Talent Development & Retention

More and more of our clients are talking to us about the need to build more strategic talent development and retention programs and activities, as leaders realize that their people — and their ability to build engaged and high performing teams — is of the utmost importance to exceeding outcomes and driving revenue growth.

Talent Retention Topics

• Onboarding – Research suggests that an employee’s first 90 days will in large part determine his or her performance, longevity, and contribution to the company. New employees want to know the right people and processes and deserve to have an onboarding plan. Let’s build an onboarding plan for your team that starts your new employees on the right track, and keeps them there.
• Competency-Based Recruiting Development and Training – From memorable job descriptions to focused interviewing skills, we can help your hiring managers access best practices for hiring the best talent.
• Manager and Leadership Development – We ask our best individual contributors to manage people and/or lead a team, but often provide them with no management or leadership skills training. Having a plan for the training and development of your people managers will increase the success AND retention of both managers and their teams.
• Career and Professional Development – Many of your team members know that they want to advance their careers, but few know how to do so. Whether for your entire organization, or for one employee,let’s build a career development or professional development plan that keeps your team engaged and thriving, and creates a talent pipeline for your more senior roles.
• Sales Leadership – Optimizing revenue growth begins with developing your sales leaders. We believe that front line sales managers are the most important role in any sales organization, and we can help you develop that talent. Sales leadership takes a “secret sauce” that combines vision, alignment and execution, mixed with creating an atmosphere where salespeople feel like they can win. We can help you redesign your processes to accelerate performance.
• Connecting Sales and Marketing – The most successful sales managers understand that the lines between sales and marketing are blurred, with shared accountability, a common sales and marketing pipeline, and customer-centric marketing campaigns and sales tools. We can help you build a strong sales & marketing connection that will close deals and drive revenue.
• Selling Skills Training – Whether for inside or field sales, hunters, farmers, or customer experience reps, we can build a practical selling skills training plan that is customized to your product, market, and customers.
• Building Self-Awareness and Winning Cultures – A company’s culture can have a powerful impact on its performance. Culture is the glue that binds an organization together and it’s the hardest thing for competitors to copy. As a result, it can be a lasting source of competitive advantage and starts with the Senior Leadership Team. We can help you maximize your team’s potential and build that kind of winning culture.

“Having worked with David in the past, I knew he would be the best person to help us develop a learning and development program for a new sales team, which included a plan for our national sales meeting. David exhibited superb leadership and vision, not only for the training plan, but for other core issues, such as pipeline management, role definition and clarity, and sales team development and structure.”

Jerome Grant, COO, Universal Technical Institute, Inc.

“David’s work with us began as a need to create a day of selling skills training to a disparate sales team. He quickly jumped into our business, and discovered other organizational needs where he offered advice, including connecting sales and marketing, sales leadership development, and alignment of our mission with our value proposition. Our sales team indicated the training was the most impactful and useful they had ever received. In addition, our leadership team benefited greatly from his counsel in strategic areas.”

Joan Pedley, VP Marketing, Teachstone

“When David came to Real Time Cases to help us improve our sales organization, it was immediately apparent that we were working with someone who not only knew how to align sales and marketing, but how to be a true partner in transforming and leading a sales organization. From leadership to strategy to execution, it was a privilege to have learned from such a knowledgeable and mission-driven professional like him.”

John Collins, VP Operations, Real Time Cases

Recruiting & Executive Search

OceansThree is the best fit for clients looking for an experienced recruiter who they can work with from start to finish (no hand-off to junior staff), from a boutique company, who is highly knowledgeable and connected in the ed tech space, to help them find outstanding sales, marketing, product, technology, or general management talent, in any part of the education sector, from Director to C-Suite levels.

We specialize in retained executive search where we can work exclusively with you, so we can provide the highest quality service and preserve the full potential of our search process, thus yielding the strongest candidates and best fit for you and your company.

If you’d like to learn more about our approach, below is a graphic outlining our talent acquisition process. We would love to discuss this with you further, and are happy to answer any questions or share additional details.

“Fit is everything. OceansThree invested the time to learn about our culture, needs, and goals. It ensured that the candidates they recruited and recommended for a number of C-Suite and other senior searches would be a good match. And they were.”

Jonathan Gyurko, CEO, ACUE

“I highly recommend OceansThree if you are looking for great people in the ed tech sector. OceansThree was professional, communicative, proactive and discerning. There were some twists and turns throughout the process, and I appreciated the counsel and perspective throughout. They saved me so much time by staying close to multiple candidates throughout a lengthier than originally hoped for process on our end, and helped to close the deal. The best evidence of the high regard in which I hold OceansThree is that our company awarded them our next search without hesitation.”

Yolanda De Rooy, Chief Learning Officer, eDynamic Learning

“OceansThree was an excellent partner in recruiting a Marketing Director. They spent time speaking with me to understand the requirements of the role, my management style and the company culture. This led to a shortlist of truly qualified candidates, and we even ended up creating a second role and hiring 2 of the candidates because they were both such a great fit. I highly recommend OceansThree for talent acquisition and plan to use them again in the future.”

Cindy Clarke, VP, Digital Communications, Elsevier; Former VP Marketing, VitalSource Technologies

For Candidates

Featured Job Openings 

Career and Professional Coaching

For candidates going through a career change, we also coach individuals through career transitions or career transformations. We can help you with: developing and strengthening your value proposition; positioning your LinkedIn profile and resume around your strengths, accomplishments and desired role; interview preparation and practice; or developing a job search game plan. For more coaching services click on the Learn More link below.

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“From the perspective of a recruitment candidate, Tracy Augustine was professional, helpful, supportive, thorough, and organized. Equipped with extensive knowledge of the education industry, Tracy discussed the role and the company deeply, assessed fit on behalf of both parties, and attracted candidates in an authentic manner. Tracy’s proactive approach was key – she scheduled pre-interview sessions to manage expectations, reached out when she received new information, and followed up consistently (even post-hire). Know that Tracy’s professionalism sets OceansThree apart from other recruiting companies. I recommend Tracy and OceansThree to both firms that need to recruit as well as to individuals who want to work in the education and in the edtech industries.”

Lisa Rahn, Director Product & Course Strategy, eDynamic Learning