The Importance of Complementing Your Assessment Test

February 10, 2012

By BackTrack

The recruiting process is a daunting task for companies, as not all candidates will be the right fit for every job or company culture. The importance in hiring only those who possess the personal and work-related behavior that a company needs for success is a given. You have assessed your candidate through PRADCO’s assessment testing. You understand the individual’s job history, character, work habits and intellectual attributes. You may have even gone through an in-depth analysis during the personal or telephone interviews with PRADCO professionals to determine readiness and desire of the candidate to fulfill the objectives for the position in question. But what about the candidate’s past?

More and more companies and organizations are doing background checks on their job candidates and current employees. One of the primary reasons for doing so is internal security and protection from negligent hiring lawsuits. Some companies choose to outsource the screening, while others choose to do the screening in-house. Whichever option your company chooses, there are some basic tips that can help you.

1. Verify information on resumes. Some job candidates appear to try and make their resume their “great American novel,” complete with literary license to pad, inflate or even lie. Because they are not signing the document like they would an application, they may not feel like they are engaging in any type of deception. One way to mitigate this is to have a disclaimer on the application where the applicant signs, attesting that the information on their resume is accurate and true to the best of their knowledge.

2. Follow up on employment and reference verifications. If an applicant asked you not to call a particular employer or reference because it could affect the current employment, make sure to follow through after an offer has been made. Contact those people to be sure that there weren’t any discrepancies that the applicant reported on his application or resume.

3. Keep your background checks consistent. If you are going to screen a salesperson, make sure that the screening procedure you use and the information you verify is consistent with any other salesperson you have done a background check on. Many companies that perform background checks will allow you to select various “packages” that you can pick depending on the position for which you are screening a candidate.

4. The most important piece of advice is to screen the applicant. Don’t go by word of mouth alone or the fact that someone who knows someone else recommended the applicant. Conduct the criminal and reference checks and confirm the candidate’s historical data. The best defense you have against any type of negligent hiring lawsuit is the ability to show you are proactive as an organization.

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THE CHECKLIST MANIFESTO AND STANDARD WORK

August 23, 2011

 By Sam Maniar, Ph.D.

On a recent trip to visit a PRADCO client, my wife suggested I grab one of the business books she was reading The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right by Atul Gawande or Take Back Your Life!: Using Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 to Get Organized and Stay Organized by Sally McGhee.  Given that The Checklist Manifesto looked like a very quick read, I chose that one.

After reading the book, my initial impression was that although the anecdotes were staggering, the book was simple and obvious.  Clearly checklists are important tools in helping us remember the crucial steps involved when taking complex actions.  As Gawande points out, using checklists can help us avoid errors of ineptitude.

Once my colleague and I arrived at our client’s office and began coaching various employees regarding their leadership effectiveness and productivity, though, the value of the book became clear.  The client, Modine Manufacturing Company, preaches the importance of standard work.  The concept of standard work is nothing new to manufacturing organizations and/or companies that embrace the tenets of lean or Six Sigma.  By standardizing your work, you help to ensure you focus on the most important things and waste less time on the trivial aspects of your job.  It also helps to improve consistency.

Modine not only advocates for each employee to identify their standard work, but they encourage people to measure their adherence and identify reasons as to why standard work events did not happen.  In essence, standard work is a checklist of sorts.  It allows Modine’s employees to stay on track and to remember the most important things they need to do.

But standard work is different from checklists in that it is not intended to be a compliance tool.  It is intended to be more of a key element for improvement.  According to the Director of Modine Operating System, Jeff Uitenbroek:

“Using Standard Work allows us to create a bit of order out of the chaos that is normal business, but the most important function of Standard Work is as a tool for learning. It is the Plan of PDCA [Plan-Do-Check-Act]. As a template for what is normal, we easily see problems or deviations from normal.  By identifying obstacles that prevent us from accomplishing the work we plan to do, we can adjust and overcome those obstacles.  This is the key element in rapid improvement.”

In many ways, our role as coaches at PRADCO is to help our clients identify and plan for their standard work as well.  For example, if someone is working on developing their bench strength, we help them identify who their targets might be and how to incorporate a regular mentoring cadence with those people.  From there, the coaching is about style and approach, such as how to motivate and inspire people to do more.

It’s easy to say, “My work differs from day-to-day, and there is nothing standard about it.”  Nevertheless, as our CEO Terry Owen likes to say, “I’ll bet you a nickel that…” there are more standardized processes in your job than you think.  By taking a closer look and making a checklist of your monthly tasks, for example, you are less likely to make a mistake and more likely to be prepared and efficient.

We’d love to hear your thoughts and/or feedback.  What are your thoughts?  How do you implement standard work at your organization?  How do you incorporate coaching into standard work?

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LEADING INTO THE FUTURE: ARE SAFETY FORCES READY?

April 1, 2011

By Alissa Hayes

There has been a great deal written lately about the need for businesses to enact leadership development programs in order to better plan for the future. Due to the changes in retirement policies in the Safety Forces, Police and Fire Departments are also recognizing the growing need for similar succession planning efforts.

The Deferred Retirement Option Plan (DROP) increases the advantages of retirement for command staff and more tenured officers. As a result, Departments are beginning to experience increasing turnover at leadership levels. The question then becomes what action these Police and Fire Departments are taking to prepare themselves. In some cases, the answer is none. One reason for this is cost. However, the cost of not enacting such programs can be much higher in the long term.

Another reason Departments do not address leadership development as much as they could relates to the traditional use of training within Police and Fire Departments.  As Chief Shaw from the City of Solon states, “The fire service has historically been weak in training personnel to handle the human resources part of being a fire officer and historically strong in training personnel to handle emergencies….Today’s fire officer needs to be equipped to deal with the various generations and personalities they will command.  ….management training programs assist us in developing our officers into well-rounded, well-trained, effective supervisors.”  Police and Fire Departments have been successful in training effective individual contributors, but that does not necessarily translate to successful leadership. This ability to lead is not something that is instinctive, but something people have to learn. Even the top scoring candidate on a promotional exam is not a fully-developed leader.

What can Police and Fire Departments do to identify and prepare future leaders? There are a number of possibilities for current leaders to consider. For future leaders, such as frontline officers, an objective assessment of strengths and developmental needs can be used to both identify and develop individuals for future promotion. For those currently in the command staff, assessments can identify common developmental needs that can be addressed via group training. Finally, when developmental needs vary from person to person, leadership coaching and/or 360-degree evaluations can help to identify ways leaders can improve their effectiveness.

Clearly, there are several methods for accomplishing the goal of preparing future leaders and developing current leaders, so each department would benefit from choosing the approach that works best for them. As the effects of DROP become more widespread, those departments who are proactively developing their current and future command staffs will be the best prepared for future changes.  

We’d be interested in hearing from you. What are you doing in your organization to prepare your staff to be the next generation of leaders?

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Leadership Development in Non-Profits (or the lack thereof)

February 14, 2011

By Kimberly Bell

Hello again and for the final time.  As promised, I spent some time researching the efficacy of leadership development in non-profit organizations and what I found was that quite simply, not a lot of leadership development is being done in non-profits.  These organizations are typically service-oriented and what little money is available is put into programmatic needs or general operating funds.  It is difficult to focus on succession planning when an organization is unsure of its future.  However, I would assert that just like a for-profit company, a non-profit is more likely to survive difficult financial times with a strong leader at its helm.  If non-profits are to survive the current economic crisis, they have to start thinking more like for-profits in many ways, including how they grow their leadership.

This idea is supported by such organizations as the Annie E. Casey Foundation who studied the lack of non-profit leadership development in 2008, and indicated in their report “Ready to Lead” that as much as one-third of all non-profit leaders are hired from outside of the organization.  With all the talent that exists within an organization, it seems a waste not to develop leadership potential from within.  A leader from the outside not only has the technical learning curve to face, but the cultural learning curve as well.   Developing someone who already has a working knowledge of the organization and a dedication to its mission seems common-sense to me.

However, as a psychologist with a direct service background, I will admit that not all of us are born to be both service providers and leaders.  Many direct service folks might not even want to lead the organization because of the distance it puts between them and their clients.  But, I believe that if they knew how much of a benefit it was to the capacity building of the organization, and if they saw that the agency was willing to invest in building their skills as leaders, more of them would step up to the plate.

The PRADCO leadership development program is ideal for these situations.  The research I read shows that most of the qualities of a good non-profit leader are the same as for-profit leaders.  They need to have a sense of vision, strategic thinking skills, a focus on customer service, strong interpersonal skills, the ability to motivate and strong ethical principles.  This sounds like a lot of the service-oriented people I know.  Taking PRADCO leadership indexes can help point out strengths that maybe the typical service provider doesn’t even know they have and identify the key areas that would need to be developed, or adjusted to become a strong leader.  In the end, it is an investment in the present to build a stronger organization in the future and one that I don’t think agencies can afford to overlook in today’s climate.

Well, it has been a pleasure to write these last few blogs and I appreciate those that have taken the time to read them.  I look forward to reading the blogs to follow that will be written by another newcomer to PRADCO, Alissa.  I am sure you will enjoy her thoughts as much as I know I will.

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The Effectiveness of Leadership Coaching on the Bottom Line

January 31, 2011

By Kimberly Bell

Hello again! As I said I would, I have done some reading and thinking about leadership training and the impact that an investment in coaching for executives can have on the bottom line for a company.  I am very excited to share with you what I have come up with, so let me start with some information I found on a for-profit organization involved in a study with PRADCO regarding the effectiveness of our coaching process. 

A major utility company enlisted PRADCO to work with several of their managers to improve their leadership skills specifically in the areas of innovation and strategic thinking. The managers worked with a PRADCO coach for 14 months with meetings every six weeks. To give you an example of the kind of impact that leadership coaching can have, let me share a sample of the results obtained by describing the impact of just one of the managers.  He and his coach assessed his strengths and challenges, worked together to develop his ability to think out-of-the-box, and developed action plans to bring his ideas to life.  As a result, he developed a new strategy to improve a production transition phase that typically shut down production for multiple days.  His new approach allowed the transition to take place faster, more efficiently and eventually got to the point where the transition could occur with no loss of production time at all. This led to a total measureable savings and increased profit to the company of $2,374,200.  That number represents a 1,980% return on the investment in the cost of coaching.

So, the potential value of leadership coaching in a for-profit setting seems very clear and relatively easy to calculate. Further, if one executive can have the impact on an organization that this one did, imagine the ripple effect that having multiple managers working at optimal levels of leadership can have on the bottom line of the organization.

However, for me a question still remains unanswered. How do we measure the impact that leadership coaching has on a non-profit organization?  Well I have some ideas about that too, but since I am out of space that will have to be the topic of yet another blog.  Once again, thank you for taking the time to read these musings and feel free to leave comments or questions.

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Supporting The Success Of New Leadership

January 20, 2011

By Kimberly Bell

As I said in my introduction, being new to PRADCO I have been spending time thinking about how I can apply my previous knowledge and experience to this new adventure. One of the areas that I am most interested in is leadership development.  I have spent the last several years training new psychologists and coaching them through their first few years as professionals in the field.  My job was to make sure that they were ready to be out on their own and to give them the best start possible toward a successful career.  But here I am at what most might call the midpoint of my career taking a new step and am on the receiving end of coaching.  I have been so appreciative of the time and effort that the staff at PRADCO has invested in making my transition into this field as successful as possible.  In case anyone was wondering, yes PRADCO uses its assessments with its own employees.  We practice what we preach.

But how does this all relate to leadership?  Well, as I was doing some reading to stimulate my thinking, I came across a rather surprising statistic.  It stated that 40 percent of new leaders fail in the first 18 months on the job.  This got me asking a lot of questions.  How many of those new leaders were properly assessed and interviewed?  How many of them came from within the company and were promoted based on their level of technical skill without consideration of their leadership potential?  How many of them were brought in for their success in another company, but were given no early help in acclimating to the culture of their new job?

This, I believe, is where leadership coaching comes in.  A new leader needs support regardless of their previous level of experience.  As with any new employee, it takes time to find one’s niche, to find the ways to be most successful in your new position.  We often forget that new executives are still new employees. They simply have more responsibility right from the get go and we expect great things from them in a very short amount of time.  The leadership coaching at PRADCO helps an executive evaluate their strengths and identifies areas for development.  Action planning meetings focus on creating objective and measureable goals.  Well timed retesting, with the input of both upper management and direct reports, supplies real life, real time feedback on progress. 

How much time and money could be saved, and how much of a decrease in the 40 percent failure rate could be achieved with the investment in the support of new leaders?  Let’s find out.  I am going to do a little more research and next week write in more detail about how leadership coaching can answer these questions.  Thanks for taking the time to read and as I continue pondering all of this, I would love to have some discussion about it so feel free to leave comments.

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Meet Kimberly Bell

January 6, 2011

Tell us a little about yourself and your role at PRADCO.

January is a time for new beginnings, so I imagine it is appropriate for someone brand new to PRADCO to be writing her first ever blog post.

I joined PRADCO one month and three days ago as a Management Consultant, which means I am spending my time learning the ropes, the corporate culture and completing pre-employment assessments.  I look forward to engaging in many more areas of our organization and getting to know our client base in the coming weeks and months. Beyond that, I hope to help expand PRADCO’s presence in the non-profit world, specifically in the areas of child services and healthcare.

Prior to joining PRADCO, I was a Clinical Psychologist specializing in developmental psychology.  I wore many hats in this role including direct service, teaching, non-profit management, and consultation to other non-profit agencies. Most recently, I was the Director of Training and the outpatient Co-Director at a local child services agency. I know all too well the challenges that non-profits face in the current economic climate and how well served these agencies would be by the consultation that PRADCO offers.

What do you like best about your job?

Being new to a job is not typically what people like best; however, I find it to be a time of infinite possibilities. I thoroughly enjoy finding new ways to apply my clinical background to enhance the development of individuals (and organizations) at all different stages of growth and change.  I can also say that the culture at PRADCO is supportive and inviting which is so important when taking on a new challenge in your career.

Tell us something about yourself that even your co-workers don’t know.

I am sure there are many things that my co-workers do not know about me yet, and I could probably get away with writing something very mundane and safe, but that seems a bit unfair having read their introductions.  So, I will share something more obscure.  My first real exposure to corporate culture occurred when I was in high school.  You see, as part of my involvement in the theater, I was a professional Mime.  Yes that is correct, a Mime that was actually paid to entertain mostly at children’s parties and festivals until one day when our troupe was hired to perform in a series of training films for the Bendix Corporation.  I don’t recall the content, but I remember being impressed at the lengths corporations would go to engage their employees.  I can’t report on how successful that approach was, but I sure would like to meet the consultant who made the suggestion.

What is your favorite travel destination?

I am pretty easy to please travel-wise and prefer a tent to most hotels.  However, my favorite place to go and really relax would be in Northern Michigan.  The northern Great Lakes are clear and beautiful.  The woods are filled with Birch trees and the air is pure and fresh.  There is a drive down the Lake Michigan coast from around Mackinaw City heading south called the Tunnel of Trees that is breathtaking.   This is a trip I never tire of and highly recommend to anyone.  Oh, and make sure you hit Traverse City while you are there if you enjoy sand dunes and pristine inland lakes.

What are you currently working on?

Well, certainly I am working on gaining a mastery of the many assessments and services that PRADCO offers.  However, as I settle in, I hope to also find new and interesting ways to integrate my background into potentially new ideas and directions for the agency, as well as to get involved in developing our client base, as I said, infinite possibilities.  I look forward to blogging this month and hope that my musings inspire discussion and insights.

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Meet Terry Owen

December 9, 2010

Tell us a little about yourself and your role at PRADCO.

After receiving my PH. D., I worked for another company for a year and three months, was laid off for lack of work and joined PRADCO two weeks later.  I started as a Management Psychologist, doing evaluations of people and realized I had much to learn.  It wasn’t too long before I was given a chance to do training, then sales, then management.  My boss, Stan Rubin, gave me all those opportunities and was my mentor who provided all my training as well.  By responding well to the opportunities and challenges provided to me I was offered the opportunity to buy stock in the company, which I promptly did.  Over the years I moved through the positions of Director of the Assessment Division, Vice-President, President and I am currently the CEO.

I spend most of my time these days supporting PRADCO’s sales efforts, conducting high level evaluations and providing leadership consulting to employees of our clients.  I also spend a fair amount of time doing validation studies, using the various Indexes that we have been developing at PRADCO over the past 10 years or so.  Finally, I am trying to be more strategic in my thinking and we are having ongoing meetings to determine our future directions, staffing needs, etc.

What do you like best about your job?

I am finding my leadership consulting activities to be the most challenging and rewarding.  It is incredibly gratifying to start working with people who have a number of developmental opportunities, work with them from several months to a year and help them make significant and observable behavior changes that they and their colleagues believe to be improvements.  And because of our business orientation at PRADCO, we routinely tie those behavior changes to improvements in business processes, sales growth, cost reductions, etc.  Over the past few years we have had support from the participants’ bosses or Human Resource executives in the actual coaching sessions, which have also added to the success of the projects.

Tell us something about yourself that even your co-workers don’t know.

I read a book about how to get rich in Real Estate while I was in graduate school.  So the first house Edda and I bought was a double, which enabled the tenant to pay most of the mortgage.   I believe my share of the payment was only $50 per month.  So we promptly bought another double, which was only a few blocks away, and since Edda and I were doing most of the work on these properties ourselves, they were quite profitable.  It was after we had purchased these two houses that I was laid off from that first job I mentioned above.  The first thing I did to find a job was to go to a local real estate office and interview to become a real estate sales person.  I thought I would be successful selling real estate, and I would have access to new properties coming on the market that I could buy.  If PRADCO had not made me that job offer within two weeks of my lay-off, I may have had an entirely different career.

What is your favorite travel destination?

Italy is my favorite to date.  Edda is Italian, both of her parents were born in Italy, and we have been there twice.  First we traveled by train alone (and met some of her relatives) and the second time we took a bus tour with my brother and his wife.  I suspect we may go back again but there are destinations that will have a higher priority in the near future.

What are you currently working on?

I am spending a fair amount of time developing a volume pricing strategy for large clients who intend to use our proprietary Indexes to test anywhere from 250 to 25,000 applicants per year.  Over the last few years, our Indexes have gained a great deal of acceptance and we are delighted that the revenue from our Indexes held steady through 2008 and 2009.  We believe this aggressive pricing strategy will contribute to even stronger growth in the future.

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Time Management

December 2, 2010

By Gene Czuchnicki

If your job is in an office environment, then you are probably being pulled in a variety of directions every day and could use more time to address all the issues that cross your desk.  Here at PRADCO, we are taking a look at how we are doing our work to see if we can do some simple things to improve our efficiency while in the office.  I thought it might be useful to review some of the techniques that most of us know, but for one reason or another fail to consistently use.

Let’s begin with getting into the office and starting the day.  Most sources recommend establishing a plan before you get caught up in the daily routine to give yourself guidance on where you are going and what you want to accomplish.  Yet, most of us try to wing it.  We check e-mail, see what is at the top of the pile that needs to be addressed, and then go at it.  Before starting work, develop a list of the top five things you want to accomplish that day.  The number five is not a hard and fast number.  Some days you may only list two tasks and some days you might list fifteen.  The idea, however, is to set some specific goals for yourself so that when one task is completed you know what you should be addressing next.

Now that you have started the day, shortly thereafter the interruptions begin – e-mails, phones, new material dropped in the in-box, colleagues who drop in, etc.  Such is the life in the modern office.  What can you do?  How about setting aside blocks of time to address similar tasks?  Let’s deal with the issue of e-mail.  No matter how you look at it, you are connected to the co-worker down the hall, to family and friends outside of the office, and even to those once in a lifetime opportunities that seem to come from countries overseas.  Each new message calls for your immediate attention and potentially an immediate response.  However, each e-mail that is opened causes a gap in the process that you were addressing. These delays require you to partially redo what you did a moment ago in order to “catch up”, and this slows down the work and reduces your efficiency.  As a potential solution, ignore e-mails for some period of time – how about an hour.  Deal with whatever you need to do in a consistent fashion and when you are done, move on to the next issue.  Once an hour, process your e-mails.  When you are done, turn your attention to the next project and leave your electronic messages alone for another hour.  Repeat this cycle, or one that works better for you, for the rest of your work life.

While e-mails seem to be the most distracting, in your work environment it could possibly be the phones.  Unless you are in customer service or where you need to take calls from outside of the office, you can send all your incoming calls to voicemail and then block out a time to respond to them.  Again, the idea is to bring all similar activities together and deal with them at one sitting.  The in-box on your desk can also be managed this way.  You control your in-box, it does not control you!

Another issue is when colleagues drop into your office.  Most of us want to be accessible to co-workers. Work for most people involves some level of collaboration and social interaction.  However, if you are dealing with a situation that requires your undivided attention and concentration – close the door to your office.  If your office environment involves cubicles, find a space that can be made private – a cubicle at the end of the row (where co-workers will not think to look for you), an unused conference room, etc.  Use this quiet time to deal with what needs to get done before returning to your regular office space.

These techniques, of course, do not exhaust the list of ways to increase your efficiency.  They are offered in the spirit of helpfulness.  We all have too much to do and not enough time to do it.  Learning to better use our available time can make our lives a little easier.

What time management techniques have been successful for you?

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Building Strength in Your Organization

November 19, 2010

By Gene Czuchnicki

Clients want to find employees who bring strength to the organization.  A great tool to help achieve this objective is the Selection Model.  We build models at most levels in the organization, as long as there are enough personnel to build a valid model to help with hiring decisions.  For those who do not know what a PRADCO model is, let me explain.  A model is a collection of behaviors that are specific to an organization’s culture and are characteristic of a high performing group of individuals in a given job.  A model points to those behaviors that a hiring manager wants to replicate in new candidates to increase the probability that they will be successful in their jobs.

The process of building a model is straightforward  and is based on PRADCO’s  Competency, Sales, Driver, Leadership and Emotional Intelligence Indexes – just to name a few of the most popular indexes.  The mechanics of the process are quite manageable and put little burden on the organization.  Once the model is constructed, it can then be used as part of the organization’s existing hiring process.

If the company elects to go no further with the PRADCO process, the model provides them with valuable information that they would not ordinarily obtain on a potential hire.  The company learns more about the person and the key areas to be probed.  More information can be obtained through a PRADCO screening or assessment. It is not unusual to have a person match a given model and yet, on further evaluation, find that they have behavioral characteristics that raise questions about how successful they will be in that position for the company.

PRADCO strongly recommends that our clients build models to help with hiring decisions.  They are cost-effective when used as part of a two-step hiring process.  The model can be used as a preliminary screening tool to reduce the applicant pool to the potentially better candidates.  After further review by the organization, the remaining applicants can be further evaluated by other PRADCO processes to distinguish between candidates and increase the probability that the most effective individual is then hired.

Over time, using a model as part of a two-step hiring process increases the strength of the pool of individuals in a given position.  This occurs because the candidates that are subsequently chosen at least meet, and generally exceed, the model parameters that were initially calculated for the position.  Over the long term, these better employees only help to strengthen the organization.

Leave a Comment » | Employee Selection, Gene Czuchnicki, Models, PRADCO | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
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