Horizon Point Consulting

Author: Mary Ila Ward

  • 4 Pieces of Advice for College Students

    4 Pieces of Advice for College Students

    One of the things I like to do most is help students consider what would maximize their learning and experiences in preparation for the working world.  

    I recently had lunch with a student who is majoring in business and thinking about concentrating in Human Resources.  She is bright, well-rounded and is exploring multiple possibilities.  She asked good questions about what to consider, and I found myself offering this advice that I would offer to most college students, in particular, business school students:

    1.  Study or work abroad at some point before you graduate.  I know the cost of this may be prohibitive for some, but there are multiple ways to make sure this experience doesn’t cost you anything.  The reason I find this valuable is because so much of the work I do now and see so many people doing, takes place in a global context.  The best way to be equipped and ahead of the curve given this reality is to spend time abroad.  

    I spent a summer taking classes in the UK between my sophomore and junior year of college. This was a valuable experience, but the culture and the language were not that different from what I was used to in the States.  I would challenge students to think about a place to study or work that puts them outside of their comfort zone and helps them learn about a different culture.  It not only builds global business acumen but also is one of the best ways to build self-awareness, confidence, and independence.   These are traits I hear a lot of employers say are sometimes lacking in young adults.

    2. Take classes outside of your discipline.  I encouraged the student I met with to take more classes than the basic ones required in Accounting and Finance and Marketing/Sales if she does concentrate in Human Resources.  Having a clear understanding of all aspects of business is important for any business professional, especially HR professionals.  This knowledge will provide a competitive advantage.   If you are majoring outside of business, take upper-level classes outside your discipline and not just your required, intro classes to give you a broader perspective and unique insights that could be applied to the direction you want to take your career.  

    3. Volunteer and get involved in leadership roles.   I learned a lot about how to lead by some of the successes and mistakes I made being the President of my sorority for half of my junior and half of my senior year.  These leadership lessons and failures helped me apply knowledge learned in the classroom and led me to make different decisions in the real world of work because I had learned a lot about what not to do when it comes to motivating people and getting results.  In addition, I learned a lot through volunteering at a local elementary school’s program where most of the students lived in poverty as well as working with volunteer organizations over summer break earlier in my college years.   Find a cause(es) that you are passionate about on or off campus and see what you can do to volunteer and then lead.

    4. Don’t rush into “real” life.   I graduated a semester early (mainly because of earning college credits in high school), started working full-time immediately, and got married about seven months after I graduated.  Whereas I don’t regret getting off my parents payroll quickly because they had already done so much to support me, the experiences learned in my first real job out of college, or the timing of my marriage, I do look back and think it would have been wise to have done something that would have only been possible during that time in my life before jumping right into all things adult.  

    This is a balancing act that involves a lot when it comes to finances and long-term plans and goals. The answer to the right path is different for everyone.  All I advise is to take some time to reflect on things before you launch headlong into moving to the next phase in your life while you have unique opportunities and age on your side.  Once you get to certain places in your life (job, mortgage, kids, etc.) you can’t go back and do some things you could have done between college and “the real world.”

     

    What advice would you give to college students today?

  • Create Insights Instead of Giving Feedback

    Create Insights Instead of Giving Feedback

    “….But the most helpful advice is not a painting. It is instead a box of paints and a set of brushes. Here, the best team leaders seem to say, take these paints, those brushes, and see what you think you can do with them. What do you see, from your vantage point? What picture can you paint?” from Nine Lies About Work

    A few weeks ago, we talked about how neuro research shows us that for learning to happen, insights have to be created. We talk a lot about giving and receiving feedback in the workplace and how necessary it is.   But what if it is more important to create insights than to give positive or negative feedback?

    What’s the difference? Feedback is about you telling people what you think and giving them the path forward from that in most cases.  Insights are people discerning what they think.

    Research shows us that people are more likely to act on what they think not what you think because insight is brain food which creates dopamine which makes us feel good. (When was the last time traditional feedback gave you a shot of dopamine?)

    So as a leader, creating insights may be the better way to get the results you need rather than trying to give feedback.

    How do you do it though? Our previous post suggests some ways. There are also some helpful ways in Nine Lies About Work by Marcus Buckingham and Ashley Goodall.   Their “insights” suggest focusing on the 1) past 2) present and 3) future and all revolved around asking good questions, not giving good answers*.

    1. Start with the Present: Ask, “What three things are working right now?” For more on this, especially when utilizing it for change management purposes, read here.
    2. Revisit the Past: Ask, “When you had problems/situations like this in the past, what did you do that worked?”
    3. Finish with the Future: Ask, “What do you already know you need to do? What do you know already works?”

    My little girl loves to paint and draw. Often, she asks me to help her draw something. We’ve been on a heart drawing kick lately. The first few times, I’ve drawn a heart on a page or a canvas for her to color or paint in. But then I stopped doing it and just left her to it. What I discovered was that her own hearts were better than anything I could have ever helped her create.  I just need to provide the tools and she can do the rest better than I can.

    How are you providing the right tools and asking the right questions in order to give people the opportunity to grow?

    *Nine Lies About Work is an insightful book linked to a lot of research. The way they phrase the nine lies, though, may just be a matter of semantics, so don’t let the titles of the lies fool you. Read the context in the chapters. In this case, you may be giving feedback in the form of creating insights.  Don’t take this to mean you need to scratch giving feedback. Just make sure you do it in a way that leads to learning and engagement instead of in a way that leads to disengagement. For more, read the book on how to do this.

  • What the World Needs…

    What the World Needs…

    “Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.” ― Howard Thurman

    Watch this video from this week’s America’s Got Talent to see this quote in action. It will inspire you, I promise. 

  • 3 Ideas to Help Your Recruiting Efforts

    3 Ideas to Help Your Recruiting Efforts

    In our last post, we discussed strategies for retaining talent in a difficult labor market.  Hopefully, you’ve focused efforts there, but most likely, you also need to figure out the best ways to recruit talent.

    Here are some ideas for doing so:

    1. Expose Yourself! Exposure is a key problem in attracting talent, especially for B2B companies.  Developing programs that expose people in the community to your company and jobs are important. We aren’t all Apple and Google.

    You can do this through partnership with schools in your area, marketing campaigns, involvement in community and charitable endeavors and by giving your employees tools to talk about your company in the community in a positive way.  An employee referral program may be a good strategy related to this.

    Work with your marketing department to create a communications plan for exposure in your primary geographic area(s) for recruitment.


    2. Look for talent in all the “wrong” places.  Explore looking for talent that you may not have ever considered before.  Here are a few areas to consider and resources and ideas to connect with these populations:

    • Individuals with criminal records.  There is a significant national movement to hire those with prior backgrounds.  Many organizations fear doing this, but there are multiple reasons do so in the right context.  Check out these resources:

    Getting Talent Back to Work

    70 Million Jobs

    • “Stay-at-home” moms or moms that have left the workforce to raise children and are now wanting to return.  This could also include people who have left the workforce to care for people other than their children.

    The Mom Project

    JPMorgan Chase ReEntry Program

    • The “retired” or “semi-retired”.

    AARP Resources  

    • Outsource. Contractors, consulting firms and/or freelancers may be the best way to get work done.

    72 Best Freelance Sites

    Oftentimes when you connect with diverse talent pools, you see that you need to think differently about how jobs may be structured.  Not everything requires a traditional FTE. Some of your best and most productive workers just may be a shift in mindset away.

    3. Reevaluate your wages.  More on this here. I’ll be speaking on this at SHRM19 in Las Vegas at 10:45 am on Tuesday, June 25th, so if you’re there, come join me for an in-depth dive on this.

    What is one thing you can do today to boost your recruiting efforts?

  • 5 Tips for Using Assessments in Hiring

    5 Tips for Using Assessments in Hiring

    In a difficult hiring market, it is hard to think about adding another layer to your hiring practices that potentially screens people out instead of in.  As one hiring manager said to me last week, “I just need people with a pulse.”

    But one reason why you may be hunting for people that are alive and not much more is because you aren’t hiring the right people to begin with, so turnover is a challenge and a cost to you in more ways than one.

    If done correctly, assessments can be a valuable part of your hiring strategy.  To maximize assessments:
    1. Don’t test selectively.  You need to determine which assessment(s) you are going to use and when in your process you will use them, then test all candidates that get to that step in the process.  Deciding to assess some and not others can open up a lot of problems in 1) finding value in the tool(s) 2) defending you hiring practices in the case of any legal issues.

    2. If using a self-report assessment, use a normative assessment.  Normative assessments are those that are normed to a sample population. This is different than a self-report assessment that isn’t compared to a fixed standard.  

    Examples of popular tests that aren’t normative are DiSC, MBTI and Strengths Finder.  These assessments, while valuable given the correct usage, aren’t designed to make hiring decisions.  They can be useful in the hiring process to consider a person’s personality/style and ask good questions in an interview, but they aren’t for screening candidates in or out because there isn’t a comparative standard to do that.

    3. When you use a normative assessment, you need to create target ranges (scores) for the assessment dimensions for the positions you are hiring for.   For example, if you are hiring a customer service representative for your company and you are considering using an assessment that has the dimension of “conformity” on it.  The scale is 1-10 ranging from 1 requires structure to perform to 10 not comfortable/successful performing in a structured environment. You have a very structured script and process for how your representatives answer the phone, talk to customers, and document issues and resolutions in your system.  Therefore, you may set your target range that the person needs to score between 2-4 to be an ideal candidate for your position of a customer service representative.

    All this being said, there are a variety of ways to set the targets including subjective analysis by managers, job analysis, generic industry models, and/or by comparison to your current top performers.  We recommend a combined job analysis and comparison to your top performers’ method.

    4. Check for Validity & Other Important Factors.  There are a variety of types of validity and important considerations:

    • Face Validity– Does it really measure what is says it measures?  Does the conformity measure actually measure for conformity?
    • Predictive– Does it predict success on the job?  1) Is exhibiting conformity relevant to success as a customer service representative at your company? To what extent do customer service representatives need to be 1 to 10 okay or is conforming to be successful here?  Is a 6 on a scale of that too high?

    This is why we recommend setting your ranges based on comparison to your top performers.

    • Reliability: Are scores consistent? Will the same person taking the test multiple times get the same score?  If I take the test today when I’m in one mood where I’m feeling rebellious because of someone trying to control me, will I get the same score on conformity when I take the test a week later and I’m at work as a customer service representative that requires conformity?
    • No Adverse Impact: The test does not discriminate against any protected class.  Will Caucasian females scoreless on my measure of conformity than Asian males on my measure of conformity as a population in a way that is statistically significant?  
    • Administrative: Is the test easy to use and administer in terms of giving the test, receiving results, and understanding them?  In this day and age, is the test mobile friendly, does it have features that accommodate for people with disabilities, etc.?  These are all things to be considered. 

    5. Train hiring managers on using the assessment.  If those making hiring decisions don’t know about the test and/or understand it, they won’t use it or they will discount its value.  

    Set up training to walk through details of the assessment with all hiring managers, get their input and feedback and help them use the assessment to their advantage.  Keep data on the value of the assessment and share it with hiring managers at regular intervals and set-up a time to onboard new hiring managers on your entire hiring process, including the selection instrument.

    We are excited to announce that Horizon Point has launched a sister company, MatchFIT, LLC, that applied these best practices in the design of an assessment to help companies find the right talent through a work values-based approach.   In addition, the assessment will help companies diagnosis their organizational FITness in order to determine if they are a place that will attract the right kind of talent.