A Manager's Guide to Hiring the Best Person for Every Job (Paperback)

This manager's guide really is. It really is addressed to managers, along with all the human resource professional who could also benefit from the power contained within its pages. Rosenberg rightly assumes, in her preface, that most managers are totally unprepared for hiring interviews. Corporate interviewers-at all levels-seem to focus on all the wrong things in interviews, rarely looking at how well the candidate might meet the manager's expectations a year down the road. As a result, we all ask the wrong questions, struggle to make hiring decisions on the basis of inadequate data, and practically make fools of ourselves in the process.

Yes, I was using first-person in that last sentence. Guilty! As I read the introduction to Rosenberg's book, where she introduced her dialog-based instructional system, I saw myself. The good, the bad, and the ugly. Honestly, there wasn't a lot of good. All the errors I made in interviewing began flashing in front of me, confirming that this book definitely belongs on my shelf! Amazing-I was learning a wealth of valuable knowledge . . . in the introduction! (Can I apologize now to all my hiring mistakes over the years?)

Rosenberg teaches that there are three factors that determine an employee's long-term success with an employer: the candidate's ability to learn, the candidate's values, and the candidate's cognitive ability. Rarely do interviewers even approach these vital issues. Too often we hire based on a job description that's obsolete, instead of the capacity to learn, grow, and adjust to our rapidly changing work environment. The key is to determine what the candidate has learned from past experiences, rather than just what was actually done. Do you know the difference between behavioral questions and puzzle questions?

Do you hire people because of something you saw on their resume, expecting them to change? Rosenberg notes that 80% of the candidates we consider live remarkably consistent lives. Their patterns don't change. This book will teach you how to look for those patterns, make sense of them, and equip yourself for much more intelligent hiring decisions. This continual learning went on page after page in this relatively fast-moving book. Another example: use job objectives instead of job descriptions (page 57).

A clear message is that we should engage in a meticulous evaluation, examination, and exploration of the position before speaking to a single candidate. And, then prepare carefully using everything known about the candidate before conducting a structured, focused 40-minute interview.

Rosenberg presents a process she calls the Master Match Matrix. The crux of this approach is preparation, including the right questions to ask. What questions might you ask? Check out Appendix B for ideas-over 800 open-ended questions are waiting for you. This bank of effective questions, well-organized, is worth the cost of the book even without all the valuable explanatory text!

I was impressed that this one volume contains practically anything you ever wanted to know about hiring the right people. The chapters set the stage, then introduce Rosenberg's Master Match Matrix approach. Next, the reader moves deliberately through chapters on structuring interviews, questioning techniques, listening (including body language), more tools and techniques, and even interviewing for personality fit. Yes, there is even a chapter on what's legal and what's not, followed by a concluding chapter on reference checking, liability, and even termination. Three appendices complement the text, giving us common errors to avoid, as well as interview questions and additional information about personality fit.

The book's organization, aided by a good index, make this a valuable reference book to pull off the shelf every time you need to interview another candidate for employment. If you apply the lessons Rosenberg shares, you'll spend a lot less time interviewing in the future-you'll have the right people on board and they'll probably stick around a while.

The Master Match Matrix, the author's method for evaluating candidates, is the centerpiece of the book. It is an organized, intelligent, repeatable strategy that guarantees its practitioners impeccable results every time it is used. Recognizing that hiring personnel want to spend minimum amounts of time on interviews and yet hire superior if not best persons for their positions, the book first clears away the chaff of traditional interviewing, most of which is irrelevant, unfocused, and inadequate. Using the MMM, however, an interviewer will elicit relevant information from a candidate and thereby match (or not match) the candidate with the responsibilities and expectations of the position.

This book covers valuable topics not discussed in other books on interviewing; for example, deciphering body language cues, word patterns, and candidate behavior in interviews; how candidates avoid difficult questions; how to use silence as a discussion stimulant; what are "dumb" questions but how to recover from asking one; and the prevention of unnecessary turnover by discovering a candidate's long-term goals and synchronizing them with the needs of the job. All of these topics as well as the other topics in the book, from questioning techniques to "selling" the job to a candidate, are not just discussed theoretically, but are specifically illustrated with actual dialogue "how-to" segments.

In the excellent section on legalities and illegalities in interviewing, the author again provides much more specific and comprehensive information than found in other books on the subject. Among other points, the reader can learn how to design a non-compete agreement; a specific technique for quick and painless termination; questions to ask relating to legally restricted topics, how to avoid negligent hiring and the problem of employer liability; and how to obtain solid references.

Preeminently this is a hands-on, practical book. Managers and other hiring personnel reading and using this book will not only improve their interviewing skills but equally important will gain in confidence and willingness to interview. They will hire superior candidates for positions, benefiting them, their companies, and the candidates themselves. A MANAGER'S GUIDE TO HIRING THE BEST PERSON FOR EVERY JOB should be at every manager's hand. Don't interview without it.