Tedded - Business Book Review

“In business, you are who you hire.”

“Who: The A Method for Hiring” by Geoff Smart and Randy Street (of ghSMART) is a book on recruting or hiring. During the global economic crisis, hiring is not less significant, it is more significant than ever. As the authors addressed that the who mistakes are pricey, most organisations are still implementing the voodoo hiring methods (the book says there are ten; pretty scary and they are true). The authors wrote the method, A method, that ghSMART (the authors’ company) implemented with hundreds of clients and, as they claimed, the method has worked for them.

Contents (The A Method)

-Scorecard: A Blueprint for Success

It’s a bit ironic that the authors always say “Who, not what” but the first step of the A method is the what. Anyway, the scorecard needs to have clear “Mission” rather than vague job descriptions we normally see. Specific and tangible “Outcomes” are also necessary together with critical “Competencies”. The scorecard will be the blueprint of the recruiting process. We need a person that can get the job done, not an all-round athlete with a perfect resume but hangs around doing nothing.

- Source: Generating a Flow of A Players

This chapter tells us how to have more and better candidates. The best method that the book suggests is “Referrals” from friends, partners, employess, etc. The distant second and third are from recruiters and researchers.

- Select: The Four Interviews for Spotting A Players

Interview processes are “almost a random predictor” of job performance. That’s the case with “traditional” interviews, author stated. They wrote a series of four interviews; screening interview, Topgrading interview, focused interview, and reference interview. This is the best part of the book.

- Sell: The Top Five Ways to Seal the Deal

The authors elaborated The Five F’s of Selling; Fit, Family, Freedom, Fortune, Fun and the Five Waves of Selling  or the phase that you can convince the candidate.

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Now, I’ll try to compare this book, Who, to the ideal business book or a book that is “easy to understand, distinct, practical, reliable, insightful, and provides great reading experience.”

Ease of Understanding: 8/10: “Who” is easy to understand. The subject is very focused, “how to get the A player?”. The subject is adequately explained and the contents are in order, Scorecard, Source, Select, and Sell.

Distinction: 6/10: I have to admit that I do not read much on recruitment but things like scorecard is not new and we all know that referral is among the best methods of getting great candidates. Nevertheless, the critical distinction of the book is how things are put in nice and simple order.

Practicality: 9/10: Forget rocket science theories on motivation and high intellectual psychology, this book cuts the waste and put you straight into action. It tells you how to do the scorecard, how to source, how to conduct the interview, and how to convince the candidate. A point is taken because the method will probably work best with the top-ranked hires rather than new graduates. If we are going to hire for the lower-rank candidates (that’s the majority of the population by the way!), we have to simplify the method by ourselves.

Credibility: 7/10: The author stated that the A method works and it works with hundred of clients. From the experience and quotes by clients and success stories; the method sounds credible. However, the success, as the author claimed, of the method is very sentimental; it is measured mostly by customer satisfaction, I believe. It will be great if we have the data of the new recruits that actually outperform the scorecard, but measuring that will be tough.

Insight: 5/10: Because the book is destined to be very practical and straight to the point, you will not see highly detailed information of those topics. They are mostly “what it is, why it should be done, how it must be done, and examples or quotes” and move on to the next topic.

Reading Experience: 6/10: It is like reading a recruiting manual (a good one). There are stories all over the book but they are in glimpses and flashes. Having more stories of clients will be more fun and engaging but I believe that’s not the point of “Who”.

Overall: 6.8/10: If you are going to work alone for the rest of your career, skip the book (and you won’t be reading this review anyway!). If you are hiring or going to hire someone in the future, this book is a must buy. Personally, I am sure that I will come back to this book many times in the future. I agree with the author when they wrote “you are who you hire”. Since I do not want to be a B or C player, I’ll be looking for only A and The A Mothod sounds right to me.

“Q: How many bosses does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

A: One. He holds up the lightbulb and expects the universe to revolve around him.”

Reality Check: The Irreverent Guide to Outsmarting, Outmanaging, and Outmarketing Your Competition by Guy Kawasaki is arguably one of the most humourous business books around. Despite the fact that most contents in the book are from his blog, How To Change The World, “Reality Check” is full of great business “checklists” (hence, Reality Check). And those checklists cover lots of aspect in business (be warned, this book is huge, 461 pages before an index).

Contents:

- The Reality of Starting

Guy starts with the checklist you need in starting a business or intrapreneurship (entrepreneurship inside a company) and how to construct a mantra (forget three paragraphs mission statement)

- The Reality of Raising Money

As a venture capitalist, Guy Kawasaki wrote on how to raise fund from annoying and moody venture capitalists.

- The Reality of Planning and Executing

Business plans, financial projections, etc; you’ve been there and done that but Guy told you how to hit a homerun from them.

- The Reality of Innovating

Before jumping into innovating-everything bandwagon, this chapter tells you the myths, sins, and art of innovation.

- The Reality of Marketing

A brief revision of branding and identity.

- The Reality of Selling and Evangelizing

From the world’s top evangelist, he wrote about the art of selling, distribution, evangelism and PR.

- The Reality of Communicating

This main chapter covers lots of ground from e-mailing, presentation, demo, blogging, and moderating a panel.

- The Reality of Beguiling

There are lots of art (checklists and steps) of customer service, schmoozing, sucking up, sucking down (?!), and partnering.

- The Reality of Competing

A short chapter saying about your company’s defensibility and patents.

- The Reality of Hiring and Firing

Guy wrote about Silicon Valley hiring, how to hire, how to fire, craiglist, and linkedin, among other things.

- The Reality of Working

How to prevent Bozo explosion? What are mavericks in the workplace? What’s your EQ (Entrepreneurial Quotient)? This main chapter portrays the reality you face at work.

- The Reality of Doing Good

It is nice to end the book with philanthropy and how nonprofit organisations are changing the world

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I’ll humbly compare “Reality Check” to my ideal business book; the book that is “easy to understand, distinct, practical, reliable, insightful, and provides great reading experience.”

Ease of Understanding: 9/10: The book is simple, straightforward, jargon-free, and very informal (even slightly rude sometimes). Forget theories and models, you will only find simple checklists, steps, and occasional interviews which are put in the main chapters (The Reality of…). One point taken because they are blog-like which make stringing nearly impossible. Guy must have tried very hard to group them together but it is not perfect.

Distinct: 6/10: From the contents, you will find nothing particularly new and we have seen and read all of them already. However, the distinct and unique characteristic of the book is its informality and straight-forwardness. It’s honest and it’s amusing. You won’t find many authors who could make fun of those business ideas naturally like Guy.

Practicality: 7/10: Despite the short chapters (96 chapters including intro and conclusion, 3-5 pages each), they are not just a bunch of pointless blog posts. The conclusion and call to action are in each chapter. There are three key themes within the book, 1) positive chapters (chapters starting with “The Art of..”, and “How To”; there are 51 of them), 2) negative chapters (”Lies of”, and chapters on a-holes; there are 14 of them), 3) interview chapters (with interesting authors like Chip and Dan Heath of “Made to Stick” or Garr Reynold of “The Presentation Zen”; there are 18 of them), and there are other 13 miscellaneous chapters.

Reliability: 5/10: There is very little (if at all) supporting data. The book is from Guy’s experience and rule of thumb. Complex statistics and formula might help but they will ruin the book. It is a worthy trade-off.

Insight: 6/10: The chapters are extremely short but they are compensated simply by having lots of them which are directed to the similar key points of the book. The credit is also to the interview (Q&A) chapters that Guy interviewed other authors for the different aspects of the stories.

Reading Experience: 10/10: This is, by far, the funniest (yet meaningful) business book I’ve read. The book make you feel like listening to Guy’s rant on the business as usual. You won’t get bored. Extra credit to the outrageous use of vocabularies; “bozosity”, “bull shiitake” (shiitake is a japanese mushroom), “assholedom”, “mediocracy” (mediocre + bureaucracy), and things like “karmic scoreboard”.

Overall: 7.2/10: Those who want to read something that “sounds” serious might not like the book. But beyond the casual and informal nature of Guy’s writing, what we’ve learnt from the book is valuable. I highly recommend the book if you want to be “clueful” (as opposed to clueless) in business. And you will have fun reading it and also a good laugh; you can’t say that to most business books.