Trainer - Rob Sullivan

Rob’s Training Bio
Rob Sullivan is an inspirational speaker and corporate trainer who has given presentations to companies, universities, and trade associations across the country including McDonald’s, Motorola, Oak Brook Bank, Northwestern University, Northern Arizona, and the University of Virginia.

His passion is helping people and companies market themselves more effectively. This includes, but is not limited to, workshops and one-on-one coaching in the following areas:

Recruiting Assessment

Interviewer Training
Employee Development & Recognition: Marketing Yourself for New Roles Inside (or Outside) the Organization
Attracting & Retaining Top Talent
Creating Effective (and Meaningful) Job Descriptions

Outplacement Training

Sales & Marketing

New Business Development
Networking Without Schmoozing
Sales Training (Getting People to Call You Back)

Employee Development

Professional Development (Identifying and Leveraging Employee Strengths)

Other

Stress Management (Strategies for Dialing Down Stress When the Workplace Heats Up)

Rob’s book, Getting Your Foot in the Door When You Don’t Have a Leg to Stand On has already begun to replace top-selling What Color is Your Parachute? as a text in college career development courses. To date, Rob has coached countless individuals ranging from recent graduates, mid-level executives, and career changers, to the former president of a $250 million company. These clients represent a cross-section of industries and occupations including, but not limited to, sales, marketing, direct marketing, advertising, public relations, law, print production, finance, accounting, operations, manufacturing, and microbiology.

Rob has delivered 3 commencement speeches, been a guest on radio stations across the country and has been featured on NBC, ABC, CLTV, WGN, and The Stock Market Observer. He also filmed a segment for the Chicago-based reality show Starting Over that aired in March of this year. Rob has a BA in Psychology from Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts and a Master’s in Advertising from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism.

TOPIC DESCRIPTIONS

Recruiting Assessment
Is your company recruiting as effectively as it could? Not every company does. But it doesn't have to be this way.

If you'd like to improve your hiring practices and make better decisions, bring me in to do a comprehensive review of your recruitment process. This would include an in-depth examination of your corporate and departmental business objectives and recruitment strategies. Whatever opportunities we uncover, I'll work with you to make the necessary improvements.

Specific solutions might include Interviewer Training, Employee Development & Recognition, Attracting & Retaining Top Talent, Creating Effective (and Meaningful) Job Descriptions and a variety of other strategic and tactical initiatives. Since every company is different, it's not about cookie-cutter solutions. It's about matching the most effective recruiting methods with your unique business objectives.

Interviewer Training
The future of your company is only as bright as the people you hire. Hiring the right employees is, without question, one of the most difficult and important corporate responsibilities. Imagine having just one 45-minute date to determine if you wanted to spend the rest of your life with a particular person. How confident are you in your ability to ask meaningful questions and make a decision that will impact the majority of your waking hours for the foreseeable future?

Sound preposterous? It’s not much different than the dance companies and potential candidates do every day in the interview process. Learn to get beyond tired, overused questions and create a strategy tailored to find the best person for your specific requirements and corporate culture.

Employee Development and Recognition: Marketing Yourself for New Roles Inside (or outside) the Organization
Helping employees and managers recognize and leverage the experiences that can best fuel professional advancement isn’t always easy. But it’s critical to the success of your organization. Whether their goal is a promotion or a new role within the organization, this program will inspire your employees to achieve results that ultimately benefit the company as a whole.

Attracting & Retaining Top Talent
Learn the most common recruiting mistakes and how to avoid them. Streamline your efforts and make better use of your recruiting budget. Uncover the best strategies and tactics to attract, screen, and retain top candidates.

This workshop will address overall company recruiting strategies. The Interviewer Training workshop described below is a great follow up to help hiring managers create department-specific recruiting strategies.

Creating Effective (and Meaningful) Job Descriptions
All too often, the job descriptions that companies use don't do an effective job of capturing the requirements and objectives of each position. Working with the hiring managers and team leaders, we can construct job descriptions that will be as valuable for recruiting as they will be for performance reviews.

Outplacement Training
If your company is considering a merger, acquisition, restructuring, or any other situation that will result in the elimination of positions, it's important that the process is handled thoughtfully and professionally. This is not simply a matter of taking care of the people you no longer need, it's about showing the people who remain on board that the company cares about all employees. For this reason, offering outplacement services is a strategically smart, relatively low-cost investment.

Whether the workshop is 3 hours or 3 days, Rob has a strong track record of delivering value and building the confidence of displaced employees. Whatever your needs, Rob can put together a program that delivers. But don't take Rob's word for it. Just ask to see the unedited summary of the evaluations from previous workshops he has delivered over the past several years. Here are a few quotes from individuals who have attended Rob's 3 day workshops:

COMMENTS AND TESTIMONIALS

"Rob, a big thank you! We thought it was a great event. Just to give you a sense of things, we launched our follow up survey to the event and the response rate and the feedback has been fantastic. The 4.82/5.00 rating you achieved was the highest overall satisfaction of the 14 events we did this year."

"I've witnessed Rob Sullivan personally coach people on finding their perfect fit, and can testify that he's as authentic and effective as a great coach should be. Great guy. I highly recommend him."

- “Rob was an outstanding facilitator and led the session with high energy and enthusiasm. He motivated me and I feel much more comfortable about my job search. This session was very valuable and I would recommend the session and especially Rob as extremely valuable.”

- “Valuable, detailed, innovative, thought provoking, inspiring, invigorating and I liked it.”

- “Outstanding personable skills. Excellent speaker and motivator. Fantastic spin master. Good story teller.”

- "This class started out with 8 people. All 8 returned for class for each of the 3 days and, for the most part, stayed until the end of each daily session. Rob was the reason for this. Remember, we didn’t have to be here. . . "

- "Rob really pulled the class together to make us feel like family. He was enthusiastic and held our attention. Going into the workshop I didn’t have a desire to look for a job but Rob was able to present in a manner that is making me give it all a second thought."

- "Great examples. Fun atmosphere. Great topics. Dynamic speaker and presentations."

- “This was by far the best workshop I have attended. Rob gave me new ideas about what to fix in my resume and cover letters. The only thing I wished was that the workshop was longer.”

- “Rob is an excellent motivator. His energy and enthusiasm are exactly what people struggling with the loss of a job need to regain motivation for a job search.”

- "I feel very fortunate to have had Rod as the instructor. He is a phenomenal motivational teacher/speaker."

- “Rob is an excellent presenter/trainer with an obvious passion for his work. He makes every trainee feel they are important, valuable, and have talents to offer. It is exciting to be in his class.”

If you'd like the current and former employees of your company to have a similar experience, let us know. Rob would love to put together a program to help you and your employees. To learn more, send an email with the subject "Scheduling" to info@careercraftsman.com.

New Business Development
It’s amazing how many companies and entrepreneurs spend countless dollars every year creating ineffective brochures that fail to capture the company’s strategic advantages in a compelling way. As a result, companies throw advertising dollars away needlessly. This doesn’t have to be the case. The challenge of attracting a new client is no different than the challenge of convincing an employer to make a job offer. In both cases, the buyer—whether it’s the company or the consumer—must be convinced of the benefits. Unfortunately, that rarely happens.

When it comes to assessing your competitive strengths and weaknesses, there’s not substitute for an unbiased outside perspective to help leverage your unique selling proposition.

Networking Without Schmoozing
Whether your goal is to build business or find a new opportunity, there are strategies and tactics anyone can use to create long-lasting, mutually beneficial business relationships. Even if you don’t consider yourself particularly well-connected, you can learn to identify and confidently approach people who share similar values and objectives.