Book excerpt: Only one thing really differentiates your business from your competitor: your people. Do you have the right talent in the right place at the right time? It's no longer enough to have a 'workforce': you need a high-impact Talent Force. The authors first identify the massive social, cultural, and economic shifts that are transforming hiring as we know it. We are a smaller, closer, and more competitive world, as Baby Boomers are retiring in the US, India is flourishing due to outsourcing and educational development, and China is a strong new economic force. Add to that the fact that today's best people have radically new expectations and approaches to work; this book reveals what they want and how to meet those needs while building your business. Learn how to develop and implement a worldclass talent plan that aligns with business objectives, and define metrics to track and optimize success. Discover how candidates are using technology to evaluate new opportunities, benchmark compensation, and create new back-channels of communication about worklife. Maximize these new technologies to grow Talent Force, tap into new sources of competitive intelligence and stay ahead of the pack. Foreword xi Acknowledgments xiii About the Authors xv Preface xvii Introduction xix Chapter 1: The Quality Talent Imperative 1 Chapter 2: Talent Market Demands 11 Chapter 3: Building a Competitive Talent Organization 35 Chapter 4: The Cultural Obsession of Work 59 Chapter 5: Building a Talent Community 77 Chapter 6: Tangible Talent Measurement 93 Chapter 7: Talent Goes on Offense 115 Chapter 8: Relationship Recruiting (Still) Rules 133 Chapter 9: Talent Forces of Tomorrow 151 Index 163