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From the Desk of Brad Smart: How a CEO Successfully Navigated Through Incredibly Tough Mental Health Challenges

Topgrading supporter and Scaling Up coach, Kevin Lawrence, sent us an interview he did with a CEO who, with pandemic challenges mounting, discussed how he was able to transition through the lowest of mental health lows successfully. 

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From the Desk of Brad Smart: Are Your Interviews as Revealing as Speed Dates?

If you’re new to Topgrading, this blog will give you a hint that will make all of your hiring interviews the most revealing and honest of your career. Topgrading’s “secret” takes seconds to use and you’ll immediately know that the interviewee is being real, authentic and is not ‘BS’ing you.’ It’s like playing the roulette wheel and knowing in advance if the ball will land on red, black, or green.

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From the Desk of Brad Smart: Where Your Talent Methods Rank (Take the Quiz)

As the year progresses, it’s time to assess what shape you are in with the #1 factor that will account for how successful you’ll be … your talent!

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From the Desk of Brad Smart: You Cannot Believe Resumes

Are you mis-hiring people because they “fooled you?” Of course you have. Years ago we all thought that social media profiles (Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.) would force people to NOT exaggerate their successes and hide failures when job hunting. Guess that didn’t work! We all know now that exaggerations are extreme. As you’ve read, people become anxious and depressed when they “see” that their life is not as perfect as everyone else’s.

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From the Desk of Brad Smart: How To Recruit A Players When They Are Hard to Find

You want to hire high performers, A Players, right? But what can you do if: Seven million Americans capable of working are choosing not to work, Help Wanted signs everywhere, Quiet Quitting is almost an epidemic, Studies show that most workers don’t like their job, and Chances are you raised pay to stop employees from […]

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From the Desk of Brad Smart: How HR Can Sell Ideas to CEOs

In a recent blog, we addressed the reality that Human Resources is usually the lowest paid, under-respected function that reports to CEOs, and suggested that improving Quality of Hire is the fastest path toward accelerating a career in HR. In this blog I share my personal conclusions about how to best “sell” CEOs on anything […]

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From the Desk of Brad Smart: For HR to Earn More CEO Respect, Here’s a Proven Method

This blog features the #1 most important step HR managers can take to increase the respect of their CEO. If you’re in HR, you know all too well that HR, for decades, has been widely perceived to be the least respected business function. It does not have to be that way. Before continuing, let me […]

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From the Desk of Brad Smart: How to Get The Best Service From Recruiters When Candidates Are Scarce

Over the decades, clients have dramatically improved the service they get from recruiters. You can too, whether you use: Contingency recruiters (low level jobs, you pay only if you hire someone they present), Executive search firms (executive level, you pay up to 30% of first year pay, and if you don’t hire someone they present, […]

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From the Desk of Brad Smart: How to Recruit When “Help Wanted” Signs Are Everywhere

Hiring talent remains the number one concern of CEOs in the most recent (2021, just before the pandemic) Conference Board Annual Survey; it’s also the top concern of the entire executive suite. PwC’s 2017 CEO survey reports that chief executives view the unavailability of talent and skills as the biggest threat to their business.  – Harvard Business Review  Worker […]

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From the Desk of Brad Smart: Tips on How to Interview and Hire Smarter

Our research, spanning decades, shows that only 25% of an organization’s hires are high performers, A Players. With that being the unfortunate reality for most companies and managers, I devoted my career to bolstering the amount of high performers that our clients hired. One of Topgrading’s most important methods, the Topgrading Interview, is paramount in […]

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