Business Development Team Manager
Business Development Division
Dr. Gavan O’Shea joined HumRRO in 2006 as a Senior Scientist after five years with American Institutes for Research (AIR). Since 2012, he has served in various roles within the Business Development (BD) Team, including Director of both Public and Private Sector Talent Management. As the BD Team Manager, Gavan works with the Directors to generate leads, shape and vet opportunities, build partnerships, and thoughtfully grow HumRRO’s capabilities and reach. He earned his PhD in industrial-organizational psychology from Virginia Tech, his master’s in general-experimental psychology from Villanova University, and his bachelors from St. Michael’s College in Vermont. Gavan has served in several professional association leadership roles, including serving on SIOP’s Executive Board (2020-2022) as a member of the American Psychological Association (APA) Council of Representatives.
An APA and SIOP Fellow, Gavan holds an Associate Certified Coach (ACC) Credential from the International Coaching Federation (ICF). Along with coaching and leadership, his 20+ years of experience have involved developing and validating a variety of high-stakes assessments (including situational judgment tests, knowledge exams, and simulations) across hiring, promotion, and credentialing contexts. For example, Gavan has:
- Partnered with several academics and an internal team at the U.S. Secret Service to create an agency-wide leadership development system (LEADS).
- Served as technical lead for ICF’s global analysis of coaching practice, competency model update, and 2022 Credentialing Exam redesign.
- Partnered with ICF to conduct a study of team coaching, resulting in the development and launch of the Advanced Certification in Team Coaching (ACTC).
- Created a “day in the life” online simulation-based assessment for aspiring leaders at the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).
- Led HumRRO’s contribution to developing and implementing a 360-degree feedback system for senior leaders across the U. S. Intelligence Community.
- Led a job analysis of the Intelligence Analyst (IA) workforce at the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) that informed a redesign of several key IA roles.
With over 50 conference presentations, Gavan values and enjoys collaborating with the teams he is a part of to share their work. His writing appears in The Oxford Handbook of Talent Management and The SAGE Encyclopedia of Leadership Studies, along with the following HumRRO Blogs:
Advancing the Full Potential of Skills-Based Hiring
In recent years, three words have been enthusiastically embraced by the talent management community: Skills-based hiring. The term generally refers to removing educational degree requirements from the hiring process while shifting the focus to skills. This sounds simple, but discussions of skills-based hiring often generate more questions than answers, [...]
Is Cognitive Ability the Best Predictor of Job Performance? New Research Says It’s Time to Think Again
Meta-analyses have overestimated both the primacy of cognitive ability and the validity of a wide range of predictors within the personnel selection arena, according to groundbreaking research led by Paul R. Sackett, Ph.D., chair of the HumRRO Board of Trustees, and the Beverly and Richard Fink Distinguished Professor of [...]
New Horizons in Educational Assessment: Situational Judgment Tests
The English social scientist Gregory Bateson once said, “Without context, words and actions have no meaning at all.” His pioneering perspective on interdisciplinary thinking highlights an important truth about educational assessment: far too often, we test student knowledge, aptitude, and achievement using methods that ignore the contexts in which [...]
HumRRO and ICF: A Winning Model of Collaboration
For the past three years, Human Resources Research Organization (HumRRO) and the International Coaching Federation (ICF) have developed a truly collaborative research partnership that has significantly advanced coaching research and practice. Beginning in late 2017 and continuing through early 2019, HumRRO and ICF worked together to design and conduct [...]
Custom Assessment or Off-the-Shelf Solution? Decisions, Decisions, Decisions…
HR and talent management professionals looking to find the right hiring solution face a dizzying array of choices: What competencies should we assess? What type of assessment will work best? How should the assessments be administered? The dozens of off-the-shelf (OTS) assessments currently flooding the marketplace—everything from personality inventories [...]
Sharing 360-Degree Feedback Results
Sharing Your 360-Degree Feedback Results: Getting Back More Than You Give Despite their widespread use, many 360-degree feedback programs fail to live up to their potential. In an earlier post, I described how trained feedback facilitators can help participants interpret their results, identify hidden “blind spots,” and create development plans. [...]
Is Your Leadership Development Program Falling Short?
359 Degree Feedback: Is Your Leadership Development Program Falling Short? 360-degree feedback—where a leader receives performance feedback from subordinates, peers, supervisors, and customers—is a widely used development tool. Indeed, surveys routinely find that the vast majority of Fortune 500 companies employ 360-degree feedback, and it is also extensively deployed [...]