Talent Balancing: Staffing Your Company for Long-Term Success

(Hardback)

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Description

When the economy was booming, it was hard to find good people. winning the talent war was a popular phrase, and those individuals with the right stuff could command hefty salaries and perks. When the economy crumbled, the headhunters were sent packing. Today, companies are starting to hire again, but instead of recruiting a group of fifty, they're hiring five. They're outsourcing and hiring temps. They're replacing staff due to turnovers, retirements, and areas that were downsized, rather than expanding. They're relying on reduced HR departments and in-house managers and staff to make critical staffing decisions. Surprisingly, in this environment, good people are hard to find; the top performers are staying where they are, and it's the weak and marginal performers that make up most of the available talent pool. Talent Balancing draws from the author's 35 years in the field to present a fresh and practical approach to recruiting in today's volatile and uncertain environment. In particular, Talent Balancing will help entrepreneurs and managers without formal recruitment training navigate organizational politics, analyze current and future staffing needs, and execute a successful plan. Whether you are ramping up a new team or department or filling a temporary spot, Talent Balancing provides a wealth of insights and tools to ensure that your organization meets both immediate and long-term goals.

Reviews

"Jim Stedt's thorough knowledge and inside understanding of how companies incorrectly position people is enlightening. His plain talk gets to the basic issues of hiring people and explaining how to make efficient use of the talent in your company. Our organization works with numerous startup companies that do not have staffing experience and can benefit from the step-by-step information in Talent Balancing. This book is a must read in today's competitive environment."-George Carson President Carson and Company
"Jim Stedt's Talent Balancing brings the complex task of matching today's human resources requirements with corporate needs and responsibilities into much clearer focus. Candidates today are balancing home, work, and extended family obligations; while employers must consider a plethora of laws covering compliance, confidentiality and so many other issues. These clear explanations on how to find and hire the right candidate, as well as how to keep trusted employees, couldn't have come at a better time."-Stephen Lawton Editorial Director AFAB Media Services
"Talent Balancing is a practical resource for the e-hiring and staffing era of the new millennium. With how-to's, case examples, and an immense array of resources, it will help managers involved in hiring, managing and retaining staff to do it more effectively - and easily. Jim Stedt has taken What Color is My Parachute and shown us all how to pick the more appropriate colors, and how to get those colorful resources to organize and blend into a strategic rainbow that heads straight to a pot of gold."-Di Landau President, Global Resources, Inc.
"Talent Balancing is an excellent book that describes a hands-on approach to the most important job in a company finding, hiring and retaining the best people. This book provides a step-by-step guide that is good for both the novice and seasoned hiring managers."-John VanZandt, Ph.D President CEO Consultancy Inc.
"Talent Balancing is an important work for people in business and those studying business. This work is grounded in reality and will be extremely useful to its readers. It includes the very concepts upon which we know success is based in business. Its readers will see themselves in its pages and see opportunities for their own success and that of their companies. Talent Balancing advocates the use of technology, but it especially stresses the need for personal interaction. The critical essence is that Talent Balancing was born of research and practical experience. It is my opinion that this book will serve its readers well."-L. Joyce Arnston Vice President, Grants and Development Foundation for California Community Colleges

Author Bio

Jim Stedt is founder and President of Hartley & Associates, a Southern California-based staffing, management, and recruitment consulting firm. For over 20 years he has advised both startups and established firms in all areas of staffing and related human resource issues. Previously, he held a variety of management positions in several high-tech companies, including Varian Associates, GTE, and Microdata. He has written a monthly column on technology careers for MicroTimes magazine and published a computer textbook, Re-Organize. He speaks to industry groups, colleges, and at networking workshops on hiring and job searching strategies.