Assessment delivered by experts
The business or occupational psychologists employed by Alium to deliver our management assessments have all also held senior management positions in industry and commerce – offering an ideal mix of industry experience and academic rigour.
Alium is committed to ensuring that management assessment is a valuable asset to our clients and helps with their recruitment and development decisions – including any decisions about employing interim managers. Because of that, the consultants we employ operate independently from Alium, and as well as providing assessments they also offer a wealth of experience working with and coaching chairmen/women, CEOs, directors and senior executives in a range of industries.
Our principal consultants include:
Douglas Prior, BTech (Hons), Dip Pysch, CPsychol, AFBPsS
Douglas Prior has considerable experience in organisation and management development, executive coaching, management audits and the assessment and development of senior executives. In addition to his psychology qualifications, Douglas has completed extended business management programmes at Manchester Business School and IMI (now IMD) in Geneva, Switzerland.
After an early career in management consultancy, Douglas spent a period in general personnel management as Personnel Director at Forward Trust Group Ltd. Subsequently, he was Head of Group Management Development at Midland Bank Group (now part of HSBC) and then Managing Director of Midland Career Services Limited. He was a Director of MSL Group Limited and Managing Director of MSL Human Resource Consulting Limited.
He has worked at individual, team and corporate level with global and national clients in finance and banking, IT, professional services, retail, manufacturing, hi-tech engineering, chemicals, trading and energy. He has also worked in the public sector with clients such as the Cabinet Office, Inland Revenue (now Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs), British Tourist Authority, English Tourist Council, and Cambridge County Council.
James Mackay, MSc (Econ), PhD, CPsychol
James evaluates candidates for senior roles, coaches senior executives and teams from a variety of organisations in the public and private sectors, and has helped Boards and executive teams from many sectors to improve their decision-making, communications; and their capacity for effective and creative collaboration. He co-designed and co-directs the Tavistock Institute course in Executive Coaching. He operates in the U.K. and internationally, with clients in France and Italy.
Although as a Chartered Psychologist, he has a natural focus on the individual, he works with clients to identify the best strategies for interacting with, and influencing colleagues, the work group, and the organisational culture. Constant themes are leadership, strategic career development, personal ‘re-branding’, and the alignment of individual, role and corporate objectives. He has a particular interest in ‘the art of the possible’: how a client can successfully challenge, and make progress within, the parameters of the organisational culture.
After HR and industrial relations role at Hoover and Alcan Foils, Jim became a consultant advising on a range of HR issues. He worked as a search consultant in the USA and continued in search as a Director of two London-based consultancies. In the latter, he also operated as a corporate psychologist.
He is a Visiting Tutor on the Tavistock/University of East London Doctoral programme on Consulting and the Organisation, and has written on management and psychological issues for the Times, Daily Telegraph, and Human Resources. He has a Doctorate in leadership and organisational culture from London University.
Anne C. Gray, BA (Hons), MBA, CPsychol, AFBPsS, FRSA, FRSM
Annie is a business psychologist with extensive national and international experience in consulting to organisational change. Her skills in assessing executives at Board and senior level are enhanced by her understanding of the strategic and political challenges that businesses face.
Prior to establishing The Gray Partnership in 1991, she worked for a firm of Business Psychologists, Kiddy and Partners, for three years. In the 1980s, she was at the heart of the organisational change process in British Airways, with particular responsibility for Performance Management, one of the three linchpins of the change strategy.
As part of her continuous professional development, Annie has completed the Tavistock Institute’s Qualification in Advanced Organisational Consulting, after a two-year modular programme. Annie is a founder member of the Association of Business Psychologists, was Dean of Conference 2002, and is a recent past Chair.
She is also an experienced Executive Coach, having worked with clients in the financial services sector, IT and retail sectors. Her clients are typically senior executives with a history of success and achievement, who are faced with the need to adapt to a changed set of organisational expectations.
Bob Edenborough, BSc, PhD, AFBPsS
Bob Edenborough is a chartered occupational psychologist who has spent most of his career in the assessment and development of senior staff in both the private and public sectors.
He currently concentrates on the areas of shortlist assessment in connection with recruitment, using a variety of psychometric instruments as well as situational judgement tests. He has designed many of the latter himself and has also developed scoreable structured interviews on the basis of detailed research. Additionally he works in the fields of senior management coaching, auditing recruitment and selection methods and assessing board effectiveness.
He has held managing directorships within the Gallup group of companies and for several years was Director of Management Review and Assessment at KPMG. A regular speaker at conferences and professional gatherings he has also written three books on assessment methods.
Roderic Macmillan, B Tech (Hons), C Psychol, AFBPsS, FIBC, CMC
Roderic Macmillan is a Chartered Psychologist now specialising in the assessment, development and coaching of key executives and managers. His main clients are international groups in Western Europe and he also has experience in Africa, the Middle East and the Gulf.
He started his career in a ‘Future Office’ project before joining a major British consultancy, rising to Senior Consultant and Partner, and contributed to or directed assignments involving a range of Behavioural Science interventions. He worked with clients in the public, manufacturing and service sectors in Britain and Western Europe.
He then joined ITT Europe in Brussels to lead and develop the Executive Assessment Programme. He supervised consultants in Europe, Asia and Australasia assessing some 400 executives a year, and managed the use of assessments in HR decisions. He then became project manager for a programme assisting executives refocus their careers during the closure of ITTE headquarters before returning to Britain as an independent consultant.
Rosalyn McCarthy, BA, MSc, PhD, CPsychol
Ros McCarthy has over 20 years experience of applying her knowledge as a Business Psychologist to help maximise the value of an organisation’s investment in their human capital. She specialises in helping companies to manage their talent through executive/leadership selection and development. In particular, she coaches executives to develop the skills they need to deliver on their strategic objectives and plans. She also helps individuals deal with the challenges and pressures of rapid change in their organisations through the delivery of leadership and teambuilding workshops.
As a consultant, Ros has worked across a range of private and public sector organisations gaining a breadth of experience which informs her work. Prior to moving into consultancy in 1992, she headed the Business Psychology Group at British Telecom where she was involved in the selection and development of people at all levels within the business. She believes that this experience added to her commercial awareness and understanding of the pressures faced by organisations.
Ros completed her undergraduate education at the University of Kent. Her postgraduate education was at the University of Hertfordshire, where she was awarded her Master’s degree and PhD in Occupational Psychology. She is a member of the Association of Business Psychologists and the Special Group in Coaching Psychology.
Frances Clark, BA (Hons), MPhil, PhD, C.Psychol, AFBPsS, FCIPD
Frances has a background of conducting reviews of organisational performance, culture, and service quality and advising on strategic issues in the management of people and change. She facilitates leadership, team and organisational development in the private and public sector and has consulted at board and senior executive level, managed teams and worked on multidisciplinary projects.
As a chartered psychologist, she is highly qualified to use a variety of techniques for the assessment of individuals and groups. An accredited coach, she undertakes performance and transition coaching for international board level and senior executives from a wide range of functions and countries and for civil servants up to permanent secretary. She is experienced in a variety of project management, consulting, teaching and research roles, having worked for multinational organisations.