding focusing on results and measuring objectives instead of emotions is invaluable. A must-read for every manager committed to hiring the best."
–Louise Wannier, founder and President, Enfish Technology, Inc.

"A primary issue facing all our CEO members is the finding and retaining of excellent key people. The hiring effort needs serious attention and Lou Adler’s strategies and techniques are systematic and effective. His approach has helped many of our members."
–Bill Williams, former president, TEC (an international organization of CEOs)

From the Inside Flap

"If you want to hire superior people, use a system designed to hire superior people, not one designed to fill jobs."
–Lou Adler

A proven system for hiring superior people is exactly what you’ll get from this updated and better-than-ever Second Edition of Hire with Your Head. Any organization is only as strong as its weakest link. As such, it’s crucial to avoid recruiting people who weaken the chain or adversely affect your organization. Of course, there is no foolproof method for knowing exactly how candidates will work out if you hire them, but there are precautionary methods you can use to eliminate those candidates who definitely won’t work out. Written by veteran headhunter Lou Adler, this powerful resource–widely acclaimed by managers and human resources pros–gives you the tools to sidestep potentially costly mistakes by making better judgments on who fits the bill and who doesn’t.

Though most managers understand the importance of hiring wisely, many don’t know how. In the end, they often choose prospective employees based on gut reactions. While this strategy sometimes works, more often it leaves managers with ineffectual or unmotivated employees. Decisions based on emotions, biases, personalities, or stereotypes often reveal themselves as bad decisions in hindsight. The key to dodging this pitfall is to train yourself to base all of your hiring decisions on reason, not emotion.

Hire with Your Head shows you how to focus on candidate performance rather than your own impulses. It covers the fundamentals of sound hiring, including proper interviewing and assessment techniques, and outlines these techniques through Adler’s patented POWER Hiring® process, a method that addresses and solves all the problems and inconsistencies of the hiring process. Based on his extensive experience as both a headhunter and an executive-level manager, this practical and proven approach consists of five steps:

• Performance profiles–define success, not skills
• Objective evaluations–conduct a complete objective assessment with only four questions
• Well-developed sourcing plans–sourcing is marketing, not advertising
• Emotional control–measure performance before personality to remain objective
• Recruiting effectiveness–recruiting is career counseling, not selling

Updated to include new material on using the Internet to hire and recruit, approaching passive candidates, and achieving diversity and maintaining legal compliance in your practices, Hire with Your Head is better than ever. Packed with invaluable tips and helpful exercises, as well as useful checklists and revealing benchmarks, it’s the indispensable, hands-on guide every manager needs to hire the right person every time.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: Wiley; 2 Sub edition (September 13, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0471223298
• ISBN-13: 978-0471223290
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #653,307 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An On-Target Update, November 22, 2002

By	J. Schreier (United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

The second edition of Lou Adler's Hire with Your Head takes the best of the original concepts and updates it with the latest insights on interviewing and the entire selection process. I've been able to introduce the POWER Hiring concepts to a major professional services with significant results including better retention and a reputation as an employer of choice. I've seen hundred's of clients report more confidence in their ability to accurately interview candidates.

One excellent example of this update should be a revelation to many managers and human resource professionals who have been inundated with books recommending the "152 Best Interview Questions." It's the answers, not the questions that count. Adler's POWER Hiring formula recognizes the importance of getting and properly evaluating candidate answers.

From the starting point of Performance Profiles to the insights on the latest recruiting tips, Lou Adler courageously tells managers and HR professionals what they're not doing right -- and what to do to make it right.

It's rare that I read both a first and second edition of the same book -- but this second edition captivated me with every chapter.

6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good Practical and Relevant, March 21, 2006

By	R. J Szasz "Rod Szasz" (Tokyo, Japan Japan) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Amazon Verified Purchase

OK let's get it out there... people who have very little to live for read business books. 99% of the stuff written is of the most egregious quality known to mankind -- people with any sense avoid the business section in any bookstore. It is the special writer indeed that can make their experiences relevant to the rest of us, impart knowledge and wisdom, who goes beyond the pump-me-up-and-let's-all-feel-good-and-happy-clappy version of corporate America -- the kind commonly encouraged in some national sales conventions. You know! The type that tries to convince you they have secrets of business success by regaling you with stories on how important their "new" business discoveries really are, when really they are variations on the benefits such banal things as getting up early, not watching too much TV, changing your socks, and giving people hell the occassional time (preferably all of the above done based upon some abstruse mathematical formulation).

No... Lou Adler is the real thing. Not full of beans or full of himself most of the time. The advice he gives is practical, well organised and starts with the premise that, when you hire someone you should use the job as the screen for the candidate -- in order to draw those qualities out of the candidate and also to organise your presentation of the job. Adler says, "do not start with percieved requirements of the position" as these do not deliver the results needed.

There is a lot of technical detail and healthy, not corny or forced anecdotal evidence such as is legion in most of this genre.

I have seen Lou Adler on two occassions and can concur that he is one of the most down-to-earth people you can meet. In a world rife with industry setting unrealistic targets Lou is able to lay it on the line and tell you what you need to do and not what you want to do. There is no percieved, strained intellectualism or claims of revealed truth or knowledge that you get in other such reads as Zig Ziglar or Gerardi, or (horror or horrors, Wess Roberts -- author of the worst sales coaching book in history "The Leadership Secrets of Atilla the Hun).

I have recommended it for my corporate clients on occasion and can do so with a straight face and strong measure of encouragement. It actually reinforced those elements of hiring that we were doing right, and forced us to change those elements we were doing wrong - can there ever be a stronger recommendation for any book?

5 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Packed With Knowledge!, May 5, 2004

By	Rolf Dobelli "getAbstract.com" (Switzerland) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Lou Adler, president of the Power Hiring consulting and training company, provides a systematic approach for finding, interviewing and hiring the best candidate for a job. He emphasizes making an objective assessment and, to this end, he provides techniques for overcoming first impressions. He identifies four key interview questions you can use to determine job candidates' competency and motivation, and to match their skills and interests to your company's needs. The book includes charts and checklists that highlight important points. We recommend this well-organized guide to effective hiring to company owners, human resource personnel and managers involved in the hiring process. Alert job seekers may also find it useful to learn what a good interview will demand.