fbpx
Home > Blog

Challenging our own biases

Amanda Krulis, Managing Consultant

If, like me, you enjoy sinking your teeth into reality TV, then you’ve been devotedly watching the new series of Love Island. I’m obsessed and can’t wait for my daily fix when I get home at night.

Surely I’m not alone in getting enjoyment out of analysing and unpacking the personalities or projected personalities of the contestants? In fact, I can see it in the contestants themselves as they try to understand each other! I don’t want to sound overly critical, but they tend to revert to classic stereotypes and descriptions like “Laura is like a really cool surfer type”. I think we can all agreed that this isn’t the most accurate form of personality profiling!

Continue reading

Onboarding new employees. Learn from my mistakes.

This year I had the pleasure of hiring a new graduate consultant at Saville. With just over a year of management experience, this was a fairly daunting task.

I haven’t managed that many people before and I didn’t have that much experience onboarding people. I basically recounted the experiences I’d personally had (some of which were non-existent) and cherry-picked the best parts. On reflection, I didn’t think about the fact that these experiences were very traditional and administrative focused.

Continue reading

Expectations vs. Reality – My Onboarding Experience

As a new graduate, I can’t emphasise enough the importance of onboarding and how, as an employer, it should be at the front of your mind. It’s so much more than just going through the motions, giving your new employee a computer (installing all of the countless required updates), the Wi-Fi password and an office tour. There is nothing worse than having the best candidate experience leading up to the job offer, only to be let down by a manager who doesn’t know anything about you, having arbitrary goals being forced upon you without any consideration and a team who doesn’t know where you fit in.

Luckily for me, this wasn’t my experience! Some of my classmates weren’t so fortunate.

Continue reading

A Game of Roles

We often assume people can just come together and work as an effective, collective team. In reality, this is hardly ever the case! Understanding individual team members and their purpose or function within a team is paramount for a successful, cohesive and effective team. Our Work Roles Report does this and more! The report identifies an individual’s work style preferences based on the way they interact with others and their approach to work. These preferences are represented by 8 different Work Roles, each with their own strengths and weakness.

So, what are the work roles?

  1. Analysts use their intellect and expertise to break down and evaluate information. They seek the right answers.
  2. Innovators take a creative approach to problem-solving and often develop long term strategies.
  3. Relators actively communicate with others and can help improve social interaction.
  4. Assertors readily take control of situations and coordinate people well. They prefer to be the leader.
  5. Optimists tend to be resilient and can stay calm under pressure. They help keep morale high.
  6. Supporters attend to the needs of others and prefer a team-oriented approach.
  7. Finishers focus on getting things completed to a high standard and pay attention to detail. They tend to be meticulous and check things thoroughly.
  8. Strivers push hard to achieve ambitious results. They are often highly enterprising and competitive.

With the wildly successful HBO Series Game of Thrones now complete… our Monday’s will never be the same and we’re already in withdrawal. So, to celebrate the end of an era, we’ve analysed some of Daenerys’ squad using our Work Roles framework and identified their Primary and Secondary Work Roles and the way these unique interactions play out.

Check it out below and let us know if you agree, or what role you would give them instead!

Warning: this post contains spoilers!

Continue reading

Saville Assessment at the 2018 AAGE Conference

AAGE Pearls of Wisdom

We’re excited for the upcoming 2018 AAGE Graduate Recruitment and Development Conference!

Being held this year in the Melbourne Crown Conference Centre on the 31st October – 2nd November, the event is sure to be a success.

This year’s theme is “Pearls of Wisdom – Reflecting on the past for a changing future“. That’s why in our session “Let’s Workshop Diversity”, we will reflect on our combined past experiences and expertise to help attendees prepare and prioritise for a changing future.

Continue reading

Recruit your next employee fairly and objectively

recruit on talent not likability

A struggle faced by many managers responsible for hiring new employees is to recruit fairly and objectively to allow all applicants an equal chance. While the recruitment and selection effort begins with the best intentions, personal bias can inadvertently find its way into the decision-making process. This can result in a situation that we as consultants see quite often; “We really like the candidate though, shouldn’t we just give them a chance?”

Continue reading