STARRED REVIEW
"...written in a crisp style, Weyerhauser’s every paragraph is packed with advice from a seasoned pro..."
Hire Your Dream Team: 10 Secrets to Recruiting Star Talent
Kurt Weyerhauser
Publisher: Kensington Stone Press
Pages: 249 Price: (paperback) $18.00
ISBN: 9780991590803
Reviewed: August, 2018
Capital, markets, technology: all are required to grow a business. However, no single facet of a business is more important than its people. In his book Hire Your Dream Team, executive recruiter Kurt Weyerhauser reveals his top ten secrets for finding and hiring top talent.
In his introduction, Weyerhauser presents ten methods for recruiting managerial talent, including how to remain personally engaged in the search, how to maximize the value of interviews, and how to think strategically when hiring. The remainder of the book details these methods, which he associates with highly skilled hiring managers, or “talent seekers,” as he prefers to call them. From suggesting specific interview questions, to showing an example of how to improve job descriptions, Weyerhauser offers practical steps rather than abstruse theories.
Throughout the book, the author emphasizes the role of emotional engagement. Most decision-making, finds Weyerhauser, is based on emotions, and hiring managers must appeal to their hearts to land the best talent. The author also suggests that recruiters who are limiting their search to the unemployed and those dissatisfied with their current position, are missing out on reaching top talent.
Additionally, Weyerhauser offers a model to create “compelling opportunities” for potential hires based on four variables: job requirements, compensation, the time required for hiring, and the available pool of candidates. He shows how these variables interact and explains why achieving an equilibrium among them creates an advantage.
Short chapters, broken into digestible segments, enhance the book’s readability, while a “secret” revealed at the end of each chapter underscores that chapter’s main message. Start-ups and mature firms alike will find a wealth of information and insights in this comprehensive guide to finding and landing the very best talent.
"...an intimate knowledge of what it takes to hire top people..."
Hire Your Dream Team: 10 Secrets to Recruiting Star Talent
Kurt Weyerhauser
Publisher: Kensington Stone Press
Pages: 249 Price: (paperback) $18.00
ISBN: 9780991590803
Reviewed: August, 2018
A strong debut that aims to demystify the talent acquisition process for hiring managers.
Weyerhauser, a professional executive recruiter, has more than two decades of executive search experience, mostly at large firms, and he has an intimate knowledge of what it takes to hire top people. In this work, he shares his wisdom in clear, well-organized prose, presenting a logical, thorough approach to talent acquisition. He begins with the notion that it’s the hiring manager, and no one else, who must take ultimate responsibility for securing the right person for a particular position. The author intriguingly notes that some managers remain disengaged because “if the search fails, blame can be shifted to HR and the recruiters.” Active commitment on the part of the hiring manager is essential, he says, because it leads to improved decision-making, “drives focus, energy, and momentum,” and also motivates candidates. In addition to commitment and engagement, one must also embrace a methodical approach, which is the strength of this book. It covers what the author calls “the physics” of search, discussing such things as how to analyze candidates and the job market; it also offers a smart way to select a recruiter and outlines a 12-step search process, including “likely problems” and “solutions” for each step. The author also addresses, in comprehensive detail, which characteristics of a position are most important for the manager to understand as well as how to “craft a compelling value proposition” for candidates. The section on creating a position description may be one of the most valuable in the book, as it includes examples of both “standard” and “enhanced” descriptions that one may use as models.
Weyerhauser’s wise counsel regarding candidate interviews is also helpful; instead of just listing typical questions to ask, he delves into the psychological aspects of the process, such as how to assess emotional intelligence, how to ask about behavioral issues, and how to evaluate the questions that candidates ask interviewers. The author’s authoritative advice about references could also come in handy; he says that he prefers to think of them as “referees” instead of “references” because they keep “the issue of objectivity close to mind.” Weyerhauser deftly wraps up the book by noting two additional, important areas: First, he talks about the art of compromise when making a job offer, and then he discusses how managers can approach talent acquisition in a broadly strategic manner. For instance, he believes that hiring managers shouldn’t overestimate the importance of the time and cost of the hiring process, because these aspects “diminish over time, while the quality of the hire remains important in perpetuity.” Throughout this book, Weyerhauser offers several useful tools to help hiring managers do their jobs, and he articulates them clearly. As a result, the members of his target audience will not only want to engage more fully in the recruitment process—they’ll also better understand the importance of their own roles.
A compact, well-constructed, and self-contained playbook for novice and experienced hiring managers.
"...managers would do well to follow Weyerhauser's authoritative counsel..."
Hire Your Dream Team: 10 Secrets to Recruiting Star Talent
Kurt Weyerhauser
Publisher: Kensington Stone Press
Pages: 249 Price: (paperback) $18.00
ISBN: 9780991590803
Reviewed: August, 2018
Kurt Weyerhauser’s Hire Your Dream Team forwards a convincing and comprehensive approach to hiring the right talent.
A low unemployment rate often means that skilled and professional positions are harder to fill. Thanks to Kurt Weyerhauser’s experience in executive search with large companies, business managers with a need for talent now have a guidebook that steps them through the hiring process.
While the book covers the expected basics, such as reviewing résumés and conducting effective interviews, it also emphasizes the importance of full involvement on the part of the hiring manager, who, it says, should not delegate the search to a corporate human resources manager or outside recruiter:
As the hiring manager, you don’t just have a stake in the outcome of a search, you actually own the search … It’s your hire and it’s you who will have to live with the consequences for years to come.
With force and candor, the book returns to this key point time and again.
Weyerhauser’s approach is all-encompassing, laying out a hiring strategy with clarity and care. The first chapter presents ten methods for hiring talent; the details of each method are delved into in subsequent chapters. Many of the book’s insights demonstrate a deep understanding of the talent market; for example, its “candidate distribution curve,”
depicting “the whole population of professionals capable of performing a particular job,” is a unique statistical analysis. Similarly, its “five levers” for making a job opportunity more compelling are sure to be of value to any hiring manager, as is its advice for constructing an effective position description.
The book addresses not just the recruitment process but also how best to negotiate the terms of a job offer. It asserts that a great candidate is deserving of a great offer, because the quality of a hire is more important than cost and expediency over time. Most importantly, it intelligently proposes a “strategic approach to talent acquisition,” with
helpful pointers for how to conduct strategic searches.
The primary value of Hire Your Dream Team is its focus on strategies and techniques for the hiring manager, not the recruiter. By speaking directly to the hiring manager, the book makes it plain that their active engagement in talent acquisition will ultimately lead to recruiting a better employee. Managers would do well to follow Weyerhauser’s
authoritative counsel.