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New Seminar: Winning with Natural Talent

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New Seminar Roll Out

Winning with Natural Talent: Developing High Performance through Selection, Development, and Leadership of Natural Talent

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Ski jump

 

Length: 60 minutes. Capable of expanding with experiential exercises to meet the needs of longer format

Setting: In person instructor led or virtual instructor led

Audience: Any group of organization leaders: Association meetings, peer to peer groups, community meetings, or in house management meetings

Audience size: 15 people or more (if in the Puget Sound region or virtual, 5 or more). Available to sit down one on one with those who are serious about learning more without participating in a seminar

Investment: This is a free session. I can also deliver as a paid breakout for an association event.

Value to participants: Learn how to address one of the most intractable problems faced by organizations of all sizes, getting the right people into the right positions. We will address:

  • Learn what forward thinking organizations are doing to hire talent, not resumes
  • Learn easy and cost effective talent selection processes and tools
  • Learn how to eliminate the 70-90% of failed hires, external and incumbent
  • Learn how to generate a substantial ROI on invested solutions, rather than incur a cost
  • Learn how to use predictive talent analytics for evidence based people decisions
  • Learn how to accelerate the performance of your top performers
  • Learn why organizations are selecting on potential rather than on past performance
  • Learn how to eliminate the discrimination against early talent inherent in resume screening
  • Learn what to ask for when selecting a solution for your organization
  • Learn how to be an effective leader in a VUCA world (volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity)
  • Like to add 40% to EBITA? Easily within the range of validated results
  • Those individuals who become certified in Predictive Index (PI) receive 16 hours of credit towards their PHR, SPHR, or GPHR certification.

Background: Organization leaders are frustrated with the high cost of putting people into positions and having those people fail or underperform. Organization leaders are asking that their investment in training and development show quantifiable financial results. Organization leaders are seeking to learn how to lead in a VUCA world. Organization leaders have assumed that these issues are pervasive and are just part of doing business yet they continue to spend (not invest) to try to address these issues. But the problems continue. There are efficient and cost effective solutions available, leaders just have not been introduced to them. John Inman Dialogue provides these solutions.

Current research points to the need for selection based on talent, not resumes, as the first step in this process. At the center of the conversation are predictive talent analytics and cognitive assessments. These solution sets are designed to actively solve people problems in the organization with a focus on strong ROI for the organization. If current spending on products and services does not actively solve business problems, they are a cost to the organization.

Recent research:

Customer quotes:

  • PI is used extensively in Inside Sales during the recruiting phase to ensure the candidates have the DNA to be successful in their roles at SAP.
    —Shawn Robertson, Global Vice President, Global Inside Sales — Optimization and Innovation, SAP AG, Inc.
  • There is no question about it, we are better today because of our people. The Predictive Index system is a big part of that. PI gives you the insight to make a good hire.
    —Howard Tenenbaum
  • …the Predictive Index system is quick and easy to administer and it will give you 100 times the return on your investment.
    —Donald McConnell, Regional Developer, Massage Envy
  • With the Predictive Index system, I was able to build a strong team that would push the business forward. Today, I can’t imagine running my business without it.
    —Jill Berg, President/Owner, Spherion
  • The Predictive Index system can be used for far more than just a hiring tool. It identifies individual traits, but also gives you the entire scope of people’s behavior, and a deeper understanding of how to motivate and impact their performances.
    —Bruce Wade, Director of Human Resources, Bloomington Hospital
  • PI results are used to support sales managers and their teams, to increase collaboration and understanding among the team, provide highly targeted and more effective coaching and support, and to enable more data-driven succession planning.
    —Rebecca Sherrill, Vice President, GCO University North America, SAP America, Inc.

Brief Biography: John Inman, Ed.M., M.A., PHR, DDPE; John Inman Dialogue, Founder/Talent Accelerator. Excels in:

  • Developing leaders that thrive in volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity
  • Workforce analytics focused on performance
  • Organization processes that rapidly respond to continuous change
  • Adult learning, growth and progress

20 years of sales and marketing leadership. 14 years of internal and external organization and leadership development consulting and coaching. Major industries include medical, bio-technology, software, telecommunications, financial, and gaming entertainment.

Full Biography: John Inman, Ed.M., M.A., PHR, is the founder and principle of John Inman Dialogue, a Seattle based consultancy focused on designing containers, convening, and hosting conversations for organizations and communities of all types. His passion is for developing healthy and productive social systems where individuals are treated with respect and are able to thrive and grow, accelerating the delivery of value to stakeholders. Areas of expertise include leadership and organization development, coaching, adult education, and workforce analytics. His work is founded on the emerging field of Dialogic OD.

John is a long standing organization leader and developer of leaders in technology, financial, non-profit, government, education, scientific, and service firms. He focuses on the local conversations that create organization and community cultures, which provide his clients with the mindset shifts necessary to lead in these challenging times. John invested 20 years in business development and marketing starting in critical care medicine field sales and progressing to senior leadership in small to medium sized bio-technology and technology enterprises. Has worked for the last 14 years as an internal and external leadership and organization consultant in finance, secondary education, service, technology, and gaming entertainment.

John has a bachelor degree in business management, a master of education degree in adult education and organization development, and a master of arts degree in human and organization systems. He is a doctoral candidate in education leadership and change. John published “Using dialogue then deliberation to transform a warring leadership team” in the Spring 2013 edition of the OD Practitioner, the international publication of the OD Network. John recently added a suite of workforce analytics solutions and is bringing predictive talent analytics to executive teams to help pinpoint opportunities for accelerating performance.

John lives with his wife, son and daughter near Seattle, Washington and enjoys walking, road biking, researching, and time with his family.

He has worked with several early phase start up enterprises in industries including: Retail, Bio-technology, Consulting, Software, Restaurant, Education and Pre-IPO Internet.

John can be reached at john@johninmandialogue.com or at 425-954-7256. His business site is www.johninmandialogue.com. Specific to workforce analytics www.johninmandialogue.com/people-analytics and blog on talent acceleration is at www.johninmandialogue.com/blog

Decision Science: Predictive talent analytics – Questions to ask if seeking a solution

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Decision Science: Predictive talent analytics tell us whom to hire and how we should manage them. This is the title of the cover article in the July 2014 T&D Magazine.

Decision Science

 

The author states “If baseball teams can use player statistics to predict performance, thereby gaining a huge competitive advantage, why can’t companies do the same with their employees?” I could not have said it better. In fact, I am amazed that there seems to be so little interest in creating a conversation about predictive talent analytics. I ask myself if it is because HR teams are so vested in not delivering powerful people analytics to the organization because they have not done so in the past or is it just fear of change. Or maybe it is simply a lack of curiosity. If I were presented with a people analytics solution that would help place people that have the talent to do the work required into positions that fit their talent, I would jump at it.  Yet even with a powerful solution like Predictive Index available in the marketplace, there is no rush to learn more, no one beating down the doors to explore how to accelerate performance, not even a whimper. With that said, 100 of the Fortune 500 use Predictive Index to do exactly this, so it is not fair to say that no one is interested.

Of course there are always concerns about compliance and legal issues. These concerns are justified. If you decide to explore a solution or if you are using a solution within your organization, there are a couple of questions that you should ask yourself to make sure you are getting the best solution for your investment.

  • Does the solution help keep you out of legal entanglements by being EEOC, ADA, and European Union compliant? The bottom line, a solution that is free of bias and approved for the full employee life cycle.
  • Does the solution provide built in robust job modeling so that you can screen applicants against a job model for every position? You should be screening all applicants, incumbent and external first with the solution.
  • Does the solution allow you to efficiently and effectively screen for early talent?
  • Does the solution provide coaching and interview guides that are based on the gap between the employee profile and the job model?
  • Does the solution train and certify you to be a licensed analyst so that you can implement the solution where ever you go?
  • Does the solution provide executive dashboards to highlight team talents and compare with team performance so that you can improve the performance of teams?
  • Does the solution provide unlimited use of the complete solution based on a site license?
  • Does the solution come with coaching and consulting at no additional cost from your associate?
  • Is the solution based on a knowledge transfer model to insure complete implementation?
  • Does the solution deliver the big data that your executive team is demanding of you on people analytics?
  • Does the solution provide ongoing continuing education both in the form of self directed e-learning and webinars?

These are just some of the questions that you should be asking of yourself and your solution provider. To me this is a must have conversation. We can transform employees lives, hire the best people for the jobs, and improve organization performance by using predictive talent analytics.

Call or email me for more information on predictive talent analytics. It may not come as a surprise to you that our Predictive Index solutions absolutely deliver on every question above. John Inman 425-954-7256 or john@johninmandialogue.com.  

 

Are we screening millennials out of the job market?

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I need a job
In an opinion piece in the Seattle Times on June 19th, a young millennial, Raffi Wineburg, wrote a great editorial “Lip service useless for millennials.” As he pointed out, unemployment for 16 to 24 year olds is running 15%.  After investing in college, many young adults are coming out to no jobs available. These new additions to our workforce have talents to be leveraged if only we could put them on our radar and explore what they might have to offer. Instead so much of the conversation seems to be focused on what’s wrong with millennials. This is absolutely the wrong conversation. We should be instead seeking them out based on their inherent talents and asking how they can contribute in a meaningful way. If all organizations shifted their screening practices, we could make a major dent in the unemployment numbers of millennials.

Each new generation brings with it the seeds of social change and innovation. We as leaders should be trying to figure out any way possible to get these new folks into our organizations. They have grown up in complexity, uncertainty, and ambiguity. They have grown up in a totally networked world. They do not have the hangups that older generations have. They need to be brought into the interview process not screened out. What really sets the current new generation apart from past generations? They demand to be treated with respect. The old “just do what I say, I am the boss” approach is certainly not respectful, and is a sure fire way to get rid of millennials. But that assumes that you have been willing to hire millennials in the first place. If they are being screened out of the process for lack of experience, the screening process must be changed to screen on talent not resume. If they are being screened out because management does not want to create respectful management processes, I suggest that management must change. So many of our managers were trained to manage in a world that no longer exists. Get with the program would be my recommendation.

Changing manager behaviors to be respectful is a tall order, however, changing the screening process is actually quite an easy change. We are talking about looking for early talent. Some companies like SAP, actively recruit for early talent. They have set up process and goals to seek out and hire early talent. What they found was that the resume screening process that they had used and that most organizations use actively screens out early talent. They made the change to screen on talent before ever looking at the resume. To make this shift they selected Predictive Index (PI) as their assessment of choice to screen for talent. They generate a job profile for each position, this functionality is built into the PI solution, then every applicant takes a PI assessment. They have 70,000 employees BTW. The applicants PI is matched with the job profile to select first on talent. They then look at resume and decisions to select those who they will interview. The bottom line, if the applicant has an inherent talent match with the job profile, they are in the game. With the typical resume screening process, they would never make it out of the screening software and if they did, they would be discarded.

So if we are to take hiring millennials seriously, we need to consider changing our selection process to start with talent screening first. Hidden benefits are a much more efficient and effective process needing fewer people. And what you do get out of it? Employees who inherently can do the work they are hired to do and will excel in doing so. A win win all around.

If you would like to learn more about this process, workforce analytics, and people big data and how it can transform an organization, please contact John Inman at john@johninmandialogue.com or at 425-954-7256.

Resume screening discriminates against early talent

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result of resume screening

Does your organization take non-discrimination seriously? Really? Or is it just another compliance issue to contend with? If you do take it seriously and I have no reason to believe that you do not, how do you reconcile screening applicants based on resumes with your intent to be non-discriminatory? That  is a question worth exploring.

Not only does resume screening actively discriminate against early talent, an increasingly important segment of the talent pool, it also discriminates against other non-standard applicants such as those in job transition (another form of early talent) or those who have been unemployed for an extended period of time.

How do your applicants get noticed for their talents, not just what is written on resumes  based on an ever more complex set of rules to comply with for submitting a resume. Quite honestly it is daunting to almost impossible to get noticed with resume screening unless the applicant has exactly the background as documented on the resume that the hiring manager is looking for.

In the June 2014  issue of HR magazine on page 18, there is a very short snapshot of what HR managers are looking for when an applicant submits a resume. This is one of the major reasons that I have started my own business BTW. To start with, keep in mind that close to 80% of resumes are inaccurate. So all of this required content and the decisions that are based on that content are based on mostly inaccurate information. No wonder that 80% of those selected either under perform or outright fail.

The snap shot indicates that it takes less than five minutes to decide if a candidate moves to the next interview stage. I think that may be generous. That assumes that the resume gets past the screening software in the first place which is a big if. 93% of HR mangers said that inaccuracies have a negative impact on decisions to offer interviews. Before we move on, let’s consider what that means. Have you ever tried to get all of your online content to be consistent so that Google does not ignore your business? Try it some time. I just went through that ordeal as I started my business. Probably 20 to 30 hours scouring through everything that I have ever posted about my contact information, my tag lines, my bio, my locations, my products, my services, and it goes on and on. Then setting up SEO for my web site to be in absolute sync with all of the other online information. Most of you have an IT department and a marketing department to do that for you, but a job applicant? Seriously, they have to figure out all of that themselves. If the data does not match, HR says it is inaccurate. The dates on jobs do not match exactly. How about descriptions of roles and duties? How about gaps in employment that the applicant is embarrassed about and tries to cover up? What if online data does not match what is on the resume? What is inaccurate, the resume or the online data? This is a virtually impossible screen to overcome. Is screening against inaccuracies just another way to whittle down a huge digital pile of resumes? Another way to discriminate? I wonder.

So here is what I am supposed to do as an applicant. I am supposed to know what HR wants so that I can provide it. So what does HR want? Here is what that short little snap shot says and there is far more, just consider what you might be looking for.

  • Must provide recent 8-10 years of relevant job experience? Good luck if you are in transition or are early talent with this one.
  • 66% wanted chronological resumes that start with the most current. If you have been out of work for a year, isn’t that going to look interesting.
  • 43% wanted the resume to be bulleted? So what do the others want? No bullets?
  • 43% want the resume tailored to the specific industry. I am an OD guy. So does that mean that if my experience is in tech I cannot work in medical? BTW that is what I have been directly told. OD work in a non-medical industry is not useful in the medical industry. I guess people are not the same kind of people there.
  • 57% say to neither emphasize nor hide employment gaps. Does that mean that 43% want the resume to be falsified? How is that going to work with the 93% who say that inaccuracies have an negative impact on the applicant?

So here is my plea to you. Please consider screening applicants, both internal and external, based on inherent genetic behavioral and cognitive talent. Genetics accounts for 50% of an applicants success. The first question must be is the applicant suited for the work that is required? Each type of work has a genetic signature, a clear profile of the talent that is needed to succeed in the role. There are no good or bad talents, only poor matches or good matches between a persons talent and the talent profile for the role they are in. And it turns out that screening all applicants is not only easy but inexpensive.

Do we need to discover the best fits for talent early in peoples careers rather than 20 years later? Do we need to discover talent and then build resumes, not screen on resumes only to discover that the talent did not match the talent profile of the position? If we do this, maybe we can truly act on overcoming discrimination of quality applicants in all phases of their lives. We will no longer discriminate against those who are diamonds in the rough and will, with a small amount of resume building, become stars.

If you are interested in exploring this topic further, contact John Inman at john@johninmandialogue.com or call at 425-954-7256.