Testimonials

I have been following your process for my 3 open reqs. Filled out Success Profiles sheets for all three - that was NOT hard at all and made me really focus on what I was looking for. Very good exercise, in fact I enjoyed doing it since I realized that this was the basis for not only the interview process but for the job performance once I have my candidates on board.

Then for my first phone interview last night with a candidate from Japan, I wrote about 50 questions ahead of time, and identified what behavior or Experience I was looking for by each group of questions.

Although the candidate looked pretty good on paper, I realized after I was done with the interview that he was missing any real Sales Management experience, and had no substantive Channel experience.

He had the other things I was looking for, but got two (-) on my Evaluation Matrix. I like your process since it takes away the "emotional" decision - I had the data to back up my "gut".

Thank you for sharing this extraordinary process - you have made my job MUCH easier.

You are a marvelous thinker. I read your monthly newsletters and they help me a lot.

Thanks for the great seminar! Your pointers on how to build and refine interview questions were very helpful. The discussion of using strategic planning to define hiring needs was also highly informative. We enjoyed the seminar thoroughly.

Thanks again!

A quick note to personally thank you for sharing your wisdom regarding “Selecting Winners” at the CA management conference last week.

I found the content and presentation to be an eye-opener and it will have a definite impact on the way I go about hiring and managing performance of sales people going forward (regardless of it being mandated by CA).

I look forward to meeting you at future training sessions.

Thanks again for the time you spent with me at the HDI Conference. It was one of my highlights from the conference.

I took one of your pre-conference sessions at Washington a number of years ago just after becoming a Manager. At the time I didn't have a clue what I needed to do as a manager and took your session as a way to learn more about interviewing. I love your techniques and have used your information ever since then. Again, thank you for helping me do my job better.

The training we received from you on Selecting Winners has carried over to more discipline in developing 30, 60, 90 day focused goals for employees as well as a more clearer understanding of the traits required for success in the position to be filled. With your system of scripted questions and the key performance traits we are hiring for, it is virtually impossible for a candidate to bluff his/her way thru the interview process. We really understand the individual and we get a much clearer picture of the skill set and the business fit we are hiring for. Just need to be prepared to invest 2 hours ahead of time for each interview...definitely worth the price of admission.

Our ability to minimize hiring errors has greatly been advanced by our association with Barry Shamis and Selecting Winners. Our interviewing techniques have been refined to emphasize the focusing on specifics and documentation rather than listening or giving opinions or open ended questions. Our employees tell us that Storis is more like a family than a place of employment with our average tenure of over 5 years in a 15 year company we continue to attract top notch personnel.

I've become a rather obnoxious advocate of Selecting Winners! A few months ago, I was selected to become the manager for my group of pre-sales technical folks. One small problem. There wasn't a group - and I had to go find candidates, recruit them, and turn them into a team. I don't know what you think, but that really didn't seem like "new manager" fodder!

Based on Selecting Winners, I focused my recruiting on one thing: "What did you do and how did you do it?". It was really amazing to me. I was able to determine which candidates really didn't have any technical experience.

There are people who so want to be in high tech, they'll wordsmith claims of technical proficiency in their resumes. But, when I ask them "Explain how you integrated with PeopleSoft?" and start drilling down, you learn pretty quickly they just wrote reports and coordinated with the HR types.

That doesn't mean I automatically exclude people, either. One of the other messages from Selecting Winners is to figure out how to determine whether someone, regardless of experience, will be successful in this position. As a result of this, I interviewed an aeronautical engineer with no computer science training or pre-sales experience. He demonstrated very strong team skills, an excellent technical mind and a voracious appetite for learning. He's also fiercely competitive - all of which he revealed during the interviews. How's he doing? Six months on board and I've had two other managers try to recruit him away from me! He recently referred a friend of his - and she's now a member of our team as well. Identical background and work experience, too!

I now have my full team put together with additional candidates in the pipeline. My brand new team is already showing its worth and we are engaging everyone on the team in a mentoring role to help each other. My team has been praised by one of our Vice Presidents for having the best team spirit of any team in our region.

Thanks for helping me select these winners!