Executive Search and Talent Management Experts

Meet the heart of Smart Work | Network, Inc. These are the people who get people. Experts at consulting senior management on the secrets of optimizing employee performance no matter what industry you are in.    

JANE ALLEN  CEO / Founder / Chief People 'Whisperer'

A ‘serial entrepreneur,' Jane first learned about the importance of using science in the selection process via hiring mistakes she made during the start-up of the Smart Work Network 10 years ago. She grew up on a farm ‘just south of the airport' in Georgia and found her way to Cornell University where she worked with astronomers, Carl Sagan and Frank Drake when they sent the first message into outer space by way of the Arecibo Telescope. Jane has spent 30+ successful years working with CEOs and senior managers in almost all industries ranging from The Ritz Carlton Hotels to Coca Cola Company, Michelin Tire Corporation to Rhythmlink International. She has witnessed first hand the inherent traits that prevent people from being optimum performers naturally. She knows, now, hiring managers and company leaders can select better team members with data she's learned. It's the hidden diversity that costs. Jane's often called a People Whisperer because she has an uncanny way of "hearing" telling information that most people disregard. She's found the way to objectively measure what she intuitively hears so any manager can prevent these costs.

DOUGLAS GARNER,   Partner / Employee Selection / Integrated Talent Management

A "recovering" Fortune 50 Human Resources manager (SPHR), Doug realized that the ‘conventional HR wisdom' of the past did not guarantee the right fit in executive selection. He's learned that selecting and developing people is a highly complex proposition and by looking at only two dimensions, such as the titles and previous job experience on a resume, companies often miss the best candidates. By expanding the audience of talent available through broader sourcing and measuring those inherent characteristics that predict superior performance and retention for a particular employer, companies can build high performing cultures much like the pit crews in a high performance race team in NASCAR or a Dallas Mavericks in the NBA or a Boston Bruins in the NHL. Small companies will be the "Jobs Generator" for the next 50 years in the US. Doug knows that Smart Work represents cost effective technology that will assure those businesses choose the right employees who won't cost them anything (ie. pay for themselves). In his role with the company Doug is responsible for oversight and quality management of all of Smart Work's operations.
 

Stephen Giordano, Managing Partner / Organizational Development / Executive Coaching

Stephen is a Managing Partner of Smart Work | Network, Inc. and President of The Day One Group, a corporate learning and development resource.  He leads over 100 workshops a year on sales training, management and communication skills, presentation skills and the dynamics of interpersonal skills in management and leadership development. Stephen is certified in Social Styles, DiSC, the Harrison and Smart Work assessments.

As Managing Partner of Smart Work, Stephen coordinates implementation of all client talent development strategies. In this role, he is responsible for the increasingly important task of managing relationships and projects with all of Smart Work's "post- hire" talent management clients, those clients dealing with talent management issues from the stages of on-boarding to succession planning. Work in this area has traditionally referred to the stages as New Employee Orientation, including getting a new employee to full productivity as quickly as possible, to a variety of training and development activities for new and changing employee roles up through and including the various stages of organizational leadership succession planning.

Prior to his alliance with Smart Work | Network, Stephen  worked seven years as a Managing Director of a leadership and organizational development consulting firm in Princeton, New Jersey. This was where he refined his "tool kit" and worked with a Who's Who list of clients from financial services to household names in healthcare and pharmaceuticals.  He has an impressive history of organizational development consulting including training curriculum design, course materials development and delivery. He was also responsible for overseeing the firm's network of executive coaches.

Prior to joining that firm, Stephen spent 10 years working in higher education administration. During that time he hired, managed, trained, encouraged and developed staff and faculty members.

Stephen earned his Bachelor's Degree in English from Georgetown University and his Masters of Professional Studies in Education from Manhattanville College. He lives in Eastchester, New York with his wife, Libby and their four sons.

If you need a burst of expert analysis, creative advice or coaching on your timeline -- Carolyn can help you think, plan and act to improve your recruiting/retention results or team performance.  An innovative and engaging professional, she coaches business clients who want to take the guesswork out of selecting and developing high performers, as well as  individuals who are in career transition. As a trusted expert in her field, she has a network developed during 25 years of collaborating with leaders and teams at U.S. and Canadian firms, law schools and universities.  Prior to launching Carolyn Wehmann Consulting in New York City, she worked for a 250-lawyer firm where she redesigned their lawyer recruitment, retention and outplacement programs and managed a 5-person team. She uses Self Management Group's predictive assessments to coach senior managers, teams and individuals in a variety of settings. Carolyn conducts Senior Recruitment Roundtables, Managing Lawyer Recruitment seminars and speaks for NALP, the ALA and the ABA. In addition to articles, she has written 8 seminar handbooks and co-edited Your New Lawyer: The Legal Employer's Complete Guide to Recruitment, Development and Manage­ment for the ABA.  Carolyn is a Connecticut Yankee and Smith College graduate who thrives on helping people target their talent and build high-performing teams.  She and her family have lived in Greenwood, SC since 1996.

SCOTT CRANDALL, Chief Learning Officer / Sales Selection Consultant / Career Coaching

A 1971 graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point, Scott turned in his captain's commission after 5 years (and 20 days, 3 hours and 11 minutes!) for a start in Corporate America.  Or maybe it was Corporate France, as he joined Michelin Tire Corporation as a territory sales representative (for 2 years), served as regional sales manager (8+ years), director of sales (5 years), training operations manager (2 years), field sales operations manager (6 years) and divisional training & development manager (5+ years). 

Scott finished his 34 year career with a six year stint as an internal consultant with one of Michelin's subsidiaries (TCI), where he reformed their service culture, managed recruiting and career development, ran new manager training, and led the two-year reorganization project of the commercial sales force.  In October of 2010, Scott started a new business (Trinity-Lincoln Consulting), which specializes in leadership (seminars & coaching), training (of almost any kind), and traditional project consulting.

Along the way Scott has written two novels and a book on leadership (It's Not About You); led numerous highly performing teams; established a world class training curriculum; built a network of knowledgeable, influential allies; developed over forty separate live training courses and in excess of sixty online courses; and facilitated over a hundred-fifty seminars on everything from leadership, to selling, decision making, management, communications, hiring, planning and negotiations. 

Scott believes that hiring, developing and retaining the right people - as difficult as these actions appear to be - are absolutely synonymous with, and essential to, success.  And getting this right, assuming an organization has defined what they're looking for, uses the right tools, and is serious about high performance, is MUCH easier than it looks. 

Over the last fifteen years or so, Scott has learned that effective training must be a process (not an event), that changes must be intentional, must start at the top, and MUST be exampled by top leaders.  If these necessities are not followed, then any training will be like 85% of all training: a waste of time and money for all involved. As a result of this fact, Scott is "doggedly passionate" about bringing improvement, engagement, and higher performance to leaders and organizations through his work.

  A FEW OF OUR STRATEGIC ALLIANCES

Partners In Human Resources International, LLC , New York, New York. This team 'Makes Talent Work' and does it with kit gloves. Talk about your Human Resources partners, these guys wrote the book on how to partner with corporate clients to get things done with their talent management systems.  

The Self Management Group, Toronto, Canada. The team of psychologists who for over 30 years, 10,000,000 profiles and 2,500 companies, have developed and validated our Predictive on-line Self-Management assessment processes (our selection science).

Herrmann International, Lake Lure, North Carolina. Through this alliance, Smart Work | Network accesses the Science of Whole Brain Technology with all of our clients.