When to Consider Hiring a Coach

Posted on May 9, 2013 by Dana Harrison

A third-party sounding board, thinking partner, resource, accountability coach and confidante can make a world of difference in building skills and changing behavior. Here are just a few of examples of when to consider hiring a coach:

preparing for a job transition
starting a new position
building capacity
developing high potentials
closing a performance gap.

Studies and surveys confirm the value of the time and money invested in coaching. Here is a sampling of three:

A Manchester Consulting Group study of Fortune 100 executives found that coaching resulted in an ROI of almost six times program cost.
An International Personnel Management Association survey found that productivity increase by 88% when coaching was combined with training (compared to a 22% increase with training alone)
Metropolitan Life Insurance Company found that productivity among salespeople who had participated in intensive coaching program rose by an average of 35%.

Our own experience coaching clients bears out these results. In a recent year-long project we completed with a group of high-potentials, we received this feedback:

“It forced me to think differently and stop and be proactive and not reactive.”

“Development and strategic opportunities will not be realized without making a detailed plan to aside time to think along this path.”

Download our guide: Seven Things to Consider Before Choosing a Coach. Or contact me to learn more.

How will you work differently in 2013?

Posted on November 1, 2012 by Dana Harrison

I’m finding myself in a lot of conversations about 2013 and several clients have asked if I think anyone in their company would find meaning in going through our Predictive Index Management Workshop™, which certifies them as a Predictive Index^® analyst.

The short answer is always, YES! Anyone who is dealing with any of the following matters stands to find tremendous value in the training…and who do you know who is NOT dealing with one of these?

hiring new employees

improving performance of employees

building sales

navigating change

Is this you?

Perhaps you’ve already been through the training once. In that case, consider auditing it alongside someone from your company who is being newly trained. You’ll be able to use the training as a time to explore challenges and opportunities with your team…and you’ll be able to come to the training for free! Many analysts say that while they understood their first training, their repeat training is when PI^® really began to stick.

If you’re dealing with one of the matters above, have been trained and are still looking for more, let’s talk. We have everything from free tools, to free webinars, to additional training or coaching available to share with you.

Now’s the optimum time for planning in 2013. How will you be doing your work differently in order to achieve even better results next year?

Five Ways to Develop Your Leadership Talent Pool

Posted on October 24, 2012 by Dana Harrison

You’ve heard it before: good leaders are made, not born. Simply put, leadership is working through others to achieve results. This is often easier said than done, especially when the others may be quite different than us. Here are five ideas for how to develop a deeper pool of leaders at all levels of your organization. You can also contact us to help you develop a custom leadership development program for your organization.

1. Improve self-knowledge

The Connection Circle below shows that achieving business results through others starts with understanding oneself.

With self-knowledge, one has the capacity to harness strengths and manage weaknesses. (And we all have strengths and weaknesses.) When we are able to manage ourselves effectively, we can be more successful engaging others, and achieving business results.

As you know, Predictive Index^® is a powerful tool for working through the Connection Circle, starting with building self-awareness and moving out from there. Identify your high-potentials and send them to the PI Management Workshop™. Your leaders can shift from judging others (“She just ‘doesn’t get it.”) to understanding them and working with them in the most effective way (“She’s needing more clarity from me. I need to be more specific about what I want the final product to be.”) See PI Workshop dates.

2. Consider Coaching

Pairing training with coaching boasts ROI. But you don’t have to take our word for it. Consider:

An International Personnel Management Association survey (Jan. 2001) found that productivity increased by 88 percent when coaching was combined with training (compared to a 22 percent increase with training alone).
A Manchester Inc. study of Fortune 1000 executives (2001) found that coaching resulted in a ROI of almost six times the program cost as well as a 77 percent improvement in relationships, 67 percent improvement in teamwork, 61 percent improvement in job satisfaction and 48 percent improvement in quality
Research conducted by Metrix Global, LLC with Fortune 500 companies (2001) reveals that 58 percent of those clients whose coaching experience was limited to working on more tactical issues reported that their coaching significantly impacted the business. In contrast, 100 percent of those who’s coaching addressed more strategic issues reported making a significant impact on the business.

Learn more about our coaching services.

3. Schedule Training

Learning and growing is not a “one and done” event. Rather, it’s a process. And because adults learn best when they can experience new thoughts and ideas, not just hear about them, our group-format training includes interactive exercises and application activities. We offer a robust selection of topics for ½ and full-day sessions:

Change Management
Motivation
Decision-Making
Conflict Resolution
Communication
Performance Management
Team-Building
Using Predictive Index in Hiring
Implementing the Predictive Index at an Organizational Level
Coaching
Performance Goals and Standards

Contact me to learn more.

4. Brunch and Learn

Our monthly PI Fridays refresher webinars are an excellent opportunity to gather your trained PI analysts (those who have attended the PI Management Workshop™) around bagels and coffee. These sessions revisit PI topics first encountered during the PI training as well as give you the opportunity to ask questions. See webinar schedule.

5. Attend Our Annual PI User Group

This annual gathering of trained PI analyst deepens knowledge, sharpens skills, and refreshes enthusiasm. Generally scheduled during the fall of each year, this event includes sharing of best practices, application activities and skill-sharpening presentations. Learn more about the 2012 PI User Group meeting on Nov. 15th in Lansing, MI.

Do you have a favorite method to develop leadership talent to add to this list? Contact me or leave a comment.

Taking a fresh look at your screening process

Posted on July 18, 2011 by Dana Harrison

We’re in the middle of a project with a large company who has engaged us to help reduce first-year turnover through improving their applicant screening process. The company has many complexities to it and our work is focused on discoveries and recommendations that are specific to them. However, the general structure of this project is applicable for any review of a screening process. Consider the following 3 questions when thinking about the strength of your process:

1) Are we clearly and comprehensively capturing the expectations of a position? Are all relevant parties in agreement about what is expected of an employee in a position? Are the expectations documented? Are we clear about the overall expectations as well as the “dealbreakers” that must be explored during hiring? HINT: Oftentimes, what is expected of employees is scattered across many documents (job description, values statement, Key Performance Requirements, competencies, evaluations, etc.) as well as in the minds of stakeholders. In order to effectively screen candidates, it’s critical that the bottom-line expectations be determined and explored.

2) Does our screening process explore the critical expectations in a way that gives us meaningful information about the candidate? Are we asking questions that get to the heart of critical information, or are we just gathering interesting information? Do those involved in the process know what they’re looking for? Do we know what to listen for after we ask a question? Do our hiring assessments provide meaningful insights, or just interesting information? HINT: The questions we ask (or other means of collecting information) directly relate to the expectations for the position…you can’t have meaningful probing without clear expectations.

3) Does our applicant screening process connect us with top candidates and provide a positive candidate experience? Do our job postings speak to the people we want to apply? How early in the process do candidates get an accurate picture of the position and what it means to be a part of our company? Does our candidate screening process turn off top candidates? Do our communications (including our website) accurately portray our culture? HINT: Go through your own hiring process sometime and see what you notice (or ask a friend to).

Try not to be intimidated by asking these questions. Many times we find that our clients don’t need a massive overhaul of their hiring process, just a few tweaks in the right places. If you’re at the place where you’d like an outside party to review your process, make recommendations and help you implement possible changes, let me know – we’d love to help out.

Dealing with candidate photos and other sticky situations

Posted on April 13, 2011 by Dana Harrison

I really appreciated the 10-minute podcast via ERE.net on What’s Worrying Recruiters About Social Media. Keith Watts, an employment law attorney with Ogletree Deakins, discusses what it means to “do the right thing” when it comes to using Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.

To sum it up, he repeatedly emphasizes the importance of:

Consistency in the hiring process across the company;
Making hiring decisions based on job-related factors.

Here at ADVISA, we work with clients on both of these fronts. We ask: “Are best hiring practices in place and consistently used across the company?” Right now I’m working on projects with two major clients where we are helping them improve their process for the purpose of increasing efficiency and effectiveness with screening, but we’ll also help train people across each company so that the established processes are consistent. After all, a great process is meaningless if it’s not put into practice well!

As part of the needs analysis we do to determine if work on hiring processes is merited, here are some questions we ask:

What is the role of HR in hiring? The role of the hiring manager?
At what stage is the hiring manager involved in selection?
What is the typical time-to-fill?
What is the candidate experience?
Where is there frustration? Inefficiency?
What is the turnover rate? How does the company feel about that rate?

These kinds of questions can lead to the identification of areas where consistency can be improved.

When it comes to defining the needs of the position, here are some of the signs we see that indicate that positions are not as clearly defined and they need to be. These are signs that there is ambiguity about the job-related factors on which selection decisions are made during candidate screening:

Feedback on candidates is vague. (“She didn’t seem like a fit for us.”)
Feedback on candidates is inconsistent.
The company can offer no description of how this person will have to interact with the team/supervisor in order to be successful.
Descriptions of multiple positions sound virtually the same.

Did you ask yourself the process-related questions above? Did you squirm as you thought about the answers? If so, contact me and we’ll work through some more exploration with you and take a look at how we can help. And if you have signs of ambiguity about what a position requires, beware…those situations are the ones that get companies into trouble because they open the door for decisions to be made on factors such as race, age and gender, which (among other categories) are not permissible. We’d be happy to help you gain clarity into what is required for given positions at your company, as well as how to screen for these traits.

Quality, Cost or Compliance – What drives your recruiting?

Posted on March 22, 2011 by Dana Harrison

What’s your answer? Quality of the hire? Cost to make the hire? Compliance with all laws and policies?

The article “What Drives Your Company’s Hiring Process: Quality, Cost, or Compliance?” captured my attention today for the initial question it asks. But I’m compelled to write about this as well because the article so accurately captures the philosophy we take on best hiring practices, including how we counsel our consulting clients and how we manage searches in our RPO (Recruitment Process Outsourcing) service.

If you’re interested in changing your hiring practices in order to better balance these factors, or you want to hand off hiring to someone who will take care of searches for you in this model, I’d love to chat with you. In the meantime, I hope you find the article to be thought-provoking.

What kind of experience are your candidates having?

Posted on March 22, 2011 by Dana Harrison

Three cheers for the article “Pointing the Way to the Candidate Experience“!

As mentioned in the article, with unemployment still above 9%, this is an easy time to dismiss the candidate experience as unimportant. After all, with so many candidates out there, anyone you engage with at all ought to consider themselves lucky and candidates should recognize that they’re just one of a gazillion resumes you’ve received, right?

Going back to last summer, I wrote a blog called “Time is Still Ticking“, in which I talk about one aspect of the candidate experience: the time that elapses between contacts from the potential employer how that impact on candidates. We’ve continued to see top candidates disappear when employers drag out the process and, in particular, don’t stay in contact with the candidate. It is quite unfortunate to see a a potentially great hire fall apart because basic communication resulted in a negative candidate experience.

In “Pointing the Way to the Candidate Experience“, the author highlights what candidates are seeking. “A survey by Shaker Consulting Group confirms just how little window shopping job seekers expect. Job descriptions, a place to apply, contact information. Once they actually apply, what they really want is an acknowledgment, a timeline, and to know where they stand, or at least when the job was filled.”

The good news is that candidates aren’t really looking for that much. And there’s more good news…if your company isn’t provided great candidate experiences, the fixes are likely not that complicated or expensive. At ADVISA, we can help you examine your candidate experience and other barriers you may be having to doing great hiring. Here’s a sampling of how we’ve helped other clients with their hiring process, and simultaneously improved the client experience:

Revising job description formats so that the job description is clear, accurate and meaningful.
Writing authentic, but compelling job postings that capture the attention of the right kind of candidates.
Using Predictive Index® to benchmark the difficult-to-define behaviors that are critical for a position and then carrying forward that critical information into job descriptions and job postings.
Taking on searches through our RPO (Recruitment Process Outsourcing) service where our staff ensures that all candidates receive the level of communication they are seeking.

We’d be happy to take a look at your hiring processes from the perspective of a candidate and to partner with you to enhance your hiring – contact me and we’ll get started!

Self-awareness…it’s importance and assessing candidates for it

Posted on February 10, 2011 by Dana Harrison

Self-awareness. To what extent do you see self-awareness as being important for success in your company? From our standpoint at ADVISA, it’s critical in nearly all situations. Consider the following…

1. Self-awareness is the first step to growing. Without self-awareness, an employee is unaware of areas for improvement.

2. Through self-awareness, one also knows one’s strengths and unique talents, and therefore is better positioned to leverage those and maximize their contributions to the company.

3. Lack of self-awareness leads to conflict. Have you ever worked with someone who significantly lacked self-awareness? What was that experience like? How often did disagreement or ineffective communication occur because the individual just didn’t see themselves realistically, even when others tried to inform them?

If you’re still not convinced, check out this article on the Importance of Self-Awareness. But if you’re in agreement that self-awareness is quite important, let’s look at how this comes into play in hiring. When it comes to candidates screening, how can you assess a candidate’s self-awareness?

1. Get initial insight through a valid, reliable personality assessment like Predictive Index®. Predictive Index (PI®) has many applications during the hiring process, from defining the needs of the position, to marketing the opening, to helping you identify the candidates best-suited for your job. But beyond all that, it’s valuable for examining self-awareness as well. The rich, but straight-forward data you see from the 5-10 minute survey completed by the candidate tells you the workplace motivations and drives of a candidate, and likely behaviors.

2. Ask probing questions. Forget about “What’s your biggest challenge?” Try something like these:

How have you evolved as a professional over your career? What prompted the changes? What helped support the change (e.g., classes, books, mentor)?
How are you a different leader now compared to when you were in your first leadership position?
What distinguishes you as a manager/executive/sales professional/engineer/ administrator compared to your peers?
Are there any aspects of you as a professional that you’re working on developing? How are you pursuing development? Why did you identify this as being important?

3. Listen for consistency. Once you have the “peak under the hood” that PI gives you, you can anticipate areas where there are predictable behaviors that one might need to manage. See if the candidate’s responses to the probing questions above align with risks you can see in their profile and answers to other questions in the interview. This is where you can see self-awareness or possible lack of it.

4. Listen for the “so what?” After the candidate has offered self-reflection, probe for what this really means. How do they leverage an identified strength? What is their attitude about an identified development area? What are actions and results from development work they’ve done?

5. Listen for vagueness, defensiveness, judgment, dismissiveness or lack of consistency. Any of these kinds of responses point to lack of self-awareness, maturity, humility or commitment to change. If you hear these, take a harder look at whether this person will be able to fit with your company and deliver what you need.

6. Check responses out with references. If you’re fortunate enough to be able to connect with references, take an area of strength or development that that candidate mentioned and see whether the reference can confirm this.

Curious for more information? Contact me if you’d like to see a sample scenario applying the process described above. We’d also be happy to help you with any aspect of your applicant screening process through our RPO (Recruitment Process Outsourcing) service or our consulting services focused on strategic hiring.

EEOC credit check rulings bring search strategy back to basics.

Posted on December 31, 2010 by Dana Harrison

Credit checking has been around for quite awhile as an element of applicant screening, but the EEOC is taking a harder look at what was at one time considered a standard part of best hiring practices. This article by John Zappe offers a great snapshot of the issues and solid guidance on what should be considered when weighing the possibility of using this as a part of the hiring process.

What is most striking to me is that once again, this issue goes back to the basics of strategic hiring. It points to how critical it is to 1) define the demands of the position thoroughly and accurately and 2) design a hiring process that effectively assesses how candidates fit (or don’t) against the demands. It’s not necessary to start with a blank piece of paper to design a hiring process from scratch for every position – a company should have a standard process with opportunities to customize as necessary based on the positions. For example: the use of pre-employment assessments may be standard part of the process, but what is being targeted with those varies based on the position.

If you’d like someone to take a fresh look at your hiring process with an eye on strategic hiring, contact me. We’d be happy to help you get your 2011 off to a great start with even strong hiring processes in place.

Before you hire a recruiter, consider RPO

Posted on December 31, 2010 by Dana Harrison

I imagine that you’re already familiar with the process of working with a recruiter, a.k.a. headhunter. The company makes a call to the recruiter, provides some initial information about what they need, and moves on to other business. The recruiter returns with individuals deemed to be great fits for the position and is paid a percentage of the new hire’s salary. From the company’s perspective, it’s highly efficient. They didn’t have to deal with posting an ad, researching or contacting passive candidates, reviewing resumes, conducting numerous screens, etc. Especially in this economic climate when companies are starting to hire, but existing staffing is extremely tight, in house HR and hiring managers simply don’t have the time required to do all of this work. So a recruiter is the answer. Or is it?

Before you call a recruiter for your next search, I encourage you to consider an alternative: a strong RPO (Recruitment Process Outsourcing) service. And if you need a place to start, contact me – we have a great RPO service at ADVISA. RPO can manage your entire search process (ads, applicant screening, pre-employment assessment, candidate correspondence, etc.) at a fraction of the cost of traditional retained search recruiters. RPO providers are generally paid an hourly rate and are committed to best hiring practices.

If you need some hiring savvy and assistance with administering a good search, RPO may be a great fit for you. Now, if the position is highly specialized and you have to find “the needle in the haystack,” an RPO that has robust passive candidate searching or a traditional recruiter may be merited. However, in many situations, a standard RPO can provide the hiring support that is needed. Our RPO service has helped clients in 2010 fill positions ranging from sales reps to marketing directors to president. How can we help you in 2011?

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