Publications

3 Feb 2020
Interview

Lou Shipley: [How to Build a Culture of Enablement]

By: Lou Shipley

This episode of Reveal brings Lou Shipley, investor, lecturer, and previous CEO of Black Duck Security. Lou details sales enablement's role in delivering sales excellence and an effective new hire onboarding experience. View Details

Keywords: Hiring; Company Culture; Sales; Selection and Staffing; Organizational Culture

April 2018
Article

Compromised Ethics in Hiring Processes? How Referrers' Power Affects Employees' Reactions to Referral Practices

By: Rellie Derfler-Rozin, Bradford Baker and F. Gino

In this paper, we explore referral-based hiring practices and show how a referrer’s power (relative to the hiring manager) influences other organizational members’ support (or lack thereof) for who is hired through perceptions of the hiring manager’s motives and... View Details

Keywords: Selection and Staffing; Ethics; Perception

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May 1997
Case

Center for Women & Enterprise: Looking for a Director of Development with "The Scrappiness Factor"

By: Thomas J. Kosnik and Natalie Zakarian

Andrea Silbert is founder of the Center for Women & Enterprise, a nonprofit with a mission to empower women to become economically self-sufficient and prosperous through entrepreneurship. She must select a new senior sales executive, decide how to share... View Details

Keywords: Decisions; Selection and Staffing; Entrepreneurship

Educators

September 2018
Article

Assembling the Sales Team

By: Frank V. Cespedes

Data and analytical tasks have lengthened productivity ramp-up times in many sales contexts, making each hire a bigger sunk cost for a longer time. Most companies adopt two common practices: They hire on the basis of “experience” and/or look at their best reps and try... View Details

Keywords: Sales; Selection and Staffing

January 2021
Article

Sales Hiring Is Hard to Do (Don't Make It Harder)

By: Frank V. Cespedes

In the aggregate, hiring in sales is more expensive than many companies’ cap-ex decisions. But it rarely gets the same attention and companies fail to deal with challenges inherent in sales hiring. Unlike many other business functions, there is no easily identified... View Details

Keywords: Salesforce Management; Selection and Staffing; Human Resources

2015
Working Paper

Discretion in Hiring

By: Mitchell Hoffman, Lisa B. Kahn and Danielle Li

Who should make hiring decisions? We propose an empirical test for assessing whether firms should rely on hard metrics such as job test scores or grant managers discretion in making hiring decisions. We implement our test in the context of the introduction of a... View Details

Keywords: Selection and Staffing; Management Practices and Processes

October 2010 (Revised March 2013)
Case

Baxter's Asia Pacific 'Talent Edge' Initiative

By: Jordan Siegel, Mimi Xi and Christopher Poliquin

This case examines whether multinationals have a potential competitive weapon in aggressively exploiting social schisms in host labor markets and in hiring and promoting senior managers from excluded groups. View Details

Keywords: Labor; Selection and Staffing; Groups and Teams

Educators

May 2013
Supplement

Paul Thomson: Walker Insurance

This is the Spreadsheet Supplement for Walker Insurance: Paul Thomson (HBS Case 813057). Includes Exhibit 1a, Exhibit 1b, Exhibit 2, Exhibit 4, Exhibit 5, Exhibit 6, and Exhibit 7. View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurial Organizations; Entrepreneurs; Entrepreneurship; Search; Search Funds; Sales Force Management; Sales; Sales Channels; Insurance And Reinsurance; Insurance Companies; Acquisitions; Hiring; Service Management; Service; Insurance; Salesforce Management; Selection and Staffing; Insurance Industry; United States

2016
Working Paper

Who Gets Hired?: The Importance of Finding an Open Slot

By: Edward P. Lazear, Kathryn L. Shaw and Christopher Stanton

Despite seeming to be an important requirement for hiring, the concept of a slot is absent from virtually all of economics. Macroeconomic studies of vacancies and search come closest, but the implications of slot-based hiring for individual worker outcomes has not been... View Details

Keywords: Hiring; Selection and Staffing; Employment

July – August 2009
Article

Hiring Stars and Their Colleagues: Exploration and Exploitation in Professional Service Firms

By: Boris Groysberg and Linda-Eling Lee

Keywords: Selection and Staffing; Business Ventures

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2015
Working Paper

Making a Difference: Leader Evaluation, Selection, and Impact

By: Gautam Mukunda

The relationship between leader selection and impact is important to both researchers and practitioners. This paper introduces Leader Filtration Theory (LFT)—a theory from political science—to managerial audiences, applies it to organizations, and uses it to improve... View Details

Keywords: Leaders; Leader Selection; Individual Impact; Leadership; Selection and Staffing

24 Jun 2015
HBS Case

Upgrading School with a Startup Mentality

school systems typically devote up to 85 percent of their budgets to personnel. This creates heavy managerial burdens and difficulties in aligning staffing to meet the needs of students and parents. AltSchool's microschool strategy... View Details

Keywords: Re: John Jong-Hyun Kim; Education

29 Apr 2014
News

"Pull People Through"

Keywords: mentoring; diversity; Credit Intermediation and Related Activities; Finance

December 24, 2020
Article

How Businesses Can Find “Hidden Workers”

By: Joseph B. Fuller, Manjari Raman, Eva Sage-Gavin and Ladan Davarzani

Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, low- and middle-skill workers struggled to find and retain steady work. Now, many of these workers are considered “essential,” while many others are unemployed and struggling to find work. As the pandemic eases throughout 2021,... View Details

Keywords: Health Pandemics; Employees; Selection and Staffing

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2021
Working Paper

Hunting for Talent: Firm-Driven Labor Market Search in the United States

By: Ines Black, Sharique Hasan and Rembrand Koning

This article analyzes the phenomenon of firm-driven labor market search—or outbound recruiting—where recruiters are increasingly “hunting for talent” rather than passively relying on workers to search for and apply to job vacancies. Our research methodology leverages... View Details

Keywords: Hiring; Referrals; Outbound Recruiting; Labor Markets; Selection and Staffing; Networks; Recruitment; Strategy; United States

SSRN

November 2, 2015
Article

The Best Ways to Hire Salespeople

By: Frank V. Cespedes and Daniel Weinfurter

Companies typically spend more on hiring in sales than they do anywhere else in the firm. Average annual turnover in sales is 25% to 30%, while direct replacement costs for a telesales employee ranges from $75,000 to $90,000 and other sales positions cost as much as... View Details

Keywords: Selection and Staffing; Salesforce Management; Retention

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February 1996
Case

Eastman Chemical Company: Building a Board from Scratch

By: Jay W. Lorsch and Samanta Graff

Eastman Chemical Co. spun off from Kodak in 1993. The CEO of Eastman, Earnest Deavenport did not want the new company's board any members of the Kodak board to include, so he initiated a deliberate and thorough process to build an entirely new board that he hoped would... View Details

Keywords: Corporate Governance; Management Teams; Selection and Staffing; Chemical Industry

Educators