Publications

April/May 2006
Article

The Hidden Flaws of Top Executives: How to Find Them Before You Hire Them

By: James Waldroop and Timothy Butler

Keywords: Management; 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

September 22, 2008
Article

How to Minimize the Risks of Hiring Outside Stars

By: Boris Groysberg, Lex Sant and Robin Abrahams

Keywords: Risk and Uncertainty; Selection and Staffing

June 1983
Article

Elicitation of Honest Preferences for the Assignment of Individuals to Positions

By: Dutch Leonard

Keywords: Jobs and Positions; Selection and Staffing

February 2020
Case

Drift: The First Sales Hire

By: Mark Roberge

David Cancel and Elias Torres, the co-founders of Drift, scaled their business to thousands of users and hundreds of thousands in revenue. However, they were falling short of the annual revenue target they communicated to the board of directors. Having scaled the... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Growth Management; Salesforce Management; Selection and Staffing

Educators

September 2008
Teaching Note

Allston: Brand vs. Architecture (TN)

By: Christopher M. Gordon and Ben Creo

Teaching Note for [208079]. View Details

Keywords: Brands and Branding; Buildings and Facilities; Selection and Staffing; Massachusetts

Spring 2021
Article

Whose Job Is It Anyway? Co-Ethnic Hiring in New U.S. Ventures

By: Sari Pekkala Kerr and William R. Kerr

We explore co-ethnic hiring among new ventures using U.S. administrative data. Co-ethnic hiring is ubiquitous among immigrant groups, averaging about 22.5% and ranging from <2% to >40%. Co-ethnic hiring grows with the size of the local ethnic workforce, greater... View Details

Keywords: Hiring; Job Creation; E-Verify; Immigration; Selection and Staffing; Ethnicity; Entrepreneurship

18 Jun 2012
Research & Ideas

Better by the Bunch: Evaluating Job Candidates in Groups

employer selecting an employee for a job assignment, while 100 played the role of employee. In stage one, the "employees" completed two rounds of a math or verbal task for which they were paid based on performance; they also... View Details

Keywords: by Maggie Starvish

31 May 2016
Working Paper Summaries

Who Gets Hired? The Importance of Finding an Open Slot

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

2004
Article

Do Firms Change Capabilities by Hiring New People? A Study of the Adoption of Science-based Drug Discovery

By: Rebecca M. Henderson, Nicola Lacetera and Iain Cockburn

Keywords: Selection and Staffing; Change; Science; Health; Information

March 2023
Article

Learning to Successfully Hire in Online Labor Markets

By: Marios Kokkodis and Sam Ransbotham

Hiring in online labor markets involves considerable uncertainty: which hiring choices are more likely to yield successful outcomes and how do employers adjust their hiring behaviors to make such choices? We argue that employers will initially explore the value of... View Details

Keywords: Selection and Staffing; Analysis; Decision Choices and Conditions

2020
Working Paper

Should Firms Move Talent from the Geographic Periphery to Hubs? A Strategic Human Capital Perspective

By: Prithwiraj Choudhury, Victoria Sevcenko and Tarun Khanna

A longstanding literature holds that firms should hire and move talent from the geographic periphery to hubs as a means to create value from human capital. They do so, however, at the risk of losing the worker to rivals located in the same geographic hub,... View Details

Keywords: Geographic Location; Selection and Staffing; Employment; Residency; Technology Industry; India

January 2018
Article

Who Gets Hired? The Importance of Competition Among Applicants

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; Competency and Skills

2010
Working Paper

Reversing the Queue: Performance, Legitimacy, and Minority Hiring

By: Andrew Hill and David A. Thomas

Studies of minority hiring have found that poor-performing firms or firms in highly competitive contexts are more likely to hire minority candidates. However, most work has examined hiring for entry and mid-level positions, not senior management. Management positions... View Details

Keywords: Diversity; Selection and Staffing; Leadership; Managerial Roles; Performance Effectiveness; Sports Industry; United States

June 1973 (Revised December 1977)
Case

Affirmative Action at Aldrich

By: George C. Lodge

Keywords: Recruitment; Selection and Staffing; Policy

September 2000
Background Note

Professional Services Module One: Introduction to the Challenges Facing PSFs

By: Thomas J. DeLong, Ashish Nanda and Scot H. Landry

This initial module was meant to clarify how the course would be useful to students who would be starting PSFs, working for them as an employee or contractor, managing them, or hiring them from the client side. View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Selection and Staffing; Management; Service Delivery; Service Industry