The Executive Suite

Warren Rutherford is a name worth mentioning in the space of talent management. He is a Certified Innermetrix Consultant, a Fifth level coach, a Master Coach, and a member of the International Coaching Federation. Over the years, he has been executing his talent recruitment practices based on the Innermetrix ADVanced Insights Profile®, which gives an edge over other cookie-cutter approaches for candidate recruitments. This assessment system builds profiles that are more than basic personality profiles, putting up a comprehensive combination of three world-class profiles—the Attribute Index, the Values Index, and the DISC Index. The Attribute Index looks into how a person thinks and makes decisions; the Values Index measures the motivational style and drivers of individuals, and the DISC Index analyzes an individual’s preferred behavioral style. Together these indices answer the WHAT, WHY, and HOW of an individual, such as what natural talents does the individual have, why they are motivated to use those talents, and how they prefer to use their talents. The proficiency of these indices has been the key to Rutherford’s successful recruitment programs, aiding organizations to improve their hiring processes. He found that the recruitment process is significantly enhanced by systematically assessing a candidate’s thinking patterns, motivators, and preferred behaviors to identify their person-future fit for a position.

Throughout Rutherford’s professional experience, he has seen that turnover in hiring drives clients to his door as a recruiter to help them identify the correct individuals to fill particular positions. These organizations invest countless hours and costs to hire a new employee and onboard and train them until they can be productive in their new role. These efforts become futile if there are poor hiring decisions, which can result in new employees either resigning or being terminated due to their inability to effectively perform position requirements, thereby negatively impacting retention rates and the organization’s ROI. Similar issues can crop up due to ineffective promotional practices that increase promotional turnover.

Addressing these challenges, Rutherford directed his talent and expertise to build the Talent Assessment System using the Innermetrix ADVanced Insights Profile®. He integrated this assessment system into the recruitment process at The Executive Suite, enhancing its success in identifying the best person-future fit for their clients. He now extends this talent assessment system to their clients, aiding them to assess candidate’s talents, developing benchmarking position profiles, in order to enhance hiring, promotional, and successional planning decisions while improving retention rates and employee performance. With the increasing intervention of AI in hiring processes today, such as electronic resume screenings and candidate questionnaire monitoring from machine-aided assessments, he believes it becomes more important for assessments developed by organizational teams to influence the hiring process.

The key component lies with delivering the program and process for talent assessment by developing a benchmark profile for open positions that clients are recruiting for or promoting into. They engage in discussions with their clients to outline company and position objectives, develop benchmark position profiles with the involvement of existing employees, and assess the candidates against those profiles in order to evaluate if the candidates are a good fit for the job position and functions.

My talent assessment system is not a SaaS offering like other talent management systems, but a more focused and data-driven system that systematically assesses a candidate’s thinking, motivators, and behavior patterns, identifying their person future-fit for a position

In this context, Rutherford mentions that his clients often fall short of understanding how these assessment systems work. To give them a better understanding, The Executive Suite trains their clients to use these assessment tools, interpret the assessments, and develop the profiles, making them capable of utilizing the systems to the fullest and reducing their reliance on talent managers and recruiters. Additionally, clients are provided ongoing monthly support to ensure efficient use of the talent assessment system.

The Executive Suite’s Talent Assessment System is more than a set of software assisting in recruitment processes. Instead, it serves as a holistic solution that leverages various psychometric assessment tools and involves the clients’ teams to outline the requirements crucial to fit the job role as well as match the cultural environment of the organization. “My talent assessment system is not a SaaS offering like other talent management systems, but a more focused and data-driven system that systematically assesses a candidate’s thinking, motivators, and behavior patterns, identifying their person future-fit for a position,” mentions Rutherford, Owner of The Executive Suite.

Several customer segments they service include the banking, medical and insurance sectors. These sectors engage in a large number of hiring, often more than the net requirement, primarily because they fail to identify the suitable candidates who would aptly fit the position and can be retained. “For example, if an insurance company requires 50 appraisers, they might hire 60 because in a period of six to twelve months 10 of them might resign. So they hire more to meet their requirement mark,” says Rutherford. This makes The Executive Suite attractive as they can help create benchmark position profiles and then assess candidate matches to those profiles, helping organizations be more strategic in candidate selection and retention.

Highlighting system’s efficaciousness, Rutherford shared the case study of a client who desired a culture fit for candidates applying to positions within the organization. They developed a DISC + assessment profile (DISC Index + Values Index) that reflected a defined set of characteristics as developed by the client’s cultural teams so that the client could match candidates to that cultural profile.

One salient feature of the Executive Suite that has proved to be an added advantage during COVID-19 is its remote talent assessment system services. As clients prefer virtual meetings more today, instead of the onsite ones, they have been efficient in delivering these services virtually over a wide range of preferred online video platforms.

The Executive Suite has helped to steer organizations to master the art of talent assessment, unlocking the secret of successful candidate identification. For further expansion, Rutherford is looking forward to training other associates to deliver these assessment services to clients. Altogether, organizations can reach out to Rutherford and The Executive Suite to drive towards smart hiring and identifying the key attributes required to enhance an organization’s retention rates, ROI, and overall productivity.