Topgrading, 3rd Edition

The Proven Hiring and Promoting Method That Turbocharges Company Performance

By: Bradford D. Smart Ph.D.

Narrated by: Erik Synnestvedt

Great companies, large and small, rise or fall because of their talent: The more high performers on your team, the more successful your organization will be. Of course, that’s easier said than done. Research shows that only about 25% of all new hires turn out to be high performers. But companies that have used Brad Smart’s Topgrading system over the past two decades have boosted their hiring success rates dramatically - sometimes even to 90%.

Three huge problems account for the typical poor results in hiring: dishonesty (via deceptive résumés), incomplete information (via shallow interviews), and lack of verifiability (via biased references). Topgrading shows how to solve all three problems. Instead of hir­ing by your gut reactions to résumés and interviews, you can start using a scientifically honed process that compels candidates to be totally honest. Smart, one of the world’s foremost experts on hiring, has personally helped hundreds of companies double, triple, or even quadruple their hiring success rates. His clients have ranged from global giants to small businesses in every field imaginable. Hundreds of thousands of followers have applied the lessons and tools of the first two editions of Topgrading.

The Topgrading system makes hiring easier, faster, and more successful than any other process. And it works at every level, from the front lines to senior management. For the first time in seven years, Smart has fully revised and updated Topgrading with many new tools, techniques, and case studies.

Topgrading isn’t just about hiring and promoting - it’s also about developing talent. It enables leaders to reward their A Players, coach their Bs to become As, and weed out the Cs who are beyond improvement. Many great leaders know that Topgrading works. Find out how it can help your company gain a big competitive advantage.

©2012 Bradford D. Smart Ph.D. (P)2012 Gildan Media LLC

Critic reviews

“Brad helped us develop the tools to pick A-player leaders at GE.” (Jack Welch)

Great Book

Process to hire seems great, a lot of new tips for me. I will be implementing these as soon as possible.

Very self serving

top grading is an excellent idea and practice. the 20% 9f this book that focuses on the what and how of top grading was excellent and worth the read.

the 80% of the book that was extremely self serving, self complimentary, and ego stroking of the author made the book almost unbearable at times. I had to keep telling myself to focus on the positive educational parts and to keep going despite the hours and hours of the author's endless self promotion. Greatly disappointing.

Slow book

I got this book as a recommendation from a friend. I am sure the TopGrading method is pretty good, but this book is a thinly veiled advertisement for their company's services and barely tells you how to do the TopGrading method. To be clear it does tell you, but it spends well over 1/2 the book telling you how great the method is before using the last 1/3 of the book to give you a little insight into the process and encourage you to call their company. I am not a customer of theirs, so I cannot comment on that, but my peers do like the company and its services.

Good summary Info, but lots of “Selling Past the Close”

Top grading makes sense in most scenarios and I got value from the 12 steps but at the expense of a lot of self (and son) promoting and thinly-veiled marketing for consult services. I concur with many of the other reviewers on balance of marketing v content.

Return On Interviewing - ROI of substantive A's

Common sense fuels a movement. Creating yet another use of Topgrading, our collaborative HR vendor community. The absence of grading-empowered HR software assures that no real investigation into human capital is every achieved. Our HR Tech Alliances community must embrace the real value of Return On Interviewing and the tools of this book.

Game Changer

Profoundly Insightful. A clear fail proof system to help you attract, screen, hire and develop A-Players.

A lot of useful information

Book flowed well and even after making its point it had good things to add and the end was worth the read unlike many books that run out of things to say. Yes, there is some repetition but repetition by design.

The only suggestion is that the author do an objective Topgrading of Lincoln's full career before making the purity statement. It would reinforce the message that you don't make judgement on a person's career until you have the full picture not just the headline conventional wisdom.
Small detail, overall great book and concept
Thanks

A must listen if you want to Win.

It's a total of epiphany to read Brad's book. If you really want to have the most high functioning team, it is truly possible and reasonable once you read this book.
In the end, Like most genius ideas, it's way simpler than you think.

The content is good. The audio is poorly done.

The book is great. But it was hard to listen to because of the ups and downs in the narrator's voice. it seemed like they went back and redid some of the audio and the voice doesn't match. They should have rerecorded entire paragraphs not just words here and there.

Very tough to follow as an audiobook

Good content, but lots of forms, visualizations, and figures made it though to follow and repetitive-feeling while listening. I eventually stopped listening and bought the print version. Wish I'd saved the Audible credit.