Bradford Smart

Brad completed his doctorate in Industrial Psychology at Purdue University, entered consulting, and for more than 25 years has been in private practice as President of Smart & Associates, Inc., based in the Chicago area. Brad is frequently acknowledged to be the world’s foremost expert on hiring. He has conducted in-depth interviews with over 6,500 executive. He is author of seven books and videos, including: Topgrading: How Leading Companies Win by Hiring, Coaching, and Keeping the Best People (the world’s bestseller, of 1400 books on hiring, since 1999), The Smart Interviewer, Smart Parenting: How to Raise Happy, Can- Do Children (co-author with Dr. Kate Smart Mursau), and Selection Interviewing: A Management Psychologist’s Recommended Approach.

Brad has helped companies topgrade by assessing and coaching teams, conducting Topgrading® workshops, and providing books, handbooks, and videos to help clients topgrade on their own. The resulting improvements in company performance have been featured on the cover of The Wall Street Journal and in many Fortune articles.

MOST REQUESTED TOPICS:
World-Class Best Practices in Hiring Top Talent
Learn how leading companies like GE and American Heart Association dramatically improved their hiring and promoting success from 25% to 90%.

How to Create Your A Team:  World-Class Best Practices
Build your high performance team by embracing best practices to recruit, hire, promote, develop, and keep A players.

The Topgrading® Advantage:  Improve Hiring and Promoting From 25% to 90%
Dr. Brad Smart shares how leading companies like GE and American Heart Association dramatically improved their hiring and promoting success by following the roadmap set forth in Topgrading:  How Leading Companies Win by Hiring, Coaching, and Keeping the Best People, the Amazon.com #1 bestseller of 1,400 books on hiring for over five years.

Topgrading®:  How Companies Convert their Mix of A, B, C Players to 90% A Players
Many leading companies like GE, Honeywell, Hillenbrand, Barclays, and Lincoln Financial have dramatically improved their stock performance by embracing Brad Smart’s Topgrading® methods.  Vivid, actual case studies dramatize the methods.

Building a World-Class Sales Organization:  The Topgrading® Success Formula
Improve sales results by ratcheting up talent in your organization.  The Topgrading® Success Formula has turbo-boosted sales teams of leading companies by dramatically improving hiring success.

PRODUCTS:
Topgrading: How Leading Companies Win by Hiring, Coaching and Keeping the Best People
Since 1999 Topgrading® has been the #1 best seller of over 1400 books on hiring. This 2005 revision was completely re-written, with dozens of new case studies, improved tools, and a new section on topgrading internationally. Fortune 1000 companies typically find that only 25% of people hired or promoted turn out to be high achievers. Dozens of leading companies have achieved 90% success using topgrading techniques.    

The Smart Interviewer
Supplements Topgrading: How Leading Companies Win by Hiring, Coaching, and Keeping the Best People by providing more comprehensive advice on interviewing.

World-Class Interviewing and Hiring: The Topgrading Advantage
This 1-hour video teaches the Topgrading Advantage - how large and small companies typically hire 25% high performers, while topgraders hire 90% high performers.  Brad Smart will teach you his famous chronological, in-depth, structured Topgrading Interview®.  Program highlights include:

• Why topgrading gives you a 30 - to - 1 advantage
• Topgrading Interview techniques, to achieve 90% success in hiring
• Job Scorecard, to nail down your hiring needs
• Virtual Bench, to cut recruiter fees
• Copies of Career History Form and Abbreviated Interview Guide, to screen candidates efficiently
• TORC Technique, to get honest answers
• Topgrading Calculator, to track and improve your hiring success

Topgrading DVD (7-Hour) Tool Kit
Professionally produced and highly polished, this two-volume DVD adaptation of Dr. Brad Smart's best-selling book includes:

• 5 sample interviews that reveal what's meaningful in a candidate's career as it relates to your the environment:
• How to conduct and evaluate the screening interview
• The Topgrading Interview® itself – what it looks like in action
• The reference interview – proven ways to get a candidate's former bosses and colleagues to share honest opinions, freely and willingly
• The "tandem" interview – how it works, when to use it, what it accomplishes
• How to help wrap things up gracefully using the "severance interview"