"46% of them had failed within 18 months. In other words, most recruiting practices are about as effective as a coin toss." I guess I'm not quite clear what th

"46% of them had failed within 18 months. In other words, most recruiting practices are about as effective as a coin toss." I guess I'm not quite clear what this is claiming - you could read it as saying that tossing a coin would be as effective as current recruiting practices, or you could read it as saying that current recruiting practices just aren't as effective as hoped. I think the author meant the second thing, but it's pretty confusing. If it's the first, then you were selecting candidates completely randomly, then the percentage of successful people you hire would be the same as the percentage of successful people in the applicant pool. There's no reason to think that ~50% of the candidate pool will be successful - I'd think less.