I saw this mask when I was out shopping with my wife for the holidays and, of course, like anything, whenever I see something like this my thoughts always go to business. I thought about a kid holding this up like this and thinking that the person whom you get to see is the mask, not the real person. And I got to thinking about this as it relates to the hiring process because, let’s face it; whenever a candidate comes in to see us, no matter what they may say about wanting to be sure that it’s a good fit for them, too, people put on a mask, and that mask is what they think you want to see. It’s just human nature and it can be very difficult for us to decipher whether we’re looking at the real person or if we’re looking at the mask.

One of the tools that we provide to help you with this is the Behavioral Profiling tool that breaks out for you the basic, natural self, as in who the real person is, and then how we get to see that person. Think about how relevant that is for you when you’re trying to make a hiring decision, because is it the person with the mask who is going to show up or is it, in fact, the real person? And we know that in terms of providing motivation, guidance, leadership, coaching and everything else, it needs to be the real person whom you’re motivating not the mask. Thanks for your attention, I look forward to being with you again.

Even in these difficult economic times, our clients still find it very difficult to find quality candidates that they are prepared to hire. We would like to think that people are just sticking out there, you know, hanging around the telephone booth waiting for the phone call but the fact of the matter is most of us have very, very specific needs and it’s hard to find candidates that really do fit the bill. But every once in a while, you find two.

The question becomes:

What steps can you take when you really have two quality candidates?

That was a dilemma that one of our clients was facing. It was a position for sales and they had two candidates, each had very different personality profiles, both of them could certainly be very effective in sales. But their situations were very different. One person had been out of work for a while, had taken a bit of a sabbatical to deal with some family-related issues which is not at all unusual. The other person was gainfully employed, working for a competitor, and was being recruited by them, so to speak.

Well the first candidate was going full speed all out to get the job. Anything that needed to be done as part of the interview process, they really went overboard and did everything perfectly. The other candidate who was gainfully employed didn’t put nearly as much time into the effort. As a result when it came to presentations and follow-up, they really didn’t measure up at the same level. But the client understood why.

So we talked about it. I made a recommendation to let both of them know that there is competition for the position, and to let them know what your concern is in each case. Give them a chance to see how they would respond and how they would deal with that situation because after all, for sales people, this is going to be a natural evolution and this is an opportunity for you to have evidence of their behavior.

You might likely say, well the person who’s gainfully employed, well they’re not going to put in the same effort and the person who is unemployed is really going to knock themselves out. But the true nature of a competitor will come through when they realize a position that they say they want is on the line.

So the morale of the story is, give your candidates a chance to compete and pay close attention to how they deal with it because the way they deal with that competition will be very much the way they deal with…working for you.

Bob Kreisberg: For those of you that have a family cat, you’re going to understand
exactly what I’m talking about right from the get-go. But for those of you that maybe
dog people or for those of you that don’t have any animals at all, this may be a little bit
different for you, and I appreciate that.

My wife and I and children were dog people for many, many years. And we found that
having dogs was a great pleasure. They came when you call them. They sat when you
ask them to sit. And they pretty much did whatever you wanted them to do.

Then came the kittens. My daughter introduced us to kittens and we brought them in the
house. And lo and behold, the kittens ended up in the sewing room, and I remember the
first time I try to get the kittens out of the sewing room, and it was impossible. I mean
I was pulling my hair our trying to figure out how to get these kittens out of the sewing
room.

My daughter, who is a veterinary technician and a master psychologist as it comes to
animals especially cats, said to me, “Dad, what you need to figure out is what motivates
them, not what motivates you. Because if you can figure out what motivates them they
will respond to that.” And she said, “The good news is, you can find some thing they
will be motivated by. It could be a food snack. It could be an empty box. It could be a
tinkling sound. Or maybe be a moving feather. Figure it out and you’ll get the cats out
of the sewing room.” And she was right.

It was an important lesson to be learned because although with dogs, you may be able to
tell them what to do. With cats, with customers, and employees, finding out what really
motivates them and figuring out a way to bring that to them will get you far better results.

And we’re all motivated by something. It may not be a shiny light. It may not be a
tinkling sound. But it has to do with who we are and what our personality is and what
makes us tick. And just think about this. We maybe very motivated to do things that we
like but we’re even more strongly motivated to avoid things that we don’t like.

Understand the nature of the person that you’re working with so you can figure out
whether or not it is the empty box or the tinkling sound. And when you can deliver that,
then you can motivate people just the way we motivated the kittens to do what we wanted
them to do.

Thanks for your attention.

Contact us immediately to reserve your workshop date. We look forward to serving you!

One of the great things about what I get to do for a living is that I get to talk to people all over the world. I mean, I can be on the phone with a candidate for a client in Moscow or Singapore or Detroit or San Francisco or anywhere. And it’s great because it’s such a big, big world that we get to work in.

Something happened to me last week which really convinced me that as the saying goes, it’s a small world after all. I had a chance to do a profile of a candidate. And as part of the small talk, we talked about where the person was from and as it turns out, he’s from the same town that I’m from.

This is a little tiny town on the east end of Long Island. And when he gave me the family name it registered with me, and I said, “Not only do I know that you’re from the town that you’re from, I know what street your family is from.” He said, “How could you possibly know that?” I said, “It’s because your family was my next door neighbor.”

So I want you to think of the odds of that. Think of the odds when you’re talking to people all over the world that I could end up talking to the grandson of my next door neighbor. So when I recounted the story to my mom later in the day, she said, “Well you know that his Aunt Vivian was your babysitter when you were growing up.” And I just couldn’t believe it. Aunt Vivian was my babysitter?

Well, it really struck home with me that although the world is big, in so many ways what we do brings it all close together. Now I grew up in a family business where we sold merchandise in one small town and we really did get to know our customers. We knew what color of clothes they like, what sizes, what brands, and what they bought last year for Christmas. We knew all of that.

Well as much as the world has changed, there is still a lot to be said for understanding that you could be talking to your next door neighbor and your reputation of who you are and what you stand for still matters. It maybe a big world but you still can’t hide from your Aunt Vivian.

Thanks for your attention.

As most of you that watch these video blogs know, OPUS Productivity is a business providing services that assist our clients in making more informed and hopefully better hiring decisions.  A big piece to that service is the personality profiling tool, and a key aspect is that we take the time to review the results with the candidate. This way they know exactly what the personality profile says.  You would be amazed at how many candidates say to us, “Gee, I’ve gone through this cycle, before but nobody has ever told me what the profile said.  This is really neat.  I’m really interested in knowing what it says.”

Well, why is it a value to everybody? And believe me, we believe it is a value to everybody.  There is definitely a value to the candidates, as they are concerned that maybe the personality profile has said something about them that in no way reflects who they really are.  By hearing the results and being able to discuss the degree of accuracy, or areas that they think it may or may not really capture their personality, the candidate has the confidence that they are being represented in a fair, honest and honorable way.  In addition, the profile review is traditionally an affirmative event.  People get to hear something positive about their behavioral style and of course, that’s a good thing.

It’s positive for the employer as well.  Any behavioral profiling tool that includes a read back session has higher coefficients of reliability.  It provides the employer with the knowledge that the individual that filled out the profile really sees themselves that way.  So the company knows they’re getting an accurate reflection of what the person is.

And lastly, it’s better for the hiring manager. The hiring manager now has somebody that’s connect to not only with them but with the candidate, and can provide them with insight and guidance, not based on a bunch of dots on a page, but based on an actual conversation.  So that’s why we take the time to talk to the candidates.

Thanks for your attention.

The topic of our blog for today is one that comes up very commonly in conversations regarding personality profiling tools and what some people call personality profile tests. And that is: our personality profile tests legal? Well, you’ll often get a very abrupt response from people in the trade, and they say, of course, they are legal. We wouldn’t be doing this if it wasn’t legal. The reality is the topic deserves a serious response and here’s what you need to be able to understand. Personality profiling can be used in two ways within an organization. It could be used as an inclusive tool or it can be used as an exclusive tool.

It’s very simple to understand the difference. If you’re using the tool as an inclusive tool, it means that you have already evaluated your candidates at some level; you’ve reviewed their resumes, perhaps you’ve talked to them on the phone, maybe you’ve even met with them in person. You recognize that this is a person that you are actively interested in including in your organization. The profiling tool provides you with new information that allows you to better understand the nature of that person. You want to know how to better manage them, how to provide leadership, how to provide guidance and direction, and to understand a comparison, in some cases, between them and other candidates that you are looking to include.

In that situation, utilizing a profiling tool is very easy to build into your overall evaluation process. Using it as an exclusive tool is completely different. That means that you’ve made a determination that you want to exclude candidates for no other reason than their behavioral profile results. Let’s say, for instance, that you’re hiring flight attendants and you’ve determined that your top flight attendants all have patience as a high trade. And you’ve said we are going to use a profiling tool and anybody that has patience as a low trade is going to be excluded, no matter what else may exist.

Well, in that situation, then an organization need to be prepared to show that your evaluation of that top performer trade crosses across all minorities, all ages, all genders, you need to be able to show that you are excluding people in a fair and proper way. So, utilizing a tool as an exclusionary tool really takes a bit more work, and it’s a completely different application. Our clients and the nature of the work that we do are utilizing our tool as an inclusionary tool. They’re looking to understand the strengths of an individual and evaluate that how person can fit into their organization. It makes the process much easier and much clearer from a legal perspective.

Should you have additional questions about this specific topic, please feel free to reach out to me, and I’d be happy to respond to you one-on-one. Thank you.

The topic of this video blog is Interviewing Skills and specifically what I want to talk to you about today is how to look for evidence of behavior in the interview process. The areas that I am focusing on have to do with important skill sets that an individual needs to have in order to be successful in a job that you are hiring them for and when we think about the sales position, certain areas which really standout that you can’t look for evidence of behavior or listening skills, writing skills, presentation skills and closing skills and the reason I say that we can look for evidence of behavior is because these are all areas that you really don’t need to question your candidate about almost any good sales candidate, I have to say they are a good sales person but a good sales candidate if asked the question are you a good closer, we will say yes I am an excellent closer but in fact the interview process and the hiring process is very much like a sales process and so instead of asking the question are you a good closer, you can look to see how the person closes you and here is where it really gets interesting.

There are very different closing styles and a closing style has more to do with the behavioral style then it does whether one is right or wrong.  For instance people that are very assertive and people that are impatient may go to close early and often. People that are more patient, people that are more consensus-oriented may allow the process to go on a bit longer and in a sense allow you to extend the offer to them versus them closing you.

Now is one style better or worse well that really depends but what traditionally happens is if one style is the way that the manager is and that persons closing skills measured up and narrowed the manager style, they will be more comfortable with that and the manager, if the manager is a high dominance, low patience person themselves we said well I love the way that person really came after me. But if the manager is more laid back then that high dominance, low patience person may have been a huge turnoff for them so our ability to read good or bad, right or wrong is really more tied into how we match up with our candidate and as a result of that we have a tendency to hire people that are more like us and sometimes we end up passing on the candidates that although their style is different from us, it can actually be more effective.  The more you know about your own personality style and the more you know about your candidate style, the more effective you can be because it’s not really whether the style is right, it’s whether they are able to use that style to their benefit. Thanks for your time.