My first book is out! It’s on recruiting young talent and it’s in bookstores everywhere

August 8 34 Comments latest by Kartik

The short version: My first book, Recruit or Die: How Any Business Can Beat the Big Guys in the War for Young Talent, is out in bookstores everywhere! The book advises companies how to recruit top young talent.

When I was a senior in college, my friends started recruiting at companies to lock down a job before graduation. Stanford makes it easy — you basically pick from a list of companies you want to interview with, show up, and talk about yourself. What could be more fun?

I noticed something troubling, though. Most of my friends were recruiting with the same companies: investment banks and consulting firms. These jobs are high-paying (between $75,000 and $120,000 your year out of college, with steep increases) and very prestigious. They’re also dreadfully boring and make me want to take a dull thimble and cause 646 puncture wounds on my own body, then bathe in a delightful medley of lemon juice, salt, and bees.

To be honest, seeing so many of my friends go to work at these companies made me mad. Why go work somewhere and be an Excel monkey for two years? Was it really about the money and prestige? I thought there had to be more to a career than those superficial things. And yet, these companies kept recruiting the best of the best, year after year.

I started investigating by interviewing my friends and asking them what they really wanted. I found some fascinating surprises, like the surprising number of friends who felt guilty about how much their parents had paid for their education, so they “had” to go get a high-paying jobs. Others measured their worth by the amount of money they made relative to their peers. Still others had their goals set on prestigious corporate careers and used these jobs as accelerated stepping stones.

Then I started interviewing the companies. How did the same few companies manage to attract talent every single year? Why did my 22-year-old friends rabidly want to go work for companies like McKinsey, Microsoft, and Google? It wasn’t just about the money. These companies spend an immense amount of time understanding young people, appealing to what motivates us (hint: We don’t care about retirement right now), and they’re constantly getting feedback.

I teamed up with Chris Resto (founder of MIT’s largest internship program) and Ian Ybarra to write Recruit or Die: How Any Business Can Beat the Big Guys in the War for Young Talent. We researched over 1,000 students at 180+ schools to advise companies how to recruit top young talent.

I don’t ask much of readers on this site, but if you work in a company, please buy this book and give it to the head of your HR department. Not only would I love you (and you’ll look good giving such a useful gift), but the book is chock-full of insights about strategies and tactics to recruit young talent.

As Penelope Trunk wrote,

As a candidate, this book is a peek into the secret world of your suitors. You should understand the range of ways that forward-thinking companies recruit so you know how to judge the company you’re talking to. This will help you to match your strengths properly with a company’s.

Read the introduction: http://alwaysrecruiting.com/book-excerpts
Buy the book:

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34 Comments latest by Kartik

Here are the winners of the iwillteachyoutoberich book giveaways

June 4 2 Comments latest by Valiumitos

Over the last few weeks, I’ve written a few book reviews, including some with giveaways. So today, here are the winners from the last two giveaways.

From the review of Tim Ferriss’s book, The 4 Hour Workweek, we have a winner of a roundtrip ticket anywhere in the continental United States. FYI, hundreds of you bought the book and it was listed on the New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller lists. And the winner is….

Brandon Kraft. Check your email!

Read my full review of The 4 Hour Workweek.

* * *
From my review of The Brazen Careerist, a great new book on career choices by Penelope Trunk, there are multiple giveaways. I asked people to write a comment about something interesting that happened at work. The comments are amazing. The following people won free copies of The Brazen Careerist for their comments:

• S (comments #18 and #55)
• Brian (comment #32)
• Scarfish (comment #24)

The grand prize winner gets a 30 minute call with Penelope Trunk, a national columnist and author for Yahoo Finance. That prize goes to…sfordinarygirl, comment #51. Note: The Brazen Careerist is now out (see my full review).

Thanks for all the interest. And seriously, check out the comments — they’re the most interesting part of the reviews.

Related links:

• 50 books I recommend
• My other book reviews
• What might happen if you just raise your hand (or leave a comment)
• My Amazon wishlist (534 items)

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2 Comments latest by Valiumitos

Ben’s book on entrepreneurship is out today, and it’s good

May 21 6 Comments latest by My First Post

My friend Ben Casnocha’s book on entrepreneurship is out today. Congratulations for making it to the #1 Movers and Shakers list on Amazon (up 16,578%!).

I read the galleys of My Startup Life. The final book is even better, with tons of insights about entrepreneurship (see below). FYI, Ben founded his tech company, Comcate, at the age of 14. It’s now a multi-million-dollar company, and Ben is 19.

Check out the book to learn how he did this while in high school (e.g., waking up at 3:45am to take a Southwest flight down to LA, and then back up to San Francisco the same day), how to turn an idea into a company, how to fight for respect when you’re young and an entrepreneur, and how to build a team with the inevitable growing pains. I like to think that the people who read blogs about entrepreneurship will say, “Now what?” and get Ben’s book as the logical next step.

As usual, the best authors have great websites. You can sample more about what he has to say on his book site and his blog.

My Start-Up Life: What a (Very) Young CEO Learned on His Journey Through Silicon Valley

Related links:

• 50 books I recommend
• My other book reviews
• More articles on personal entrepreneurship

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6 Comments latest by My First Post

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