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Resource Center - Looking For A Good Book?

"E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It" ñ Michael Gerber

Book Description
An instant classic, this revised and updated edition of the phenomenal bestseller dispels the myths about starting your own business. Small business consultant and author Michael E. Gerber, with sharp insight gained from years of experience, points out how common assumptions, expectations, and even technical expertise can get in the way of running a successful business.

Gerber walks you through the steps in the life of a business -- from entrepreneurial infancy through adolescent growing pains to the mature entrepreneurial perspective: the guiding light of all businesses that succeed -- and shows how to apply the lessons of franchising to any business, whether or not it is a franchise. Most importantly, Gerber draws the vital, often overlooked distinction between working on your business and working in your business.

The E-Myth Revisited will help you grow your business in a productive, assured way.

www.amazon.com


 

"The Manager's Book of Questions" ñ John Kador

Amazon.com
Choosing someone to fill a job vacancy is one of any manager's most important responsibilities. The Manager's Book of Questions: 751 Great Interview Questions for Hiring the Right Person, by journalist John Kador, contains a wide assortment of carefully worded queries that help make the process more effective. Logically organized by topics such as work history, motivation, teamwork, and skill assessment, it also includes favorite questions of top recruiters and personal questions that should never be asked.

www.amazon.com


 

"96 Great Interview Questions" - Paul Falcone

Midwest Book Review
Plenty of job titles advise on how to handle interview questions; but too few lend depth to the employer's side - what to ask, and how. Falcone's title is invaluable in telling how to organize interviews to best identify high-performance candidates and how to spot evasions and untruths. An excellent guide to turning general answers into specifics, and to using these candidates' specifics to assess strengths and weaknesses.

www.amazon.com


 

"Adams Streetwise Hiring Top Performers" - Bob Adams & Peter Veruki

Furnishes authoritative tips on how to find, interview, and hire the best people for a company, including six hundred interview questions and tips on networking, writing ads, screening techniques, references, and hiring legalities. Ingram answers into specifics, and to using these candidates' specifics to assess strengths and weaknesses.

www.amazon.com


 

"Avoid Employee Lawsuits" - Barbara Kate Repa

Book Info
Presents an easy-to-use reference guide addressing the hiring of workers, doing background checks, testing applicants, keeping records, paying workers, avoiding discrimination, guarding against sexual harassment, preventing violence, conducting investigations, and firing.

www.amazon.com


 

"Balanced Scorecard" - Robert Kaplan

From Publishers Weekly
Has running a corporate or government or not-for-profit enterprise becomes increasingly complicated, more sophisticated approaches are needed to implement strategy and measure performance. Purely financial evaluations of performance, for example, no longer suffice in a world where intangible assets, relationships and capabilities increasingly determine the prospects for success. Kaplan, a Harvard Business School professor of accounting, and Norton, president of Renaissance Solutions, make a key contribution by describing and illustrating the balanced scorecard, a multidimensional approach to measuring corporate performance that incorporates both financial and non-financial factors. The concept of a balanced scorecard originated in a study group of 12 companies that met throughout 1990; since then, the authors have worked with several companies, including FMC Corporation, Brown & Root Energy Services, Mobil and CIGNA, to create scorecards and use them as a systematic means to implement new organizational strategy. Though still in the preliminary stages of development, balanced scorecards could represent the emergence of a new era of management sophistication, in which both the hard and soft variables of work life are taken into account in a rigorous, testable fashion. Kaplan and Norton provide an excellent, though dry, introduction to a new methodology of management.

www.amazon.com


 

"Changing Minds: The Art and Science of Changing Our Own and Other People's Minds" - Howard Gardner

From Publishers Weekly
Gardner, a psychologist and professor at Harvard, examines the factors involved in changing minds on significant issues, in politics, science, business and art. He identifies seven key elements, including reason, research and real world events, that are part of the decision-making process. Certain facets are more heavily weighted in some fields than others: "leaders of large groups often rely on the appreciable resources at their disposal but are buoyed or undercut by real world events," says Gardner (Frames of Mind), who believes this explains why a politician or a CEO will disregard advice in the face of larger issues and popular perceptions. To prove his theories, Gardner analyzes the behavior of several individuals including President Bush, Britain's Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair, and South Africa's Nelson Mandela. Gardner doesn't limit his examination to politicians because he also believes that artists, writers, musicians and teachers can change people's minds. While the discussions and real-life examples are intriguing and do clarify Gardner's theories, the book doesn't fully deliver on its promise. Although Gardner does offer suggestions on how someone can influence others, he doesn't include a detailed prescriptive strategy for decision makers in the business world. Readers must draw out insights on their own, which, given the complexity of the material, may be difficult.

www.amazon.com


 

"First, Break All The Rules" - Marcus Buckingham

Amazon.com
Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman expose the fallacies of standard management thinking in First, Break All the Rules: What the World's Greatest Managers Do Differently. In seven chapters, the two consultants for the Gallup Organization debunk some dearly held notions about management, such as "treat people as you like to be treated"; "people are capable of almost anything"; and "a manager's role is diminishing in today's economy." "Great managers are revolutionaries," the authors write. "This book will take you inside the minds of these managers to explain why they have toppled conventional wisdom and reveal the new truths they have forged in its place."

www.amazon.com


 

"Fun Works: Creating Places Where People Love to Work" - By Leslie Yerkes

Book Description
* Shows how to create an organizational culture that is fun and productive; create and sustain motivation; and retain your best employees

* Examples and case studies from real-life companies ó including Pike Place Fish and Southwest Airlines ó illustrate the principles of Work/Fun Fusion

Fun Works presents real-life case studies and interviews with dozens of leading authors, companies and individuals that illustrate eleven important principles for creating a funóand productive and profitableóworkplace. Fun Works provides tips, resources, examples, and motivation to make it easy and fun to unleash the power of fun in yourself, your coworkers, and your customers! ëGurus of Fun'óauthors and expertsóoffer their spin on each principle. Lest you say, "That's all well and good but will it work in my industry?" Fun Works shares the voices of individuals, diverse in their backgrounds and professions, who express how work and fun merge for them. An inventory of behaviors will give you concrete indicators of how well you have integrated fun into your work experience.

www.amazon.com


 

"Hiring Smart" - Dr Pierre Darnell

Book Description
People are the most valuable asset in today's fiercely competitive workplace. In HIRING SMART, now available in paperback for the first time, Dr. Mornell delineates 45 simple strategies for "people reading"óobserving a candidate's behavior and predicting what they'll be like in the workplaceóthat virtually guarantee hiring the best possible candidate for any job.

www.amazon.com


 

"Hiring The Best" - Martin Yale

Book Description
Updated to include the very latest information on the legal guidelines you must follow under the Americans with Disabilities Act.

How many managers have stalled their own careers by hiring the wrong person? Too many.

The most common mistake is believing that if a person can do the job, the person is a good hire. Actually, there are three broad areas that must be probed thoroughly to make the best decision.

* Is the candidate able to do the job?
* Is the candidate willing to do the job?
* And is the candidate going to be manageable?

In Hiring the Best, over 400 questions thoroughly probe these areas and give you the necessary material for the perfect choice. The updated fourth edition of this proven management tool also features an extensive review of the pros and cons of hiring temporary workers, part-time employees, consultants, and independent contractors.

www.amazon.com


 

"The Customer Driven Company" - Richard C. Whiteley

From Library Journal
Whiteley, vice president of the Forum Corporation, has based his book on Forum's research with 563 top executives in 44 different organizations. He seeks to provide managers with a step-by-step method for investigating, measuring, promoting, and rewarding product and service excellence that can lead to real customer loyalty. He first identifies the essential ingredients necessary to establish a customer-driven company such as creating a customer-keeping vision, saturating your company with the voice of the customer, etc. Whiteley then provides a set of "toolkits" to enable managers to identify how well their company is doing in the areas identified. A timely work, well organized and presented. Recommended for all business collections.

www.amazon.com


 

"The Employers Legal Handbook" - Fred Steingold

A comprehensive guide to the legal rights and obligations of employers.

www.amazon.com


 

"The Leadership Pill" - Ken Blanchard & Marc Muchnick

From Publishers Weekly
Blanchard is a veritable self-help book writing machine. His latest-a typically slim volume offering a typically simple parable-concerns a competition between two leaders with wildly different management styles. One leader takes "the leadership pill," which gives him "all the attributes of effective leadership." The other leader does not take the medication. Although the book is presumably not an advertisement for natural healing, it seems that way at times: it turns out the leader who doesn't take the pill winds up winning the competition. The message? Leadership takes time-it can't be learned overnight (or ingested via pill form). Leaders must show integrity, build "a culture of partnership" and affirm their employees' sense of self-worth by letting them know what they do is important. It's a solid, though obvious, message that should resonate with fans of Blanchard's brand of advice.

www.amazon.com


 

"Thinking of a Change: 11 Ways Highly Successful People Approach Life and Work" - John Maxwell

From Publishers Weekly
Basing his latest book on the theory that "successful people think differently than unsuccessful people," Maxwell (author of bestselling The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership and Running with the Giants) guides readers on the journey of mastering "good thinking" to achieve their personal and professional potential. Maintaining an encouraging tone and a down-to-earth writing style honed from his more than 30 previous titles, Maxwell details the impact and practical value of 11 kinds of thinking, including reflective, shared, creative, unselfish and big-picture. Useful tips, like how to discover your gifts through focused thinking, ways to break down complex issues with strategic thinking, and how to understand the value of examining the worst-case scenario through realistic thinking, characterize the author's surprisingly concrete lessons. The step-by-step format is bolstered by inspirational quotes, personal insights and high-profile anecdotal evidence about the likes of Priscilla Presley, George Lucas and George Washington Carver. Ending each chapter, emphasizing the discipline needed to think your way to the top, are exercises designed to evaluate and increase your personal progress in each area.

www.amazon.com


 

"When You Say Yes, But Mean No" - Leslie Perlow

From Booklist
Calling herself an "anthropologist of corporate culture," Perlow conducts her fieldwork in the office environment, studying the interactions of people in the world of organizations and examining the ways that people do and don't express honest opinions, mostly in an effort to fit in and avoid making waves. She asserts that in our natural desire to be liked and to avoid conflict, we will often say "yes" when inside we are screaming "no," leading to a dysfunctional work environment that devalues relationships and impedes creativity and progress. Yet this pattern is passively promoted by managers in almost every organization, and every time we silence conflict, the consequences get worse; as does the likelihood that we will continue the pattern in a destructive "silent spiral" that encourages anger and gossip. Perlow provides a number of stories and useful exercises that promote expressing differences while preventing the negative side effect of petty arguing, clearly showing that an atmosphere in which open dialogue is encouraged is healthy for both personal and organizational relationships.

www.amazon.com


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