Several months ago, HPi was asked to help transition a business unit President from a major insurance company, which had undergone a corporate restructuring which resulted in combining two major operating units. Although Derrick had spent virtually his entire working career in insurance underwriting, his continuing education and work experiences had helped him to achieve a senior financial leadership role in the company. Essentially, his career had transitioned from a foundation in sales to acquiring senior financial and management responsibilities.

“When we first met Derrick, he was actually extremely positive about his continuing career trajectory, despite his recent job-loss” Bob Wilson, HPi President said. “The job market was contracting, particularly in the insurance industry, and the economy was headed south…” he further noted. When Chris Wagner, HPi Executive Coach, first met with Derrick, he was very impressed with his energy, educational background and work experience, but was concerned by his optimistic view of the job search process and his background in one industry. One of the first things that Chris did with Derrick, was to look deeply at the transferrable skills and competencies that he would bring to the job market, and he used a battery of OI Solutions eCareerCenter assessment tools to help them to better identify his work values, define his accomplishments and then to develop a marketing plan in the broader financial services segment.

Chris noted that “Derrick was able to draw upon the large network of financial executives he had done business with in the past.” Chris had to coach Derrick to focus on enunciating his accomplishments and identifying transferrable skills. The key skill development led him to acquire critical active listening skills, to help better attune him to nuances in his networking campaign. As Chris said, “…sometimes the best sales-person is far too focused on describing their product and fails to listen to the customer’s needs…”

The outcome was, after a five-month campaign, Derrick landed a position as Division President for a major Chicago area bank responsible for lending to private clientele. He feels that this position offers him a much richer compensation opportunity, based driving his business plan and sales goals. Chris and Bob were able to help him to negotiate a better base salary and structure a more realistic incentive compensation package. Derrick has been in his new position for over three months and is delighted – he has become an active HPI alumnus and in fact, has hired another HPi client to help him develop new business in the collar counties which surround Chicago.