Client Testimonials

It is my pleasure to provide any potential Burling group client with the sharing of my experiences in working with Ron and his group.

By way of informational background I have been in business 40 years, 20 of those last years as President and CEO of a chain of retail stores. We operated in 3 states, with 43 locations (an average of 120,000 sq ft). Our corporate headquarters staff numbered 150+/- and housed 700,000 sq ft of distribution. We were a growing business with a true need to find people with the necessary skill sets and backgrounds in order to keep our momentum moving forward.

With our needs being what they were we decided to look beyond our own Human Resources department to help us in filling our need to attract and retain quality individuals that would not only be able to perform in the job but would fit the culture of the company and be supportive of what the culture embodied as set forth by our founders. We interviewed 4 very competent firms, and through this process, we selected the Burling group to assist us.

Our relationship with Ron and his team date back to working together for over 10 years. I would characterize that relationship as a wonderfully professional, productive, insightful and positive one. One that I personally place a very high value on. His help and professional expertise allowed us to find, attract and retain much of the core of what is now our senior leadership team that is fundamentally in place and well functioning today.

Through the course of my personally working with Ron, I am not too proud to say that I learned a great deal from Ron that has helped me better understand how to read and assess people, their behaviors, and to better understand how to encourage and motivate them.

I would characterize Ron’s working style as follows:
1. He is extremely professional and methodical in his approach to the tasks we provided him with.
2. He is fair and honest in his dealings with us.
3. He is extremely inciteful in being able to read people, not only through his profiling tools and interpretations but through his incite full questions he poses to not only applicants but to people in the companies, he is working with. His questions are very thought-provoking. Often times he will “question you” towards what is eventually and often times the right decision, instead of telling you “you have to do this or look at the situation this way.”
4. Bluntly put, Ron is a “no B.S.” type of guy. While he is always diplomatic and deferential, he will tell it to you exactly as he sees it from his own unique perspective. Personally, I greatly appreciated his candor and straightforward and honed in approach. I have always been a big fan of the old saying “don’t tell me what you think I want to hear, tell me what I need to know.”

Our work encompassed 5 different areas:
Behavior Profiling And It’s Impact Of Hiring Success- Profiling provides an employer with a large toolbox that assists them in make a hiring decision that properly mates up the candidate and the job which greatly improves the employers chances of getting the right person who can do the job and who will likely provide the employer with the longevity and continuity that they need. It does so through gaining insight into who the applicant really is (do they talk a great game or are they truly the real deal). It provides psychological insight into who the person truly is and how they feel about themselves. It also provides a window into how they feel about their past jobs and the job they possibly will be doing for the prospective employer. Profiling also provides insight into the tangibles as well as the intangibles that motivate individuals. It also helps to tell you how does your applicant work and what you will need to provide them in order to be successful. Are they high touch high maintenance or are they self-motivated, self-starters? Profiling also helps you to match up the job/the job environment/corporate culture to prospective applicants.

Succession Planning- Using the wealth of information that can be gleaned from thorough profiling it allows you to evaluate candidates not only for the job you are looking to fill but looking for characteristics, skills and abilities they may possess that are essential for future jobs and advancement within the company.

Client Counseling- This process allows all parties involved in the hiring process to review/refine/and enhances our job descriptions and the necessary skills to not only help us better understand our needs from both the job perspective and potential candidate perspective. Ron would then take the outcome then apply those requirements to the candidates each process.

Client Coaching- At mid to senior levels, we have used Ron’s services to counsel and coach our people. Sometimes on a remedial level and sometimes on a preparatory level for future advancement. Data gleaned from Ron’s assessment and profiling tools along with his tremendous innate sense of how to read and reach people always seemed to produce positive results for us.

Working With Young Candidates- As a family business with a daughter of college age, I asked Ron to work with her in order to assess her strengthens, weaknesses, areas of interest and well as aptitude’s in those areas of interest. The results and outcomes of the assessments and coaching helped to provide her with a directional focus towards a career path the she has been successful in as well as personally fulfilled and satisfied in.

In summary, my company, as well as my own personal experiences with Ron and the Burling Group, have been extremely positive, productive. As you know, hiring the right person for the job that their personal characteristics tell you that they are looking for a career and not just a job is very cost effective. I would be happy to speak with anyone entertaining utilizing the services of the Burling Group. I am sure Ron would coordinate the conversation.

Sincerely,

When I first started working with Ron Deitch, I knew I wanted to make a move. I had an idea of where I wanted to be but I was stuck in a rut trying to figure out how to get there. As difficult as a search can be, it was made even more difficult by the fact that I had existing clients who needed my attention.

The first thing that Ron and I did was to use his diagnostic tool to identify my strengths and weaknesses. The profile he gave me was in many ways revealing, but it also confirmed for me a lot of what I already knew about the skills and talents that had made me so successful up to that point. Working with the profile, we were able to identify the right kind of position for me, where I would be happiest. And from there, the search became much more manageable.

During the search and interview process, Ron’s sage advice was indispensable. Whether it was coaching me through mock interviews or helping me tackle difficult questions, I never entered a meeting feeling like I was not prepared. In the end I was able to transition into a position that best suited the type of lawyer that I am, and which will give me the ability to grow and expand in a way that will help me reach my full potential. I now enjoy going to work and I am confident that it is because I was able to find the right role using Ron’s advice and his profiling tool.

 

We have worked with the Burling Group since 2012.  Initially, we utilized Ron’s skill set to assist us with profiling potential new associates.  Ron’s insights and observations helped us establish criteria to hire successful associates.  Integrating Ron into the front end of the hiring process saved us time, money, and effort in identifying and hiring excellent associates.

By profiling the firm’s partners, Ron has given us valuable knowledge on how we work together and a better understanding of each partner’s professional strengths and weaknesses.  Ron continues to profile potential partners joining our firm providing us feedback on their professional styles.

As our firm begins to succession plan, The Burling Group has provided great insight on potential firm leadership.  Ron’s direct analysis and coaching ability complements our mentoring of managers as they grow into their roles.  Further, Ron continues to counsel our partners and key employees as our business expands.

Forum Financial Management, LP is an SEC-registered investment adviser with its principal place of business located in Lombard, Illinois.  The forum provides fee-based wealth management and financial planning services for individual and institutional clients.

The Burling Group, Ron Deitch, is an integral part of our Human Resource search and development team.  Ron provides critical insight, through his proprietary personality trait assessment tool, into key candidate predictive performance metrics. This data, combined with his one on one candidate interviews, yields results that significantly increase the likelihood of a successful hire and reduces long term HR costs.

I have been professionally associated with the Burling Group for 10 years. President and CEO, Ron Deitch became an integral consultative member of the Board of Directors and my Human Resource Department with expertise in the broad spectrum of business challenges.

Ron is gifted in quickly assessing key players with profiling/assessing key players: internal and external candidates into a comprehensive succession plan at the upper through senior management levels. This includes career development, senior management counseling, identifying appropriate career paths and promotability options within the board of directors. Five and Ten-year growth plans.

The Burling Group takes a no-nonsense approach with clear and concise behavioral summaries. The organization particularly appreciated the Burling Group’s availability by telephone and other electronic communication devices.

Thank you to the Burling Group for the coaching and tools that helped me to evaluate the next steps in my career. I found the Behavioral Survey tool to be extremely accurate. Combined with coaching the value was maximized by challenging me to find ways to better understand how my personality traits aligned with the expectations of the potential role. That included a full evaluation of the job description against my personality as well as refining additional questions I needed to ask the hiring manager for a complete understanding. Around 10 months ago I was offered/accepted the role which has proven to be the right choice. I plan to continue to use the coaching and corresponding tools from the Burling Group as I continue to grow in my career. 

I recommend Ron Deitch most highly. He's a consummate professional and a delightful and wise man.

Ron was instrumental in helping us build Globe Union Group into a leading player in the kitchen and bath industry in a short period of time. His services were full-circle: he enabled us to hire, manage and outplace extremely well.

Ron helped us hire the best candidates and assisted them in developing their innate potential through his ability to understand what makes someone tick and insights into how to get people to achieve peak performance. He got to know our internal folks intimately via in-depth interviews and the appropriate application of behavioral tools. Then Ron helped us draft meaningful candidate profiles that were designed to identify excellent prospects who would complement our team.

Next, we utilized these and Ron's other tools to create personal leadership development and succession plans for most of our directors and vice presidents, about twenty people in total. In the rare occasion when someone was not the right fit for our company going forward, Ron provided outplacement services which included presentation skills development and interview training, once again while appropriately leveraging behavioral tools.

Finally, when my two older children were seniors in college, I hired Ron to help them with career coaching and interview training. Both secured dream jobs with international consulting firms and went on to top business schools (Stanford & Harvard). 

 

Ron Deitch and the Burling Group have proved to be an invaluable resource using behavioral profiling tools to provide accurate insights into strengths and individual growth edge. Accomplished via individual executive coaching and counseling sessions, support talent management and succession planning to insure we have the human capital needed to support the future growth of our company.

Ron has also assisted in specific projects such as an initiative to break down barriers and improve interaction between our sales and marketing teams. He has assisted us in using behavioral profiling for new applicant assessment to improve on the success rate of hires.

Ron also provided highly successful outplacement services to our executives such as individual coaching and career guidance, presentation skills and extensive interview preparation.