Mastering the Hire

About the Author

Chaka Booker is a managing director for The Broad Center, a national organization focused on leadership development. For over a decade, he has traveled the country identifying and developing talent from a wide range of industries. Booker has interviewed nearly 3,000 professionals from Fortune 500 companies, the military, graduate schools, consulting firms, and leadership programs, as well as the public and social sectors. He is a Pahara Fellow at The Aspen Institute, a Forbes contributor on leadership and entrepreneurship, and has written for the Stanford Social Innovation Review.

Main Idea

Mastering the Hire: 12 Strategies to Improve Your Odds of Finding the Best Hire by Chaka Booker provides a comprehensive system to enhance hiring practices, enabling employers to consistently make excellent hires. The book offers 12 proven strategies that help accurately identify the right talent 90 percent of the time, aiming to replace the guesswork in hiring with a structured, scientific approach.

Table of Contents

• Introduction: The Coin Toss
• Part I: Reducing Interference
• Strategy 1: Intuition, Know Thy Place
• Strategy 2: Candidates Don’t Answer Questions. They Answer People.
• Strategy 3: The Right Question Asked Wrong Is the Wrong Question
• Part II: Pressure Management
• Strategy 4: To End With Truth, Start With Trust
• Strategy 5: You’re Not Assessing the Candidate. They’re Assessing Themselves.
• Strategy 6: Pressure Clarifies and Reveals Potential
• Strategy 7: Stop Rationalizing
• Part III: Sharp Tools
• Strategy 8: An Interview Is a Glimpse
• Strategy 9: Break Down the Fourth Wall
• Part IV: Identity and Bias
• Strategy 10: Biases Are Unspoken Criteria
• Strategy 11: Be Mindful
• Strategy 12: Culture Fitness, Not Culture Fit

Analyzing and Explaining Each Idea

Introduction: The Coin Toss

Research shows that the predictive validity of job interviews is limited, often equating to a coin toss in terms of accuracy. Booker emphasizes the need for a structured approach to increase the odds of making the right hiring decisions. The goal is to move away from intuition-based decisions and towards a system that consistently identifies the best candidates.

"Hiring does not have to be a coin toss. Regardless of your starting point, you can increase the odds of finding great talent. That is the goal." —Chaka Booker

Part I: Reducing Interference

Interference during interviews often stems from human nature, as both the interviewer and candidate read each other's social cues and signals. To improve hiring outcomes, it's crucial to manage these interferences effectively.

Strategy 1: Intuition, Know Thy Place

While intuition can sometimes be accurate, it is often subject to biases. Booker advises interviewers to "park" their first impressions by documenting them and setting them aside until after the interview. This helps avoid confirmation bias and ensures a more objective assessment.

"To increase the odds of making a strong decision, you need to manage subjectivity, so you can determine the relevance of a first impression." —Chaka Booker