Competing for Talent: Key Recruitment and Retention Strategies for Becoming an Employer of Choice

by Nancy S. Ahlrichs

Book Overview

The red-hot competition for talented employees is no longer new. Employers everywhere know that attracting and keeping exceptional talent is crucial to success in today's economy. Competing for Talent... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0891061487
• ISBN13: 9780891061489
• Release Date: September 2000
• Publisher: Consulting Psychologists Press
• Length: 254 Pages
• Weight: 1.25 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.1" x 9.4"

Customer Reviews

Effective Talent Management Tool

Amazing source for talent management covering the most important HR functions to be fully utilized for building a sound strategy. Full of case studies, role models, statistics,. It is a source so valuable to use and keep for reference

Comprehensive, Well-Organized, Informative

Employers are continually concerned about competing with each other to hire and hold the best employees they can find. Sometimes this competition becomes a frenzy, since the best people-qualified, experienced-are in high demand. It's essential, to compete well, to become an Employer of Choice. Ahlrichs, in her preface, observes that employers of choice "know that their 'choice' status is a significant achievement attained through consistent application of comprehensive strategies and tactics, as well as top-bottom organizational responsibility for retention.This book is divided into three important sections: the big picture, recruiting, and retention. In Part One, How Employers of Choice are Winning the Talent Wars, the three chapters focus on Learning from Employers of Choice, Employer of Choice Foundation Strategies, and Building and Communicating a Top Employer Reputation. These writings present a good overview and insight into how Employers of Choice are operating. The orientation is to understand what these companies are doing, rather than a how-to approach. There is a lot to learn here.The second part, Creative Strategies for Recruiting Top Talent, offers the readers four chapters, starting with How Employers of Choice are Redesigning Recruitment. The next chapter, Only You Will Do, has a little more instructional tone, but still primarily takes a third person view. This chapter concludes with a helpful Orientation Checklist. Chapter 6, Surfing for Recruiting Results Online does provide a healthy amount of how-to. While this field is changing almost daily, there is a lot of value here for the reader. Plenty of website domains are included. The last chapter in this section, Finding New Hires in Unlikely Places, is filled with good ideas. Here I felt a lot more of the how-to I was looking for.The third section is entitled Comprehensive Strategies for Retaining Top Performers. Here the chapters are titled Understanding Why Employees Leave; Managing and Leading for Retention; Retrain, Develop, and Profit; and New Compensation and Benefits Strategies. There is a lot of value in these chapters-lots of ideas and perspectives. An exit interview guide will be helpful to those companies that have not taken advantage of this tool. The author seems to really hit her stride in providing ideas for readers in this section. The same holds for her conclusion, Becoming an Employer of Choice. The book is well-written, filled with valuable information for the reader. The solid chapters are supplemented with a good resource guide and an index. I'd recommend this book for company owners, senior executives, and human resource professionals. As an ethical reviewer, I must share with you that I am co-author of "How to Become an Employer of Choice," a competing title in the same field. With that perspective, I would be quite comfortable recommending my clients read "Competing for Talent" as a supplement to my book.

A handbook on the retention of your most valuable asset

An easily understood, quickly assimilated read. I read the entire 200-page book at one sitting, and shared ideas with the co-owners of my company right away. Usually, business management textbooks are full of jargon. Competing for talent is in plain english, and can be applied immediately.

Excellent competitive intelligence on corporate culture

This book offers "heads up" competitive intelligence that will work for any company or organization that wants to attract and retain a high quality workforce. I have seen bits and pieces of this information as we have worked with our own corporate culture. Having "Competing for Talent" in my hands five years ago would have saved us a great deal of research.

Important New Book!

Competing for talent should be required reading for anyone interested in learning new approaches for hiring qualified employees in today's very competitive work environment. I work for a state university system that has restrictive limits on what we can pay. Competing for Talent provided me with useful real world solutions to attracting and retaining qualified employees. This book had a positive and immediate impact on our hiring success.