A discussion I had with a managing director (Stuart Kellock) of Label Apeel, a boutique label printing company, began the process which saw them switching from using Thomas International psychometric tool to using MindSonar as their standard psychological profiling tool last month.
The reason the company Label Apeel decided to move from Thomas international was that they have now seen the benefits of how granular, flexible and accurate this tool is in looking at people’s thinking styles and values base.
Stuart and I started talking about the issues that his company was facing because he had recently lost an employee in a post.
Using the MindSonar profile and meta-programme language, I asked him some questions about what was important to him about that role and, between us, we built up a profile of exactly what he needed from a person in that position. We broke down the required values base, how they think and thus, how they behave.
Thinking style profile
We moved away from a personality profile into a thinking styles profile. From there, we progressed and started looking at a number of different positions within his organisation and built profiles based on the current experts who were in those roles.
We have now reviewed and profiled the operations director, sales managers and account managers. This has allowed the company to recruit to specific roles as well as training roles, so the company has a clear line of succession moving forward.
It has been a very interesting process and, as usual, it really is very satisfying when MindSonar can help a company improve and lay strong foundations as a result of the tool’s testing capabilities.
So where to next?
Build templates
The Label Apeel now has a desire to profile all key positions so they can build templates of thinking style for those roles for future use.
In refining the recruitment process, we reviewed and developed a workflow to enable timely advertising, recruitment and profiling in this fast-paced, competitive market.
The bonus of using MindSonar Psychological measurement compared to other psychometrics assessments in recruitment is that it can give the employer and line managers a communication template. This enables the line manager to understand and communicate with the employee using the employees activating language and thus build deep rapport.
A word from the client-Stuart Kellock MD
Label Apeel is the UK’s leading quality label printer. To achieve these standards we have to employ the very best people. Having engaged with different types of personality modelling before we were looking for something that would allow us to match the skills of the role to the thinking styles of applicants.
Working with Ian and the MindSonar product has been a pleasure- but don’t expect an easy ride. This tool is all about you doing the hard miles up front rather than after you have employed the wrong person. Ian probed us and pushed us to truly define the role and the skills required for the post. We did a lot of examining and thinking before we understood the requirements of the role. To my mind, this was such a worthwhile exercise to create a template of the style we wanted, so when we went into the selection process, we were focused and thoughtful which is probably a 100 miles from where we have been in the past.
The tool is clear, understandable and extremely useful. It allowed us to make very fine decisions between different candidates or in one case identify that actually none of the candidates were suitable. The real power behind the tool though is Ian himself, a tough taskmaster who brooks no waffle or prevarication. Ian has guided us through the implementation and the using of MindSonar, and I believe saved us 10’s if not 100’s of thousands of pounds in wasted time and energy, employing unsuitable people for the wrong roles.
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