The Essential Guide to Recruitment: How to Conduct Great Interviews and Select the Best Employees

Citation

Brown, M. (2007), "The Essential Guide to Recruitment: How to Conduct Great Interviews and Select the Best Employees", Library Review, Vol. 56 No. 5, pp. 420-421. https://doi.org/10.1108/00242530710750626

The author of The Essential Guide to Recruitment is clear from the outset that this book is not intended as an academic text. It is aimed rather at managers responsible for recruitment and selection in their organization. A typical reader is assumed (as one of the cover reviews suggests) to be somebody in a small firm seeking to recruit without the assistance of an in‐house human resources department. This is important for assessing the book's appeal. The majority of larger organizations are usually nowadays well served by professional human resource (HR) support in their recruitment and selection activities, and many of these professionals provide training for managers involved in recruitment. In fact, some organizations insist that this training is carried out before the manager can provide it. So it can be assumed that this text is designed for the busy manager without HR support, or possibly a manager who wishes to supplement HR advice and training with a key text.

Because the book is not presented as an academic text (although the author is clearly aware of the field from her employment experience), there are no references or citations. In one way this is understandable, as most busy managers could not be expected to follow up conceptual and theoretical points. Even so this approach occasionally raises questions. For example, on p. 43 and subsequently, a Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) survey is mentioned, and it would have been helpful to know which. Perhaps a busy non‐specialist might not even be aware of the organization's role. The same point applies to research from the Institute of Employment Studies mentioned on p. 50. If this is really a “how to do it” book, arguably such references are not needed. I also question the relevance of the short exercises at the ends of chapters, which are more the sort of thing students would find helpful than a busy manager. In the same vein, would the busy manager really be interested in examining candidates’ responses in a psycho‐analytical way (p. 109)?

Having said this, there are many good things about this text for the manager who does find time to work through it. It is very well‐written (apart from an odd “principle” which has escaped the proof‐reader on p. 26), clearly structured and presented, and very good on the potential pitfalls of recruitment. I liked the sensible reminder that the final decision is the candidate's (p. 6) and that recruiters need to make a good impression on all candidates, including the unsuccessful ones. There are also several very useful references to the correct use of psychometric instruments (e.g. p. 13), and a wealth of very helpful material about interview questions, where the reader is guided through the ways in which this inconsistent predictor of future performance may be improved. Not least, the book stresses that the selection exercise does not end with appointment, but that effective induction can ensure the successful applicant makes an immediate useful contribution.

In general, this is a useful text and might be useful not just for managers, but as an aide memoire for HR officers relatively new to recruitment, although the latter may need to supplement it with some of the more conceptual publications produced by the CIPD if they are studying formally for a CIPD qualification. A useful text for library and information professionals interested in keeping up with current mainstream practice.