We’re in Metro Detroit Next Week: Note New Location

Posted on October 4, 2012 by Beth Claflin

We’ve had to make a last-minute change in location for our Using Predictive Index^®in Hiring session next Wednesday, October 10th, from 8 a.m. to noon. Our new venue is very close to the original – please come to: VisTaTech Center, Room W 210A, Schoolcraft College,18600 Haggerty Rd., Livonia, MI 48152. Map and parking.

If you are unfamiliar, this is part of our 2012 KNOW. GROW. GO. series of events. There is still time to register. Best of all – it’s free!

The session content is geared toward trained Predictive Index analysts (those who have completed the 2.5 day course). It is an expansion of our recurring webinar by the same name. The advantage of this longer face-to-face presentation is the opportunity for skill building.

The session will be led by our Dana Harrison, Director of Talent Acquisition & Leadership Services at ADVISA. Coffee and light breakfast-type items will be provided.

Register here. Please come with questions and/or email Dana in advance if questions are on your mind. There are no dumb questions! Also, please bring printouts of PROs and/or candidate profiles you may be currently considering. Alternatively, feel free to use your laptop/pad/phone in class to look at profiles (although the old-fashioned printouts can be faster and easier to put side-by-side).

Caging Your Personal Bias

Posted on June 18, 2012 by BJ McKay

It’s 2:30 PM in a small office within a larger office building. Sharon has arrived for her interview with GPX software. She is greeted by Kathryn and Rick who will be interviewing her for the next couple of hours. The conversation is focused 100% on Sharon, her work experience, her successes and failures, and her personal outlook on the future. Then, she is permitted to ask a few questions about the firm, which she does. All parties leave the interview feeling like they accomplished something, and Sharon is to expect a call within the next few days to determine what next steps would be should she be selected for the position.

The above scenario sounds standard right? There is a big missing piece to the interview story above. Read it again. Did you see it this time? It’s the fact that GPX software is not interviewing Sharon at all; Kathryn and Rick are. Kathryn and Rick are not the company; they are human beings with their own stories, parents, siblings, friends, families, and successes and failures. Sharon is being interviewed through the personal bias of Kathryn and Rick, like it or not.

Bias is defined as: Prejudice in favor of or against one thing, person, or group compared with another, usually in a way considered to be unfair. This is a part of all of us. It cannot be separated from who we are, as we have built it up over the course of our lives. It is a byproduct of the thin-slicing that we do to make sense of the world and operate in it efficiently. Bias comes from our family, our neighborhood growing up, our school, and our successes and failures. It is meant to keep us safe from potential threats in our environment.

Sharon, in this case, is not a threat in Kathryn or Rick’s environment. Or is she? Did Sharon work with or know a former colleague of Kathryn? Did she attend a rival college of Rick’s and achieve more material success than he? Is Sharon the daughter of Kathryn’s favorite teacher and mentor from college? These and many other bias’ are a major factor in the interview process, and in the social circles within a workplace. Regardless of your intelligence and experience, bias is tattooed in each of us.

How can we objectively measure and judge someone else with this type of handicap for the job?

The answer rests in proven, reliable, and valid data that is tested against these biases. A tool that can dive deeper into the invisible drives, motivations, and sources of confidence for each individual. Each of us is motivated to move toward activities, relationships, communities, and endeavors that feed our self-confidence. This can be accurately measured in minutes via proven behavioral assessment tools. The purpose of these assessments is NOT to stereotype people and let us know what they cannot do. Quite the contrary. Behavioral assessments provide us the insight to ask more relevant questions, free from our own bias. They provide us deep insight into the invisible drives that motivate us to do what we do everyday. Ultimately, when applied appropriately, they provide each of us an opportunity to do what we do best, they way we are hardwired to want to do it.

How does that sound? The next time you line up an interview, see if the company cares enough about avoiding personal bias in the hiring process by offering a behavioral assessment. If they do, pay attention to the relevance of the questions you are asked during the interview. Odds are you will walk away feeling like the process was warm and respectful of who you actually are, rather than an uncomfortable grill session or a soft chat that doesn’t bear any relevance to the job.

If you are currently using behavioral assessments to remove bias in the hiring process THANK YOU. You are ahead of the curve and should be commended for adopting best practices in the hiring process. If you have not considered behavioral assessments in your hiring process consider reaching out to me today for a complimentary assessment and professional feedback on the results.

Time to go; your job candidate, Sharon, has arrived at the front desk and she is ready for her interview.

ADVISA at the Super Bowl 2012 Social Media Command Center

Posted on January 27, 2012 by BJ McKay

This year’s Super Bowl is going to be more social than any in the history of the sport, and my client Raidious will be the epicenter of this activity. They are the Social Media Command Center for Super Bowl 2012 in Indianapolis. Last night we had an exclusive event to hear the strategy that Raidious will be employing through @superbowl2012 on Twitter. Taulbee Jackson, Brian Wyrick, Ryan Smith and the entire team shared the excitement and all the work that will go into serving the masses that will be in Indianapolis during Super Bowl week.

Here is a local and a national story that have been written about this first ever initiative:

WTHR -

Mashable -

There is a Bloomberg article around the corner that I’ll share when it’s posted. It has been rewarding working with the talented team at Raidious and they continue to be a case study in the application of Predictive Index® in hiring and in management development.

@superbowl2012 on Twitter is where you need to be from now through Super Sunday.

Personality Assessments and Restaurant Hosts

Posted on February 18, 2011 by Paul Dumouchelle

Restaurant managers look for a variety of qualities in the person who greets people at the door.

As a PI® consultant, I evaluate the managers’ comments from the perspective of qualities that can be defined with personality assessments.

There is a uniform interest in people who are comfortable dealing with variety, change and pressure. In the world of PI® this would be defined in recruiting metrics as Low C – or Impatience. This fits my own impression of the restaurant business.

In addition, all the owners seek people who will do a good job connecting with customers on a personal basis – In the world of PI® this would be defined in recruiting metrics as High B – or Extroversion. Again, no surprise, makes sense for a host.

Where there seems to be some possible variation, though, is on the other PI® factors – A (Dominance) and D (Formality).

As for Dominance, there seems to be a tendency for Low A attititudes of agreeability and accomodation – but there is also an element of control necessary and this may vary depending on the restaurant and the role given to the Host. The more authority a host is expected to exert the higher the A drive.

With regards to Formality, it seems the D drive could be all over the map. Some restaurants seem to want a host who is friendly, but “proper.” This suggests a High D. Other restaurants seek a much more interactive host who will act on their own instincts to develop a relationship with the customer – sounds Low D to me!

What this reinforces is the need to customize your hiring assessments to your situation and goals for any particular job.

As I travel throughout Ohio and Michigan in my work with ADVISA I’ll be taking a closer look at the person greeting me at restaurants – with an eye to evaluating their personality and how well I feel they’re doing their job!

Great Hires Can Make All the Difference

Posted on January 22, 2010 by Beth Claflin

There are several reasons that businesses will settle for “good enough” when hiring.

Sometimes it is because the workload has increased so quickly and dramatically that they are caught unaware until they have reached a critical point where customer satisfaction is at stake and overworked employees are near mutiny.

Sometimes it is because, for a certain level of employee, they are under the misguided perception that being “picky” is a waste of time and resources.

Sometimes businesses will settle for “good enough” because, even though they spend a great deal of time on personnel selection, they are not spending that time doing the right things. They may think their candidate screening process is adequate; that they know what skills, personality traits and experience the position needs; and they know how to predict the performance of a candidate; and that they are good interviewers.

The truth is that great hires can make all the difference. Hiring affects the bottom line. Engaged and energized employees deliver so much more each day – day after day. And equally as important, engagement and excellence will often drive others to raise their game in the workplace as well.

I’ve seen this on a personal scale during the past year. I’ve had the enviable position of working with terrific, talented, energized people during my five years at ADVISA. During this past year, we made two more excellent additions to our workforce: my direct boss, Dana Harrison, who is Manager of ADVISA Hiring; and Brian J. (BJ) McKay, our new Client Service & Sales Consultant.

Dana and BJ have re-energized our workplace with their enthusiasm and many talents. Along the way, I have witnessed some of their good habits rubbing off on the rest of us.

I find myself thinking even harder and more often than usual about how to do my work better because that’s what I see Dana and BJ doing every day at ADVISA. Their daily striving for excellence and achievement creates an environment that entices all of us to raise our game.

Give some thought comparing your own hiring process to best practices in recruiting with the help of an expert at ADVISA Hiring. We’ll ask you:

to define the “personality” of the job and share an excellent tool for doing so
to determine the performance objectives that define success for the position and the metrics you intend to use to measure those objectives
to consider your “employer brand” and ways to promote it
to define the value proposition for potential candidates

Give us a call – we love to share what we know. We can help you make great hires in 2010.

Recruiting – The Art of Creating the Right Relationships

Posted on December 10, 2009 by Dana Harrison

Studies indicate there are four of these levels of fit between the employee and the job, the workgroup, the candidate’s vocation and the organization described below.

The concept of “employee fit” is truly a multi-level phenomenon, and will be maximized in instances in which a person’s personality matches both the objective characteristics of the organization and integrates well with the personalities of those that he or she interacts with most frequently. Keep both of these levels in mind when assessing candidates.

Only the best hiring practices coupled with a well-planned and executed on-boarding process will deliver the desired results.

Considerations when using hiring assessments

Posted on December 9, 2009 by Dana Harrison

Thinking about using hiring assessments as part of your candidate screening process? Here are five important considerations:

The assessment needs to appraise job-related skills or characteristics (i.e., decision-making, intelligence) as opposed to simply reveal interesting information.
Make sure that the assessment is valid, reliable and neutral to gender, race, age, or national origin.
Benchmark an assessment by first looking at your existing employees. By knowing how strong and weak performing employees do on an assessment, you have meaningful information to benchmark what you are looking for in your candidates.
Administer hiring assessments equally. For example, if you are hiring for an engineer and have one candidate take the Predictive Index® survey as step two in your candidate review process, then all other candidates for the engineer position must take the survey at the same point in the process.
Use any assessment as a data point, but not as the ultimate decision maker. Hiring assessments are meant to give you meaningful, job-related data that complements what you learn through resumes, cover letters and interviews. Information from an assessment should be considered along with a candidate’s skills, experience, potential, culture fit, etc. in order to get a comprehensive picture of a candidate’s fits and gaps for your position.

Blog Contributors

TELL YOUR PI^® STORY