Alumni Recruiting

Recruiter Resources

Ideas, Insights and Best Practices

From new thinking on human resource issues to expert commentary on leadership development and global business, the following articles and multi-media presentations by Harvard Business School faculty and other thought leaders may help guide your recruiting efforts and business strategies. Please check back often as we will update this library regularly.

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Change Management

Hire Senior Executives That Last

The failure rate of executives coming into new companies is 30-40% after 18 months. The costs of this failure rate are enormous—wasted and duplicated recruiting fees, missed business objectives, unproductive employees, and distracted colleagues. It's a significant but mostly invisible drain on corporate productivity. So what can hiring managers do to improve the odds? Here are three relatively simple steps. Read the article

Fire Your Marketing Manager and Hire a Community Manager

As social media grows in importance in your marketing mix, consider what changes it means for how you manage and engage your community of customers or clients. Read the article

The Right Time to Re-Org

Changing a company's organizational structure is a tool executives commonly employ to improve their company's performance. But new research suggests that most of these reorganizations accomplish little. Some even make matters worse. So if structure is the wrong tool to improve results at their company, then what are the right ones? Read the article

Get Immediate Value from Your New Hire

Whether new employees are transitioning from another part of the organization or are brand new to the firm, you can get them up to speed more quickly by going beyond the basics and explaining how things actually get done. Read the article

Off-Ramps and On-Ramps Revisited

How much has the recession shaped women's choice to take more circuitous career paths than men? Not a lot, it turns out. Data from 2004 and 2009, which factors in the severity of the economic crisis and the surge in households with nonworking men, suggests the nonlinear path is not a luxury for boom times but the way many women want to structure their careers regardless of the economy. Read the article

Global Business

It Pays to Hire Women in Countries That Won't

New research finds that multinational companies can spin gender bias into gold by recruiting and hiring well-educated female managers in countries that traditionally discriminate against women. Read the article

The Battle for Female Talent in Emerging Markets

To meet the talent shortage in emerging markets, multinationals need to develop the best-educated and best-prepared managers in those markets, which increasingly means women. Smart multinationals recognize their potential and have found ways to recruit and retain them, giving them the support they need to break through a very thick glass ceiling. Results for the first-ever study of talent in emerging markets. Read the article

Leadership Lessons from India

To discover how Indian leaders drive their organizations to high performance, the authors interviewed senior executives at 98 of the largest India-based companies. Almost without exception, these leaders said their source of competitive advantage lay deep inside their companies, in their people. Read the article

Human Resource Management

How to Build an A-Team from Day One

Almost every manager begins his or her tenure with the goal of building a top-notch leadership team. Yet as time passes and managers move on to new assignments, they often look back and regret that they didn't develop their team faster and more aggressively. What's behind this seeming contradiction—and what can managers do to establish an A-team as quickly as possible? Read the article

Those Job-Hopping Baby-Boomers

The latest stats Bureau of Labor Statistics offer surprising insights into the employment behavior of the post-War generation. Read the article

Does Your HR Function Complicate Things?

What used to be a high-touch (and high cost) unit in many organizations has now become automated, outsourced, and oriented towards self-service. While these shifts have indeed lowered costs, in all too many cases they have left managers to fend for themselves on important people issues. Read the article

How to Conduct an Internal Interview

When you need to fill a position, the most cost-effective and practical thing you can do is hire someone from within. Still, the internal interview is often thought of as something to check off on a hiring to-do list rather than a source of real information. If you already know the person, what else is there to learn, right? Wrong. When conducted well, internal interviews can provide valuable new insight into a known candidate. Read the article

Ditch Performance Reviews? How About Learn to Do Them Well?

To learn to conduct performance reviews well, you need to know the key reasons they are so challenging, frustrating, and generally disliked. Here's a look at three common challenges and four solutions to conducting effective reviews. Read the article

How to Handle High-Potential Hires

Some employees are more talented than others. That's a fact of organizational life that few executives and HR managers would dispute. The real question is how to treat the people who appear to have the highest potential. Read what HR executives at dozens of top companies said about the experiences they provide for high potentials and about their criteria for getting and staying on the list. Read the article

Why We (Shouldn't) Hate HR

Too many organizations aren't as demanding or as creative about the human element in business as they are about finance, marketing, and R&D. If companies aren't serious about the people side, how can HR people in those organizations play as serious role? Read the article

The Five Traps of Performance Measurement

In an episode of Frasier, the television sitcom that follows the fortunes of a Seattle-based psychoanalyst, the eponymous hero's brother gloomily summarizes a task ahead: "Difficult and boring—my favorite combination." If this is your reaction to the challenge of improving the measurement of your organization's performance, you are not alone. Read the article

Restore Trust with Employees? Forget About It

As companies look ahead to a recovering economy and expanding job opportunities, many leaders wonder how they can "restore trust." How can they dissipate the cloud of fear and resentment that hangs over many employees still tender from years of layoffs, salary freezes, pay cuts, and furloughs? How can HR managers recreate an atmosphere of trust in the organization? What's needed today is a new notion of that trust, a new equation between company and employee that is a realistic reflection of today's environment and that redefines engagement, performance management, and the role of learning and role. Read the article

How to Make HR Relevant (audio)

An interview with Susan Cantrell, coauthor of Workforce of One: Revolutionizing Talent Management Through Customization. Listen to the podcast

Are 'High Potential' Programs an Anachronism?

There's a growing debate among human resources professionals on the usefulness of "hi-po" programs. As the nature of our work and the workforce evolves, author Tammy Erickson raises questions about talent and competition. Read the article

Innovation

Hire Great Guessers

Analytics are now king. And they should be. It's so much easier to collect and digest numbers on your business than ever. But without good guessers, any project is doomed. Good guessers know what is worth investigating in the first place. And they have strong instincts into where the best bets lie. They are great not just at product dev, but at hiring, market development, strategy, vendor selection, advertising, and market segmentation and definition. Read the article

A Simpler Way to Make It Simple

Before rolling out an enterprise innovation, UK supermarket giant Tesco insists that it must meet three conditions. The first is that innovation must in some way be better for customers; second is that it should ultimately prove cheaper for Tesco; and, finally, the innovation must make things simpler for staff. The first two goals are often easy. It's the third point that provides the challenge.Read the article

On the Differences Between Innovation and Cooking Chili

Anyone can run an experiment—like changing a chili recipe—just try something and see what happens. But you should demand much more from the innovators in your company. You want a systematic and rigorous approach, disciplined experiments, not a casual free-for-all. Read the article

Innovators, You Need an Attitude Adjustment

Innovation, by definition, is non-routine and uncertain. But the objective is not necessarily to reinvent management or disrupt ongoing operations. One of the keys to achieving innovation in both areas is to nurture healthy partnerships between teams working on innovation initiatives and those managing ongoing operations. Read the article

Hire People Who Disagree with You

Leaders who solicit opinions from people who disagree with them are smart enough to realize that they do not have all the answers. Such leaders also must make it safe for others to disagree; otherwise the exercise is moot. Here are some things to consider when hiring for difference. Read the article

The Outside-In Approach to Customer Service

Times are tough for many businesses, yet some are holding their own, even thriving. How do they do it? According to a new book by Harvard Business School's Ranjay Gulati, it is customer-centric firms—those with a so-called outside-in perspective—that are most resilient during turbulent markets. Read the article

Why Controlling Bosses Have Unproductive Employees

Believe it or not, the very thought of a bossy boss makes employees do a lousy job. In fact, researchers have found they do the opposite of hard work. Why freedom matters in the workplace. Read the article

Leadership

Be Brave: Have a Bad Meeting

It may be contrarian, but to say "we had a great meeting" too often means just the opposite. In fact, disagreement, discord, or just plain saying "no" may be what it takes to move the ball forward. Read the article

Managing Older Managers: A Guide for Younger Bosses

You already know that winning depends in no small part on hiring people better than yourself. If you are a youngish entrepreneur or boss, that will entail hiring older and more experienced people, especially in top roles for your organization. Managing a colleague with ten or fifteen more years of experience than you can present unusual challenges of motivation, boundary-setting, and leadership. Here are some ways to get the most out of your hires and your collaboration with them. Read the article

Women and the Uneasy Embrace of Power

Although women now attend college at a higher rate than men, and have for the most part closed the gap in achieving advanced and professional degrees, women are not occupying the real power positions in corporations, academia, or the professions in anywhere near the same proportions as men. The fact of the underrepresentation of women at the top begs the question of why. One part of the answer is women's reluctance to embrace power. Read the article

How Are You Developing Future Leaders?

Hard as it might be for old folks in positions of power to see the world in a new light and embrace it, we need to try out best to offer a hand to the next generation coming after us. Read the article

Authority versus Persuasion

In directing employees, managers often face a choice between invoking authority and persuasion. In particular, since a firm's formal and relational contracts and its culture and norms are quite rigid in the short term, a manager who needs to prevent an employee from undertaking the wrong action has the choice of either trying to persuade the employee or relying on interpersonal authority. In choosing between persuasion and authority the manager makes a cost-benefit trade-off. This paper studies that trade-off, focusing in particular on conflicts that originate in open disagreement. Read the article

Getting Beyond Engagement to Creating Meaning at Work

For today's leaders, understanding what makes an employee experience meaningful and what role they can play in this process are crucial to building a sustainable and competitive organization. Read the article

It's Time to Focus Executive Development on Real Business Issues

What must an organization do in order to win in its marketplace, and how can the executive group be best utilized as a lever to achieve these ends? Read the article

Leadership in the Age of Transparency

What are the forces behind the coming sea change in corporate leadership? Today, business leaders are bombarded with messages that they owe more to society. But often the result is an incoherent mishmash of charitable giving, CSR programs, and "going green" initiatives. Here, the authors present a far more disciplined way to respond to the challenge. Read the article

Organizational Behavior

The Power of Positive Failure

Positive failure: Isn't this an oxymoron? What good can come from failing? The answer, it seems, is "a lot." Read the article

The Right Way to Fight

Differences of opinion at work are inevitable and often integral to innovation, problem-solving, and performance improvement. But knowing that doesn't make them any easier to manage. Disagreements with coworkers can be uncomfortable, and if handled poorly, result in unproductive and even harmful conflict. The good news is that, with a little planning, you can avoid a fight and find an answer that everyone agrees on. Read the article

The Early Bird Really Does Get the Worm

Does physiology play a role in job performance? New research finds that people whose performance peaks in the morning are better positioned for career success, because they're more proactive than people who are at their best in the evening. Read the article

How to Avoid (and Quickly Recover from) Misunderstandings

When someone expresses a request, demand, assertion, or thought that doesn't seem to make sense, resist the temptation to react. Instead, pause. Ask yourself what's going on. Read the article

Put Your Employees First (video)

Vineet Nayar, CEO of HCL Technologies, Ltd. and author of Employees First, Customers Second: Turning Conventional Mangement Upside down, explains how inverting the management pyramid leads to superior organizational performance. View the video

Three Ways to Capitalize on Creative Tension

Clashing management styles do not always lead to management clashes. The key is managing yourself and your expectations and constantly pushing for innovation and benefit. Read the article

The Toot-Your-Own-Horn Gender Bias

Point to their accomplishments—risk being labeled as self-promoting. Don't point—risk getting fired. How women can handle the acknowledgement conundrum. Read the article

Get Your Team to Stop Fighting and Start Working

Collaboration is here to stay. So what can you do if your team has dissolved into arguments or members just can't seem to get along? Experts offer advice on how to get things back on track. Read the article

Managing Yourself

Power Posing: Fake It Until You Make It

We can't be the alpha dog all of the time. Whatever our personality, most of us experience varying degrees of feeling in charge. Some situations take us down a notch while others build us up. New research shows that it's possible to control those feelings a bit more, to be able to summon an extra surge of power and sense of well-being when it's needed: for example, during a job interview or for a key presentation to a group of skeptical customers. Read the article

Build Your Power Base from Small Beginnings

People who wish they had more power in their organizations—power to bring their ideas to fruition, power to change policies that make no sense—often try to find the one "big move" that will land them in a position of authority. That's a long shot, and it misses the reality that most power bases start out small. Which means it's possible for almost anyone to begin acquiring growing influence through unspectacular moves. Read the article

Effective Communication Begins with a First Impression

All too often, business leaders forget the classic adage "you never get a second chance to make a first impression." In both written and oral communication, it's just too easy to begin with the ordinary. As we're designing presentations or crafting emails or letters, step back and consider the total package you are delivering to your reader or audience and decide carefully how you real ought to begin. Read the article

Do You Have Too Much on Your Plate?

The most common complaint from managers these days is that they simply have too much to do. One explanation is that downsizing has left many companies without the resources to support increasing levels of business. Also, many firms are rethinking how they do business, and driving these changes requires extra effort. If your company's not in a position to add staff to relieve the pressure, then you need to think about alternative ways to manage the overload. Read the article

Lead Without Saying a Word

Leaders can sometimes communicate more without words than with them. What matters is poise and conviction. A leader need not always use words to convey meaning; non-verbal cues often say more than words can ever do. Unfortunately, too often non-verbal cues are displayed to the wrong effect. Those in charge, especially those in very senior positions, must be careful not only with their words but with their body language. Here are some suggestions. Read the article

Sharpen Your Skills: Successful Negotiation

Can you out-negotiate Wal-Mart? Can women overcome gender stereotypes to win equitable pay? Recent research from Harvard Business School looks at important factors to consider before sitting down at the bargaining table. Read the article

How to Make Your Network Work for You

The best time to build your network is before you need something. To reap the benefits of networking when you need them, you must know how to make your network work for you, and how you can work for your network. Read the article

Technology

Enterprise 2.0: How a Connected Workforce Innovates

Enterprise 2.0 tools—wikis, tags, Twitter and other microblogs, and the like—are transforming companies' innovation processes because innovation is no longer the domain of scientists, engineers, or designers. Read how top companies are managing and benefiting from this change. Read the article

Tweet or Meet? How to Choose Your Medium Wisely

How do you choose among the various media options available today for connecting with important people in all the different parts of your life? Listen to the podcast

Coping with Social Media (audio)

An interview with Alexandra Samuel, director of the Social + Interactive Media Centre at Emily Carr University and the cofounder of Social Signal, a company that offers training, resources, and advice on using social media in business settings. Listen to the podcast

How 21st Century Technology Affects Creativity (video)

Andrew Klavan, one of America's most widely read crime writers, is also a keen theorist of the impact of 21st century digital technology both on the creative process of the artist and on the traditional publishing business. In this video interview, he talks about his vision of the future of creativity. View the video

Social Media Usage Policies: Less Lawyering, More Encouraging

If you need to create a social media policy, think of it as enabling effective use rather than simply preventing problems. Here's what a policy should convey. Read the article

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