I've been consulting with high-tech firms for half
a century, and I sure wish I had this book fifty
years ago. I cannot even estimate the number of
times I've seen hiring problems that would have
been prevented by a manager reading Hiring the
Best Knowledge Workers, Techies & Nerds. At
least once in every consulting assignment, a manager
asks me a question that could be answered by a quick
look-up in Johanna Rothman's contents or index.
I know, because many times in the past decade, I've
recommended Johanna as a hiring consultant to my
own clients, and she's never failed to produce phenomenal
results.
Hiring mistakes cost high-tech organizations literally
billions of dollars each year, plus untold pain
and anguish on the part of hiring managers, applicants,
and employees. This superbly organized book distills
Johanna's many years of experience doing just what
its title implies—Hiring the Best. It nicely
balances cases drawn from that experience with principles
abstracted from dozens or hundreds of cases. Indeed,
it would be a poor manager who couldn't pay for
his or her own salary by applying these principles
to an organization's hiring process.
There's only one thing I can
find wrong with this great book: The author underestimates
its value. She wrote it as a book for managers who
are hiring, but that's too narrow an audience. It
excludes several other large groups whose members
should be reading it:
Everyone who participates in the hiring process,
such as coworkers who are called upon to interview
job candidates
Teachers and trainers who prepare students
for jobs and need to understand the processes
that will be, or should be, used to select them
Any knowledge worker, techie, or nerd who is
now, or will be in the future, applying for a
job, or even for a promotion in his or her present
job
But, in the end, Hiring the Best Knowledge Workers,
Techies & Nerds is a book for managers, and
any high-tech manager who doesn't read it as a hiring
manager may soon be reading it as an out-of-work
applicant looking for a new job.
