Kinsa Group Blog

Can nice guys (or gals) finish first?

That is the question that John Hausknecht, assistant professor of Human Resource Studies at Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations, wanted to know.  In conjunction with Green Peak Partners, a Denver-based organizational consulting firm, Hausknecht and his research team conducted a unique longitudinal study of 72 senior executives to define the qualities that lead an executive to excel in his or her position.

The study consisted of two phases:

• Phase 1: Between 2005 and 2008, Green Peak Partners conducted four-hour background interviews (covering family, education, early-career and recent professional experiences) with executives to identify individuals’ qualities, leadership styles and technical competence.
• Phase 2: Between April and October 2009, researchers then interviewed those executives’ supervisors, to determine how well the execs performed on the job.

What made this study special is that it examined both short- and long-term indicators of executive performance for a relatively large sample of individuals.  Some of the study’s findings were surprising:

- Interpersonal skills mattered. Executives with weak interpersonal skills rated poorly:

• on their ability to deliver bottom-line results;
• on every performance dimension, including managing talent, inspiring followership, business/technical acumen and strategic intellect;
• as people managers.

- Self-awareness was a primary driver of an executive’s effectiveness. A high self-awareness score was the strongest predictor of overall success.

- While gender and birth order did not correlate with performance, executives with more siblings were better at driving results.

- “Bully” traits were typically signs of incompetence and lack of strategic intellect. While traits such as being “arrogant,” “impatient,” and “stubborn” are often viewed as part of a business-building culture, they correlated to low ratings for delivering financial results, business and technical acumen, (and not surprisingly) managing talent and being a team player.

- Experience at multiple companies did not predict executive success. In fact, the study found that candidates who changed jobs frequently were often trying to outrun problems.

Can nice guys (or gals) finish first?

According to J. P. Flaum, Managing Partner, and Dr. Becky Winkler, Principal, at Green Peak Partners, soft values drive hard results.  Strong bottom-line executive performance is most likely to come from those who are both emotionally intelligent and self-aware.  According to Winkler, “Our findings directly challenge the conventional view that ‘drive for results at all costs’ is the right approach.  The executives most likely to deliver good bottom-line results are actually self-aware leaders who are especially good at working with individuals and in teams.”

Kinsa Group – Delivering Successful Food & Beverage Executives

Using our unique food & beverage recruiting and assessment processes, The Kinsa Group specializes in placing qualified professionals and senior-to-executive level management candidates who will drive bottom-line results in your organization.  Contact Kinsa today.

The BLS Employment Situation Summary continues to paint an anemic economic picture.

Economists continue to talk about a “jobless recovery,” with many employers focusing on productivity gains, as opposed to hiring, to manage any increases in business.

What’s the upside?

Well, if your company isn’t focused on hiring right now, it may be the perfect time for you to review and improve your employment screening process.  Doing so could help you:

• increase compliance;
• reduce theft, fraud and accidents;
• prepare you to make even better hires when the time comes.

As experts in employment screening for food & beverage executives and professionals, The Kinsa Group recommends taking the following steps to reduce the potential for negligent hiring and discrimination:

Consult with your attorney. If you hire on your own, you should have your legal counsel review your screening process to ensure you’re complying with all current legislation and hiring regulations.

Be consistent. Your screening process should be the same for all candidates within comparable job descriptions.  If you do a background check on one production manager, you should also conduct the same background check with candidates for all similar supervisory and management positions.  In addition to preventing anyone from “slipping through the cracks,” a uniform process helps minimize your exposure to litigation.

Use social media carefully. Social media has made access to candidate information fast, easy and free.  But if you intend to use this publicly available information to screen candidates, make sure that you obtain written permission and follow all EEOC and FCRA provisions.

Formalize and document your process. If you don’t already have one in place, now is the time to standardize, formalize and document your background screening policies and procedures.  Creating a formal policy makes screening more effective, efficient and consistent.  Furthermore, should a problem arise, your ability to show that you applied fair, consistent and documented screening processes will limit your legal exposure.

Reduce your risks and make better quality hires with Kinsa.

Hiring top food & beverage professionals – honest, high performers who do what they claim they can do – is critical to your organization’s continued success.  Kinsa’s full complement of search and assessment options can help ensure that success.  Here are just a few of the benefits our services provide:

• Transfer employment screening risks such as discrimination and negligent hiring.
• Save time and eliminate process bottlenecks employment screening creates.
• Hire the best food & beverage talent available.  We go beyond typical background and reference checks to create the best possible matches.  Kinsa evaluates candidates’ performance in the specialty skills of the position, results achieved in past positions, and overall predictors of success.  Online behavioral testing is done for Priority Searches, and an all-day face-to-face interview can be performed by our partners in Industrial Psychology for Retained Searches.

Work with Kinsa and your hiring decisions can be made with confidence – guaranteed.

According to SpendingPulse, Americans spent roughly 5.5% more this holiday season than last.

Could it be because they’re expecting pay raises in 2011?

Possibly.  A recent Workforce Management article included results from a number of surveys which showed pay increases running as high as 3% in 2011, with an average increase of 2.7%.  After two to three years of salary freezes and other human resources cost-reduction strategies, employers seem prepared to start the thawing process.

Here are a few key statistics from the Towers Watson, Mercer, Hay Group Inc. and Conference Board surveys:

• According to CPI projections by Georgia State University, pay hikes should comfortably outpace inflation rates in 2011, with a 2.8% pay raise equaling a “real” salary increase of 1.1%.
• Only 2 % of companies surveyed plan across-the-board pay freezes in 2011, down from 13% in 2010 and 31% in 2009.
• Companies continue to strengthen the link between pay raises and performance.  Top-ranked talent will receive pay raises averaging 4.5% this year; average performers 2.7% raises; low-rated workers only .5% raises.

Although unemployment rates continue to remain high, the upswing reflected in these survey findings should get you thinking about attracting and retaining key talent.  If your organization is not able to keep pace with 2011 pay increases, consider offering spot bonuses, flexible hours, time off or additional training/skill building to keep your best employees working for you.

As a leading food & beverage industry recruiting and assessment firm with over 25 years of experience, Kinsa has the resources and expertise to help you meet your need for talented food & beverage professionals as the economy shifts gears.  Contact us today to discuss your plans for 2011.

With unemployment near record highs, you may question the benefit of recruiting services.  If job applicants are plentiful, can recruiting and assessment services really help you?

In a word, yes.  Here are just a few of the ways recruiting services can simplify your job and help both you and your company be more successful:

• Save Time.  Posting jobs, screening résumés, scheduling and conducting initial interviews, testing and reference checking are extremely time-consuming activities – especially when candidates are abundant.  Use a recruiting service to eliminate both the time and cost associated with these processes.
  Some recruiting services, such as Kinsa’s Choice Search Option, allow you to pick and choose the portions of a full-search process without paying a full-search fee.
• Increase Focus. Use the extra hours you gain (by offloading time-consuming recruiting activities) to focus on other key HR priorities or revenue-generating activities.
• Access Top Candidates. The market may be flooded with job seekers, but are they people you really want to hire?  Recruitment specialists are experts at sourcing the best talent.  They use extensive candidate networks, internal and national databases, intensive assessments, direct recruiting techniques and referral sources to identify individuals – even highly desirable “passive” candidates – with the skills, experience and personality traits to succeed in your organization.
• Shorten Your Time-to-Hire. Because recruiting services maintain such robust candidate databases, they can dramatically reduce the time it would take to find the right person on your own.  In Kinsa’s case, our specialization in recruiting food & beverage industry professionals makes us better prepared to rapidly pinpoint potential candidates with the food & beverage experience you require.
• Reduce Your Hiring Risks. Our tough job market has caused a rise in résumé fraud, as desperate job seekers feel compelled to stretch the truth in order to get hired.  Unfortunately, the employer pays the price, when a new hire who has misrepresented himself has to be replaced.
  Recruiting and assessment services reduce the risk of a bad hire in two ways.  First, the referred candidate is thoroughly screened, interviewed, tested, background and reference checked to verify skills, experience and work history.  Additionally, most recruiting services guarantee the quality of their direct placements for several months – and will find you a replacement if you’re not satisfied.

Ensure Hiring Success with Kinsa’s Recruiting and Assessment Services

From Retained Searches, to Contingent Recruiting and Choice Search Options, we provide flexible access to the talented food & beverage industry professionals your organization needs.  Ensure the success of your next hire – contact Kinsa today.

At Kinsa Group, we realize how critical it is for you to stay on top of the latest trends, newest products, and most recent scientific innovations affecting the food and beverage industry. 

To make it easier for you to learn about relevant industry events, here are a few links to comprehensive 2010 calendars:

1. Meatingplace.com’s 2010 Event Calendar and 2011 Event Calendar provide links to dozens of food industry-specific conferences, expos, training workshops and forums.  Accessing these calendars requires signing up for free membership to meatingplace.com.
2. The American Beverage Association provides a directory of 2010 meetings and conferences specifically for beverage industry professionals.
3. BNP Media has several comprehensive calendars of events that include links to global trade shows, summits and expos for the food, beverage, and packaging industries:

            Master Calendar of Events

            Snackfood & Wholesale Bakery Calendar of Events

            Beverage Industry Calendar of Events

            Food & Beverage Packaging Calendar of Events

 Kinsa Group - National Recruiters for the Food & Beverage Industry

Kinsa specializes in recruiting professionals, executives and senior-level managers for the food and beverage industry.  Our promise is to deliver the talent who most optimally fit your company’s philosophy and culture.  By focusing on the best interests of both parties – and by drawing on food industry experience and assessment expertise – we are able to offer the best hiring solutions.  Contact us today.

Help your recruiting service service help you.

Continuous improvement should be a goal of any business relationship – your relationship with your recruiting company is no exception.  Help your recruiting service deliver better results by providing them with frequent, measurable feedback.  By letting them know what they’re doing right, as well as how they can improve, you can make your recruiting even more efficient and cost-effective.

Ask internal staff who interact with your recruiting firm during the hiring process to periodically fill out a simple report card.  It can evaluate quality of fills, ease of working with the recruiting specialist, timeliness of service, etc.  Then, share the feedback with your recruiting firm.  They will use the information to identify opportunities for improvement, to further customize the service they deliver, and to make your job as easy as possible.

Here are a few sample questions to consider:

The Recruiting Firm

1. How well does the recruiting firm understand the food & beverage processing industry?
2. How valuable is the recruiting specialist during the initial phases of the search (e.g., position specification, determining a salary range, developing a recruiting strategy, etc.)?
3. How well does the recruiting firm meet your expectations?
4. How would you rate the recruiting firm’s service, as compared to other firms you’ve used?
5. How would you rate your recruiting specialist (service, industry knowledge, professionalism, etc.)?

The Candidates

1. How well do the candidates referred fit the requirements of the available position?
2. How well qualified are the candidates to work in the food and beverage industry?
3. How would you rate the candidates’ attitudes (i.e., willingness to accept the position offered, professionalism, etc.)?
4. How would you rate the interview-to-hire ratio (number of candidates referred to find the right individual)?

How well are we doing?

Kinsa Group specialists are experts in recruiting for the food & beverage industry.  Our goal is to provide you with the “ideal match” – talent who optimally fits your company’s philosophy and culture.  We want to know what we’re doing right and where we can improve.  Please contact us with your feedback, so we can deliver even better results for your organization.

An effective mentoring program provides a wide range of business benefits:

• Facilitated onboarding.  Mentoring speeds up the process of bringing on new hires as well as redeploying existing employees into new lines of work.
• Increased employee satisfaction and retention.  Research has shown that employees who participate in mentoring programs have higher job satisfaction and reduced turnover.
• Improved employee productivity.  When employees are mentored, they can get answers to common problems quickly – without wasting time on rediscovering or re-inventing solutions.
• Effective career growth / succession planning.  Mentoring programs help employees reach their full career potential, grooming them to fill key roles as part of an organization’s succession plan.
• Knowledge management and retention.  Mentoring promotes effective knowledge sharing, to reduce the risk of losing critical skills and knowledge when employees leave.

Obviously, mentors can play an important role in ensuring your company’s continued success.  But while identifying a budding protégé may be straightforward, identifying a potential mentor can be more complex.  Whether that person is you, one of your managers, or an outside expert, a mentor should possess the following professional and personal attributes:

1. Senior-level business experience.  To provide guidance, the expert should have several years experience working in senior corporate positions.  At a minimum, the expert should be a professional peer to the protégé.
2. Interpersonal and political “know-how.”  The expert ought to be proficient in handling all sorts of complex interpersonal dynamics within the context of office politics.  To be an effective trainer, the expert must be able to help the protégé navigate the tricky political waters of his organization.
3. Integrity and confidentiality.  Professional development involves discussing high-level, strategic, off-the-record information, as well as sensitive personal issues.  Honesty and discretion are essential when broaching these confidential topics.
4. Organizational and personal insight.  The expert must have an in-depth understanding of the company’s objectives, needs and hierarchy.  Equally, he must also appreciate the protégé’s strengths, weaknesses and goals.  To achieve professional development goals, the trainer must align both the company’s and the protégé’s interests.
5. Flexibility and ingenuity.  When egos, ambitions and agendas collide, sparks fly.  What works for an organization one day may be thrown out the window the next.  An expert trainer must be able to shift gears, develop solutions on the fly, throw out tactics that prove ineffective and come up with new ones – fast.  He must be comfortable dealing with uncertainty to navigate a corporate environment rife with change.

Need a promising protégé?  Looking for your next mentor? Contact us today.  As a national food and beverage industry recruiter, Kinsa can provide the talented individuals – from R&D directors to food service sales managers to process engineers - your organization needs.

Have you ever noticed that some people always seem to end up climbing the career ladder faster than everyone else?  While it could be because Mom or Dad is the boss, more than likely it’s because they work hard and follow these five tips:

• Always display a positive attitude.
  Your attitude can be a powerful self-fulfilling prophecy.  If you have a negative attitude, 9 times out of 10 you will fail.  But, if you bring a positive attitude and display confidence, strength, and determination, you WILL be successful.
• Stay educated.
  The best way to ensure success is to stay one step ahead. Research your industry. Know what’s happening and what the experts say will happen. Look for trends. When you find them, start to train yourself in these areas. Knowledge is power.
• Create a personal elevator pitch.
  First impressions mean a lot.  If you only had 30 seconds to convince someone you were a hard-worker and a leader, what would you say and do?  Plan this ahead of time; you never know when it will be needed.
• Learn to network.
  Unfortunately sometimes it’s not what you know, but who you know (at least to begin with).  Learn to network. You can even network within your own company. Invite co-workers to lunch. Take the time to walk by someone’s office to say hello. And actively seek out opportunities to network outside of work by joining organizations, groups, etc.  You start by seeking out your local chamber of commerce to learn of upcoming events.
• Be open to new opportunities.
  Read trade publications. Listen to people in your network.  When a new opportunity presents itself, don’t sit back and wait.  Take the initiative to inquire more–and don’t be shy!

And speaking of new opportunities, if you’re in the market for a new job or just curious about what is out there, please call us today.  As national recruiters specializing in the food & beverage industry, Kinsa Group offers a variety of excellent career opportunities.