The Talent Edge: A Behavioral Approach to Hiring, Developing, and Keeping Top Performers - Hardcover

Cohen, David S.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0471646431 ISBN 13: 9780471646433

Publisher: Wiley, 2001

Synopsis

A practical step-by-step approach to hiring the right person.

Every hiring manager knows that the traditional hiring and interviewing process is a poor tool for predicting organizational fit and future on-the-job success. Behavioral interviewing can improve your chances of picking the right candidate two to five times over traditional processes. It focuses on how the candidate works rather than on skills, qualifications, and impressions.

The Talent Edge shows how you can develop a concrete understanding of what your own top performers do differently than the majority of their peers, and how to translate that knowledge into a better hiring system. While using case studies from organizations that have successfully transformed their hiring practices, the book articulates the business case for a Behavioral Interviewing system, and provides a roadmap for implementing it.

Comprehensive coverage includes: how to write job profiles and translate them into questions and answers that can be used in the interview; how to prepare for the interview, ask questions, and probe for the right information. The book also offers advice on how behaviors that are defined and proven to be useful in the hiring process can be incorporated into performance management, career development, and succession planning.

About this title

About the Author

Dr. David S. Cohen is a Principal in the Strategic Action Group, a consulting firm specializing in human resources development. His work with corporations is in several primary areas: management and leadership development; behavioral-based recruitment, selection, and performance management; helping corporations to articulate their values and develop a strategic vision; creating high-performance, results-focused teams.
Dr. Cohen's background spans both corporate consulting and education. He has consulted with a diverse group of industries in Canada., the United Kingdom, and the United States, specializing in the design and delivery of management development programs and human resources processes that are integrated with the business plan, vision, and values of individual clients.
Dr. Cohen is a sought-after speaker on human resource issues that has presented frequently for groups such as Linkage, the Institute for International Research, Insight, IQPC, the Canadian Management Centre (of American Management Association International), and the Human Resources Professional Association of Ontario Annual Conference. He is also called upon as a keynote speaker at a variety of corporate programs.
Dr. Cohen holds a doctorate in Education from Boston University and is a member of the Human Resources Professional Association of Ontario (HRPAO).

Every hiring manager knows that the traditional hiring and interviewing process is a poor tool for predicting organizational fit and future on-the-job success. Behavioral interviewing can improve your chances of picking the right candidate two to five times over traditional processes. It focuses on how the candidate works rather than on skills, qualifications, and impressions.

The Talent Edge shows how you can develop a concrete understanding of what your own top performers do differently than the majority of their peers, and how to translate that knowledge into a better hiring system. While using case studies from organizations that have successfully transformed their hiring practices, the book articulates the business case for a Behavioral Interviewing system, and provides a roadmap for implementing it.

Comprehensive coverage includes: how to write job profiles and translate them into questions and answers that can be used in the interview; how to prepare for the interview, ask questions, and probe for the right information. The book also offers advice on how behaviors that are defined and proven to be useful in the hiring process can be incorporated into performance management, career development, and succession planning.

From the Inside Flap

There are huge costs to any business for making the wrong hire— in the selection process itself, training, higher rates of turnover, reduced innovation and productivity, and the negative impact on customers and other employees. Whenever you hire talent that does not fit your organization, you set yourself back.

The Talent Edge shines a bright light on the failings of the traditional interview and selection process, and offers a clear, management system based on behavioral job profiling and interviewing. This competency-based approach improves your chances of picking the right candidate two to five times over traditional processes, has a tremendous impact on retention levels, and results in clarity within the organization around goals, values, and the nature of top performance.

The Talent Edge shows anyone involved in the selection process how to use behavioral interviewing to improve the hiring and selection process. It also shows hiring managers and human resource professionals how to translate the principles and techniques of behavioral interviewing into effective processes for managing human capital throughout the organization, far beyond interviewing— in career development, performance management, training, coaching, and succession planning.

The Talent Edge clearly articulates the business case for a behavioral interviewing system and provides a road map for implementing it effectively:

• Explains how to write behavioral job profiles and translate them into interview questions.
• Shows how to prepare for the interview, ask questions, and probe for the right information.
• Features case studies throughout the book from seven companies that have used a behavioral approach to dramatically improve their hiring and performance management processes— AbbottLabs, Calgary Police Service, HMV, Michelin, Sprint Canada, Starbucks, Thomas Cook.
• Includes sample dialogues, interviews, behavioral profiles.

Edition details

• Publisher: Wiley
• Publication date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0471646431
• ISBN 13: 9780471646433
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 232