Books for Human Resources and Recruitment (annotated list)

Have you recently started working as an HR or recruiter and are you looking for a vertical book on recruiting or an HR management handbook? Here are some reasoned recommendations (unfortunately, there are a thousand recycled lists online).

What an HR book is (really) for

“Books are useless, what you need to learn you will learn in the field,” we often hear. Nothing could be more wrong. We at In-recruiting are convinced that a book, a recruiting guide or an HR handbook read at the right time, can really make a difference in the career of an HR professional.

We are convinced – as Bateson writes in an enlightening aphorism

There is nothing more practical than good theory

And so an HR book can fulfil several functions:

Inspiring a professional to delve into a hitherto unexplored approach or declination of his or her profession. And what many recruiters are doing with Employer branding and Recruitment marketing.

Organising their knowledge after a few years on the road. This – if possible – is even more important because in practice this often creates dysfunctional ways of working so that the HR person on duty does not “have 10 years of experience, but 1 year of experience repeated 10 times”.

DigitalRecruiter. Social network, AI, gamification e strumenti tech per i professionisti HR (ITA)

An excellent introduction to the new recruiting (or should we say Talent Acquisition) trends. The two authors Silvia Zanella and Anna Martini have done an excellent job of summarising how the work of the modern recruiter is changing due to the acceleration of digital.

Particular attention is paid to defining the new figure of the digital recruiter. The key skills to succeed in this role are analysed, as well as the daily activities of a typical Digital recruiter’s day.

If you are an old-school recruiter, start here. It will help you understand what is new in the industry and motivate you to explore some of the approaches in the book.

Full Stack Recruiter: The Ultimate Edition (ENG) 

This is the bible. If you are a recruiter at the beginning of your career you will find all the information you need. If, on the other hand, you are a seasoned recruiter, you will find bread for your hungry teeth.

It is not a theoretical handbook, but a practical one. It is a well-organised distillation of many topics: recruitment marketing, candidate engagement, recruitment analytics, cold-calling, and all the aspects required to successfully fill the role.

If we had to indicate to whom it is recommended, we would suggest it to all IT and Tech recruiters, as the first part is all about sourcing tactics (hunting for passive candidates).

The Robot-proof Recruiter: A Survival Guide for Recruitment and Sourcing Professionals (ENG)

Has technology improved or worsened the relationship between candidates and recruiters? From many quarters one hears the adage: technology will kill recruiters.

In her book, Katrina Collier delves into this delicate balance, with practical pointers for capturing the attention of candidates in a world dominated by artificial intelligence, algorithms and chatbots. A practical yet inspirational book that looks at the present and the future of the professional recruiter.

Tip: buy the new 2022 edition with orange cover, it is the most up-to-date to the new post-pandemic scenario.

Personal branding per l’azienda. Valorizzare l’azienda posizionando le sue persone chiave (ITA) 

Today, finding candidates is easy, it is much more difficult to be heard. How can you become a reference point for candidates in your sector? Personal branding is the answer to this question – and in the post-pandemic scenario it is a necessity for all recruiters, internal or external to the company.

This text is not only addressed to recruiters, but to all those figures in the company who are responsible for enhancing the value of the company by positioning its key people. The target audience is therefore HR managers, talent acquisition managers, people managers, but not only.

Tip: We recommend this book to 2 targets, namely those who hold strategic positions in the HR area and those who want to get their hands directly dirty and have no qualms about producing online content, in a continuous process of trial and error.

Hire by Design: A Hiring Blueprint with Design Thinking (ENG)

HR managers and recruiters know it: attracting and selecting candidates in today’s world is a complex business. To manage this complexity, it is necessary to get rid of old approaches, step out of one’s comfort zone and try out new ways.

This handbook for recruiters (but there is a sister text by the same author: ‘HR by design’) presents design thinking, a creative problem-solving approach, and the different ways you can apply it in recruiting and talent acquisition.

Tip: It is a book that asks not just to be read, but put into practice. One experiment at a time.

We would like to point out that it is currently included for free in your Kindle Unlimited subscription.

The Candidate Experience: A Roadmap to Building a Better Candidate Experience (ENG)

Today everyone is talking about candidate experience. But how can you map and practically improve the candidate experience in your relationship with your company?

This book, in less than 100 pages, answers these questions. The approach is practical and straight to the point, and it also presents several tools you can apply immediately in your company to map, measure and optimise the candidate experience (it’s a bit like a toolkit).

We would like to point out that it is currently included for free in your Kindle Unlimited subscription.

We also recommend discovering the other texts by the same author, each one vertically focused on a topic: sourcing tools, tech recruiting, Boolean searches, candidate messaging and engagement, etc.