KeenHire Blog by Margaret Graziano

Acing the HR Interview

Join Margaret Graziano and the Northern California Human Resource Association this Friday at 10:00 a.m. for a fabulous, informative and inspiring presentation specifically geared towards Human Resources professionals on Acing the HR Interview. 

 Whether you are an HR Consultant, Recruiter, HR Strategist, Benefits Manager, Strategic Business Partner, VP of HR, CPO, in Talent Acquisition, Talent Management or an Executive Search consultant the game of Human Resources and everything tied to it has changed.

Smart companies are adding roles such as Chief People Officer and giving that role the complete responsibility for maximizing the company's returns on their people investments. These key roles are created to own the processes and results for recruitment, employee retention, employee engagement, training and development, performance management, succession planning and more. Other firms are adding roles such as Director Talent Acquisition, VP of Talent  Management and Employee Retention Specialist.

Given the only true differentiation any company really has is in the people they employ to create, deliver and manage their service, "People" Management has become a strategic issue.   

 

The current state of the economic rebound, globalization, competition, price wars and emerging industries are just some of the compelling issues facing companies; add in the mass amount of people looking to retire and the 15.3% fewer workers available for the next generation of leaders and do not forget the millennial generation who have a ton to offer yet no business or people savvy and you have a perfect talent management storm. This storm creates an abundance of opportunities for strategic and business minded Human Resource industry professionals. 

If you are up for the game, the next 10 years is the prime time for you to make your impact and leave your legacy. If you are exceptional at what you do, have a strong work ethic, think like a business person, have a healthy mix of concern for people and profitability and are willing to continue your education and stay ahead of the curve, there are no limits on what you can accomplish.

Margaret Graziano's Acing the Interview presentation enables you to evaluate your talents and strengths and target them towards business that needs what you offer.  It delves into what you need to know about yourself and things you ought to consider before putting yourself in front of opportunities. The presentation digs into what and how the employers think when they are interviewing you, it teaches you how to communicate to your buyer (the employer).

Additionally and most importantly, the presentation gives you the tools to knock the socks off of the companies you are interviewing with.  Join us this Friday from 10:00-11:30. Register now!

Maximize Your Profitability. Build and Execute A World Class People Strategy

Executive Forum - January 16 & 17, 2011

Call for Presenters!

 

KeenHire is carefully vetting senior level Human Capital trainers & consultants who are excellent at live training, focused ONLY in the Corporate space, have a strong track record of recent success and have world class strategic Talent Management content focused in the below areas. We are accepting submittals now and will select candidates for potential co-presenters by July 30, 2010. If you are interested in being a candidate, the context of the event is maximizing your profitability through building and executing a world class people strategy.

 

Module 1 - Talent Acquisition

-Current & Future State of the Workforce-Keen Hire

-Workforce Planning

-Best Practice Teams

-Building your Employee Value Proposition

-Building your TA Strategy

-Performance Metrics

 

Module 2- Employee Selection -KeenHire

-Building your Internal Hiring Process

-Performance Management

-Talent Benchmarking & Role Analysis

 

Module 3-Employee Retention

-Employee Engagement

-On Boarding

-Career Planning

-Performance Metrics

 

Module 4-Employee Development                                                                                      -High Potentials                             

-Succession Planning

-Performance Management

 

Selected speakers are expected to promote this event, register at least 10 companies and will be paid a percentage of revenue.

 

Employer of Choice. Train Your Managers To Retain The Best Employees

The Premise

With a rocky economy, emerging industries on the rise, four generations in the workforce, Sr. level leaders on the verge of retirement or redeployment and a sea of talent management issues knocking at your door, it is time to start thinking about how our company will maximize it’s return on your people investments.

 

The Society of Human Resource Management reports that 6 of the top 10 Workplace Trends are directly related to talent acquisition, selection & retention.

 

The number 1 trend to most likely have a major impact on the workplace is workforce retention, and the most critical HR function effecting business strategy is Staffing/Employment and Recruiting.  Companies who know that people are their competitive advantage are focusing on achieving organizational effectiveness, implementing stronger hiring processes, improving employee engagement, impacting workforce retention and elevating the performance of their people.

 

The KeenHire™ Talent Strategy 3.0 program empowers employers to take a new look at their human resource processes and their approach to Talent Management, Recruitment, Performance Management, Employee Engagement and Key Contributor Employee Retention.

 

Join us for this provocative, insightful and fun program that delves into the corporate strategic talent management and workforce performance issues and highlights innovative and practical solutions to solve them.  Click Here NOW to register.

 

The Program

We delve into your company's employment recruitment and retention issues, dispel the myths and uncover critical issues that affect your company’s ability to attract and keep the right people in your key contributor and next level leadership roles.

-Employee Retention-Understand the difference between Talent Equity and Tenure Equity. Review the generational parameters and influencers effecting employee engagement & retention. Delve into practical retention strategies and how to implement them into your day to day business.

-Workforce Assessment-Learn the organizational development approach to uncovering your company's people challenges.  Work with Benchmarking and Top Grading and learn how it can help you help your company maximize it's returns on it's people investments and mitigate hiring, engagement & retention mistakes.

-The Talent Mindset-Understand how a change in mindset is imperative to your company's ability to attract and retain the right people in the right roles. Strategize on astute methods, keen processes and provocative employee programs that forward your company to be an Employer of Choice.

-The Real Cost of Employee Turnover-Work through a hands on deep digging exercise and uncover the painful impact of hiring the wrong person or keeping the wrong person in a key role.

Take Aways

1. You gain hands on experience in uncovering the Real Cost of Employee Turnover and the impact that it has on your ability to achieve your corporate strategic objectives.

 

2. You learn the organizational development methodology for assessing your company’s real human capital needs.

 

3. You gain competence and capability to improve your company's ability to attract, select, engage, manage and retain your mission critical, key contributor and next level leadership talent.

 

4. You walk away with power and prowess as well as hundreds of practical employee retention strategies and employee engagement initiatives that forward your company's ability to incorporate the Talent Mindset into your everyday management and people practices.

  

The Expert

Margo coaches business leaders on building strategic minded stakeholder centric organizations. Her expertise in Strategic planning and Organizational effectiveness position her in a senior level Executive advisory role. She has developed proprietary work flow process, training and tools that enable her customers to implement Conscious-hiring protocols, High performing Recruitment initiatives, Employee Retention and Leadership development.

 

Want to Bring a KeenHire Consultant In-house? Call Today! 1-888-533-6447

 

 

Registration

 

Virtual Courses consist of 8 weekly 2 hour sessions and begin on June 18, August 9, September 17 and costs $599.00 per person. Save 30% overall when you register 3 or more participants.

 

Maximize Your Effectiveness with the Success Factor

The Premise
You are the sum of the results produce in life. While some like to point to luck being at play when great success is reached. I say luck is what happens when hard work and preparation meet opportunity and inspired action.

This high-energy, collaborative program highlights the drivers and levers that bring long-term personal and business success.

If YOU are really the source of your own success it is powerful to take a look at how that success happens.

The thoughts you have, the beliefs you hold, the actions your take, the people you surround yourself with, what you spend your money on and how you spend your free time is all about your choices; and your choices determine your outcomes. 

Explore and create a vision for yourself and your future that it inspires you to take the actions that lead to success.  Click here to Register NOW

The Program

•    You to the 5th power

•    Engaging Risk

•    Making the Right Choices

•    Being Unstoppable

•    Commitment – Living inside a context for winning

The Takeaways

1. Goal setting tools that turn ideas into action

2. Actionable activities that sharpen your saw

3. Heightened awareness of what stops you and how to cut that off at the pass 

4. Self Management strategies that eliminate time bandits and unworthy distraction

5. Resources to maximize your strengths

The Expert  

At 21, single mother Margaret Graziano had a tough choice to make: to fight for child support or try supporting her family with a straight commission sales job. She chose the latter and never looked back. Graziano began her personnel career as an employment consultant earning a six dollar an hour draw and within 10 years, had opened her own staffing agency. In testament to her business savvy she has established a client base stemming from 80% repeat business, earned more than $5,000,000 in personal “desk production” income, and placed more than 2,000 candidates in direct hire positions with a 98% placement satisfaction rating.

 

Want to Bring a KeenHire Consultant In-house for Training? Call Today! 1-888-533-6447

 

Registration

Virtual Courses consist of 6 weekly 1 hour sessions and begin on Monday evening June 14, August 9, October 4 at 6:00 pst and costs $299.00 per person. Save 30% overall when you register 3 or more participants. Click NOW to Register.

Emerging Leaders Immersion Training

The Premise
If you are new to the responsibility of Managing people, process or systems and your company requires an efficient and effective use of their resources this hands on Management immersion training program is for you.

This high-energy, collaborative program hones in on the fundamentals of managing your team, maximizing your effectiveness and building a high performance team. Click here to register NOW!

The Program
•    Workplace Strengths Awareness
•    Delegating Authority
•    Accountability
•    Personal Productivity
•    Hiring the Right People

•    Motivating and Inspiring your team
•    Performance Management
•    Navigating through your Role as Manager and Key Contributor

 
The Takeaways
1. You gain power and prowess in your ability to lead
2. You walk away embracing your managerial role
3. You learn systematic methods to maximize productivity  

4. You get a process for hiring, on boarding and managing your team
5. You focus on building and strengthening on your and your teams X-Factor

The Expert
Margo coaches business leaders on building strategic minded stakeholder centric organizations. Her expertise in Strategic planning and Organizational effectiveness position her in a senior level Executive advisory role. She has developed proprietary work-flow process, training and tools that enable her customers to implement Conscious-hiring protocols, High performing Recruitment initiatives, Employee Retention and Leadership development.

 

Want to Bring a KeenHire Consultant In-house? Call Today! 1-888-533-6447

 

Registration

Virtual Courses consist of 8 weekly 90 minute sessions and begin on Monday mornings June 14, August 30, October 11 at 9:00 a.m. pst and costs $399.00 per person. Save 30% overall when you register 3 or more participants. Click here NOW to register.

 

follow me on twitter - @keenmargo

 

Conscious Interviewing-Bring Science And Precision To Your Hiring Process

Behavioral Interviewing Certification Training

 

The Premise

Turnover cost the US economy over a billion dollars last year. What is it costing your organization? The estimated costs of a poor hire runs 3-7 x's of a roles salary.

 

No matter what type of organization you run the competition for mission critical high quality people is heating up. With costs rising and margins shrinking, no organization can afford unwanted employee turnover and money pouring out the door due to poor hires. When we say costs of a mis-hire, we don’t only mean in the wrong hires’ salary, we are talking about the management and training hours wasted, the unsatisfied customers, the compromised processes and employee morale issues - it all adds up.

 

Let’s face it in the world right now, your internal people resources is one of your only differentiating competitive advantages. For your company to sustain growth and be profitable it is critical that you hire effective difference makers who have the capacity to achieve your company's goals and objectives.

 

In KeenHire's Conscious Interviewing program you learn a proven, effective methodology and a process to attract and select the right people, for the right roles all the time.

 

 Click Here to register
 
The Program

The KeenHire™ Conscious Interviewing course trains and empowers recruitment professionals and hiring managers to learn interviewing strategies that help your company succeed.  At KeenHire we bring science and precision to the recruitment and hiring process® and we teach you how to do it too.  We train you to implement a Conscious interviewing process that saves your company time, money and effort while causing early engagement from your high potential candidates.

 

Join us for this hands on training workshop that encompasses every aspect of correctly utilizing targeted selection, behavioral interviewing and Role analysis in your employee selection process. You walk away with a thorough understanding of when to look for what types of behaviors, competencies and motivators and which types of questions to ask to hone in on specific behaviors as well as what answers to listen for and when to probe and when not to probe. In our full Conscious Interviewing course you actually have the opportunity to create 2 behavioral interview benchmarks that you can use immediatley. With each course registration you get a FREE 90 day subscription to KeenView - KeenHire's on line behavioral, values and competency based interviewing software.
 

The Take Aways
1. Develop a fundamental understanding and appreciation for why most bad hiring decisions are made in the first ten minutes of the interview. Learn interviewing strategies that help your company succeed.

2. Learn the foundation behind behavioral, competency and value based interviewing and why it is so important to utilize this diligent conscious interviewing process when hiring for high impact roles.
3. Gain faculty in uncovering the key performance indicators for each role.

4. Delve into all facets of what drives peak performance -motivations, ways of being, ways of thinking, and modes of interacting.

5. Improve your prowess in creating astute behavioral interviewing models that target the right fit.
6. Receive your Certification in Conscious Interviewing which includes; role analysis, top talent benchmarking, behavioral selection, behavioral interviewing and behavioral interviewing interpretation.

 

The Expert

Dr. Stephanie Marberry, Interviewing Strategies Consultant received her Ph.D. in Industrial Organizational and Social Psychology from Northern Illinois University.  As an originating partner at KeenHire Talent Management, Stephanie has consulted with small to mid-sized companies in High Touch and High Tech markets to improve their hiring efficiency and effectiveness through the implementation of customized selection systems. Dr. Marberry has a passion for educating others on current HR best practices by utilizing the appropriate scientific tools and methods to identify, select, develop, and retain top talent. Her facilitative training style encourages discussion and application, allowing her participants to gain a clear understanding on how to implement the techniques into their own business processes.

  

Want to Bring a KeenHire Consultant In-house?

Call Today! 1-888-533-6447

 

Registration

Virtual Courses consist of 8 weekly 90 minute sessions and begin on Friday afternoons June 18, August 9, September 17 at 12:00 p.m. pst and costs $499.00 per person. Save 30% overall when you register 3 or more participants. Click Here to register.

 

Can't make time for training, visit the KeenHire on line store and purchase tools, workbooks, scripts, manuals, assessments, CD's, DVD's, books and more.

 

Conscious Hiring-Maximize Your Hiring Effectiveness!

An Effective & Operationally Efficient Talent Delivery Model for Astute Employers

 

The Premise

Fundamental to building an organization with the best resources is implementing a hiring process that attracts the right people, screens and assesses that those people have the right stuff to do the job in the right way and engages the right people to come on board ready to hit the ground running! KeenHire Conscious Hiring training enables you to learn interviewing strategies and helps your company succeed.

 

Companies with a very specific purpose and mission require a strategic Talent Acquisition plan and a carefully defined new employee selection process to get them where they are going. Business leaders of these organizations know that the success of their organization depends on the quality of the people inside. A Conscious Hiring process takes into account the purpose and result base for each employment position in the company, then it looks to your business philosophies, company mission, vision and core values. Only after the core business objectives are considered is an astute employee screening, selection process and interview strategy implemented.  KeenHire Talent Management’s Conscious-Hiring process trains and enables you to identify the right people for the right roles while causing early engagement of the right people throughout the hiring process.

A fundamental aspect of a Conscious-Hiring process is systematically integrating and on boarding each new hire into your organization.

One of your only competitive advantages is the how your mission critical, key contributor and next level leaders solve your company's business issues, execute your companies mission, run the operations and interact with your customers.  In a nutshell the success of your company hinges on its ability to recruit, interview, hire and retain its employee talent base wisely.

Make no mistake about it, your hiring decisions make or break your business. What you don’t know will cost you: training time, management time and workforce productivity losses, company morale and employee productivity, new sales and customers. The bottom line is if you want a healthy EBITA you must run an organization with the right profit minded, effective and 'can do' people. KeenHire Conscious Hiring training enables you to learn interviewing strategies and helps your company succeed.

A holistic Conscious Hiring process empowers you to hire right the first time, every time.

The Program
•Change the way you think about your employees' impact on your business

•Raise the level of influence and span of control your Recruitment and Employee Selection process  

  has on your company's overall organizational effectiveness

•Learn how to avoid common interviewing traps & mitigate hiring risk

•Hone in on the key elements of building a systematic results based Conscious-Hiring process

•Hire right the first time and increase your employee ROI

 

 The Takeaways

1. Walk away with a blueprint for creating a highly effective Conscious-Hiring process
2. Learn to conduct Role Analysis, the organizational development approach to scoping the role
3. Study a step-by-step process for Choosing Your Talent Wisely and hiring with your head
4. Understand how to use, select and administer psychometric assessment tools
5. Review Behavioral Interviewing techniques; the when, why and hows

The Expert

Dr. Stephanie Marberry, Interviewing Strategies Consultant, received her Ph.D. in Industrial Organizational and Social Psychology from Northern Illinois University.  As an originating partner at KeenHire Talent Management, Stephanie has consulted with small to mid-sized companies in High Touch and High Tech markets to improve their hiring efficiency and effectiveness through the implementation of customized selection systems. Dr. Marberry has a passion for educating others on current HR best practices by utilizing the appropriate scientific tools and methods to identify, select, develop, and retain top talent. Her facilitative training style encourages discussion and application, allowing her participants to gain a clear understanding on how to implement the techniques into their own business processes.

 

Want to Bring a KeenHire Interview Strategies Consultant In-house? Call Today! 1-888-533-6447

 

Registration

Virtual Courses consist of 4 weekly 2 hour sessions on Fridays at 12:00 p.m. pacific and begin on June 18, August 9, September 17 and costs $399.00 per person. Save 30% overall when you register 3 or more participants. Click here to register for Conscious Hiring.

 

Can't make time for training, visit the KeenHire on line store and purchase tools, workbooks, scripts, manuals, assessments, CD's, DVD's, books and more.

Hiring, Managing, Engaging and Thriving With Your Virtual Workforce

When you have to do more with less, hiring virtual employees could be the perfect solution, just remember to Choose those virtual team members wisely. When you make the choice to open your doors to the virtual workforce you open yourself and your company to a whole new world of responsibility such as performance management for virtual employees, virtual team building and retaining virtual employees.

Keep in mind certain aspects you take for granted in managing and engaging your in house employees must be addressed, shifted and tweaked when hiring, managing and engaging with the virtual workforce. It is extremely important that you get it right in the beginning as more and more of your workforce will choose the virtual option and more and more companies are offering it.

Virtual team members carry more than just the burden of remembering which time zone they're working in. Business and Hiring Managers need to recognize the different way that virtual team members experience signal and noise. In order for a team with virtual members to work well, some effort needs to be spent up front on team governance and organizing communication processes into a tune with a good beat you can dance to.

 

 I'm thinking about the distractions around virtual team members because I stumbled on a great, if somewhat geeky, article in Information Technology & People that speaks to what my company does.  The gist of it is that co-located teams and virtual teams have different ways of getting to trust and team commitment.  In short, co-located teams develop trust through irregular personal interactions, whereas virtual teams build trust out of regular processes and clearly defined working relationships. 

 

This makes a lot of sense.  If you work side by side with your teammates you get cues all the time from them about how to work together.  In fact, you're receiving peer pressure, process pressure, the persuasion of the team leader and company pressure all at once, all the time.  It’s like listening to a symphony – notes and melody swirling around, but with somebody guiding them in the same direction.  Not much of a surprise then that it's relatively easy to get to a high level of team commitment with all that conducting going on. 

 

But put yourself in the shoes of the virtual team member.  Boy, what fun!  You get all the interaction of your local environment, but what you're tasked with focusing on is something invisible, unfamiliar and that doesn't give much feedback.  It reminds me of a pledge drive: I'm trying to just drive the car and not to hit anything when the music stops and the man asks me to pick up the phone.  We all know how well that works: I turn down the distraction and stay on the road. 

 

What I read in this article is that, in general, it's hard to focus in a noisy environment, and that people are really bad at thinking on their feet when they're under pressure.  I've always thought that it's a good idea to have a protocol to follow in the event of a surprise, so that you don't have to actually think on your feet.  Fortunately, for co-located team s these surprises and the resulting pressure are (usually) infrequent events that occur and get resolved.

 

But in a virtual team, the members are always under pressure. What they need is more like sheet music to guide from beginning to end.  And what the authors are suggesting is that it's that note by note guidance that makes it possible for the team to get its work done at all.  The team’s sheet music helps keep everyone together so they can create a soundtrack, not just background noise.  A pledge drive is easily turned down and ignored, but a good regular four-four beat gets turned up and sung along to.

 

The team leader has to orchestrate those rhythmic processes and clear relationships at the outset when he or she has the best chance of being heard.  That's the time, early on when an awful lot of us would likely be thinking about the schedule, that we should be spending our energy on governance. That’s when we should be setting up the relationships, performance management standards and processes that inform how work actually gets done.  After all, a schedule tells me how long I can wait until my tasks go critical. But what a virtual team needs early on is members zeroing in on their responsibilities and understanding the process for communicating regularly to the team that they're on the beat.

 

It's all about making it easy to do the right thing. The world is full of distractions. The challenge for a virtual team is to systematically make teamwork simple enough and regular enough to cut through the noise. 

 

 

David Kershaw

Founder, eVisioner

http://www.evisioner.com

MetaTeam :: Revolutionizing The Way Teams Work!

 

Call For Executive Recruitment And Talent Management Presenters

HR Executive Forum – Silicon Valley –January 2011

Our intention is to create a transformational Executive Retreat at StillHeart Institute in Woodside California for companies committed to achieving extraordinary results in service delivery, operational excellence and profitability through the power and engagement of their workforce.

Call for Presenters:

I am looking for highly successful Executive Level Recruitment, Corporate Recruiting Leadership and Talent Management Consultants and Practitioners who are at the top of their league, have an extraordinary ability to capture and engage a room and have achieved transformational results in dynamic and challenging environments.

Areas of Expertise

Corporate Transformation Consultant

Systemic Change Agent

Leadership Development

Succession Planning

Organizational Development and Design Specialist

Corporate Recruitment Consultant

Engineering Management Recruitment Consultant

Executive Sales Recruiting Practitioner

Management and Executive Recruiting Consultant

Human Resources Management-Operational Excellence

HR Technology Consultant

Recruitment Technology

Performance Management Consulting

Employee Engagement Consultant

Application Process

Please submit your CV, a video of you speaking to a group as well as the 3 goals you want to accomplish by participating in the HR Executive Forum. mgraziano@keenhire.com.   Deadline for submissions 6.29.10

 

 

KeenHire Management Recruitment Consulting And More

KeenHire™ Talent Management partners with top executives, international business leaders and strategic HR management of customer facing enterprises committed to making their mark socially, environmentally & fiscally.

Our expert Human Resources Management consulting specialists develop the foundation for organizationally effective, stakeholder aligned, high performance operations. Once the systemic work is done we create Recruitment and Employee Retention programs that leverage your company’s ability to compete for Mission Critical, `Go To`, Key Contributors and next level Leadership resources.  

We provide strategic minded Organizational Development, Workforce Planning & Design, Talent Acquisition, Employee Retention and Human Resource Management consulting professionals to companies committed to building with the best.

We train Leading Practices in O.D., Strategic HR Management Consulting, Workforce Planning, Recruitment, Hiring, On-Boarding, Performance Management, Employee Retention and Employee Development. We maximize your organizational effectiveness.

We save you money and time by implementing world-class consulting in HR Management, Recruitment, Employee Retention and Talent Management process technology & systems within your organizations.

We support your Recruitment, Human Resources Management and Employee Retention efforts while you grow with our RPI, TMPI and A la Carte service offerings.    

KeenHire™ Talent Management

We deliver world-class HR management consulting, Technical Recruitment solutions, Employee Retention strategies and highly skilled people for Start Up, Socially Responsible and High growth companies where the vitality and success of the company depends on the people inside.   Our ideal customers are in need of strategies for implementing best practices in Engineering Recruitment, Technical Recruiting, Management Recruitment Consulting, Corporate Recruitment in Silicon Valley, San Francisco, Chicago, Boston and Washington, D.C.