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).

3 Ways to Be ‘Irreplaceable’ HR!

Posted on September 5, 2012 by Aszure Grimes

In my role at ADVISA, I spend a lot of time with CEOs and Human Resource Directors – two potentially powerful leadership roles that contribute to an organization’s level of success. An article recently on MSN about being an “irreplaceable” employee prompted me to offer three tips specifically for HR Directors to become even more effective as leadership partners with CEOs:

1. Know what matters to your CEO.

Understanding what s/he considers to prime objectives for the year, and beyond, can put you in a position to support them. For example, in a conversation recently with a CEO of a large law firm, he told me that his goal is to grow the firm. He wants to hire people who will develop new business as well as bring a solution to him when they recognize an issue, not just bring him complaints. “I need to know that they are ‘go-getters and problem-solvers’ We can teach them aspects of the business we need them to know. But, we can’t make them proactive when they’re not,” he said. Being aware of these goals, and acting on them when it comes to talent acquisition, is what will make the difference for his HR department. (How can HR identify candidates who are more likely to problem-solve and develop business for the CEO? A behavioral assessment, like Predictive Index^®, can provide the data needed.)

2. It’s All About Productivity: Quantify It!

Measuring productivity or success in a role can appear difficult at first for non-sales positions. “Am I doing a good job?” is a question many ask and the answer is often left to subjectivity when it doesn’t have to be. For example: if you are responsible for acquiring talent in your organization, track the turnover or the productivity of the candidates you’ve brought into the company. Are there departments where the turnover is exceptionally high? Be proactive in looking into the problem and identifying a solution. And, tracking data gives you the opportunity to identify what is working well so that you can duplicate it in other areas. (Do you have a “turnover problem”? Whether it’s departmental or company-wide, consider talking to ADVISA about how Predictive Index can help you identify the reason AND create a solution.)

3. Be the Expert AND Be Open to Change

CEOs will often look to HR to help them understand personality assessments and what they can potentially bring to their business in terms of improving talent acquisition; developing management skills and improving communication. You can’t possibly know everything about every tool available! But you can become the expert about what’s important to your organization. Whether it be increasing sales; reducing turnover; improving communication or employee engagement, fully understanding the problem at hand positions HR to seek solutions. When looking at various solutions, you will know what is a reasonable option for your company and what isn’t. (If you are not comfortable presenting a new tool or solution, allow the solution provider to be the presenter instead. Do you have an issue that you need help resolving? Let’s talk about it!)

Human Resources serves a unique and often unappreciated role in many organizations by being responsible for its lifeblood – its people. As an HR professional, you can take your organization to new heights and new levels of profitability. What company and CEO doesn’t want that? It’s just a matter of considering what’s important from their perspective, in addition to yours, and taking action. Sometimes that can be a bit overwhelming. Where do you begin? ADVISA is here to help.

Dana Harrison Named Director of Talent Acquisition and Leadership Services

Posted on February 22, 2012 by Beth Claflin

When Dana Harrison joined our team as manager of our ADVISA Hiring unit in 2009, we thought she was something special. Three years later, we have been proven right!

Dana has demonstrated her value time and again by delighting our clients as they seek new ways to address workforce and leadership issues on the path to business excellence and uncommon success. In light of her demonstrated abilities and our organizational needs, she has been named ADVISA’s Director of Talent Acquisition and Leadership Services.

In this new role, Dana will work at both the strategic and tactical levels across multiple service lines:

Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO) – this is the new name of what was formerly know as ADVISA Hiring
Consulting on hiring systems and strategy
Consulting on integrated hiring/appraisal systems, and leadership development (including 360 assessments and coaching utilizing offerings from the Center for Creative Leadership).

If you have not yet had the opportunity to meet Dana, please reach out to her. She would very much like to make your acquaintance – and we think you will find you are better off for it!

Link with Dana:

Read Dana’s blog.

Send Dana an email.

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.

Organizational Planning – Avoid letting one get away!

Posted on May 28, 2011 by ADVISA WEB TEAM

We had the unfortunate situation come up this week in which a client really liked a candidate for a position but because of a delay in the timing of communicating this to the candidate, the candidate accepted another opportunity. Ugh! A good one got away!

This reminds me of a time last summer when my then 9-year-old son was fishing in a local pond. He may or may not have been convinced that he would ever catch a fish, so he didn’t really plan on “next steps” in the event that this actually occurred! Well, as luck would have it a fish did bite and it was a big one; but because he did not plan in advance, he did not know what to do once it actually took the bait. It got away. He didn’t act swiftly enough to actually catch the fish and reap the benefits of such a feat! This was very disheartening for him as you can imagine.

The same was true for the client/candidate situation mentioned above. Unfortunately, timing is everything and not being able to respond swiftly when you find a candidate who matches what you are targeting often times leads to losing them to another company. It is very disheartening for a hiring manager to think they might have a position filled only to find out that by waiting or even just hesitating that candidate moves on to another opportunity.

All of the candidate screening processes in the world will not guarantee a good hire for a particular position within your organization unless you have put into your organizational planning the action steps needed in the event that you find the right candidate for the job. In addition to identifying when a new hire is necessary and taking the steps to effectively screen candidates for the position you should also include in your best hiring practices a plan to actually move a candidate through the selection process quickly!

With real estate the old adage is location, location, location. With hiring the adage may just be “timing is everything” – especially if you want to avoid letting one get away!

A case for candor about money in your job postings

Posted on December 15, 2010 by Dana Harrison

This month while I’ve been working with several clients on strategies for employee recruiting and attracting the right candidates, the question of whether or not to include in a job posting the compensation structure or range keeps coming up. This is certainly a hot topic and one that elicits strong opinions as to what falls within best hiring practices. From my seat, however, I am a strong advocate for being candid in the job postings about the pay range.

Admittedly, there is distinct taboo in our culture for talking about money. It’s not considered socially acceptable to talk about our compensation over dinner with friends. Nor is it generally considered acceptable to talk about our compensation with our colleagues. Regardless of our perspectives on these taboos, the fact is that it is these attitudes that make us gasp at the idea of blatantly saying in a job posting, “Here’s what we’ll pay for this position.” What if the former employee sees that figure and it’s vastly different than what they earned? What will others in the company say if they know this information? Does this information help your competitor? Eek! Too many companies hear these questions and quickly mandate that postings not include wage information. I think this is an over simplified reaction and one that harms the company in the long run. Here are five reasons distinct advantages to posting the range:

Save time – The company doesn’t need to waste time with candidates who aren’t a good fit. The salary information is the best bottom-line self-selection mechanism for potential candidates. Let candidates weed themselves out if the pay just won’t work for them.
Save time (part 2) - The compensation is the clearest indicator of the level of the position. Again, let self-selection take place and let many over and under-qualified candidates pass by.
Transparency – Withholding any compensation information for late in the candidate screening process conveys to candidates a feeling that the company is playing games. This can deter candidates and/or make your new hire get started with a less-than-positive feeling about the company.
Avoid mishires – Withholding the information also may result in someone taking the position because they’ve gotten so far into the process even though the writing is on the wall that it won’t work for them financially. The outcome? Say hello to early turnover!
Appeal to cautious applicants – The cautious applicant (who may be the perfect person for your accounting, QA, purchasing, etc. position) may skip your posting and focus on those where there’s less risk in applying because the dollar figure is out on the table. You need these candidates.

Repeatedly, one of the reasons I’ve heard that a company won’t post the compensation range is because they’re not comfortable with it. Sometimes they’re unsure how competitive they are in the market. A simple salary survey (we can help with that!) will provide that information. Other times they know that they aren’t competitive and they’re nervous about turning off candidates. But I have to ask, is a strong candidate going to be more disenchanted seeing the low pay in the posting or when several steps into the screening process? If your business model depends on highly competitively priced product/services and as part of that you have low wages, I encourage you to own that, make your case as a strong employer in other ways, and embrace the advantages listed above that will come when you are candid about pay.

There is both an art and a science to recruiting employees - at ADVISA, we enjoy looking at all angles and helping our clients be savvy about their efforts. I’d love to hear your thoughts on this subject and welcome the opportunity to help advance your hiring. Let’s talk!

The Importance of Ordinary Instants

Posted on May 7, 2010 by Beth Claflin

In his newsletter, recruiting and HR expert Peter Weddle urges employers to consider the importance of “ordinary instants” and their effect on big life decisions – like whether to pursue a particular job. This phrase refers to the thousand of hum-drum, banal instants that make up the typical hiring process – those we don’t even normally think about because they are so ordinary. They are the tiny intersections we have with job candidates from beginning to end like:

the tone of the job advertisement
the hoops we require them to jump through to apply
our acknowledgement of their application (or lack of acknowledgement)
the greeting we use when we begin a phone interview
the communication we use to schedule a face-to-face interview
the kind of reception we give candidates when they visit.

These ordinary instants exert a far greater impact than their name would suggest, Peter says, for three reasons:

The sheer volume of ordinary instants make it likely that they will influence the course of what we do
They often lull us into a kind of carelessness that can permit them to fester into their own version of a really BIG problem.
The ordinary for one person can be a tipping-point for another.

Here at ADVISA Hiring we agree with Peter’s point and remind our clients to consider ”ordinary instants” in their hiring process. You’ll hear us refer to this as the employer’s “brand.” It consists of the manner in which employers interact with their job candidates (as well as with with their customers).

What is your employer brand? What does your hiring process say about you? Does it reflect HR best practices? Does it reflect professional courtesy and respect for candidates’ time?

Excellent hiring can make all the difference in a competitive world marketplace under stress from extraordinary economic forces. We can help your business thrive by sharing best hiring practices and providing data-driven tools to save time and improve outcomes. Want to review your recruiting strategy and what it says about your employer brand? Contact us today.

Frustration in the hiring chair

Posted on March 30, 2010 by ADVISA WEB TEAM

You would think that in today’s economy that it’s an employers market, i.e. employee recruiting would yield tons of applicants and it would be a piece of cake to find the right person. Alas…it is not always so. Sometimes, it feels like looking for a needle in a haystack.

In the present economy, employers who are hiring don’t have the luxury of hiring multiple people to fill lots of positions. Hiring is more “spotlighted” where employers are looking for that one person who brings a multitude of abilities and skills that can fill many shoes. So the desired skill set can be much more complicated and, thus, more difficult to find and not quite as obvious as…

but more like this…

We can help you with your applicant screening and hiring and selection process to ensure that your recruiting strategy is on target to find your personal “needle”!

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.

What’s your strategy?

Posted on December 6, 2009 by Dana Harrison

Gotta give Lou Adler credit. His posting What Is Your Hiring Strategy, and Is It the Right One left me thinking all night about recruiting strategy, not to mention giving me a good laugh at his rather comical (yet relatable) summations of various approaches. And while his opening is intended to focus on how we approach recruiting employees and selecting the best candidates, it’s absolutely applicable as a general strategic planning approach. Fabulous! I hope you enjoy this as well.

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