Keith Giarman and Martin Pocs hosted DHR’s 5th annual conference addressing talent best practices in private equity funded companies. This year’s conference convened at the St. Julien Hotel in Boulder, CO, where a group of PE leaders gathered to address a range of topics relevant to the proper assessment of human capital.
The day started with a keynote from Barry Conchie, a noted leadership assessment guru with training in cognitive science and former Leadership Scientist at Gallup. He set the stage for the day exploring key biases we as human beings unintentionally embrace when evaluating people.
In the next session, Keith Giarman, Managing Partner of the Private Equity Practice, oversaw a panel of four leadership assessment experts who have worked extensively in and with the private equity community. This panel included: Tiffany McFerrin from Solstice Talent; Julie Wolf from RHR; Nicole Morris from the Vaya Group; and Ben Holzemer, Partner and Head of Global Talent at TPG (former Co-CEO of the US for Spencer Stuart). The panel described the various assessment tools and methodologies, including the challenges, merits, trade-offs, and proper utilization.
The day ended with a session moderated by Jeff Cohn, with support from Keith Giarman, discussing research on the top leadership attributes of successful CEOs, as identified by PE partners around the country. In an interactive discussion, Jeff and Keith then introduced a “mock” search with three finalist candidates where the audience helped to decide which CEO candidate would be most suitable to hire in a $200 mm health-related home care
company.
Comments from attendees:
“I enjoyed the topics and the format. It was great to have Barry set the table on the findings and then the subsequent panel was oriented towards solutions to some of the points. I would have loved the first panel to have gone on even longer. The panelists were very knowledgeable and provided good insight to service options and use cases.”
– Jared Poland, C3 Capital
“I thought it was an excellent cross-section of practitioners and subject matter experts. Good questions and prep from Keith, and balanced dialogue between the panelists.”
– Ben Holzemer, TPG
“The conference was very informative and included actionable content. The speakers were clearly domain experts and highly prepared. The group had a good vibe and it was interactive.”
– David Scopelliti, First Quartile