Thought Leadership Published Worldwide

In addition to publishing articles in Satellite Evolution Group,
we are invited for speaking engagements.

Examples of topics include:

– Designing Compensation Models for Performance in Today’s Marketplace Click for Employee Compensation Panel Discussion Video

– Addressing the Shift in the Paradigm of Recruiting Critical-Talent

– Top Priorities for Leadership to Drive Business Growth

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How are You Measuring Business Performance?

As a business leader, you are constantly challenged with navigating your business through obstacles and finding a path for success. It is necessary to measure business focus on both the immediate goals as well as the goals on the horizon. There are numerous resources that define good leadership (click for example) and offer recommendations for improvement (click for example), but shouldn’t you make sure that your business has what it takes today before you go forward? Is everyone in your organization just as focused and just as excited about the business as you are? Read More

Do Panel Interviews hire the Best Candidate?

As a CEO or business leader, adding the right talent to your business through the most efficient means is a top priority. Panel interviews are an efficient use of time since all members of the hiring jury are interacting with the candidate at once. However, interviewing requires both an employer as well as a candidate in order to successfully complete the two sides of interviewing.Read More

Does Higher Compensation Equal Hiring Better Talent?

The simple answer is yes, higher compensation equals hiring better talent. However, hiring the right talent is not a simple event. The highest paid person is not always the best member of the organization. You can expect to have a poor result with the compensation of $1 dollar and a much better result with a compensation of $1 million but higher compensation does not always equal hiring better talent. Read More

What is the Magic Answer to Compensating Millennials?

Recruiting millennials, hiring, and compensation doesn’t have to be a challenge. Millennials are defined as being born generally between 1976 and 2004. According to Pew Research, there are approximately 76 million in the US. They are tomorrow’s leaders and a critical member of today’s workforce. How is your business recruiting and compensating millennials?

Millennials are thought of as “snowflakes”, needing immediate gratification and recipients of participation ribbons for sports events they entered as children. Read More

How Important is Compensation When Hiring?

Compensation and Hiring

They go together like cookies-milk, scotch-soda and business-performance .
Regardless of the technical complexity of your business’s product or service, the most important and complex part of all businesses are the human beings who work there. There’s nothing more important than attracting and hiring the right people to work in your business.

What does compensation have to do with hiring the right people? A great deal.

To address that question, let’s use two compensation details of a hiring process. Read More

Employee Engagement; Are Your Employees Engaged or

Loosely Connected?

Employee Engagement has become a business of it’s own.

Employee engagement is key to the successful performance of your team. Without engagement, new employees can be less interested, less involved, and less effective and have a shorter “life span” in your organization. Employee engagement has become an industry and for good reason. Employee efficiency, productivity, effectiveness and performance are aspects of employee engagement.

From the viewpoint of a professional recruiter who pursues critical talent, the question is: How engaged are your employees OR how open are they to leaving your company for another job? Read More

Hiring is not a beauty pageant!

Boxwood Strategies hiring process

Beauty Pageant or Hiring Process? Define your hiring.

Does your business have a proven hiring process or are your running a beauty pageant? Hiring the right talent today is more critical than ever. It seems like there is a new business popping up weekly to promote their quick hiring methods so your business can hire quickly. Shouldn’t your business focus on the hiring process designed to get it right instead of get it right now?

Today’s resources provide many options to help the business leader through the hiring process. For example, there is a vast array of assessment tools, there are the scripted interview questions, there are background checks as well as financial background checks and much more. Read More

Small Business Hiring with Trump as President

While the election of Donald Trump was a political event, it was also an event that has impact on small businesses and this is a business conversation. As a CEO or hiring manager, how does your small business conduct hiring with Trump as President? If small businesses find themselves needing to add critical talent during the Trump Administration, they will need to give consideration to the current economic factors of the supply and demand of talent as well as the implementation a best practice retention – recruiting process. Read more

Best Tricky Interview Questions for CEO’s to Use

As a CEO or business leader, are you reading this article expecting to find the great secrets for tricky interview questions from the viewpoint of a professional recruiter? Are you looking forward to uncovering the best tricky interview questions for CEO’s to use and the magical ways to get them to work? Is the headline itself a trick?. Read More

Three Considerations for a Productive Hiring Audit

I am frequently asked, “When is the best time of the year to recruit?”

My answer is: the best time to add talent to your organization is when you need to hire someone to solve a critical business challenge. The answer is not based on any specific time of year. Hiring should be based on the timing of a critical need.

As 2016 comes to an end, many businesses regard the new year as the scheduled time to add new talent to their organization. This can make the start of a new year to be a somewhat frenetic hiring period. However, with planning and implementing a processed approach, the frenetic part of hiring can be a thing of the past. Read More

What does Sonar have to do with Sales?

This is not a fishing tale but it does have to do with fish.

Fish use sonar to sound out sound waves in order to hear the sound that is coming back. According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, the word sonar is derived from the phrase “sound navigation and ranging.” Sonar uses sound waves to detect and determine the location, size, and relative motion of underwater objects.

To put it into a business application, the fish care much more about the reflected sound that comes back than they care about the original sound made. Read More

Redefining the “Artistry” of selling

Is there anything more critical to sustaining or growing a business then revenue? It has been said that “sales solves sins” meaning that businesses that can generate meaningful, repetitive sales revenue can be a success while making mistakes along the way. Read More

Four indicators that your hiring model is broken and suggested solutions

The most complicated aspect of every business is the human being. Every business needs talented people to participate and contribute toward the success of the business.

We all live in a changing business environment and continue to make adjustments to maintain a competitive edge and to deliver value to our customers. Read More

What does recruiting cost your business?

Many business leaders would agree that the most complicated, difficult and crucial part of a successful business is the talent – searching, identifying, screening, interviewing, qualifying, motivating, retaining, etc.

In spite of having the best idea, the best service, or the best product, a business will never really experience true success without having the right talent. To make the situation just a little more complex Read More

Has employee retention left the building?

A recent technology industry study revealed that 67% of employees, who have between 1 and 5 years on the job, voluntarily leave their companies.

If this is shocking, then perhaps more attention should be given to the trends in today’s marketplace. Perhaps we need to change the perception of: “Employee Retention”.

CHANGE continues in business today. This is the new normal. It may be the only thing that is constant.

In my experience, today’s employment marketplace sees an employee change in their job every 3-5 years. It confirms that there is a shift in the recruiting and hiring paradigm from the days when employers were hiring for a lifetime. Read More

What is the #1 Element for Business Growth?

Not only is running a business difficult; but, many smart people have been unsuccessful. According to an October 2014 Gallup survey, about half of businesses fail in their first five years in spite of good products, good people and good markets.

Assuming you are delivering a relevant product or service, what is the most critical element that a business must have in order to generate growth and success? Read More

Critical Recruiting Take-Aways and CHANGE

What is your recruiting strategy and process? How do you and your organization approach acquiring new meaningful talent to help grow your organization and reach objectives?

Yes, strategy and process – not merely posting a position description, running an ad or delegating the responsibility to a non-stakeholder. Just because that happens frequently, it doesn’t make it a strategy and a process. Read More

Interview Questions: The Top 3 and the Bottom 3

The business climate is constantly in a state of change. What once worked before, may no longer be effective today. Hiring critical talent has its own set of unique challenges since it involves the complexity of the human race.

At the heart of hiring is the interview process including the interview question. Interviewing is not a static event. It is dynamic. Therefore, the quickest way to have a hiring failure is to conduct interviewing “the way you have always done it”. Read More

You DO Hire Humans….Don’t You?

Raise your hand if you think we are better off with the benefits of technology.

Soon, you may be reading this on your way to work while your car is doing the driving for you.

Technological breakthroughs are changing our life daily. Businesses operate at a much faster pace thanks to many amazing technological developments. While technology helps facilitate and accelerate business, true growth is directly impacted by acquiring and hiring the right talent. Read More

Is Job Hopping a Change for Good?

There was a time, not so long ago when businesses frowned upon job-hopping. With this earlier generation of workers, the term “Job-Hopper” was regarded as a very undesirable label for any member of the workforce.

It was loosely defined as pattern of changing companies every year or two of one’s own volition. That was also a time when many members of the workforce retired after 20-30 years working for the same employers.

To be considered a “Job hopper” meant you were not committed to the success of the company you worked for. Instead, you were only committed to your career advancement and increased personal earnings. Read More

Five Compensation Nightmares
….Can Your Business Avoid Them?

“I love my job so much, I would be happy to work for free”?

You must be kidding me!

While some professionals are openly focused on maximizing their earnings and others are more focused on making a difference, none would work for free. They come to work to be compensated.

In it simplest form, professionals are paid to deliver value to their company. It is simple. Yet, unnecessarily complicated and one-sided compensation models are on display today. Read More

Looking Forward to Monday

“Baseball is ninety percent mental and the other half is physical.”

Yogi Berra, New York Yankees

What’s the biggest difference between Monday and Friday?

The start of the week vs. the end of the week?
The day before the weekend vs. the day after the weekend?
One is before “hump-day” and the other is after “hump-day”?

Who Gets You a Job?

If you are a member of the volatile business community, what do you do when you find yourself seeking employment? The volatile economy impacts the senior level leaders as will as the mid tier and less tenured. How do you navigate through the confusing employment market place? Can you be your own agent of change? With the constant changes in the marketplace, who gets you a job today? Read more…

Measuring Wealth. What’s Changed?

A company’s wealth and success are measured in a store, within a retail chain, in a corporate structure and on Wall Street based on wealth. The scorecard is money.

“Money talks and BS walks.” Read more…

Five Ways for Continued Growth

Isn’t it an interesting phenomenon that what got a business off the ground requires a 180 degree shift once the business has achieved critical mass?

Picture this: your business has matured to being recognized as a functioning, operating, successful business. Growth is just as important as it ever has been. Growth now requires more than what the business owner can contribute alone. Growth requires the business owner to “let go” of some of the control and have the right talent to delegate to key members of the business. Delegation is key. Read More…

Who Shines Your Shoes?

Regardless of your responsibility as a business professional, you have selected and purchased business footwear. There is nothing to suggest it will stop anytime soon. Footwear represents function and fashion. With so much to choose from, selections made are by an individual choice and not generically “I’ll wear whatever.” Read more…

Who do you work for?

…Why is this a question that should be frequently asked?

The obvious (and wrong) answer is you work for the company whose name appears on the check they send you. Read more...

Are you old?

While it may not be appropriate, this is a relevant question in today’s workplace.

Upon further consideration, is “OLD” as relevant in today’s marketplace as it has been in the past?

None of us are getting any younger. With growing older comes the internal voices naturally asking “Can I still do my job well? Am I valuable to the marketplace?” Read more….

Changing the Interview Conversation to Overcome “Candidate Polishing”

For CEO’s and hiring managers, what could be more straightforward than interviewing candidates? You are managing people and growing your business. Interviewing and hiring is just another aspect of your business.

Not so fast. Read more…

Could this Fix the Broken Recruiting Business Model?

What if the commission driven recruiting business model were adjusted to a fixed fee model?

What would change and what could improve toward Best Practice Recruiting?
·   With a fixed fee, the employer would have a clear understanding of their fee and an easier ability to budget accordingly.
·   With a fixed fee, the recruiter is now equally incentivized to seek the BEST Talent, regardless of current earnings.
·   With a fixed fee, the recruiter is aligned with the goals of the employer’s need to hire the best fit.
·   With a fixed fee, the hiring manager is closer to trusting the recruiter’s insight and comments about various candidates, since the recruiter’s fee is the same regardless of who is ultimately hired.
·   With a fixed fee, there is no need to build-in a “true-up” fee 12 months after date of hire.
·   With a fixed fee, the recruiter can become a valuable resource during the negotiation of an offer.
Read more...

Why lose critical talent during a merger or acquisition?

……following the acquisition of a desirable asset, wouldn’t it be logical to focus on maintaining the employment of the newly acquired talent? Wouldn’t it be logical to provide re-assurance? Wouldn’t it be logical to communicate? After investing significant time and money, wouldn’t it be predictable for the parent employer to invest in a program to integrate the newly acquired talent into the “mother-ship”? Read more….

What Are You ADJUSTING in 2014?

For a business to reach a point of success in today’s marketplace, there needs to be an appreciation for change and an ability to make the necessary adjustments. Many years ago when dangerous dragons were prominent, dragon-slayers were in high demand. Not much call for dragon-slayers today. Did the dragon-slaying businesses evaporate or did they make the necessary adjustments to remain relevant and prosperous in today’s marketplace? Read more….

Is Human Resources your best Recruiting Resource?

In traditional business models, the need for an employer to acquire talent is and always has been the responsibility of Human Resources. The name “Human Resources” itself says, “We are all about the existing employees and adding new ones.” If it were that simple, then candidates would be joyous in their anticipation of interviewing with the employer’s HR team, and hiring managers would regard their HR as a partner/team member who solved business problems by proactively landing the right fit before the hiring manager’s critical need ever reached a top priority. Read more…

Is Compensation about the Money?

Yes, it is about the money
What else makes such an easy and immediate reward to an employee? Employers can offer creative benefits, an energetic workplace environment, flex schedules and extended leave, but all take second place to “the money”. Various forms of stock options and equity can fall into a version of “the money” depending upon the structure of the employer. Read more…..

The COLLISION between Employers and Job-Seekers

With respect to Economics 101, the well-known Law of Supply and Demand usually applies when discussing the acquisition of critical talent. There are times when employers are seeking to hire critical talent and the supply of qualified candidates is limited. Then, there are times when numerous qualified candidates are pursuing a very limited demand of employers with a need for talent.
Read more….

Non-Compete Agreements and The Wind vs. the Sun

……..it reminds me of a story my grandmother told me many times about the Sun and the Wind.
The sun and the wind were comparing their strength one day and decided to hold a contest. The wind pointed out a man walking down the street and challenged the sun to see who could remove the man’s coat first.
The wind blew. The harder it blew, the tighter than man cinched his coat. After some time, the wind ran out of energy.
Read more….

Great time to grow while it is a Zoo out there

· Why is the employment scene like a zoo?
· How does Darwin play into this equation?
· What makes this a great time for employers to make exponential gains?

With the first quarter of 2013 in the history books, three employment-related trends are worthy of mention. Our information comes from industry conversations in multiple settings including the recent March SATELLITE 2013 Show in Washington DC.
Read more….

A Good Divorce to You

No, you did not mistakenly pick up a legal journal with an article written for attorneys about the splitting of married couples. However, we will discuss some similarities between marriage and employment within the context of leadership and best practices recruiting.
Nothing is static. Things are in constant motion. Employees change and companies change … sometimes destroying the employee-employer relationship. Read more…

The Impact of a Bad Dog Owner on Your Organization

As a long time dog owner, I have found there is nothing more loyal than your dog that welcomes you with unconditional love when you arrive home from work. On the other hand, there is nothing more terrifying and upsetting than having a dog in your neighborhood that is loose, aggressive and capable of injuring you or your family. We as owners have a responsibility to provide direction to our pets and a responsibility to keep our dogs from harming others. As a wise man said, “There are no bad dogs, only bad dog-owners.”
Read more…..

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