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Most good business decisions have an associated return on investment (ROI). If you purchase a piece of equipment that increases output by 50% with the same labor, then the ROI calculation seems simple. An investment in marketing that drives a 20% increase in new customers is similarly easy. But what about initiatives tied to personality assessments? How do we transition from framing personality assessment as part of the “soft” and “fuzzy” world of HR and OD into the concrete, bottom-line world of finance and real ROI? If your organization is contemplating making an investment in the use of personality assessments,…

It seems like everyone is either talking about or already using personality assessments. Emerging demographic shifts and the accompanying tight labor market mean that personality assessments have shifted from the rare “nice to have” to a common and critical tool for finding, retaining, and developing the right talent. This shift marks the use of personality assessments as something substantially more than a recent uptick, instead approaching what futurist and best-selling author Daniel Burrus defines as a hard trend or “future certainty”. But while the adoption of personality assessments might be inevitable, the successful application of personality assessments is less certain….

If you are serious about investing in your people, you know that uncovering what makes them tick will have a direct, positive impact on their workplace interactions, their professional development, and their satisfaction. Enhancements in these areas can lead to long-lasting improvements in the recruitment and retention of key personnel. Personality assessments provide the most efficient and effective path for understanding personality at work, but once you start looking at the various options in the marketplace, you’ll quickly see a big variance between the different offerings. To clear up any confusion, we’ve outlined the various alternatives, their associated cost ranges,…

When it feels as though finding qualified applicants is harder than finding a needle in a haystack, it’s easy to feel like hiring any one candidate with a pulse might be better than hiring no one at all. But the difference between recruiting success and failure often comes down to just a handful of overlooked gaps. Many of the Best Candidates Are Not Looking The candidates that you want to attract already know that they are highly sought. In most cases, their current employer would hate to see them leave. Indeed, many of the best candidates are not even currently…

Top performing organizations invest many hours, dollars, and resources on organizational development, employee engagement, and retention initiatives. Yet many leaders are now sharing stories of The Great Resignation. Recruitment, retention, and development of top talent has become critically important, and at the same time, increasingly challenging. With such tremendous investments in human capital and employee development initiatives, it’s a shame to see so many of these initiatives fail to deliver their intended results. First Pitfall – Lack of Defined Results All development initiatives start with good intentions and genuine urgency. We’ve all seen the statistics and the impact of the…

People often ask us, “How can someone exhibit such stellar leadership qualities at one organization but then miss the mark at the next?” We often expect effective leadership qualities to transfer, independent of the environment. We teach leaders and aspiring leaders to do things a certain way; to “be” certain behaviors. We chase the leadership model of the month. Kurt Lewin, the father of social psychology, famously said, “Behavior is a function of a person in their environment.” He posited what personality research now confirms: our behaviors relate both to ingrained personality and our ability to adapt behaviors intentionally and…

Finding the right employees is critical to the success of any organization, but interview processes typically lack the clear set of operating practices that provide stability, clarity, and objective measurement. Unless organizations clearly identify the employee characteristics needed to succeed, the hiring process will become time-consuming, frustrating, and risky. In the end, hiring the wrong person can lead to conflict and delays that end up costing you time and money. Make sure your organization is set up for hiring success by using the process we’ve outlined below. Before The Interview Process Begins Internal discussions that generate a clear vision for…

2017 is a year of expansion and new opportunity here at CentACS. We are excited to announce a change that we’ve been working on for more than a year: CentACS will officially become Paradigm Personality Labs on August 28, 2017. With this new name, we will launch a fresh new look, with modernized logo and colors that will consistently identify our brand across our company’s products. Why is CentACS changing a name associated with our company since the 1990s? A little history: Pierce and Jane Howard started this company in 1986, and originally named it Howard Management Consulting. Over the…