Getting excited about Skinny Resumes®

If you are filling positions in your organization, you’re facing a barrage of resumes — resumes that may be interesting, but lacking in experience.  That’s called a “Skinny Resume”.

In a matter of weeks, fresh college graduates will begin the search for their long sought after first jobs.  Grads come with unique competencies and a Skinny Resume, so navigating through the abundance of Skinny Resumes can be a gamble.

Resumes are statements of skill and experience, but in reality resumes only make up 25% of what makes a candidate a good selection for any position at any level.  Using behavioral and cognitive assessments more than doubles your odds of finding excellent candidates who possess the natural behaviors and cognitive speed aligned with the positions you are filling.

Skinny Resumes often block our view of the real talent at our door wanting to join our organization.  Skinny Resumes are often the best pick from the pool of applicants.

It’s easier than you think to muddle through those resumes and find the diamonds.

Successful College Hires: Step by Step

1. Create a Job Model. A job model is more than a job description.  In addition to the duties of the job, a comprehensive job model includes the behaviors that are demanded in the position. Building that behavioral job model can be done electronically and quickly.
2. Gather Resumes.  It’s important to gain tactical information about candidates, but be skeptical.  A recent study by CareerBuilder.com revealed that 78% of resumes contain misleading information.
3. Measure innate talent. Using objective measurement of both behavioral traits and cognitive agility using assessments lets you compare how a person will perform on the job versus the job model you created, how quickly they learn, what motivates them and how you should manage them.
4. Interview for choices. This is the time to find out a candidate’s perspectives from “their world.”  Ask questions that prod at their personal values, attitudes, ambition, and commitment to excellence.
5. Train! Companies that train people win because they attract people that want new skills and have the capacity to perform.   Accelerate that Skinny Resume that matches your position with targeted higher speed onboarding and training.

A local Scottsdale company has been helping businesses navigate personnel issues for over 20 years.  Mike Stewart, President of the Predictive Group, has been working with organizations, both local and around the globe, to design “early talent” management programs to address the huge number of applicants they receive for thousands of open positions.

According to Stewart, “Traditional resume screening alone is not an effective strategy for today’s recruiting challenges. Terrific Skinny Resume candidates for open positions around the globe abound but recruiters and hiring managers just do not see past their resume screening process to recognize those excellent choices.  And, as job demands continue to change rapidly companies are faced with limited and in some cases zero “resume qualified” applicants.

It is common for well-intended companies to miss exceptional “talent” simply because their selection strategy is totally centered on experience.  Experience based recruiting is automatically rejecting excellent natural talent that fits the role, will learn at an accelerated rate, and will develop competency that often surpasses veterans in execution of the job within months.  Talent is defined as a marked, innate ability.  Innate means it exists in a person from birth.  So, measuring a person’s talent – behavior and cognitive ability – we can begin to understand the probability of a person being a fit and with targeted onboarding and training it is certain they will accelerate naturally in a role.”

To measure natural talent, The Predictive Group uses the Predictive Index^® (known by users as PI) and the Professional Learning Indicator™ (PLI).  The Predictive Index^® and the Professional Learning Indicator are scientifically and psychometrically valid and compliant with EEOC guidelines.  The Predictive Index takes less than 10 minutes to complete online, and users for more than 50 years are commonly in awe of its uncanny accuracy.  The Professional Learning Indicator™ is a 12 minute test online consisting of mathematical, verbal and spatial reasoning questions that measures learning agility and processing speed – essentially, cognitive agility.

“We have clients large and small that have completely pivoted to recruiting Skinny Resume candidates to fill common entry roles, critical positions, and hard to find experienced candidate positions.” shares Stewart. “Additionally one of our very large global clients has an “early talent” strategy and quota for selecting university graduates with less than 4 years’ work experience that is completely committed to using talent measurement as the key criteria for selection“.

College grads absolutely make excellent workers; they’re inquisitive, continuous learners, and have the energy and willingness to take on assignments. They are looking for a return on their investment in school, and they are keen to align their interests even if their resume is Skinny. Finding and attracting high potential individuals is becoming more and more important for filling the critical roles that our baby boomers are leaving behind as they retire.  Selecting the candidates who will stick and stay with your company requires a selection pivot to add talent measurement to what is already working for you.  Go Skinny.

• 73 of the Fortune 500 are PI® clients
• 65 of the Global 500 are PI® clients
• 18 of the Top 100 Companies to Work For are PI clients
• There are 8,800 PI clients around the world
• There are 52,700 Certified PI Analysts around the world
• PI is used in 145 countries
• PI is available in 67 languages, including braille
• There were 1.5 million PI surveys scored in 2011 and over 2 million in 2012

Valid, reliable and free of bias, PI transforms workplaces around the world!  Not yet a client?  Contact us now for your free demo.

Are you a certified PI Analyst?  Join us this Friday, April 26th at 9:00 a.m. for your monthly no-fee Virtual PI Refresher Webinar.

Predictive Group is gifted at and passionate about helping you build an organization of successful individuals.  Our data stretches far beyond a simple hiring decision.

Before any selection decision is considered, a thorough job analysis should be done in order to clearly define the responsibilities, performance expectations, values, behaviors, and skills required to be successful in the job.

After receiving resumes, administer the Predictive Index® and Professional Learning Indicator™ to learn more about the naturally occurring genetic traits of candidates.  Considered in conjunction with other sources of information such as resume screening, and reference checks, interviews are a good time for you to determine the person’s choices and cultural fit with your company.

PI and PLI together can provide valuable insight into the behavioral aspects of job performance and allow a more thorough and disciplined approach to decisions.  The guidelines below offer a simple step-by-step process for including PI in these decisions. Remember also to consider the specific context into which you are placing an individual: What is the boss’ management and leadership style? What are the genetics of the key team members? Is there an opportunity to develop the candidate’s strengths in this job?

In addition to providing specific, objective information, use PI and PLI to provide you with a source of insightful, probing questions about the candidate’s capabilities, as well as the job situation in which you are placing the candidate.

Steps:

1. Develop a job pattern for the position and target cognitive benchmark.
2. Administer applicant’s PI and PLI in advance of the interview.
3. Analyze the applicant’s PI.
4. Analyze fit with job.
5. Prepare your interview questions based on your analysis.
6. Prepare your reference questions based on your analysis and interview results.

Are you having trouble finding resumes that catch your eye for your open jobs?

Are the job description’s requirements exceeding the experience of the applicants?

Prioritize hiring for talent…

The Skinny Resume process is objective data applied to accurately predict the innate talent and potential in any applicant, especially those who lack experience.

Using The Skinny Resume equation:
• Less time spent screening resumes
• Not culling only on specific areas of work experience and subjective interviews
• Interviewing for relevant performance, characteristics, ambition and values

Using the DATA of the Predictive Index and Professional Learning Indicator, we can begin to understand the individual’s TALENT – the innate, natural, existing-from-birth qualities that motivate and drive people. With this DATA, we can PREDICT whether a person will perform average, or above? Will they like the work? Will they be engaged, and stay a while?

THINK YOUR COMPANY WILL BENEFIT? SIGN UP FOR A FREE DEMO NOW
Let us show you how to select the right talent for your organization, every time.

A Holistic Method of Managing Talent

Using The Skinny Resume Process, you identify individuals with the qualities that fit jobs. But, what about the future?

Our clients use Skinny Resume Data to identify high potentials, develop leadership skills, set performance goals, improve job fit and create clear career paths.

Contact us today for more information.

Originally Appeared at Examiner.com at: http://www.examiner.com/article/how-predictive-index-trumps-disc?cid=rss&utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter
FEBRUARY 26, 2013
BY: SCOTT BROWN

For years, DiSC has enjoyed almost unbridled growth in its popularity. According to DiSCprofiles.com, “DiSC® is the leading personal assessment tool used by more than 40 million people to improve work productivity, teamwork and communication. It is non-judgmental and helps people discuss their behavioral differences. While DiSC measures your personality and behavioral style, it does not measure intelligence, aptitude, mental health or values. The profiles describe human behavior in various situations, for example how you respond to challenges, how you influence others, your preferred pace and how you respond to rules and procedures.”

The DiSC model discusses four reference points:

Dominance – direct, strong-willed and forceful
Influence – sociable, talkative and lively
Steadiness – gentle, accommodating and soft-hearted
Conscientiousness – private, analytical and logical But here’s the thing with DiSC.

While all of the validity and reliability studies have proven it does what it purports to do and it produces results that can be replicated time and time again, it fails to explain how much of a trait you have in relation to others and in relation to what your job requires. It gives you no context to your traits.

While DiSC is exceptionally popular, there is another trait based assessment that has been around since 1955 which does provide you with a context to your traits. It is called Predictive Index or PI for short. The PI survey has also been proven to be both reliable and valid. PI measures four personality traits – an individual’s need for dominance, whether he or she is extroverted or introverted, the individual’s level of patience and his or her need for control – just as the DiSC survey does.

But here is where PI trumps DiSC significantly.

1. PI provides the user with a measure of how his or her results compare to others who have taken the PI survey over time. By using the standard deviation measure (or bell curve), PI shows the user if he or she possess a trait at a “normal” level or at an “exceptional” level. Here is why this information is critical for the success of the individual. People who exhibit an exceptionally high or low level of one of the measured traits will show the world their exception in most interactions. For example, individuals who possess a level of dominance that is in the third standard deviation will show their need to drive relationships and situations in most encounters. Conversely, if an individual possess a lack of patience in the third standard deviation he or she will show the world an activity level that could almost be described as manic.  The inclusion of measuring an individual’s level of each trait against the statistical norm provides both the individual and the interpreter with a context for understanding how the person shows the trait to the world.
2. PI provides the user with an understanding of not just how they perceive themselves in terms of the traits, but how they perceive what level of each trait is required in their current position. This is exceptionally important because it helps an individual see if they “fit” into a specific role. This measure helps individuals plan their career based on their natural traits rather than on external forces such as money or acceptance into an organization. It also shows, if an individual is in a role that is not a natural fit, how he or she should try to manage his or her traits to perform the job more effectively.
3. PI provides organizations with the opportunity to develop a profile (or PRO) based on what level of each trait is ideal to perform a specific job. For example, an accountant should probably posses a higher level of patience and a higher need for control to ensure their work is flawless. By building a PRO, an organization can utilize the PI survey as a pre-employment tool to help increase the success rate of hiring individuals who are closer to a natural fit to a specific position.

So should organizations abandon the DiSC tool? It depends on what you are looking to gleam from using the tool. The PI provides much more information than DiSC, but that also means it is more difficult to interpret for the untrained user. The DiSC is easy to understand, but that means it is doesn’t go as deep as PI. Determine where you will be using the trait based assessment. Then make an informed decision as to which trait based assessment addresses your need most fully. Don’t just blindly choose an assessment based on popularity.

The virtual workforce continues to grow….

• Currently, an estimated 20 to 30 million people work at home at least one day a week [1]
• 52% of companies provide ‘virtual work options’ for their employees or scenarios that allow for work away from the company premises.[2]
• More than half (56%) of Fortune 500 senior executives and hiring manager anticipate reliance on virtual teams to multiply in the next one-to-three years.[3]

Paradoxically, as more employees embrace—and even expect—a distributed work environment, research indicates low levels of confidence in the ability of managers to navigate this type of workplace structure. Even while technology has made it easier for employees to connect, the pressure is on top executives and their managers to develop and oversee teams that work collaboratively, efficiently and effectively across different time zones and cultures.

This white paper explores some of the major trends that are contributing to the rise of the virtual workforce, examines some of the main challenges related to remote-team management, and outlines the key principles of “personality management” that will help managers achieve success with virtual teams.

Are you trying to convince your manager to develop a new project? Or, would you like to introduce a new system to your team but can’t gain support?

Positioning your ideas is one of the most imperative skills to have in your professional life.  Advice like “Be confident!” and “Be yourself!” don’t give you the actual tools you need to effectively connect to others to express and influence your ideas.

There is an actual set of scientifically proven skills that YOU can learn and apply to sell ideas, products and services.   I invite you to attend our two-day Customer Focused Selling Workshop.  The two-day commitment will give you real life skills you can use every single day at work to elevate your career. It is a fun, interactive workshop that will use the actual challenges you’re facing at work to ingrain new skills into your life.  You’ll effectively connect to others without being pushy and using tricks.

Held at our Scottsdale headquarters February 14 & 15, you’ll join individuals from diverse backgrounds and careers to install the 5-step strategy to building trust, articulating information and sustaining relationships.

Instructed by Mikey Maynard, a Predictive Group Senior Associate who has professionally spent decades as a leader devising, growing and managing teams.  Mikey’s enthusiasm and affability in the classroom is both entertaining and contagious, and his passion is helping company leaders like you lift  performance in the areas of leadership, sales, production and safety.

Click here to learn more, or click here to begin the enrollment process.

All over the globe, organizations are struggling with the changes in workplace dynamics due to economic and generational progression.

As a result of the needs of our clients in a time of need, we at Predictive Group have developed a program to help you find, select, and retain qualified and talented candidates in your business – we call it The Skinny Resume® Solution.

Our Global clients have experienced the success of using the Skinny Resume® Solution to fill their talent pipeline with qualified and successful individuals.  Recent graduates and those transitioning careers are some of the talent that have been placed in positions that match their potential, even though their resumes may contain significant gaps in experiences or skills. Employees who are aligned behaviorally and cognitively are more engaged and productive, positively impact customer and associate interactions and increase retention rates.

There are positions at all levels to fill, whether entry level or planning for the succession of leadership. You are looking for educated candidates, with years of experience to prove the ability to excel.  Growing companies often can’t compete in the marketplace by meeting the high salary demands of workers with years of experience.

That’s where we can help.

Using genetics, we can absolutely provide you with the ability to predict a candidates’ propensity to succeed in any position.

50% of the reason people excel in their positions is directly due to their behavioral and cognitive genetic makeup aligning with the demands of the position.  Every position in every organization has a combination of demanded behaviors and cognitive complexity that serves as the model for success in the position.

Traditional hiring strategy relies heavily on resumes/CV’s as the foremost recruiting tool.  However, studies show that 78% of all resumes contain misleading information.  Using objective measurement is core breaking through this barrier.

Use the Predictive Index® and the Professional Learning Indicator™ to gain insight into a person’s natural talent: behavior and cognitive ability.  The Predictive Index® assessment is a scientifically validated assessment that defines the behaviors and drives that motivate employees.  The Professional Learning Indicator™ calculates how quickly an individual will learn, adjust, problem solve and absorb instructions..

Give us a try!

Contact us for a no-fee demonstration of how you can use the Skinny Resume solution to attract, develop and retain talent to drive growth at your company.   Call us at 1-800-713-8344 or 480-423-5222.