Recruit or Die. Okay, it’s not quite that dire, but the book by that name was an interesting read this week. The book was described this way:

RECRUIT OR DIE: How Any Business Can Beat the Big Guys in the War for Young Talent — the first front-line look at the entry-level college recruiting game. In the book, the authors share dozens of recruiting anecdotes that demonstrate the way successful recruiters are working their magic, as well as showing how not-so-successful recruiters are blowing it.

The authors know what they’re talking about. Chris Resto heads up MIT’s largest professional development and internship program, the Undergraduate Practice Opportunities Program; Ian Ybarra is a recent MIT grad; and Ramit Sethi is a recent Stanford grad and Web 2.0 entrepreneur. They’ve seen them all come and go. And they have stories to tell.

Want to dazzle prestige recruits? Forget the pizza parties say the authors of Recruit or Die — you’d better show them your senior people, what they’ll be doing, and where they’ll be doing it. And you’d better be interested in working with the placement offices all year. The big three in prestige recruiting — McKinsey, Microsoft and Goldman Sachs — do it. They dazzle their candidates. And they get the best ones.

One big lesson from the book: The great companies not only go after the best people and get them, they are great places to be from. That’s how college recruits are thinking these days. Note to managers: Young people are not planning to spend their life at your shop. So make it good while they’re with you and a good place to be from. Then you’ll get the superstars.

Recruit or Die
by Chris Resto, Ian Ybarra, and Ramit Sethi
Published by Portfolio; August 2007
ISBN 978-1-59184-161-6
B&N, Amazon