The Headhunter's Edge
Inside Advice From One of the Top Corporate Headhunters in the World
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- $6.99
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- $6.99
Publisher Description
One of the world’s top headhunters reveals his most valuable techniques for getting the best jobs and finding the right people.
The most important thing you’ll ever do if you are trying to build, rebuild, or even turn around an organization is hire the best people—and keep them. Jeffrey E. Christian has learned this lesson by working on hundreds of executive search assignments and building his own headhunting firm into a nationally recognized company, one of the top ten in the nation. In The Headhunter’s Edge, he reveals his secrets for excelling on either side of the desk—as a leader trying to build a great company, or as a job seeker in search of the next big position.
In this practical manifesto, Christian shows how essential it is to have the most talented people on your side. But how do you find the best? And how do you become the best? Christian’s solution: Think like a headhunter. He gives readers the benefits of his twenty years of experience interviewing thousands of CEOs and potential CEOs, and tells you
• how to conduct an interview and spot great leadership qualities in job candidates
• exactly what to do and say to keep a valuable employee from resigning
• how to expand your network to find the best emerging talent
• key strategies and instructions for choosing and getting the most out of a search firm
• what it takes for ambitious and talented people to get noticed and get the next big job or promotion
Practical, impassioned, and wise, The Headhunter’s Edge is an indispensable guide to advancing your career—and making your business more successful and profitable.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Christian, a headhunter who is perhaps best known for placing Carly Fiorina in the CEO position at Hewlett-Packard, offers a book that is part memoir and part advice tome for job seekers and employers. He begins by describing his first headhunting job, which involved making cold calls to place people in the chemicals and plastics field. Though inexperienced, Christian had a talent for sizing up people and quickly became a success; he did so well that he soon launched his own company. Christian readily admits it was the early 1980s, a time when there were available jobs for almost anyone who wanted to work at the levels he placed. The subsequent boom and bust of the tech field and the dot-coms provided him with more experience; he believes that the lessons he's learned as a headhunter apply to both employees and employers. For example, he identifies five key traits shared by all effective leaders: they're honest, smart, passionate about their work, humble and possess the ability to surround themselves with other smart, capable people. Christian offers suggestions for interviewers and would-be employees, such as looking outside their specialties, preparing themselves for all job opportunities and learning to read body language. Christian's writing style is engaging and his advice is sound. However, since he attempts to cover several topics interviewing, recruiting and retaining the book ends up as an overview of the broad subject of employment rather than a specific how-to guide.
