BY RICK WEINBERG, CALIFORNIA BUSINESS JOURNAL
The front of Ron Feher’s business card is typical –- name, phone, email and website. Nothing too elaborate.
However, the back of his business card expresses quite a different story –- it tells you virtually everything you need to know about Feher as a business professional and an individual.
A colorful chart illustrates his behavioral style, motivators and driving forces.
“Look,” he says in his Mission Viejo, Calif. office as he points to the back of his business card, “this is who I am. This is who you are doing business with.”
He is, first and foremost, altruistic. His profile also shows he is steady and stable, compliant, influential in an enthusiastic and trusting fashion and that he solves problems in a cooperative and analytical manner.
These personal and professional characteristics were determined through an innovative and unique assessment that is a superior tool for job and candidate matching and staff development, among other uses.
Feher uses this as part of his coaching process for his clients. WhiteRock specializes in helping companies hire the best candidates by identifying the behaviors, motivators, and competencies that the job requires. He also helps retain top talent and improve the overall effectiveness and efficiency of C-Level executives and their front line managers.
“A company’s most valued asset is, or should be, their employees. So, I help make businesses better by making their people better,” he says.
Feher incorporates various types of assessments in his suite of services, which includes manager mentoring and staff and team development.
Because of WhiteRock’s assessment procedure, Director Scott Heaton of California Commercial Investment (CCI) is a much happier individual these days. For years, Heaton struggled through the hiring process for property managers. His Westlake Village, Calif. based firm owns and operates 60 apartment buildings — 100 units in each — in 30 states.
“A nightmare,” Heaton says of his decades-long experience of trying to hire “the right” property manager for his out-of-state properties.
“When I first met Ron, I was intrigued with his concept and approach. One of my ongoing problems was that I interviewed prospective property managers almost exclusively over the phone. Over the years, I developed protocols to help us better define the attributes we want in an applicant and to insure they don’t embellish or lie.” — Scott Heaton
It didn’t work well. Property manager after property manager left the company for a variety of reasons –- and Heaton always tied it back to a flawed hiring practice.
Enter Feher with his job/candidate matching process and exceptional science-based assessments created by TTI Success Insights that accurately identifies a person’s behavior style, what motivates them and how well-developed their competencies are.
“TTI takes the assessment process further,” Feher says. “What motivates people, what drives them, and the soft skills they bring to the job are three areas that you don’t normally get in the typical hiring process. What it does is provide you with objective data that you don’t get from an interview or a resume.”
When Feher was hired to solve Heaton’s dilemma, his first step was to take CCI’s top five property managers through the job benchmarking process.
“A very wise starting point,” Heaton says. “We had relied heavily on the success of our top performers when we looked at new candidates. But there was a missing piece. We just weren’t able to glean enough insight.”
The assessments of the top five managers produced data and results that Heaton utilized to hire his last four property managers. “We’re 4 for 4,” he says with a laugh. “All four have worked out perfectly and it has everything to do with the assessment Ron created.”
Feher has more than 30 years of experience, an MBA, certifications in both project and process management and is a certified analyst with TTI. He worked in a variety of executive positions ranging from operations to infrastructure management. He then decided to launch WhiteRock and incorporate science and psychology into helping businesses hire and retain top talent.
“I found it intriguing,” he says of TTI’s wide-ranging programs. “From a hiring standpoint, every time we hire someone we use our own biases subconsciously. We’re all biased in a certain way. Sure, there are some people who say, ‘Me? Biased? No way.’ Well, the fact is, when you interview someone, you do it from the standpoint of ‘This is how I would do the job. This is the personality I’m looking for.’ But that may not necessarily be what the job needs. If you can eliminate those biases, you get a much better candidate.”
Contact
Ron Feher
Chief Improvement Officer
949-466-0943
Web: www.WhiteRockBusiness.net
Editor’s Note: The name WhiteRock was chosen by Feher for two reasons. One was to honor his father, a paratrooper in the 82nd Airborne division in WWII. The Hungarian name “Feher” means “white” in English. “I chose ‘white’ to honor my father’s memory, his service to his country, and the work ethic he left behind,” Feher says. The second part of the company name, “Rock,” was chosen because the business is built on a solid spiritual and ethical foundation. “It comes from Matthew 7:24,” he says. “… like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down and the winds blew and beat against the house; yet it did not fall, because it was founded on the rock.”
