Spotlight on the President of PeopleClues, Julie Moreland

By Cara Whedbee, Ph.D.

This “Spotlight” interview features entrepreneur and the President of PeopleClues, Julie Moreland. Moreland is responsible for leading this company she co-founded in January of 2004, which focuses on providing cutting-edge behavioral assessments for business use which are incorporated into an easy-to-use online platform specifically designed for the commercial market to help companies around the world hire, train and promote the right people for the right jobs. The unique PeopleClues assessments measure core cognitive abilities, counterproductive attitudes and personality characteristics in order to focus on the following employee issues:

• screening
• selection
• coaching and development
• team development
• career planning
• succession planning
• strategic workforce planning

During the past 20 years, Moreland has become a nationally respected authority on practical business applications of assessment technologies. Moreland is the co-developer of several employment assessment products used for pre-employment screening, career development and team development, as well as training and development. As a Fellow of the Workforce Stability Institute, she has written a chapter of their flagship book, How to Attract, Optimize and Hold your Best Employees.

For more information on PeopleClues, you can visit their Web site: www.PeopleClues.com.

HRT: Thanks for taking the time to visit with me today, Julie! Our readers really appreciate it.

JM: Thank you, Cara. I am very excited to talk with you and to your readers.

HRT: All right, Julie, the first question I have for you is: how did you come up with the idea for your company PeopleClues?

JM: Well, close to 10 years ago now, the core group of us that are partners in PeopleClues really thought about the assessment market and noticed that there was a huge gap, or market niche, that wasn’t being filled.

There were assessments that were an hour long or more, expensive and required interpretation that were being used for screening people for management and sales type positions. Users of these assessments were happy and getting good results with these assessments. Then you also had the opposite end of the market where you had lots of assessment tools that were really quick and simple being used for training and for team building and for very lightweight applications. These assessments weren’t validated for hiring, but served their part of the market very well.

We found that hiring managers were very frustrated because they didn’t have the budget or the time to use the longer, more expensive assessments for the majority of their positions and they couldn’t use the shorter, simpler ones since they were not validated for hiring. There wasn’t anything that was really valid or very reliable for use with the majority of their hiring, especially at a price to be used in high volume in that market.

So we set out on a mission to create a set of assessments that would really fill that part of the market. We formally launched PeopleClues on January 1, 2004, with a product line designed from the ground up with this in mind.

HRT: Great. So once you and your partners knew that you wanted to start your company, how did you get it going?

JM: Well, the old-fashioned way. We decided to go with what many might call a “shoestring” strategy, where you build it without any outside capital. We didn’t want to have other investors looking over our shoulders and trying to tell us how to build it and run it. So we built it from the ground up just getting one customer at a time and making sure we took good care of them.

HRT: So what is the most important thing you’ve learned so far about being a business owner?

JM: We have all faced the same challenge that makes or breaks a small business. It’s people! You can have a great product or service, but if you don’t have the right people who are motivated to do a good job, you are likely to fail at some point. Even if you manage to stay in business, you are not likely to be profitable. And it’s not just about having your people in the right place with good fit, it’s about spending time training and motivating them to do a great job. If you are not nurturing those relationships, then sooner or later you’ll lose them. I’m definitely not saying that having the right people is everything. I am saying that you can have everything else right and if you have the wrong people in the wrong jobs, you’re likely to fail.

We’ve all seen products sell well that weren’t even the greatest quality, but they had a great marketing plan and they had the right people driving the plan and making it happen. So when it comes to what’s most important, what I’ve learned is that there is rarely enough money and resources to do everything you want to do in a small business. The one place that you can’t afford to cut corners is in making sure you get the right people in the right jobs and spend time and money training and nurturing those relationships. This extends to your relationships with your clients and vendors.  Everyone knows the saying that “people do business with people…not companies.” 

HRT: Good point. That leads me to our next question. Since we focus on Human Resources on our site, I want to know: what is your HR strategy for PeopleClues?

JM: There are three key strategies in terms of HR for us. The first key strategy for us as a small company is to make sure the day-to-day human resource tasks are being handled by experts since that is not our core talent. We actually made a strategic decision when we started the company to align with Administaff to help us with our HR, because the value is so tremendous for a small company that doesn’t really have the means to offer great benefits programs and offer all this online training. There’s no way we could have afforded to do that ourselves.

The second key strategy is to make sure we have the right people in the right jobs. We want to screen and hire the very best talent that we can, and sometimes that means being patient and not just filling a position, but making sure that we are getting the right person for the right job and that the person really fits our culture. A huge part of this strategy is to continue to provide the tools and training they need to be successful in the job. 

The third key strategy is to make sure we clearly define a “path” for employees to grow and be tied to the company’s success. Part of this is to look out five years to where our business will be and then create a logical path for employees to grow and move if they want more of a challenge. This allows all of us to see where we are headed and how we can all work together to get there.  Every employee in our company is tied to the success of the company in some way, so there is a motivation to make sure we are working together to make it happen.

HRT: Good. So how do you approach customer service at PeopleClues?

JM: We help our clients with their most important asset, “their people.” We have kind of a funny saying internally that goes, when it comes to our clients, “love all over them.” That’s our internal mantra.  We just look for ways to over deliver if possible so that we have the best chance of maintaining that relationship over time.

We look at it and say, this client, and particularly a “person” inside of the client company, has trusted us to deliver high-value assessments and we need to continue to maintain that trust year after year because many of our clients are on annual contracts. So we take the retention of that contract very seriously. And the only way we can do that, in our minds, is by “loving all over them” all year long and continuing to make sure we keep their trust.

HRT: Finally, if you could give one piece of advice to your fellow entrepreneurs, what would it be?

JM: That one’s pretty easy. Besides the obvious of making sure you hire and retain the “right people” for the “right job,” the second most important piece of advice would be to take great care with your planning and forecasts. Small businesses, and the entrepreneurs that run them, typically get into trouble when it comes to estimating how long it will take to do something, as well as how much revenue will be generated.

A very safe rule of thumb to use when estimating how much time it will take to do something is to multiply by four. And likewise, when you estimate the amount of revenue, divide by four. So for example, if you think it will take you one month to create a great marketing strategy for your product, then assume it will actually take you four months to get it finished. And if you think that you can generate $100,000 with that strategy, assume it will be $25,000.

With this new “estimate,” would you still do the project?  Because “stuff happens” and plans get derailed, things pop up that you didn’t anticipate in terms of difficulties with the plan. Most projects fail because of the “stuff” that wasn’t anticipated or planned for. Most entrepreneurs will underestimate their expenses and how much time it’s going to take them to do something, and they’ll overestimate how much money they’re going to make from that particular project. This whole exercise allows you a chance to step back and ask yourself “would I still make this same decision with these new numbers?”

HRT: Great advice, Julie! Thank you for taking the time to talk to me and our readers. I know they will be able to get a lot out of what you have to say, as I did.

JM: It was my pleasure. Thank you, Cara.

 Average 5 out of 5