ACORN CONSULTING INC
Welcome to www.AcornConsultingInc.com.
My name is Don Burrows. Working in Spanish as well as English, throughout Latin America and across the US, I have been a senior human resources professional for about three decades.
I do not do administrative HR.
Rather, I view HR as a profit center whose reason for existence is to create custom solutions to business problems that are hurting a company’s bottom line.
My core belief is this:
Human Resources must cut costs and improve profits.
Otherwise, what’s the point?
I have divided my site into two complimentary segments.
The first deals with my PEOPLE PROSPECTUSTM.
Startlingly, research shows that about 80% of all mergers, acquisitions and joint ventures either fail or else fall very far short of being the successes their architects expected them to be.
In other words, they fall flat on their assets. And of course, when that happens, money goes down the tubes, as do people’s jobs.
What’s the problem?
Lack of balance is the problem. A Due Diligence process that delves deeply into the LEGAL and FINANCIAL side of a deal while all but ignoring the PEOPLE side of the deal is the problem.
Said another way, assessing legal and financial issues and situations require left-brain skills. Assessing people situations requires right-brain skills.
When the architects of a deal rely almost exclusively on left-brain skills that yield primarily financial and legal data, and only superficially consider the right-brain people aspects of a deal, it is fair to say they are doing their Due Diligence with only half a brain.
And they are getting predictable results.
If you would, please study this slide. You will see it again in each of the five PowerPoint presentations on this site.
Completed as part of the Due Diligence process for a merger, an acquisition or a joint venture, the People ProspectusTM will provide investors with a People Balance SheetTM to accompany the traditional financial balance sheet. With two separate balance sheets, the decision-makers will have the benefit of full disclosure and a complete Due Diligence and will then be able to make informed decisions to proceed, back away or renegotiate a better price or terms.
The process is equally valid and applicable when senior management wishes to have an independent, neutral third party conduct an Organizational Health CheckTM of their own company.
Please call 425.231.0085 or email Don@AcornConsultingInc.com to discuss.
Thank you.
Don Burrows
The second deals with creating Accomplishments-based resumes.
During my almost three decades as a human resources professional, at one time or another I have been both a professional recruiter and an outplacement professional for each of my employers in these industries: hospitality, manufacturing, financial services, wholesale foods and the US Army. I have hired and outplaced everyone from new-hires to executives, in the US and overseas, in English as well as Spanish.
And more to the point, over the past three decades, I have become expert in crafting accomplishments-based resumes, professional profiles that make people become ONE IN a million people, not just ONE OF a million people.
Please think about that for a moment, and do it from the context of today’s economy and job market. Today is February 24, 2009 and President Obama just gave his State of the Union speech.
If you are out of work and you are competing with everybody and their brother for what jobs there may be, and if your resume is the typical reverse-chronological resume that took very little time, thought and effort to put together and that basically lists all your jobs, duties and responsibilities, then your resume looks pretty much like everyone else’s.
You will not stand out as someone special and unique. Your chances of getting a call to come in for an interview are all but non-existent, and if you don’t even get the interview, you will never get the job.
You are presenting yourself in a boring, commonplace manner,
and you will be ONE OF a million other people.
On the other hand, if you have taken the time and effort to learn and apply a process of:
- identifying your special and most effective skills and abilities (what you bring to the world of work)
- identifying your major accomplishments
- putting those accomplishments together in such a way that you position yourself as the unique solution to an employer’s unique need, and
- learning how to personally present those accomplishments effectively in the interview, then
you have greatly enhanced the likelihood of being invited in for an interview because you will have separated yourself from your competition by making yourself one IN a million, not one of a million.
Please - please, do not make the mistake of thinking that your position, experience or education is such that you have not accomplished anything that would be of interest to a potential employer.
Creating an accomplishments-based resume is all about your mindset and has nothing to do with where you were on the company’s organization chart.
I have helped clerks in the mail room, secretaries, cleaners on the shop floor, accountants, sales professionals, managers, directors and executives identify their major accomplishments and present themselves as problem-identifiers and problem-solvers.
And wouldn’t you agree that in today’s world, our companies could use more employees who can identify and solve problems?
I am in the process of creating downloadable lessons that will enable you to create your own accomplishments-based resume; I’ll provide review and editing support if you wish.
If you want me to create the whole resume with you from start to finish, I’ll do that as well.
So. If it is important to your job search that you stand out from the crowd, please call 425.231.0085 or email Don@AcornConsultingInc.com to discuss.
Thank you.
Don Burrows
