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World Book Day: My top 5 recruitment reads

In honour of World Book Day, I bring you 5 great reads for anyone wanting to excel in their recruitment career.

1. Will it make the boat go faster? - Harriet Beveridge & Ben Hunt-Davis

Inspired by Ben Hunt-Davis's journey to Olympic gold in the men's Rowing Eight at Sydney 2000, Will It Make The Boat Go Faster tells his story of the process that won him that medal. It's a tale of talent, supremely focused preparation and hard work.

What won the race? Not just the combination of these elements, but the way in which these elements were made to work together.

It’s about daily actions and thought processes, setting goals and then stretching them.

A good read for anyone to draw parallels to your own goals, ways of working, motivations, attitudes and habits. 

Buy it here

 

2. Find your why: a practical guide for discovering purpose for you and your team - Simon Sinek

Find Your Why is the follow up to Start with Why, the global bestseller and the subject of the third most watched TED Talk of all time.

This easy-to-follow guide starts with the search for your personal why, and then expands to helping your colleagues find your organisation's why.

Finding your why, particularly in recruitment, can be a difficult undertaking - why do you do what you do? A big part of our What Drives You campaign was uncovering the different motivations - the why's - of our team. 

Anyone regardless of level, or management responsibility will benefit from finding their why and can lead you on a path to a more fulfilling life and long-term success.

Buy it here.

 

3. The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck - Mark Manson

In this generation-defining self-help guide, Mark Manson shows us how to stop trying to be "positive" all the time so that we can truly become better, happier people.

Described as a "refreshing slap", this outspoken read is full of ruthless humour that leads us to understand our limitations and accept them, so you can figure out what the most important things are and streamline your attention. 

As you can tell from the title, much of the language in the book is quite candid, but hits on fairly serious and helpful topics to assist the reader in practical terms.

Buy it here.

 

4. Black box thinking: the surprising truth about success - Matthew Syed 

The theory of ‘marginal gains’ has become key to many success stories in recent history. Simply explained, it’s the process of getting better at small elements of a process in order to impact the overall aim. One of the biggest winners in this strategy recently was Team GB Cycling who saw unprecedented success at Rio 2016 through focusing on marginal gains.

The book goes in depth on the ways to think about failure, in order to become better at succeeding. Focusing on marginal gains can help you to be a better recruiter.

Buy it here.

 

5. Drive: the surprising truth about what motivates us - Daniel H. Pink

Forget everything you thought you knew about what motivates people - at work, at school, at home. It is wrong.

As Daniel H. Pink explains in this book, the secret to high performance and satisfaction in today's world is the deeply human need to direct our own lives, to learn and create new things, and to do better by ourselves and the world.

Along the way, he takes us to companies that are enlisting new approaches to motivation, and introduces us to the scientists and entrepreneurs who are pointing a bold way forward.

Buy it here.​