Bob Kelly
Partner
Tinicum, Inc.

As a partner in a private investment partnership with $1.5 billion of committed capital, I spend a decent amount of my time imagining what a business could become, identifying the capability and skill gaps which historically have kept it from reaching its potential, and recruiting talent to fill those gaps. To a large degree, the success of our investments depends on putting the proper person in each key position. Assembling the best team can create a lot of value.

A mentor of mine once compared hiring people to hitting a baseball – if you consistently hit .300, you end up in the Hall of Fame. Because assessing a person accurately in an interview is difficult to do, nobody’s right all the time. We’ve found that utilizing a full suite of analytically rigorous assessments improves our recruiting process by helping us make the right choice a higher percentage of the time. As importantly, we avoid the costly hiring mistakes that preclude or delay improved financial performance.

Compared to other people we’ve worked with who can administer the same tests, Angelo Valenti’s different. Whenever we call, he responds immediately. He really listens to us, developing a fine-tuned sense of what we need. Angelo’s insights into people, and how to combine them into teams, are deep, accurate and truly additive. While others might think they always know the right answer, Angelo understands how to use his tests and observations appropriately to support our judgements, so that his point of view helps us make the best decisions we can.

Angelo has been an integral part of our appraisal process for the past 20 years.