1、Hiring andKeeping theBest PeopleHBE001_fm_.qxd 10/02/2002 11:27 AM Page iTEAMFLY Team-Fly The Harvard Business Essentials SeriesThe Harvard Business Essentials series is designed to provide com-prehensive advice, personal coaching, background information, andguidance on the most relevant topics in b
2、usiness. Drawing on richcontent from Harvard Business School Publishing and othersources, these concise guides are carefully crafted to provide a highlypractical resource for readers with all levels of experience.To assurequality and accuracy, each volume is closely reviewed by a special-ized conten
3、t advisor from a world-class business school. Whetheryou are a new manager interested in expanding your skills or an experienced executive looking for a personal resource, thesesolution-oriented books offer reliable answers at your fingertips.Other books in the series:FinanceManaging Change and Tran
4、sitionHBE001_fm_.qxd 10/02/2002 11:27 AM Page iiHARVARD BUSINESS ESSENTIALSHarvard Business School Press|Boston, MassachusettsHiring andKeeping the Best PeopleHBE001_fm_.qxd 10/02/2002 11:27 AM Page iiiCopyright 2002 Harvard Business School Publishing CorporationAll rights reservedPrinted in the Uni
5、ted States of America06 05 04 03 02 5 4 3 2 1No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrievalsystem, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photo-copying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior permission of the publisher.Req
6、uests for permission should be directed to permissionshbsp.harvard.edu, ormailed to Permissions, Harvard Business School Publishing, 60 Harvard Way, Boston,Massachusetts 02163.Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication DataHarvard business essentials. Hiring and keeping the best people.p. cm. (Th
7、e harvard business essentials series) Includes bibliographical references and index.ISBN 1-57851-875-X (alk. paper)1. Employee selection. 2. Employee retention. 3. Employee motivation. I. Title:Hiring and keeping the best people. II. Harvard Business School. III. Series.HF5549.5.S38 H37 2002658.31dc
8、212002010627The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Publications and Documents in Libraries and Archives Z39.481992.HBE001_fm_.qxd 10/02/2002 11:27 AM Page ivContentsIntroduction xi1 The Hiring Process 1Attracting the Be
9、st PeopleDefining Job Requirements 2Recruiting Promising Candidates 7Interviewing 10Evaluating the Candidates 21Making the Decision and Offer 25Dont Forget Process Improvement 28Summing Up 292 Beyond the Hiring Basics 31Details You Need to KnowOnline Recruiting 32When to Use a Professional Recruiter
10、 38Case Interviewing 40Hiring Based on Embedded Personal Interests 42Hiring for Microculture 49Psychological Testing 52Summing Up 553 Keeping the Best 57Essential Retention StrategiesWhy Retention Matters 60Why Retention Is So Challenging 66Master Page AHBE001_fm_.qxd 10/02/2002 11:27 AM Page vThe S
11、pecial Challenges of a Diverse Work Force 69Why People Stay 75Why People Leave 77Two Retention Champions 79Managing for Retention:An Overview 81Summing Up 854 Market-Wise Retention 87Competing in the War for TalentNot All Employees Have Equal Value 88Market-Based Retention Strategies 92Summing Up 99
12、5 Developing the Talent You Have 101Strategies for Training and DevelopmentThe Development Dilemma 103Skill Training 104Career Development 108Handling C Performers 112Summing Up 1146 Workplace Factors That Affect Hiring and Retention 115Focusing on CultureConsider Your Culture 116Employee Burnout 11
13、9Work-Life Balance 123Summing Up 1337 When All Else Fails 135Keeping Talented Employees, Even After They LeaveKeepingValued People in Your Orbit 136Hiring Former Employees 139Exit Interviews 141Summing Up 142vi ContentsHBE001_fm_.qxd 10/02/2002 11:27 AM Page viAppendix A: Sample Job Description 143A
14、ppendix B: Targeted Interview Questions 145Appendix C: Legal Landmines in Hiring 151Notes 155Glossary 159For Further Reading 161Index 165About the Subject Advisor 169About the Writer 170Contents viiHBE001_fm_.qxd 10/02/2002 11:27 AM Page viiHBE001_fm_.qxd 10/02/2002 11:27 AM Page viiiThis Page Inten
15、tionally Left BlankHiring andKeeping theBest PeopleHBE001_fm_.qxd 10/02/2002 11:27 AM Page ixThis Page Intentionally Left BlankIntroductionThis book explains the essentials of what managers and businessowners need to know about hiring and retaining good employees.Effective hiring and personnel reten
16、tion are the two bases of futureorganizational well-being. If that seems like an overstatement, con-sider this: The success of most of todays businesses depends more onhuman assets than on physical or financial assets. Buildings, equip-ment, manufacturing facilities, and most technologies can be rea
17、dilypurchased,but the human talent and know-how needed to drive ourknowledge-based industries are much harder to come by.Hiring decisions are among the most important decisions madeby managers, and this book explains the essentials of what managersand business owners need to know about this process.
18、Without theright people in the right positions, neither a company nor its in-dividual units can turn in exceptional performance. Good hiringdecisions create a foundation for more effective performance byemployees, teams, and the company overall. Conversely, bad hiringdecisions drag down performance
19、and are painfully expensive tocorrect. Bradford Smith, a consultant who helps major corporationswith their hiring decisions, has estimated from his study of fifty-fourU.S. companies that the average managerial “mis-hire” costs a com-pany twenty-four times the individuals base compensation!1How istha
20、t possible? Smith points to all the usual suspects: the mis-hirescompensation and cost of maintenance, the initial hiring cost, sever-ance expenses, the costs associated with hiring and training areplacement, and so forth. But the biggest cost, according to Smith,is the cost of the mistakes, failure
21、s, and missed business opportunitiesxiHBE001_fm_.qxd 10/02/2002 11:27 AM Page xiTEAMFLY Team-Fly that result from having the wrong person in a management positionover several years.Thus, in his calculation, the average total cost for amis-hired manager with a base compensation of $114,000 will costa
22、 company $2.7 million in not just tangible fees, but the intangibleexpenses of errors and lost opportunities.The damage that mis-hired or mis-placed individuals can causeis particularly acute when they are managers. C-level managers typ-ically hire C-level players, set lower standards, and eventuall
23、y createan exodus of truly competent people.When excellent managers andgreat employees are hired, the opposite prevails.Thus, hiring man-agers have a powerful obligation to their company and to themselvesto treat hiring with the greatest attention and to be as deliberate aspossible in identifying an
24、d engaging the best possible people. DavidOglivy summed up the importance of careful hiring when he wrote,“If each of us hires people who are smaller than we are, we shallbecome a company of dwarfs. But if each of us hires people who arebigger than we are, we shall become a company of giants.”Retent
25、ion is the other side of the human asset equation. In amarket-driven economy youll never be able to keep everyoneandyou shouldnt want to.A certain amount of employee turnover canactually improve the health of an organization, infusing new energyand new ideas into the ranks. But turnover among valued
26、 employ-ees is costly, disruptive, and negatively correlated with customer sat-isfaction.As this book will reveal, hiring right is a powerful first stepin reducing unwanted turnover.But there are many other things youcan do to make your workplace one that good people will not wantto leave, and these
27、 will be addressed here in detail.Whats AheadAs a manager responsible for hiring decisions, this Harvard BusinessEssentials volume will provide you with the basics of hiring andretaining great people.Chapter 1 begins with a five-step process for effective hiring,from determining the job requirements
28、 to recruiting, interviewing,and evaluating candidates, and making an offer.xii IntroductionHBE001_fm_.qxd 10/02/2002 11:27 AM Page xiiChapter 2 digs deeper into key steps of the hiring process. Usinga conceptual framework of “embedded life interests,” it will helpyou align individuals with jobs tha
29、t they will find most satisfying andat which they will excel.The chapter also covers the pros and cons oftimely subjects such as online recruiting, the use of “head hunters”and search firms,candidate testing,and the case interview technique.In Chapter 3, we move from hiring to the field of employeer
30、etention. Distilling recent research findings, we will explore whyretention mattersas measured by customer satisfaction, turnovercosts, and business performance. This chapter explains, in broadstrokes, why people stay with a company and why they leave, andpoints to eight practical steps that manager
31、s can take to improveretention.Chapter 4 looks at the retention challenge from a market per-spective. From this perspective, some employees and employee seg-ments represent more value to the organization than others. Themarket perspective suggests that managers should be less concernedabout overall
32、turnover and more concerned with focusing retentionattention and resources on those individuals and employee segmentsthat create the most value for the organization.This chapter explainshow various market-based strategies can reduce turnover amongstthese key individuals and employee segments.Trainin
33、g and career development are also shown to be effectivetools for the retention of valued employees. Chapter 5 describes for-mal and informal approaches to employee training, explains whytraining pays, and offers tips on reducing its costs through onlinelearning. In addition to boosting retention, ma
34、ny of your organiza-tions human resource needs can be cultivated internally throughemployee developmentspecifically, skill training and career devel-opmentand this chapter will also address this key benefit.The effect of the workplace environment on hiring and reten-tion is the subject of Chapter 6.
35、This chapter not only explains howworkplace climate can influence a candidates decision to take a joband to stick with it, but also addresses how you can alter the cultureof your workplace to make it more appealing and to avoid employeeburnout. Also discussed are three principles for creating succes
36、sfulwork-life balance programs.Introduction xiiiHBE001_fm_.qxd 10/02/2002 11:27 AM Page xiiiEven if you handled every aspect of hiring and retention per-fectly, you would still lose some valued employees.This is a fact oflife in a free labor market. But as Chapter 7 reveals, the departure ofa good e
37、mployee need not be the end of your productive relation-ship with that individual.This chapter shows how some professionalservice firms are using alumni relations programs to keep formeremployees in their orbits as customers, sources of market intelli-gence, and, in some cases, as future “rehires.”T
38、he benefits of rehires,and of using exit interviews to uncover the root causes of employeeturnover, are also explored in this final chapter.In our mission to cover the “essentials” of hiring and retention,weve naturally been able to touch only lightly on many subjects andhave left others out entirel
39、y. So, for readers who would like to learnmore, a number of helpful resources are included at the end of thisbook: a glossary of terms, an annotated list of relevant articles andbooks, and three appendices.Appendix A contains a job descriptionthat you can use as a model in developing your own descri
40、ptions.Appendix B is a generic group of questions that you can use as youinterview candidates for just about any type of job. Appendix Cdescribes the “legal landmine” that readers based in the UnitedStates need to be aware of, and avoid, in the hiring process.In addition, you will find invitations t
41、hroughout the book tovisit the official Harvard Business Essentials Web site, www.elearn-ing.hbsp.org/businesstools, for free interactive versions of the toolsintroduced in this book.The content in this book is based on a number of books,articles,and online productions of Harvard Business School Pub
42、lishing, inparticular: Peter Cappellis Harvard Business Review article on mar-ket-driven retention; various hiring and retention articles publishedin Harvard Management Update; and the hiring module found in Har-vard ManageMentor, an online service.While this book will help you improve your hiring a
43、ndemployee retention skills, the information given here is of a generalnature and is not intended as legal advice nor as a substitute for legalconsultation regarding general hiring processes or the managementof specific individual situations.With that caveat in mind, lets turnto the five-step hiring
44、 process.xiv IntroductionHBE001_fm_.qxd 10/02/2002 11:27 AM Page xivThe Hiring ProcessAttracting the Best People1Key Topics Covered in This ChapterDefining job requirements Recruiting promising candidates Interviewing Evaluating candidates Making the decision and offerHBE001_ch1_.qxd 10/03/2002 2:47
45、 PM Page 1Like many other activities undertaken by organiza-tions, hiring is a business processa set of activities thatturn inputs into outputs.This process compiles informa-tion about job requirements, the applications of various candidates,and the deliberations of decision makers, and produces an
46、outcome:new people on the payroll.This chapter describes a five-step hiringprocess. Execute these steps well, and not only will the quality ofyour hires improve, but you will also be more confident that you arehiring the right people.Defining Job RequirementsBefore you can make a good hire, you need
47、 to know what you arehiring for. You also need to determine which skills and personalattributes will be a good “fit” with the requirements of the job andthe organization.To define the job and its requirements, you need to understand: the primary responsibilities and tasks involved in the job; the ba
48、ckground characteristics needed to perform the job(education and experience); the personal characteristics required (for example, does theindividual need to have strong interpersonal skills? Be highlyintelligent?);HBE001_ch1_.qxd 10/03/2002 2:47 PM Page 2 the key features of your organizations cultu
49、re (for example,team-orientation, degree of conformity, reward systems); and your managerial style (for example, authoritative, coercive,democratic) and its implications for an effective workingrelationship.Primary Responsibilities and TasksIf youre looking to rehire for an existing job, take a look
50、 what thecurrent incumbent is now doing and evaluate their job description,if one exists. But dont simply accept either of these perspectives asdefinitive. Use the hiring opportunity to reevaluate the primaryresponsibilities and tasks of the job. Make sure you can answer thequestion,“What does the e
