10 Must-Read Recruitment Books for 2023

This article has been updated on April 3rd, 2023.

There’s no such thing as finding the right time to catch up on your reading, is there? If you want to, you will.

Agreed not everyone is a bibliophile. But there are many of us who find the answers we seek in books from wonderful authors. Perhaps, reading is also an acknowledgment of willingness and humility, accepting that there is so much you don’t know.

Most people who aspire to become better, be it in their personal or work lives, look toward books that introduce them to a plethora of ideas and possibilities.

As John Coleman says in his HBR article,

“deep, broad reading habits are often a defining characteristic of our greatest leaders and can catalyze insight, innovation, empathy, and personal effectiveness.”

Do you have these recruitment books on your bookshelf?

We put this reading list together, after speaking with several recruiters/hiring managers and doing our own research, and hopefully, it will make your life exponentially more fulfilling!

Read on…

#1—Recruiting Sucks… But It Doesn’t Have To: Breaking Through the Myths That Got Us Here by Steve Lowisz

Recruiting developers should be a rewarding experience, not a challenging one. Why do recruiters/hiring managers feel that most tech interview experiences are bad? Maybe it’s time to rethink the entire recruiting process, identify gaps, and hire the best of the best. This is exactly what Steve Lowisz swears by.

In his book, he urges recruiters to leave traditional recruiting practices behind them and be better marketers to attract top talent. He also debunks 7 myths that are associated with and hinder recruiting a high-quality workforce.  

Get your copy here.

#2—Social Media Recruitment: How to Successfully Integrate Social Media into Recruitment Strategy by Andy Headworth

With the pandemic shuttering offices, remote work has come to the forefront. Companies are changing the way they work while their employees remain scattered across geographies. Recruitment strategies need to be tweaked to attract and hire talent from a remote perspective. This is where social media steps in.

Social Media Recruitment deals with choosing suitable platforms, devising social media strategies, creating content that caters to a global audience, and building strong brand recall. Leveraging social media to improve your hiring efforts is a useful tactic to have in your corner, believes Andy Headworth.

Find the book here.

#3—High-Tech High-Touch Recruiting: How to Attract and Retain the Best Talent By Improving the Candidate Experience by Barbara Bruno

Hiring great candidates is only half the battle; engaging and retaining them to become long-term employees is the end goal. In her latest book, Barbara Bruno blends “high-tech” hiring tools with “high-touch” relationship-based recruiting methods to provide a better candidate experience.

She gives pointers on how to enhance the human aspect of recruiting while utilizing new technology to source candidates.

Get your copy here.

#4—Hire Right, Fire Right: A Leader’s Guide to Finding and Keeping Your Best People by Roxi Bahar Hewertson

Every recruiter/HR professional knows the importance of firing an employee when required. It is just as important as hiring right. In this book, Roxi Bahar Hewertson gives leaders the tools to hire top talent and fire someone at the right time, cleanly and gracefully. She tackles a sensitive subject that is not usually talked about in recruitment books. 

Hire Right, Fire Right demonstrates how to weed out mismatched hires and how to handle the loss of great talent. From increasing their company’s hiring success rate, employee retention rates, and even lowering the risk of lawsuits and damage to your organization’s reputation, decision-makers are fully armed to make the right hiring decisions with this book.

Get your copy here.

#5—Hiring for Diversity: A Complete Guide by Gerardus Blokdyk

If you want your company to head towards a future where technology is inclusive and built with everyone in mind, you need a workforce that is inclusive, diverse, and representative of the market that your tech company hopes to reach.

Fostering a D&I culture at the workplace is no piece of cake, which is why Hiring for Diversity comes equipped with design strategies and recent advances to improve your diversity hiring efforts. It also teaches you to set diversity goals appropriately and achieve them through the right initiatives.

Find the book here.

Recommended read: 4 Things The Pandemic Taught Us About Diverse Tech Teams

#6—The Robot-Proof Recruiter: A Survival Guide for Recruitment and Sourcing Professionals by Katrina Collier

Technology is known to be a recruiter’s best friend. However, with the plethora of automated screening tools, online assessments, and other remote interviewing software, some aspects have begun to get lost in translation. The human factor is being taken over by automated practices, and candidates are supremely dissatisfied with the recruitment process where they often feel like numbers rather than people.

Katrina Collier explains how to stand out and recruit successfully in a world of tech overload. The Robot-Proof Recruiter is an indispensable guide for recruiters to gain the trust of any candidate and be the one that candidates want to talk to.

Find the book here.

#7—Hiring Success: How Visionary CEOs Compete for the Best Talent by Jerome Ternynck

Future-proofing tech teams is the way forward in 2021. To keep up with the trends in the market, companies need to adapt quickly and design hiring strategies that are aligned with these changes.

Jerome Ternynck distills the 30 years he’s spent creating future-ready tech teams in this popular book, which describes several recruiting strategies that CEOs can make use of when hiring.   

Get your copy of this book here.

#8—The Talent Fix: A Leader’s Guide to Recruiting Great Talent by Tim Sackett

The Talent Fix outlines a unique recruiting model for talent acquisition leaders and practitioners. It is a practical book, which provides scalable real-world examples of how organizations are successfully recruiting today.

Building and retaining a great talent pool is what companies dream of, and this book shows you exactly how to go about it.

Find the book here.

#9—Recruit Rockstars: The 10 Step Playbook to Find the Winners and Ignite Your Business by Jeff Hyman

This is the go-to book for recruiters looking to make hiring less instinct-driven and more skill-based, recruit talent with limitless potential, and understand the essential elements of an effective hiring campaign.

Follow Jeff Hyman’s 10-step approach for hiring the right talent for every role. In other words, hire rockstars and star performers effortlessly, every single time.

Find the book here.

#10—The Art of Sustainable Performance: A Model for Recruiting, Selection, and Professional Development by Bas Kodden

Published in 2020, this book approaches recruitment and selection of candidates in a distinctly new light. Bas Kodden stresses the importance of key performance indicators as being the secret sauce to building successful teams.

This book ensures that recruiters and HR professionals will find a practical, innovative, and fruitful model to adopt for their recruiting strategies.

Get your copy here.

What’s on your reading list? 

There are plenty of great books on talent acquisition and recruiting out there. These are just a few that have caught our attention. Did we miss a must-have on your reading list for 2023? We want to know! Tell us what books you think should go on this list in the comments section.

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Ruehie Jaiya Karri Author 58 Blogs