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Cipher: A Proven Framework to Hire the Best People
Paperback
Publisher: Third ACT Publishers
Published: Apr 27 2026
Pages: 216
Weight: 0.65
Height: 0.49 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
Nearly half of new hires fail within 18 months. That's not a people problem-it's a process problem.
Most hiring still runs on gut feel, vague job descriptions, and unstructured interviews-an approach with odds worse than a coin toss. The cost shows up fast: wasted time, lost money, and a team that can't deliver.
For 15 years, Craig della Penna has helped leaders hire with clarity and rigor using his proprietary HireBest(R) system resulting in better hiring decisions, reduced attrition, and less time wasted in extraneous interviews.
The key component of that system is the Cipher(R), a simple, powerful framework that defines what success must look like before you meet a single candidate. It distills any role into four essentials: Charge, Outcome, Deliverables, and Efforts so everyone evaluates talent against the same standard.
In this practical, step-by-step guide, you'll learn how to build and use Ciphers to help:
- Replace hiring based on gut feel with a structured, repeatable hiring system
- Reduce bias by anchoring interviews to what truly predicts performance
- Compare candidates consistently based on data-rich perspectives
- Hire better, onboard faster, and coach performance using one framework
If you hire or your business depends on hiring, stop gambling with your most important asset. Learn the clear, teachable framework that improves decision quality and hiring outcomes. It's time to HireBest.
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