First Hired, Last Fired tells you about the qualities that moved the bosses and coworkers of over sixty diverse employees to call them indispensable -- which the authors define as "even in a drastic cutback, the last to go." It also reveals which qualities are irrelevant.

The characteristics that make some people seem indispensable have been distilled from twenty-seven years of observing irreplaceable people at work. It is the meanings that employees invest in their roles, as well as the particular skills they have attained, that make the difference between performance that is good enough and that which is superb.