Case Scenarios

1. Poor fit between job requirements and employee talent/motivation
2. High IQ not leading to high sales competency
3. Rapid Team Development Imperative
4. Avoiding the "Peter Principle"
5. Severe Organizational Stress
6. High-volume Customer Service Hiring
7. Assessment Tools, a Question of Investment

Scenario #1:
Poor fit between job requirements and employee talent/motivation

"I have heard that 80% of workers in the western world are in the wrong job. How do I address this within my organization?"

The first step is to hire effectively. With our proven employee selection reports, you can eliminate interviewer bias and clearly assess if the candidate is truly suited to the position. Trireme^® Consulting offers a variety of recruitment tools which provide a third-party objective voice in the recruitment of any range of employees, from hourly-wage workers to top line executives.

Secondly, never underestimate the power of a professional development program. Using any number of our tools, like our ASSESS™ Development Report, an organization can launch a development program. Designed for professional level employees, this 40+ page report comes complete with coaching and self-development recommendations, and online resources.

Finally, recognizing and appreciating an employee’s talents is the first step to retention. By objectively investigating their unique skills and motivations, your managers can uncover the "hidden assets" within your workforce and align talent with the job requirements. Trireme's^® online assessments offer a quick method for implementing a highly effective professional development program that will ensure your employees are both satisfied, and appropriately engaged.

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Scenario #2:
High IQ not leading to high sales competency

"We are a professional services firm. Our recruiting practice is to hire only the "best and the brightest" – so, with that much "brain power," why do the majority of our teams continue to struggle with sales revenue and growth expectations?"

This problem occurs in many industries.  The legal sector is a good case in point. As many managing partners in law practices will concede, performing at the top of one’s class academically doesn’t necessarily predict success in business. This is particularly true when it comes to the "rain making" requirements of becoming a partner.

In response, law firms are now beginning to implement programs to develop their "finders, minders and grinders" with greater effectiveness (those employees with business development aptitudes, compared to those good at organizing engagements and complying with rules and regulations, as compared to those with talents for research and writing exceptional briefs.)

Trireme's^® SalesMax™ assessment was developed for professionals who represent complex products (such as business to business technology) or services (e.g., accounting, consulting, and legal services).  By utilizing this tool, you can discover who among your team has key sales personality traits, what degree of sales knowledge they have (and conversely, where they need training), as well as how each individual is best motivated (Recognition? Economically? A sense of "belonging?" Educational opportunities?) All of this objective data will allow you to position, manage and develop your talent effectively.

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Scenario #3:
Rapid Team Development Imperative

"I’ve recently been hired as a national product development manager for a business to business software company. I have very aggressive development goals and need to understand the talent on my team rather quickly. The pressure is on."

A professional in this scenario could benefit from a team development and coaching project, using our Proception2™ assessment. There are two components to these reports, one which reveals the individual’s key business motivators, and the second which explores their behavior style in your workplace.

Starting with Proception2, you and your team would come to recognize and appreciate each others’ distinct workstyles and how to best relate and communicate with those of different styles. Taking the team through the process also helps establish trust among the team, in addition to recasting people’s perceptions (in many cases, misperceptions) of one another.

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Scenario #4:
Avoiding the "Peter Principle"

"Our challenge is that we promoted an exceptional sales person into a sales management role, the result has been disastrous."

The most gifted athletes rarely make good coaches. It's critical to distinguish between the skill of performance and the skill of leading the performance, two entirely different aptitudes. The lesson learned in this scenario is that you should institute an effective succession planning and leadership evaluation process before you do both your employee, and the company, a disservice.

The fact that an organization is prepared to identify this problem directly is the first step in the right direction. Trireme's^® selection and development tools cover over 70 distinct professional roles and evaluate the competencies specific to each of those roles. This is particularly important when contemplating expanding a person’s duties beyond their demonstrated skills.

A fair and effective approach to your struggling sales manager might be to enroll him or her in our executive coaching program. First conducting an assessment of his or her innate characteristics as they relate to the new position requirements, we would then construct a high accountability professional development plan.

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Scenario #5:
Severe Organizational Stress

 "My company was supposed to have been acquired last year. The deal fell through and now we have a problem with low employee morale among the rank and file. The greater problem is that it’s affecting our bottom line in terms of plummeting productivity and increasing employee turnover. I need more than a "finger in the dyke" solution, please."

Whether low productivity and high employee turnover is caused by a thwarted takeover, declining sales or a merger having indeed taken place, the stability and development of your employees is critical.

First and foremost, employees need to be heard and understood. Furthermore, their opinion needs to be valued in reconstructing a path forward. Trireme^® can assist in this regard by utilizing our Perception 360™ organizational climate survey. The results of this survey will allow you to triage the deployment of your organizational development efforts.

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Scenario #6:
High-volume Customer Service Hiring

"My call center is anticipating a significant expansion. I would like to be more effective with hiring the right people. My main concern is that we establish a stronger customer-service oriented culture."

In this situation, it is wise not to rush forward by merely filling seats as this is a wonderful opportunity to promote efficiency and cost-effectiveness.

Instead, Trireme^® offers a variety of tools that are designed to measure important, work-related, personality characteristics in applicants for management, supervisory, and associate level jobs.
These tools can allow you to quickly and easily screen for characteristics associated with productivity, cooperative work behaviors, honesty, integrity, and service to others. They are extremely cost effective solutions that will help you "put the right people in the right seats" (to borrow a line from "Good to Great") reducing turn-over rates, helping to develop your best people, and improving culture and morale.

We also suggest that the implementation of an initial applicant screening tool called "E-net Hire™." Using this online automated tool will significantly reduce management’s time in sifting through applications that are not suitable for the position.

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Scenario #7:
Assessment Tools, a Question of Investment

"We are a rapidly expanding insurance company. Our CEO continues to recruit based on intuition and gut-feeling. I can’t tell you how many big hiring mistakes this has lead to. And we seem to carry those mistakes for quite some time before we finally do something about it. We’re on a limited budget, so assessment tools are out of the question."

With all due respect, it is a common error for CEOs in this situation to be penny-wise and pound-poor. Unfortunately, this is an extremely common problem and it has only been in recent years that the value and effectiveness of assessment tools has been introduced to the executive ranks.

Interestingly enough, one of the origins of current assessment tools was in the selection of bomber pilots in World War II. Military commanders investigated certain trends that they had casually observed in the personalities of pilots who survived bombing runs and those who did not. Objective investigation lead to the distinction between good technical skills and the essential personality characteristics required for battle survival.

Hiring mistakes add up to high costs. A Fortune 500 company has said it costs $255,000 to find, interview, hire, train and have little or no results from a key sales representative. These costs include estimates of lost business, a factor that most companies and organizations fail to quantify in their job turnover costs.

Simply put, our clients have been uniformly impressed with the reasonable price and high value of our selection assessment tools and consulting services.

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