Bradford D. Smart

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About Bradford D. Smart
Brad completed his doctorate in Industrial Psychology at Purdue University, entered consulting, and since the 1970s has been in private practice as President and CEO of his own company, now called Topgrading, Inc., based in the Chicago area.
Brad is frequently acknowledged to be the world’s foremost expert on hiring. The company consults with many leading companies and hundreds of small and growth companies. Brad has conducted in-depth interviews with over 6,500 executives.
He is author of seven books and videos, including Topgrading 3rd Edition: The Proven Hiring And Promoting Method That Turbocharges Company Performance; The Smart Interviewer: Tools and Techniques for Hiring the Best; and the training series Topgrading Toolkit, featuring the 12 Topgrading hiring steps and demos of all the interviews. In addition, he has co-authored the following books: Topgrading for Sales: World-Class Methods to Interview, Hire, and Coach Top Sales Representatives, with Greg Alexander; and Smart Parenting: How to Raise Happy, Can-Do Kids, with Dr. Kate Mursau.
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Books By Bradford D. Smart
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 such as General Electric and Honeywell to midsize and small businesses in every field imaginable, and to not-for-profits such as the American Heart Association. And hundreds of thousands of readers 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. This edition now features 40 companies of all sizes, across a wide range of industries and home countries. It’s the most advanced and useful version of Topgrading ever. The third edition includes:
- Simplified Topgrading methods for entry-level jobs.
- The new Topgrading Snapshot, which screens out weak candidates in just 15 seconds.
- The latest version of the acclaimed Topgrading Interview script.
- Case studies from 35 companies not featured in any previous edition.
- Many additional innovations created by Topgraders.
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.
Brad Smart's Topgrading has sold more than 150,000 copies since 1999, making it the definitive book for executives who want to hire, coach, and retain top talent. Now Smart has teamed up with Greg Alexander, who used Topgrading to radically improve his sales force at EMC.
In Topgrading for Sales, they have boiled down the key Topgrading ideas to a pithy 112 pages while focusing on the unique needs of sales managers and sales directors.
Great sales forces don't just depend on strategies-they depend on hiring the best possible reps. But surveys show that about half of all hires and promotions put an underqualified person in the wrong job. No wonder the average tenure for sales managers is only nineteen months.
Topgrading for Sales takes the guesswork out of hiring by teaching readers how to interview systematically for A-level talent instead of relying on hunches and prejudices. It also shows how to coach B-level reps to turn them into A-players and how to weed out C-players before they do too much damage.
* How to build excellent rapport
* How to apply the TORC Technique for motivating the interviewee tobe totally candid and reveal negatives
* How to conduct productive reference calls
* How to correctly interpret an interviewee's responses
* How to prepare for an interview, how much time to take during aninterview, how to focus your questions in ways that will revealwhether the interviewee meets your organization's needs ornot--plus the latest hiring legalities you should be aware of
The Smart Interviewer will help you avoid costly mishires andmispromotions and give you strategies and tools to hire productive,high-caliber employees that meet your company's needs.