Recruiting, Interviewing, Selecting, and Orienting New Employees.

Recruiting, Interviewing, Selecting, and Orienting New Employees, Book, 2006, American Management Association, $49.95.

Let me be perfectly honest: Not only have I recruited and hired many employees in the past, I have developed and delivered training for managers on many of topics covered in this book. That said, I gained enough new information from reading Diane Arthur's new edition of Recruiting, Interviewing, Selecting and Orienting New Employees to feel a bit uncomfortable about my previous efforts.

Not that I read it cover to cover, mind you. There's just too much detail for that. What I did do, and what you would probably do if you purchase it, was use it as a reference, focusing on the chapters that meshed with my current projects (revamping new employee orientation and adding customer service competencies to staff job descriptions and interview guides) and skimming over the rest.

No-nonsense approach

As no-nonsense as its title, this book is very well organized, with its four parts arranged to coincide with the hiring process from recruitment to the job offer. The table of contents further divides the parts into logical subtopics and again into specific focus items. I had no problem finding exactly what I needed, for example, by looking under "Interviewing" and finding subsections on job analysis, job-specific competencies, characteristics of competency-based questions, and examples of competency-based questions.

Turning to the appropriate section, I found not only a rationale for competency-based questions but a virtual "cookbook" for developing them, examples of their applications, and pages of questions addressing generic competencies such as problem solving, decision making, communication, and time management.

In the recruitment segment, the author not only covers a survey of basic recruitment trends (including a comprehensive analysis of offshore outsourcing) but also adds A-to-Z tips on how to make recruitment efforts succeed. Sometimes the how-to approach is just what you need.

The author uses a variety of other methods to inform the reader as well. Checklists and bulleted key points, model dialogues, sample forms, interview notes and internal communications, brief historical backgrounds, best practice cases and copious footnotes all contribute to the wealth of information.

Facts and processes

I am glad this book crossed my path. Although I am a specialist (management development and OD), in my flat organization I spend a lot of time training and coaching managers to carry out their HR responsibilities effectively. Recruiting has a lot of information for specialists like me to checks their facts and review their process knowledge.

Since this edition came to market in 2006, the information is current and timely. The only concern I have is that given the time it takes to bring a volume of this scope up to date, it may become quickly obsolete, particularly the regulatory sections.

Recommendation

Let's begin with who might not want to buy Recruiting, Interviewing, Selecting, and Orienting New Employees. If you have formal training in human resources and keep current, the book isn't for you. If you work in a large organization with specialists in each of the primary HR functions, you won't need it either. But if you, like me, are a specialist with some responsibility outside your field, you might want to make the relatively small investment to put this book on your resource shelf. I also see it as useful to small businesses without official HR departments, for office and practice managers in charge of staffing, and for managers with a significant role in hiring for their departments. The presentation of information is concise without being trite and meaty enough to help the user with almost any issue related to the hiring process.

Recruiting, Interviewing, Selecting ...

Diane Arthur

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Review by Kathy Armitage

Product Ratings

Recruiting, Interviewing, Selecting, and Orienting New Employees

Holds user interest  *** 1/2
Value of Content     *** 1/2
Self-Study Value     ****
Instructional Value  ****
Value for the money  ****
Overall rating       ****