{"id":2426,"date":"2015-04-20T13:34:21","date_gmt":"2015-04-20T13:34:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.discovery-graduates.com\/?p=2426"},"modified":"2015-04-20T13:34:21","modified_gmt":"2015-04-20T13:34:21","slug":"how-to-spot-great-future-leaders","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/discovery-adr.com\/us\/how-to-spot-great-future-leaders\/","title":{"rendered":"How to spot great future leaders"},"content":{"rendered":"

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By Sarah Evans<\/span><\/h3>\n

So you want to start building your future talent pipeline, but where do you start? Identifying your future leaders needs to begin at the earliest stage possible; when you\u2019re recruiting. In this post I will share with you some of the tools and techniques that we use to spot great potential quickly.<\/p>\n

My \u20183 B\u2019s\u2019 summarize the three main areas you need to explore when identifying your leaders of the future.<\/p>\n

Biographical<\/strong> \u2013 start by looking at past experience. This isn\u2019t a case of simply scanning resumes for the benchmark requirements, but looking a little deeper for specific examples where the individual has shown leadership abilities. Can you find examples of where the candidate has stepped up and put themselves in a position of responsibility? Have they been accountable for something and how did they manage this? If you decide to interview them, ask them to expand on these things that you have pinpointed. Prompt them to talk about how they dealt with the responsibility and how they solved problems and made decisions. The way they articulate this and the ways in which they tackled problems and made decisions will give you great insight into how they approach situations and how they are likely to perform in the workplace.<\/p>\n

Biological <\/strong>\u2013 some people are natural leaders. We all know someone is right at home when in a position of responsibility and it is crucial for hiring managers to identify the makeup of individuals who have those key leadership traits. You may be thinking \u2018how do I do that with just a resume and a short telephone conversation?\u2019 Discovery Graduates profiling tool of choice Parallax, is what we use to identify these core behaviors. This unique profiling tool seeks to uncover not just a person\u2019s behaviors, but how frequently they exhibit that behavior, revealing their most dominant ways of acting in situations. This is invaluable information that provides accurate insight into a candidate\u2019s likelihood of being a strong future leader. If you wish to find out more about Parallax, click here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Based on evidence<\/strong> \u2013 now it\u2019s time find out if the things you have learned about your graduates are actually true! From role playing to team activities and competency based interviews to the delivery of presentations, we use a combination of tools throughout the assessment process to provide concrete evidence of the graduates\u2019 skills and behaviors. Team activities will highlight natural leaders who are happy to put themselves forward on the spot and equally, giving presentations will exhibit leadership skills in other ways. Some will be comfortable managing a group; others will put themselves forward to lead a certain aspect of the activity. You then need to consider which you require for the role in question, or, what development plans you can put in place to ensure all leadership qualities are fully developed.<\/p>\n

Do remember that you are looking for future<\/em> leaders \u2013 they are not the finished article yet, but the more leadership skills they exhibit now, the more confident you can be that they will be motivated to progress into roles of responsibility later.<\/p>\n

So, once you have identified those that have this spark, how do you nurture the talent? Mentoring<\/strong> is a great way to support fresh, inexperienced talent and help graduates along their journey. Having someone to bounce ideas off and someone who can provide an experienced perspective on career success factors is invaluable for a fresh graduate.<\/p>\n

A development program<\/strong> is a must-do also. Discovery\u2019s graduate development program, The OPEN Program<\/a>, is accredited by the Institute of Leadership & Management and is a combination of experiential learning and desk-based coursework, which covers all elements of leading and managing in great detail. A program like this will accelerate your graduate\u2019s learning, equipping them with fundamental skills to blossom into a successful future leader.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re keen to get a graduate working on real life business projects<\/strong> to accompany their development and training, then we couldn\u2019t promote this more! For a graduate entering a business, they are likely to be on the first rungs of the ladder in the first few roles they have, so it is great to start considering how you can put a graduate in a position of responsibility early on. Get them flexing their leadership muscles by creating projects for them to run. Perhaps that CSR project that you\u2019ve wanted to execute for months but never quite got round to, or perhaps you\u2019re looking to a change a supplier \u2013 a perfect project for a junior person to manage.<\/p>\n

I hope I have given you some useful insight into the tools we use to spot great future leaders as well as how to best nurture them once you have them in tow. If you would like to have a chat with me about any of the above, or anything to do with graduate recruitment and development, please do get in touch.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Sarah Evans So you want to start building your future talent pipeline, but where do you start? Identifying your future leaders needs to begin at the earliest stage possible; when you\u2019re recruiting. In this post I will share with you some of the tools and techniques that we use to spot great potential quickly. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_breakdance_hide_in_design_set":false,"_breakdance_tags":"","footnotes":"","_members_access_role":[],"_members_access_error":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2426","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/discovery-adr.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2426","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/discovery-adr.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/discovery-adr.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discovery-adr.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discovery-adr.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2426"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/discovery-adr.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2426\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/discovery-adr.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2426"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discovery-adr.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2426"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discovery-adr.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2426"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}