Book Review: The Rare Find

The Rare Find:  Spotting Exceptional Talent Before Everyone Else by George Anders.  This book was recommended on a few websites, and anything about talent is a must read for WineTalent--so I dove into the book this fall.  This book studies the different ways successful companies screen potential candidates and also outlines some helpful recruiting tips.  I think this is a great book for every Human Resources professional to read and use to find exceptional employees for their organizations. 

This book studies how large, public entities screen for talent, as well as small upstarts.  The recruiters who specialize in finding soldiers for the elite Special Forces group explained the rigorous physical and mental testing they do to find individuals who have what it takes to be a Green Beret.  There is also a section about how the University of Utah Professor David Evans found top-notch computer programmers who had anything but stellar work and education histories.  With Dr. Evan's ability to see what really stimulated these young programmers he established an exceptional computer engineering program and mentored students that went on to make major contributions in computing. 

George Anders also describes how leading hospitals find surgeons, how major league sports teams find their next star players and how music executives find their next superstar.  Facebook's talent acquisition is studied, as is Teach for America's system detailed.  Some of these recruiting strategies are quite inventive, while others use traditional systems to understand candidates in new ways. 

This book was very good at outlining how successful companies develop talent acquisition models, how they adapt ones that aren't working, and some things that you and I can do during our recruiting.  Now when I'm screening resumes I'm looking for jagged ones--and then investigating what happened to cause those irregularities.  My long-time interest in looking at those extracurricular items added to resumes was also encouraged in this book--saying that it allows you to see other dimensions to a candidate's personality.  Earlier this week an Olympic track athlete's resume was in my inbox.  I had a different view of that person than if I hadn't seen that. 

If you are in the talent acquisition and management field, this book is definitely worth reading, and putting to work.  If you don't, I will!

CEOs: Keep Your Key Talent

Today's WSJ's Boss Talk section featured Ram Charan, a veteran management adviser to major US Companies. In this article, Ram talks about the need to identify and groom key personnel and keep your company's talent engaged and recognized.

Message to CEOs: Do More to Keep Your Key Employees - WSJ.com

Here are the biggest corporate talent-management Ram Charan sees:
-Leaders not held accountable for developing talent
-Performance assessments without candor or focus on developmental needs
-Failure to drill deep enough to know best staffers well and put them in stretch jobs
-Top Management's serious lack of time commitment and energy
-Placement of loners in leadership jobs.

With the economy showing many signs of recovering, the necessity to identify and keep top talent will be more important than ever. Especially WineTalent!