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ATD Blog

Personality: The Game-Changing Ingredient for Talent Management Success

Wednesday, December 9, 2015
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One of Caliper’s clients, a specialty engineering firm, has experienced explosive growth during the last five years by providing solutions for some of the largest infrastructure projects in the world. Their skilled and experienced professionals consist of engineers, researchers, scientists, construction managers, and technical experts with specialties in steel, precast and prestressed concrete design, inspection, nondestructive testing, and materials engineering.

As one of the fastest-growing engineering firms in the United States, our client understands that its ability to grow and continue to exceed its clients’ expectations is a function of how well it can continue to find and nurture top talent that fits the firm’s culture.

Future Talent Management Challenges

The challenges facing fast-growing firms are immense, and there are many trends that will have a significant impact on their future talent management strategy—from how they hire and retain top performers to developing employees and planning strategically for the future. A few trends that will have a major effect on all industries include accelerating retirements, multiple generations in the workplace (Boomers, Gen X, Millennials, and Generation Z), rapidly advancing technology, automation and big data, and the growing demand for diversity and inclusion. The challenges generated by these trends will force leaders to re-evaluate how employees are hired, developed, and retained.

A Common Language

One challenging aspect about working with highly technical staff has always been mentoring emerging leaders to understand that it takes different leadership styles to inspire and motivate individuals. In order to produce optimal results, our client realized it must also assemble teams of individuals who look at the world differently. In the past, our client applied traditional hiring methods and found that its managers would seek out individuals who were the most like them. As a result, they would have teams of individuals who thought and acted alike. The game-changing trends and challenges mentioned would have crushed the growth prospects for this thriving firm if its hiring practices continued.

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Engineers have a well-deserved reputation for being “numbers” people who like to bury themselves in reams of data. Our client’s breakthrough came when it added a common language to describe success characteristics (or competencies) combined with people analytics and an understanding of personality as a critical component of its talent management strategy. This combination provided a perfect solution for “numbers-centric” managers to think about how to better assess talent and assemble higher-performing teams.

This leads us to a larger question: How do you alleviate risk when the roles that you hired for, from the title, to the job description, to the definition of success, may radically shift during your employees’ time within your company?

Personality in Talent Management

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It starts with personality, which is becoming the foundation of long-term and strategic talent management. To hire for personality, companies must speak a common language that describes the competencies needed for success. In this case, competencies do not refer to skills and abilities. Instead, competencies can be assessed through scientifically valid personality assessments, which can predict an individual’s natural tendencies and motivations and help you develop them for the long term.

Some examples of these competencies include team building, strategic talent management, influence and persuasion, decisiveness, strategic thinking, composure, resilience, motivation, and perseverance. These traits are all valuable in the workplace, regardless of changes or trends. The results for our client were immediate and had a direct impact on its strategic objectives, business goals, and talent management strategy. Some measurable results include:

  • higher-performing teams due to leadership matching skill sets, strengths, and weaknesses 
  • reduced turnover, from 38 percent to 8.9 percent 
  • increased morale due to a greater focus on employees’ personal and professional growth 
  • improved mentoring sessions with emerging leadership, allowing senior leaders a tool to analyze tendencies and actions 
  • improved mining of existing talent for future positions and increased career path opportunities for employees. 

If you have not considered implementing a personality-focused talent management strategy along with competencies that describe critical characteristics for each of your high-stakes positions, perhaps 2016 will be the year to get started. 
Hiring for and developing talent based on personality is only one trend in talent management. Learn about other new strategies and how you can help prepare your organization while improving your own skills with the ATD Talent Management Handbook

 

About the Author

Frank Costanzo has more than 30 years of experience building and leading technology-based businesses across multiple industries, including education, banking, online brokerage, and publishing. In his capacity as senior vice president of sales with Caliper, he is responsible for the sales organization and business development initiatives. Frank is a member of Caliper’s executive committee and is charged with providing strategic direction and ensuring that Caliper is delivering solutions that maximize clients’ human capital potential. He takes a proactive role in connecting clients’ future visions of their organizations with the most innovative solutions available from Caliper today. 

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