SCANNER FREEMONT / Data Analyst
Freemont is responsible for the digital conversion of survey responses while adhering to strict quality standards set forth by its managers. Freemont began its career at TruScore in 1996 as a Data Analyst and quickly became pivotal to TruScore's success. As the years passed, Freemont has slowly matured into part-time Data Analyst while also holding many positions in the work environment including On The Floor, On The Empty Desk, and Hold The Door (AKA Hodor).
RON SACCHI / Master Coach
A former Operations Manager in the High Tech Industry, Ron Sacchi brings decades of leadership and management experience to the organizational development and the executive coaching arena. An energetic thought-leader with a track record of success in all areas of Human Capital development, he has consulted and coached managers in start-ups, joint-ventures, high tech, pharmaceuticals, and media. Because of his business acumen and creative approaches to behavioral change, he is respected in the HR community specifically for the ability to direct, motivate, influence and inspire leaders to improve performance.
Holding an MBA from Saint Mary’s College, Mr. Sacchi is also licensed in various management, leadership and psychological profiling tools.
CARLANN FERGUSSON / Master Coach
Carlann inspires leaders to reconnect to their individual purpose and lead with contagious energy. She ensures leaders gain deep self-awareness and eliminate self-sabotaging behaviors. Her guidance is based on coaching, training and selecting hundreds of executives across diverse companies as well as her own journey into the executive ranks.
Carlann is the author of the highly acclaimed book The Insightful Leader: Find Your Superpowers, Crush Limiting Beliefs and Abolish Self-Sabotaging Behaviors (Praeger, June 2018). She holds a master’s degree in Industrial-Organizational Psychology. Her thirty years of experience include leadership roles in Fortune 500s, the private sector, and the U.S. Government. Carlann has been a featured guest on ABC News Radio, Wharton Business Radio and has been cited in CBS MoneyWatch, International Business Times, Newsday and Workday.
DR CHUCH MELTZER / Master Coach
Dr. Chuck Meltzer is a Master Coach and President of the SynTECGroup, an organizational development consulting firm. As an executive coach, he draws on his training at a doctoral level in psychology, direct senior management experience and management consulting with a wide cross section of industries. He has developed an extensive series of strategies to assist leaders in creating organizational wide and personal change. Dr. Meltzer has a decade of direct senior management experience and 20 years’ experience functioning within his consulting and coaching practice. His coaching approach is solution focused and time framed. Based on determined goals, a personally customized approach to the process has enabled his clients to realize sustainable change in a manner that allows them to enhance their effectiveness and success as leaders within their organization.
Dr. Meltzer is certified and a master trainer in several coaching assessment tools that he employs within his practice.
ERIN HIRSCHLAND / Master Coach
Erin is an organization development expert with nearly two decades experience serving organizations of all sizes across industries on a broad range of issues. Working with leadership teams, she helps articulate an actionable vision and corresponding values, connecting these to organizational strategy, execution and results. Her tools of choice include senior team retreats, one-on-one executive coaching and proven survey and related instruments.
Erin’s additional expertise includes designing employee selection systems, developing performance management tools that increase performance across the organization over time and employee and customer experience metrics. An effective facilitator and coach, Erin works with leaders and their teams to build trust, commitment and results.
She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Psychology from the University of California, Santa Barbara and a Master of Arts degree in Industrial/Organizational Psychology from the University of Colorado.
SONYA D HAMILTON / Senior Assessment Consultant
Sonya is a Senior Assessment Consultant at TruScore with over 24 years of experience designing and delivering 360 feedback solutions and providing 360-based coaching, training and interpretation.
Sonya has extensive experience working with Managers and Leaders, guiding them through the feedback and development journey and providing insights and direction to help maximize their impact within the organization. Sonya’s areas of expertise include 360-based coaching, 360 data analysis and interpretation, Train-the-Trainer certifications, facilitation, survey & questionnaire design, and the design and delivery of assessment programs.
Sonya has a Bachelor’s degree in psychology and a Master’s of Science degree in Industrial & Organization Psychology from Springfield College with a specialty in Counseling and Psychological Services. She is a Master Trainer for TruScore and the Clark Wilson Task Cycle surveys receiving a Certificate of Achievement in “How to Train a Trainer”. In addition, Sonya is certified to administer a variety of other psychometric instruments including employee engagement and organizational instruments as well as the line of Hogan Personality Assessments.
KAYLEY MOTZ / Assessment Advisor
Kayley draws on her extensive customer service background to provide clients with prompt, quality support. In her role as Assessment Advisor, Kayley works to ensure clients’ needs are being met. She assists in project set up and management, as well as processing and quality checking feedback reports. Kayley also aids in the execution of the day-to-day responsibilities of the production team, such as coaching session scheduling and tech support.
CRYSTAL HUGHES / Assessment Advisor
Crystal leverages her extensive background in Industrial-Organizational (I-O) psychology as she manages the day-to-day operational and tactical aspects of multiple and large scale projects for TruScore.
Crystal assists clients with setting up and managing feedback projects, and serves as the point of contact throughout the entire process. She quality checks feedback reports, and provides tech support when needed.
ELLIE SOLOMON / Assessment Advisor
Ellie manages project implementation for the entire 360 assessment feedback process and ensures that each client’s unique needs are met on time and in an efficient manner. Ellie consults with clients who use TruScore’s off-the-shelf Task Cycle® instruments as well as providing hosting solutions for clients using their own survey content, including custom processes and reports. She helps clients navigate through the TruScore® survey hosting software, having literally written the handbook that several clients are using.
She coordinates and implements all translation efforts, including soliciting bids, managing timelines, providing files to the translation companies, implementing translations for the web pages, and testing.
ULLA WESTERMANN / Software Engineer
Ulla uses her years of experience as a software engineer to maintain and add new features to TruScore's applications. She also helps with customizing feedback reports based on client needs.
HANK CURTIS / Business Development Manager
Hank manages and assists in the analyzing, planning, research, and development of TruScore’s objectives and strategic plans in order to achieve business opportunities, growth, and financial profitability.
Hank drives the expansion of TruScore’s direct sales, establishes relationships with TruScore’s clients, identifies clients, and keeps up-to-date on industry trends and client developments.
TAYLOR BRANTON / Bookkeeper
Taylor is responsible for managing payroll and employee fringe benefits programs, in addition to organizing company gatherings and outings. Taylor oversees day to day accounting needs as it relates to client invoicing, accounts payable, and general compliance requirements. She also has a hand in month, quarter, and year end reports and works closely with the CEO and CTO to furnish details necessary to make accurate business projections and decisions.
KURT BLAZEK / Design Director
Kurt uses a unique blend of strategic thinking with dynamic executions to create TruScore’s visual and interactive design. He is responsible for creating, evolving, and sustaining the company’s brand to internal and external stakeholders through multiple mediums. He oversees all of TruScore’s digital strategies, along with the implementation of social media tools and techniques.
Kurt leverages TruScore’s marketing and messaging information to identify, evaluate, and apply methods to maximize the effectiveness of the search campaigns across all of the major search engines. He tracks and measures the ROI of search engine rankings, direct print, and marketing websites.
JOSH SHEETS / Chief Operations Officer
Josh is responsible for all day-to-day aspects of managing the operations and various functional areas including business development, sales and marketing, client delivery, vendor relations, human resources, and IT.
Josh helps to ensure outstanding customer service, and the administration of long-term and day-to-day business processes that complement the delivery of high quality, innovative customer-focused survey tools, assessments and hosted survey offerings.
TOM KUHNE / Managing Partner and CTO
Tom joined TruScore in 1995 and has served in a number of roles, including Data Analyst, IS Manager, and VP & CIO. In his current role as Managing Partner and CTO, Tom is the driving force behind TruScore's technology vision for the present and the future. He manages all aspects of TruScore’s information systems, ensuring all systems meet the highest functionality and security standards.
Tom enjoys working hand in hand with clients and partners to make sure TruScore® delivers the technology and advancement that has become expected of it as a leader in the online assessment marketplace.
DEREK MURPHY / Chief Executive Officer
Derek joined TruScore in 1996 and has served in a number of roles, including Data Analyst, Operations Manager, and President & COO. In his current role as CEO, he is responsible for planning and implementing the strategic direction of the company. In addition, Derek is involved in product development and overseeing the day-to-day business operations for TruScore.
TruScore founder Dr. Daniel Booth, a pioneer in the field of assessment of leadership and management skills, served as a mentor to Derek for more than a decade. During this time, Derek became certified on TruScore’s full line of management and leadership assessments. He currently uses these skills to lead content debriefings with customers and partners on a regular basis.
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Bridging the Soft Skills Gap: How to Teach the Missing Basics to Today’s Young Talent, by Bruce Tulgan. 2015. NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Whenever I talk to colleagues about their work situations, most of those who are over 40 complain about young workers. In the past few weeks I’ve heard: “they often don’t show up for work and I have to work a double shift”, “they think they deserve a better work environment than people who’ve been here longer”, and “they don’t have any social skills.”
The complaints are so universal that Bruce Tulgan has written a book focusing on how to bring young workers up to speed with “soft skills”. Hard skills are the technical skills required to do the job, and he believes these are generally strong in young workers. But the soft skills are often sorely lacking. Tulgan describes soft skills as those involving professionalism, critical thinking, and followership. He asserts that people are hired because of their hard skills, but are fired due to their lack of soft skills.
Tulgan has been doing research on generational shifts in workplace skills since 1993. “Generation Z” (born between 1990 and 1999) are the newest employees to enter the workplace, and his data point to a major difference between these young people and older workers in terms of soft skills.
Trends such as globalization, technological advances, institutional insecurity, the information environment, and an increase in diversity have contributed to the soft skills gap. In addition, two other trends have significantly impacted on the decline in soft skills. The first Tulgan calls “helicopter parenting on steroids”. “Gen Zers have been insulated and scheduled and supervised and supported to a degree that no children or young adults have ever been before.” As a result, relationship boundaries with authority figures are rather blurry for Gen Zers. They expect authority figures to set them up for success, be of service to them, and treat them as customers. They are often startled when authority figures see it differently.
Second, Gen Zers have been told their entire lives that “all styles are equally valid,” so they are less inclined to try to fit in at work and more inclined to try to make the work environment fit in with them. Soft skills are mostly about fitting in, but Tulgan sees Gen Zers as the ultimate non-conformists. They struggle with the reality that there cannot be a functional workplace where everybody makes his or her own rules of conduct.
Of course, not every Gen Zer has poor soft skills. Many young people excel at professionalism, critical thinking, and followership. Unfortunately, there simply aren’t enough of them to fill all the entry-level jobs.
Tulgan discusses how to hire for soft skills as well as how to train people in them. It is important to build soft skills into the basic job requirements. When hiring, look for red flags, such as a prospective hire who arrives late for the interview. Don’t hire this person, regardless of his hard skills. In addition, consider previewing the job for prospective employees, either through job shadowing or showing videos of workers doing the actual job. That way the new hire won’t be surprised at having to do the boring, difficult parts of the job in addition to the exciting and challenging parts.
Most of the book goes into great detail about exactly how to provide training to Gen Zers. This requires that managers become teachers and drill down into the missing basic skills. Tulgan gives readers explicit instructions about how to teach these missing skills. For example, he discusses five components of professionalism: self-evaluation, personal responsibility, positive attitude, good work habits, and people skills. For each component, he talks about the gap between the manager and the Gen Zer; the bridge, or what the manager needs to remember; a script for exactly what to say when presenting the skill; and finally, he includes specific lesson plans.
When teaching personal responsibility, for example, the manager might complain about the Gen Zer: “They are too quick to make excuses for themselves, blame others, and complain about external influences, obstacles, and constraints”. The Gen Zer might respond: “In my entry-level position, I often feel powerless in the face of so many factors outside my control”. The learning objective is to teach employees how to take greater personal responsibility by learning to stay focused on concrete actions within their control. Four detailed lesson plans include such objectives as defining “personal responsibility” and considering small things that are within the person’s control when facing a typical work problem.
After reading this book I understand the differing points of view more thoroughly than I did when just listening to complaints. This problem will not just go away, I fear, as young people mature. They need to be taught these skills, just as they are taught hard skills. I’m tempted to carry copies of this book around with me and hand them out to friends and colleagues who complain about the Gen Zers in their lives. Solving the soft skills gap can be done, but it requires time, energy, and thought. This book will help enormously.
