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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