Talent Makers

Powerful ideas to transform hiring into a massive competitive advantage for your business

Talent Makers: How the Best Organizations Win through Structured and Inclusive Hiring is essential reading for every leader who knows that hiring is crucial to their organization and wants to compete for top talent, diversify their organization, and build winning teams. Daniel Chait and Jon Stross, co-founders of Greenhouse Software, Inc, provide readers with a comprehensive and proven framework to improve hiring quickly, substantially, and measurably.

Talent Makers will provide a step-by-step plan and actionable advice to help leaders assess their talent practice (or lack thereof) and transform hiring into a measurable competitive advantage. Readers will understand and employ:

• A proven system and principles for hiring used by the world's best companies
• Hiring practices that remove bias and result in more diverse teams
• An assessment of their hiring practice using the Hiring Maturity model
• Measurement of employee lifetime value in quantifiable terms, and how to increase that value through hiring

The Talent Makers methodology is the result of the authors’ experience and the ideas and stories from their community of more than 4,000 organizations. This is the book that CEOs, hiring managers, talent practitioners, and human resources leaders must read to transform their hiring and propel their organization to new heights.

Chapter 1 The Problem and the Promise 1

Chapter 2 From Chaos to Confidence: The Hiring Maturity Curve 23

Takeaways 44

Expert Insights: Shauna Geraghty 46

Chapter 3 Employee Lifetime Value 51

Takeaways 67

Expert Insights: Andres Traslavina 69

Chapter 4 Structured Hiring 75

Takeaways 79

Expert Insights: Jan Fiegel 80

Expert Insights: Gerardo Alvarez 84

Chapter 5 Own Every Moment of Your Hiring Experience 87

Takeaways 106

Expert Insights: Jill Macri 107

Chapter 6 Attract the Best Talent 111

Takeaways 138

Expert Insights: Joelle Emerson 140

Expert Insights: Porter Braswell 145

Expert Insights: Katie Burke 148

Chapter 7 Making Confident, Informed Hiring Decisions 151

Takeaways 174

Expert Insights: Beth Steinberg 175

Expert Insights: Tope Awotona 180

Chapter 8 Driving Operational Excellence 185

Takeaways 201

Expert Insights: Pattie Money 203

Chapter 9 Talent Makers 207

Takeaways 219

Expert Insights: Maia Josebachvili 220

Chapter 10 Changing Minds 225

Takeaways 236

Chapter 11 Final Thoughts 237

Acknowledgments 239

About the Authors 241

Index 243

“The co-founders of human resources software firm Greenhouse Software make a strong case for systematizing talent acquisition.... Their fervent belief that senior executives need to be more engaged in the staffing process, rather than simply delegate it to human resources, is the cornerstone of their approach, which aims to help readers to identify, attract, and retain the best talent.... A forward-thinking and enlightening view of hiring practices.” —Kirkus Reviews

Daniel Chait is CEO and Co-founder of Greenhouse. As a technology entrepreneur in New York for over 22 years, Dan is a frequent speaker on the topics of hiring and entrepreneurship.

Jon Stross is President and Co-founder of Greenhouse. He drives product strategy and works closely with customers and partners to build a platform that improves hiring performance.

Despite its central importance to company success, hiring continues to be one of the most frequently mismanaged and undervalued areas in many organizations. Chaos and frustration are often the norm, and unconscious bias in the hiring process impacts decisions. As a result, many organizations are unable to attract the talent they need to be competitive.

In Talent Makers: How the Best Organizations Win through Structured and Inclusive Hiring, the co-founders of Greenhouse Software, Inc., Daniel Chait and Jon Stross, deliver a comprehensive and proven framework to improve hiring quickly, substantially, and measurably. The book offers readers a complete plan for building winning teams and provides the playbook to make it happen supported by real-world examples. You'll discover how to assess your Hiring Maturity along a clear spectrum. You'll then discover how to quantify the lifetime value of your employees, structure your hiring systems to challenge bias, and transform your talent practice into a competitive advantage.

The concrete strategies and practical advice contained in Talent Makers is based on the authors' experience serving over 4,000 organizations. This is the book that CEOs, leaders, hiring managers, and talent practitioners must read to transform their hiring and propel their organization to new heights.

Praise for Talent Makers

"Once you have something, nothing else really matters but the team you build. Your company is not your product, or even your customers. It's your team. Daniel and Jon have been the single most innovative leaders in hiring in business software, leaning in very early on and bringing the sort of powers to find, manage, and empower talent to every business...that used to just be reserved for the elite in tech. If you want to read one single 'business book' on how to win, it should be one about great teams. Read Talent Makers."
—Jason Lemkin, Investor, Business Partner, Founder and CEO of SaaStr and SaaStr Fund

"In this thoughtful, research-backed book, Dan and Jon provide a compelling framework and data-driven tools for leaders who increasingly realize the value of diversity, equity, and inclusion and want actionable strategies for bringing about change. Talent Makers maps out the path to more fair hiring practices that block implicit biases and allows companies to become better at hiring.
—Shelley Correll, Professor of Sociology and, by courtesy, Organizational Behavior, Stanford University

"While there are many paths a company can take to improve diversity, equity, and inclusion, they must all begin with getting hiring right. In Talent Makers, Daniel Chait and Jon Stross break down the steps to build an effective hiring culture that attracts top talent, reduces bias in hiring decisions, and creates more opportunities for candidates from diverse backgrounds."
—Jon Winkelried, Co-CEO of TPG