Workforce Insights

Margaret Speaks

Keynote Speaking from Margaret Graziano

 

Margaret Graziano is a torchbearer in the staffing and recruitment industries. Her visionary ability, astute knowledge of full life cycle talent management, and her tenure in the field positions her far ahead of the human capital innovation curve. In the early 2000′s Graziano shifted her mindset from “recruiter working to make a placements” to “consultant committed to building extraordinary workforces.” She added a talent management division to KeenHire, created Conscious Hiring™, and significantly invested in her own personal and professional development. She utilizes her certifications in organizational development, behavioral interviewing, psychometric assessment usage, role analysis and employee retention to create curriculum and programs that elevate KeenHire’s ability to hire and retain the right people for their customers.

Margaret speaks on a number of current and pressing issues relative to hiring, leadership, retention, and selection in the professional world. Now more than ever it has become an absolute necessity to gain and utilize valuable industry knowledge. Through countless hours of research, education and experience, Margaret brings her unique point of view and deep industry background to you. As for specialties – well – she has many. Take a look:

• Talent Strategy 3.0
• 21st Century Leadership
• Conscious Hiring™
• Employee Retention
• Hiring Better Salespeople
• Organizational Development
• Maximizing Your Effectiveness
• Strategic Planning
• Succession Planning
• Recruitment Process Outsourcing

 

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Interested in booking Margaret for your event, business or conference?

Please contact KeenHire directly.

 

Meet The Founder

Margaret Graziano, CPC, CTS

 

• Named “Chicago Woman Business Owner of the Year”
• National Association of Women Business Owners, 2004
• Named “Influential Woman in Business”
• The DuPage Business Ledger, 2003

Margaret Graziano is the CEO and Sr. Managing partner of Keen Talent Management, a recruitment & talent management solutions firm that partners with growth bound companies to maximize their people ROI.

Ms. Graziano has worked in the human capital industry since 1983, and has been coaching business leaders in implementing a conscious-hiring process and high performing recruitment and talent acquisition, retention and talent management strategies since 1999.

She has long-term successful partnerships with international and emerging, mission driven companies with commitments to hiring philosophically aligned stakeholders. Companies attracted to adopting Margo’s best practices are firms who know that the life of their company depends on the people inside. Keen has successfully served business leaders in the medical education, training & education, customer centric software, consumer goods, foods, health & fitness, high touch, professional services, association and healthcare industries.

 

About Us

KeenHire Talent Management

 

We help our customers select, hire, develop, manage and retain
highly qualified people with specialized skills in customer interfacing roles.

 

Emerging Leaders Coaching

Over the next 5-8 years, there will be a projected loss of 45% of competent leaders who will be leaving their roles in business for retirement. If not dealt with appropriately and swiftly, leadership gaps can widen beyond repair.

Our coaches have the primary intention to further the goals of your organization by developing and working with next-level managers, emerging leaders and executives. We set your company up to up harvest and grow talent for the next generation of leadership, which will improve retention, engagement and productivity.

We identify emerging leaders, and we develop them using a proven process that determines how closely values and behaviors align. Succession planning is the single most important factor when it comes to scaling effectively. This means that leveraging and retaining your top talent are both essential to sustainability and success.

Talent Strategy And Workforce Optimization

If you have been concerned about how your company can compete for key talent now and in the future, it is imperative to sit down with the business leader and discuss the need to develop a compelling talent strategy. An effective talent and workforce strategy must have more than an endorsement from the CEO. In other words, developing and implementing a competitive and effective talent strategy for the purpose of optimizing your workforce must be an initiative that comes from the top of an organization. Without stakeholder alignment no talent strategy can sustain the test of time.

With four generations in the workforce, emerging industries on the rise, senior level leaders on the verge of retirement or redeployment and a whole new generation entering the workforce, every company who relies on people to deliver a service needs to be working on building competent hiring practices, creating employee development programs and establishing competitive employee retention strategies. While these are all elements of an effective talent strategy they are not the only important factors. Workforce optimization requires a comprehensive holistic approach that includes metrics and measurement in key areas of concern – employee retention ratios and hiring effectiveness ratings, from both the hiring manager and the new employee.

365 Days of Gratitude - Post 13 - Landmark Education

Tonight I assisted at Landmark Education's Advanced course evening session. I was there to stand for SELP registration and to register people into the completion course of the curriculum for living.

I first attended the Landmark Forum on a recommendation from Bruce Hodes, a well respected and provocative company performance coach. It was 1996. Before the Landmark Forum I was living a single dimensional life. After the Landmark Forum I saw many more avenues for living, working, mothering, relating, loving and contributing. My world opened up and so did my creativity and my ability to vision a future outside of my peripheral vision.

After the Forum my awakened curiosity moved me to learn everything I could about my industry and about all the factors that would change it. It was almost a decade later that that the KeenHire concept was born.

Whether self development comes in the package of Landmark Education or DePaul University for me taking on my own leadership, being driven for excellence and staying curious has put me in a position to invent and invest in a dream and play the game of making it into a reality.

I'm grateful Bruce Hodes that you invited me to do the Forum.

365 Days of Gratitude - Post 1 - Thank You Tom for My 1st Management Training

My first day of Gratitude 2013 goes to Tom Schaff for turning me on to the fundamental principles for living life on purpose.  One of my goals for 2013 is to create a Gratitude Journal and post daily. Today, as I embark on this year long gratitude journey, I remember first the people I am grateful for. There are so many who have contributed to my leadership growth and development, some came in my life for a reason, some for a season, some my whole a career and some my whole life. There are many to acknowledge. In just the process of doing a mental inventory of who has made a difference in my personal and professional career development, I count 50 people and more than 200 gratitude entries.  (just off the top of my mind).  There certainly will be no shortage of content for these gratitude entries and that is why I am so excited to see where this project for acknowledgement and gratitude takes us. 

As I look at my process of goal setting in general, I think back to Tom Schaff and his Exponentia Growth Systems' Presidents Club in Schaumburg, Ill, the first real management training program I had attended. I think back then there were 20 or so of us in the Sales Management training class and weekly we shared stories and learned lessons of how to be hiring managers and how to scale our sales organizations. In Tom's classroom we learned about our strengths and barriers to growing our sales businesses. Given Toms veracious appetite for knowledge we were always reading new books, and often had the opportunity to meet with new philosophies and even at times Authors.  During that time period Tom turned me on to Jack Canfield, you know the Chicken Soup for the Soul guy. Tom gifted me the book "Success Principles" and today as I look back on my 2012 completion and my 2013 Goal setting process it is Tom's face I see and Tom who I am ever so grateful to for inviting me to kick up my life through reading a book. After I read the book, Tom shared about his experience at Jack's Breakthrough to Success week long course and through his sharing, I too registered for the course.  It was in this course that I learned to really evaluate how my life was turning out. It was there I learned the art of setting intentions and goals. It was through that course that I learned to create annual completions lists of the 100 things I accomplished in that year and to set a new top 100 things I want to do in the new year. It was there that I learned to hone in on the 9 environments in my life and create the "ideal" in each one.  It was in Jack Canfield's BTS course that I learned to set my future vision for my life.  And yes, it was there, in that course, in the sweltering heat, at the beginning of August, in Phoenix  that I learned to set my annual goals from the future state and make them specific and measurable. The reality is, most likely, I have learned these things before, however in this course I created mastery in goal setting for myself and for my business.  As I look back, it was this course that altered the course of my future.  I am grateful for you Tom, and the mentoring that you provided for me as a young staffing firm business owner and as a head of sales.  You believed in me and my ability to change the course of my future and for that I am eternally grateful.

Magi

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Gratitude Can Change Your Life

Recruiting Millennials? Keep it Social and Keep it Simple

Recruiting millennials takes economy of communication and a compelling message, and it also takes relationship building.  This is the challenge and the opportunity if you want to have millennials in your workforce.

For your message to reach the millennial generation, it has to capture their attention immediately.  Millennials have grown up with Facebook and Twitter, and 97 percent or more of them use texts to communicate.  They expect to know within the first phrase of any message whether it matters to them and what action will be required.  They also expect to be familiar with your business before dialogue about work even begins.  Your recruitment strategy must incorporate clear, sharp communication and optimal use of social media.

Make sure that your internet presence is consistent and compelling. 

The millennial generation is not content with job security and a paycheck.  They want to be fully engaged and using their talents at work.  Millennials expect to enjoy their work and to make a significant contribution.  They also expect to be paid well.  Your Facebook, Twitter, Linked-in and website presence should communicate clearly that employee engagement is paramount, and that your workplace is interesting, prosperous, and innovative.  Any discussion about working for your company will be most productive if the candidate already has a positive impression of your business.

Keep your message short and to the point. 

This is the generation that has introduced text into the English language.  They are masters at multitasking, and are accustomed to their vital information in small, digestible installments.  Any message you send, whether it is a recruiting presentation or an email, has to capture their attention in the first sentence and keep it long enough to communicate a call to action.  Relationship building occurs over several communications, not in one long email. 

Create a vivid picture of how great it is to work for you.

An important component of your recruiting message is a good look at what a work day looks like in your business.  Is it interesting?  For millennials, boring is the worst thing to put up with on a job.  Are there opportunities to shine?  Challenges?  Millennials are very social and are skilled networkers. Your communication has to show that opportunities for collaboration, contribution, and employee engagement are plentiful in your business.

What are you tweeting?  What’s on your Facebook timeline?  Are people engaged?  If you have a company blog, do people comment?  Active interchange communicates vitality and opportunity.

To make sure your message is reaching the right people, let one of our Keenhire consultants assess your social media and web strategy.  

posted by Elizabeth Danu

Talent Strategy or Competition? How to make all your people feel like they’ve been promoted

I recently read an article for employees about how to position themselves for a promotion.  In a corporate culture where the path to the goods is getting on top, getting that promotion is the key to nirvana.  The next step up the corporate ladder means more money, more respect, more job satisfaction, and perhaps a sense of job security, if anyone has that these days!  What if all those things could occur for everyone who works for your business? 

You can reference the entire article here.  For our purposes, I’ll give you the tip for getting that promotion, followed by deeper look at how you can optimize your employee engagement strategy.

1.  Know your job.  The advice for promotion seekers is to do a good job with the one they have.  This is easy to do if the job is a good fit.  Your job as a manager is to hire right in the first place.  Keenhire’s Conscious Hiring process ensures precious time and resources are not used placing a square peg in a round hole.
2. Volunteer.  People who want to be made use of make themselves useful.  Your job is to have a great talent strategy so that the gifts and talents in your talent pool are contributing.  This is how everybody wins!  You get the best results, and your people get to do what they’re good at. 
3. Create your own position.  When people are stepping into a need, new job descriptions get created.  Your job is to develop your people so they can step into the new opportunities that your company’s growth will provide.  A comprehensive employee development strategy is a must.
4. Let your boss know.  Your job is not to wait for an employee to tell you they are interested in contributing.  Make sure your employees know that you know who they are, and are paying attention.  This is a key component to employee engagement, which I discussed in last week’s blog. 
5. Get more education.  Your job is to add value to your workplace by providing ongoing training and development within your organization that helps people do what they do even better.
6. Don’t create drama.  It is difficult for your employees to create drama if you have crafted your company culture to reflect the ideals that everyone wants to participate in.  Company culture starts from the top down, and congruence throughout the organization will make drama a waste of time for all concerned.  Keenhire’s organizational assessment tools will help you understand what’s going on at every level of your organization.
7. Network.  The promotion seeker networks.  The productive organization encourages collaboration.  Cooperation rather than competition is something that you can create, if you’ve hired right, provided a dynamic, creative, high performance company culture, and set up an ongoing employee development strategy. 

Today’s economic climate requires that people at every level of your business are engaged and happy.  A promotion is a great thing, and you can ensure that everyone who works for you is happy without one.  To make sure you're creating the company culture you want, talk to a Keenhire consultant today at 888-533-6447.

 

Written by Elizabeth Danu

 

Boost Corporate Performance With KeenHire

In the News  HR Retreat Maximize your personal effectiveness. Influence people for organizational alignment. Impact a culture centered on people, purpose & profit. Build alliances with like-minded professionals. Join us August 27th in Palo Alto from 7:30am-5:00pm! Cost: $395 Click here to register.

Boost Performance with KeenHire Labor Problem: Labor data from the US Bureau of Labor Services indicates that 600,000 to 900,000 career vacancies are attributed to the greater-than-average mismatch between the skills employers seek and those that are available in the market. This startling data, coupled with the growing concern for the cost of a mishire is enough to cause a business leader to initiate damage control. Another key factor affecting the employment life cycle is the latest data released from Towers Watson - less than 30% of employees are actually engaged in their work. If these statistics are real, this means 70% of employees are just going through the motions and doing the bare minimum to get by; for a growing organization committed to expanding this simply wont work. Labor Solution: If you want engaged, happy employees you must attract & hire people for jobs that are a good match for their motivations, values, behaviors, and competencies. While you can teach certain competencies to a person capable of learning, you cannot force an outcome with someone who is not interested in producing it. Hire people who are driven internally to do the work you need them to do, in the time frame you need it done, for the type of customers you serve. At KeenHire we call our hiring process Conscious Hiring because it causes both the candidate and the employer to be conscious to what they need and want out of a role.   Labor Problem: A 51,000,000 and growing deficit of available & qualified labor shortage. As more cutting edge opportunities are arising every day, and less people who are qualified and interested in doing the work the opportunities require, companies are scrambling to attract the best and brightest. Many companies are resorting to hefty sign on bonuses or retention packages for the highly skilled, top performing employees. However, many of these same employees who accept the benefits report they are not engaged or excited about the company and the services they provide. They sign up for the role only for the money, and when more money shows up elsewhere with a better platform to display their talents, they are gone. Labor Solution: Know why people come to work for your company and why they stay. Learn about what makes the younger high tech, millennial generation tick, put yourself in the shoes of a Gen Xer and figure out what matters to them, because often what matters to you is quite different. Once you are clear who your ideal employees are and which generation they fall into, craft a Retention Strategy and Employee Value Proposition that attracts and retains the people you need.   Next Step: If you are compelled to position your company as a leading employer. If you are in a highly competitive industry, seeking highly skilled people for customer centric roles and the life of your company depends on the people inside, schedule a Talent Strategy review with one of our Consultants. In 30 minutes, you will identify the biggest areas of concern and be advised on potential solutions.