#CoronaDiaries – The Travesty of Hero Pay!

I’m back in the office and I’m feisty as ever about all this “Hero” pay going on across the world! I love Heros, I mean who doesn’t love Heros, but…

Can I be real a second?
For just a millisecond?
Let down my guard and tell the people how I feel a second?

Also, beyond excited that Disney+ is releasing the Original cast of Hamilton on July 3rd! In the comments give me your over/under number of the amount of times I’ll watch Hamilton on Disney+? (I’ll tell you what my wife’s number on me was after a bit!)

Should the US Women Soccer Team be Paid the Same as Men? No!

How’s that for a clickbait headline! “I knew it the SOB Tim Sackett is a Sexist!” Slow down, read the post, you might be surprised on my take…

The US Women’s Soccer team should not be paid the same as the US Men’s Soccer team. They should be paid more!

Okay, let’s dig into this issue.

The media coverage on this issue is rightly pro-US Women’s Soccer. The US Soccer’s legal team continues to make ridiculous statements in an attempt to fight for their client. That’s what you pay lawyers to do, win your case. The men have more responsibility!? What is this, 1935!?! I’m not even sure how the US Soccer’s in house council even allowed that language to be released!

Here’s the full read of the US Soccer Federation’s legal argument. It’s worth a read if you truly care about this issue.

My first reaction to this case when it first got hot last year was this entire thing is ridiculous. If the women want the same as the men, why not just do straight revenue share that is equal. Both men and women get the exact same percentage of revenue they bring and can split it up in whatever way they deem appropriate for their teams. Seem fair? I thought so.

You bring in more money, you get more money. You bring in less, you get less, but don’t bitch, you brought in less.

My thought process on this issue has changed considerably since my first reaction. I love the logic behind revenue share because the Capitalist in me seems like that is equitable and fair. You make more, you get more. But the reality is, the women, in this case, have not had the same advantages of the men for decades, maybe a century, when it comes to this issue.

Let me break down some points:

– You don’t want to hear this but if the US Women’s Soccer team had the same contract as the US Men’s soccer team, they would actually make less money than their current contract. The US Men would argue and are currently renegotiating, they would make more if they had the women’s contract! From US Soccer, the women actually make more than the men, but the men make more overall because of professional money and non-US Soccer tournaments.

– Men’s soccer has been funded and supported at such a different level for so long, it has given them a giant, one could argue, an unsurpassable advantage in player development, infrastructure, marketing, etc. This is why the US Men don’t require have compensation to play on the national team because they make exponentially more than the women playing professional soccer.

– If we pay the US Women equally to the US Men, the women will actually make less overall, because they don’t have this advantage of time and resources the men have gotten for so long. I don’t think pay equality is what is needed, it’s pay fairness. By the way, if you take a few minutes and actually read the legal documents, this also what the US Women are saying. But, in the media, it wouldn’t play well to say “we want more”! But, what they are actually trying to get, would, in fact, pay them more than the men, when it comes to US Soccer compensation, but not total overall compensation.

– Carli Lloyd, the famous US Soccer women’s player, admitted in her testimony that the US Men actually do have more “skill” when it comes to speed and strength. The use of the word “skill” is really what the media pulled out. The actually tactical and strategic soccer skills, ballhandling, passing, etc. Is way too subjective to argue that men have more skill than women.

– “Women’s Soccer and Men’s Soccer are not the same game.” This was a statement from my wife, a former D1 college athlete and a national team invitee. The name is the same, but we have to get over this fact that men and women playing a similar game is the same. It’s different! I love to watch women’s volleyball. Men’s volleyball is boring. I would rather watch men’s basketball over women’s basketball. If I love “basketball” why don’t I love watching both? Because I actually love watching “Men’s basketball”. Different games.

– The legal argument that US men soccer team members have more responsibility is just an ignorant statement. Again, based on history, awareness, resources, etc. US citizens get super pissed if US “men” lose at anything to other countries because we’ve been conditioned by mostly media, that this is how we should react. If the women lose, we tend to not be as upset. “Oh, they played their butts off! Next time!”  Again, we’ve been conditioned to this response. If we would have been conditioned that losing, men or women in a national team competition, is awful and unacceptable for decades, we would all truly believe this responsibility is equal, which it is, but we tend to think differently about, because of how we’ve been conditioned.

– These are all union bargained terms. This is why the US women have taken their argument public because legally this win will be hard. They bargained fairly and agreed to these terms. Courts love to uphold bargained agreements. You signed the contract and now you think it sucks. Okay, go back to the bargaining table. Isn’t that why you joined a union?

I hear your argument right now. “Tim, more people want to watch men over women, the TV viewership, ticket sales, etc., show this!” The reason women don’t have the same resources is because it’s not the entertainment people want. Well, for decades, men were the only entertainment option we’ve been given! “Tim, men’s football and men’s basketball pay for all those Title 9 scholarships for women!” And every other men’s sport as well. Again, historically we didn’t support women’s athletics even close to men’s. So, if we did, from the beginning, would we even need Title 9? We won’t know, we are where we are right now.

Also, I don’t give a crap that one team was more successful than another. In the world of national teams, that doesn’t really matter. In the US, our best male athletes usually gravitate to the sport that pays them the most money (basketball, American football, baseball, even hockey). Women, again, don’t have those same avenues. The highest NBA player salary in 2019 was $34,000,000 per season. The highest WNBA player salary was $127,000.

The US Women’s Soccer team should not be paid equal to the US Men’s team. They should be paid more. Paying them the same would just be another injustice to female soccer players. We have systematically put women athletes at a disadvantage for so long in the US. Not pay equity, pay fairness.

4 Great Things About Your 401K Taking a Dump!

The stock market is in the crapper and everyone’s 401K took a hit that will take years to recover, so how can any of this be great!?!

Oh, just give me a minute to explain…

Yeah, it sucks! I mean panic in the streets sucks, I just lost my retirement condo in Boca sucks! I’m trying to make light of a bad financial situation. Oh wait, I kind of am.

The reality is we all put ourselves in this situation. We gambled. We put our money into mutual funds and 401Ks and other investment vehicles and we loved watching them gain money for the last ten years! Since the great recession, the S&P 500 has tripled! If you got in early, you’ve seen your entire retirement increase substantially from where it was.

Good news, bad news. It sucks we are all taking this hit, but we’ve had a great ride up! Plus, it will ride up again, for those who have a few years. For those who don’t, I’m very sorry, truly. It’s a great lesson for us all that as we get close to retirement, get the vast majority of your money out of the market and into much more conservative investments.

So, what about this nightmare do I think is great?

1. GenX lives! It’s too late for the Baby Boomers, they’re out. The Millennials thought they were on the cusp of taking over, well sorry, kids, Daddy isn’t leaving just yet! Thanks to the market fall, Gen X is here to stay for another decade and the Millennials looking to take over as leaders are just going to have to sit back and relax.

2. Retirement is Boring! I know you wanted to retire. It seems so great sitting around Florida watching your friends get older, sicker, and eventually die. Look, you get one run around this rock, why just stop, let’s keep this thing going! There isn’t one part of me that is looking forward to retirement. What am I going to do, sit home and watch crappy CBS cop shows? Nope, apparently, I’ll be getting a second job to help pay for the food bill with all my Gen Z kids at home that can’t find jobs.

3. Being Poor is a Great Diet Plan. Do you know no one has ever written a diet book about not having money and how it reduces your caloric intake? It seems like someone would have ‘scientifically’ picked up on that. Ugh, I lost most of my retirement in the stock market, now I have to stop going out for the nice 3,000 calorie dinners at the Applebee’s! America is way fat! LIKE WAAAAYYY FAT! We all need a diet. To feel a bit hungry again. We’ll all be tougher for it!

4. I’m buying great companies at a super discount! I’m a conservative gambler. I only like winning! Do you know how you win? Buy great, profitable companies, at 50% off and double your money in a shorter period of time! Now is not the time to be gun shy. This will be one of the top 2 or 3 buying opportunities in the history of the market!

I know, there is a portion of folks who will read this and think, “Tim’s an asshole!” How can he say this!?! He has no empathy! (Editor’s Note: Tim is an asshole.)

We all choose to react to tragedy in different ways. This sucks. This sucks for me and my family. This sucks for my business. This sucks for you. We can all agree on that. I also need to move on. To move forward. We did that after the great recession and we were stronger for it. We’ll do that again.

Also, Gen X Lives!

How Would a College Education be Different if you Were an Investor?!

There’s a concept that is starting to gain some steam in college tuition funding called “Income Share Agreements”. The basis of these agreements is pretty much “I” (the investor) pays “you” (the student) to go to college and get an education. Once you graduate and get a job, I take some of your annual salary for an agreed-upon time.

From the Washington Post:

In an ISA, a student borrows nothing but rather has his or her education supported by an investor, in return for a contract to pay a specified percentage of income for a fixed number of years after graduation. Rates and time vary with the discipline of the degree achieved and the amount of tuition assistance the student obtained.

An ISA is dramatically more student-friendly than a loan. All the risk shifts from the student to the investing entity; if a career starts slowly, or not at all, the student’s obligation drops or goes to zero. Think of an ISA as equity instead of debt, or as working one’s way through college — after college.

I like this alternative to student loans because it puts much of the risk on the investor and away from the student. Also, if higher education institutions get involved with these kinds of investment funds, it truly puts accountability back on their organization to ensure they are producing graduates who are desired and prepared.

Purdue University has been doing a ton of testing with these types of agreements:

Although the very nature of ISAs protects the participant, early adopters such as Purdue have built in safeguards. A user-friendly computer simulator provides quick, transparent comparisons with various public and private loan options. No investee pays anything for the first six months after graduation or until annual income exceeds $20,000. For those graduates who get off to fast career starts, a ceiling of 250 percent of the dollars that purchased their education limits total repayment.

All of this gets you to think about what might be possible if we walked away from traditional student loan programs altogether!

What if…

  • The amount of your investment into a student returned more than you could make on the stock market?
  • Students had to present themselves, as high schoolers, to investment groups to get funding for university?
  • Investors and investing groups were only willing to fund students in careers where they could get a good return on investment? Say goodbye to history majors!
  • College students had to meet with their investors and explain why they got a “C” and missed class because they were drunk!?
  • Organizations and HR Departments started investing in potential future talent in a very real way!?

I love disruption to traditional things we have come to believe just can’t be changed. This isn’t perfect and there are a lot of questions, but it’s worth testing and trying. What we know is traditional student loan programs are not working at all! Something has to change.

I’m GenX and a Capitalist, so I love the accountability of both the investor having to make sound, prudent investment decisions around who they feel is most likely to give them a great return on investment, and the student’s accountability of understanding there’s a cost/benefit to your career choices and what it will cost to pay back those choices.

What do you think? Would you allow one of your kids to get into one of these arrangements, or would you have been willing to do this in college? I think I would have had very few people want to invest in me, but those who did would have been paid back in spades!

 

College Students: Are you adding your side-hustle to your resume!?

I got killed a few weeks ago by some trolls on Twitter over posting this tweet:

I get that many people need to work side hustles to make ends meet in today’s world. I wasn’t talking about these folks working their butts off to make ends meet. I myself work side hustles.

In today’s #outrage culture, this tweet was seen as insensitive by some folks who spend way too much time on Twitter and not enough time on their professional role! Also, I’m clearly not Gary Vaynerchuk, the king of hustle porn, who could tweet this exact tweet and get 5 million likes before the end of the day!

Turns out, Recruiters are now encouraging college students to put their side hustles on their resume and profiles. Why? Because employers actually really like candidates who aren’t afraid to work! It’s the #1 thing that executives tell me when we talk about their pain points around hiring. “Tim, we just need people who want to work!”

So, what are the top side hustles you should be adding onto your resume and profiles? The folks at The Knowledge Academy did a survey and found these were the most popular:

  • 85% of US recruiters recommend those college students who buy items from garage sales and then sell them online for a higher price, to include it on their resume/job applications
  • 67% of US recruiters believe college students that create/modify products to sell online, should have it on their resume/job applications
  • 60% of US recruiters think college students who offer photography services for hire, encourage stating it on their resume/job applications

I really think as a candidate, any skill you believe adds to your overall value as an employee should be something you add to your resume and/or profile, but just know that some HR/Talent/Hiring Managers will look at this in different ways. If you’re an engineer and you’re also driving for a ride share service, you probably need to explain why the full-time gig isn’t enough. “I’m also supplementing my income with weekend and evening ride share to help pay off my student loans quicker!”

The survey found that –52% of recruiters feel companies who know an employee has a growing ‘side hustle’ should take an active approach to support them (i.e. offering flexible working hours). Um, what!? So, Mary is our accountant and we love her, but she also has a growing cupcake business on the side and I should give her time off to go do that and not fulfill her duties in a full-time role? I’m not sure I 100% can buy into this philosophy from a business standpoint!

I would probably go back to that employee and ask them if they started their own business, like this side hustle, and had to hire folks, who then wanted to not work their ‘real’ job, but put more time and effort towards their own thing, how would that sit with them? I already know the answer. They want and need workers who are committed and get their jobs done like everyone else.

It’s definitely a different world we live in. Side hustles become full-time hustles for so many folks. I definitely see this when someone is working a full-time gig that they hate, and a side hustle that they love. Like Gary V would say, you need to then adjust your lifestyle to fit your side hustle, and not your full-time gig if that’s what you desire to do. What you can’t do is think just because you love petting puppies, doesn’t mean you can do it full-time without giving up some stuff. It’s hard to make those Tesla payments on a puppy petter salary!

Ford Layoffs – “Hey, stay a few days and say your goodbyes!”

A big announcement yesterday over at Ford where 7,000 or so white-collar workers will be getting laid off. For generations of automotive families, this is really anything new. You grow up knowing about once every ten years, the big autos will do some ‘right-sizing’ or reorganizations. The reality is, and other industries are much different, auto industries hire in good times like your drunk Uncle Lou buys drinks at the bar after he cashes his income tax return check!

In good times, there is nothing better than working in the automotive industry. Everyone gets hired for good wages, bonuses are good, and they throw money around like it’s monopoly money. In bad times, they ‘right-size’ and it’s not targeted, it’s pretty much we need to cut 10,000 people, make it happen!

Ford CEO Jim Hacket said this layoff is different, it’s not, but to prove the point he also said this:

He acknowledged saying goodbye to colleagues is “difficult and emotional.”

“We have moved away from past practices in some regions where team members who were separated had to leave immediately with their belongings, instead giving people the choice to stay for a few days to wrap up and say goodbye,” he wrote.

Wow, really!?! Thanks, Jim!

Honestly, though, it is a bit more humane, right? Basically what you say when you walk someone out immediately during a layoff is this:

  • Hey, you no longer have a job but thank you for all those years of your life and discretionary effort you gave!
  • Also, we don’t trust you, so get the hell out, NOW!
  • Also, if you know of any younger workers who can do what you do, but for 30% less, please refer them to us!

Now, I am not saying Ford is laying off older workers and keeping younger workers. That would be slanderous, and I would never say such a thing! You can look at the data for yourself! It is a bit ironic though how white-collar layoffs tend to impact higher paid, more experienced workers. Turns out experience only matters to a certain salary point, then we are mostly the same in terms of productivity and knowledge.

No, Ford is in a very competitive industry and very fast-changing industry, and while all these ‘more experienced’ workers made us a lot of money, we now need to hire a different set of skills for our next generation of products. We no longer need all these mechanical engineers (true) and we need many more electrical and computer engineering skill sets (also true). Also, we probably need less more experienced finance, human resources, marketing, and operations folks as well, for these new more technical products we are creating.

So, back to the actual layoffs. Do you agree with Hackett (no relation, since my name, is “Sackett” with an “S”, and not an “H” but I see the confusion if you’re dumb) on his layoff approach of treating the Ford employees a bit differently and letting them close up shop and not walk them out immediately?

My take:

This should be an individual management decision. Your manager knows if you’re a terrorists or not. If she believes you can act like an adult and not sabotage anything on your way out, she should be able to make that call. If she believes you’re a problem, she should also be able to make that call on walking you out immediately.

I don’t believe this should be an all or nothing approach. I’ve seen people who have done some very bad things when given the chance to ‘pack up shop” on their way out. When you take the livelihood way from a person, you really don’t know how they’ll react. Some will become desperate and take anything they can get, staplers, information, etc.

Most, the vast majority, will be sad and grieve but also be able to handle this news in a respectful manner, knowing they’ll probably need that manager reference to land their next spot.

Layoffs suck, even when done for the best reasons to save the jobs of thousands of others. They just suck. I feel awful for those Ford employees having to go through this, just as I did for the GM employees who had to go through this at the end of last year. Organizations are living, breathing things, and as such, tend to make the same mistakes as well do in good times and bad.

 

Could We Use Congestion Pricing Theory in Recruiting? #SourceCon

Oh, lord, what the heck is Sackett talking about now!?

Congestion Pricing Theory (CPT) is basically paying more for convenience. We see it used on things like tollways, where if you want to ride on this road you pay a premium, or if you want to use this certain lane on a tollway you pay more for the access to a less congested lane of traffic.

You also see it at places like the movies. You pay $12 per ticket to go to a movie on a Saturday night at 8 pm, but if you go at 10 am on a Tuesday morning, you might get that same ticket for $8. It costs more to go during the busy time.

Airlines fully embrace CPT when you pay a little more to get on the plane first so you don’t have to deal with full overhead bins, etc. Theme parks now have tickets you can buy that lets you bypass the long lanes. Congestion Pricing Theory allows consumers to pay more for what they believe is important to them.

So, could we use this model in recruiting?

Let’s say you’re Google and you have thousands of people apply to your jobs that will never get seen. Could Google use CPT to allow applicants to pay an upcharge if they were certain to have their application examined and given feedback? Maybe it’s $25.

For $25 you can be assured your application will have a real human look at it. Would you pay to ensure that would happen? Depends on the company, the job, the competition, your income level, etc. But, the reality is, if someone turns CPT on in their hiring process, and their brand is very attractive, people would pay the fee!

Now, ethically, is this right?

Ethically is it right to have roads paid for by tax dollars, then to drive on those roads in a less congested way, you still have to pay more money? Is it right to charge one person a different, higher, price for the same service that another person paid less for?

One of the main complaints that candidates have about applying for jobs is the lack of information. The reason they don’t get the information they want is it costs too much money for organizations to properly staff TA shops in a way that would allow them to give this high level of feedback.

Congestion Pricing models would definitely give candidates and organizations an option to offer this service for those candidates who truly wanted the feedback they desired or at least more feedback then they’ve historically been given.

So, we don’t do this because we’ll say it impacts the poor and those out of work the most. They can’t afford the price to ensure they will be seen, so the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.

I think it’s interesting that this is the main argument of doing something like this, but we don’t argue this type of pricing when it comes to other parts of our life where these things used to be free, and now they are not.

I’m not saying that we limit those who apply. All are still open to apply and all will have the same experience as they had before. Some, who choose to have an elevated candidate experience, will choose to pay for that experience.

I’m not saying this will ever happen, but if it does, I’m not going to be shocked because we’ve seen so many successes using CPT in other areas of our lives.

What do you think? Hit me in the comments.

Want to make more money? Be an extrovert!

New research out of the University of Copenhagen finally puts to rest the age-old argument around what’s better: being an extrovert or being an introvert? I have friends who are on both sides and super successful in their careers, but it’s still one of those things where if you are one or the other, you usually believe what you are is the best.

Well, in terms of lifelong earnings the data is pretty clear you want to be an extrovert! From the study:

One striking result is how much the trait of conscientiousness matters. Men who measure as one standard deviation higher on conscientiousness earn on average an extra $567,000 over their lifetimes, or 16.7 percent of average lifetime earnings. Measuring as extroverted, again by one standard deviation higher than average, is worth almost as much, $490,100. These returns tend to rise the most for the most highly educated of the men.

For women, the magnitude of these effects is smaller (for one thing, women earned less because of restricted opportunities). Furthermore, extroversion is more strongly correlated with higher earnings than is conscientiousness, unlike for the men.

Yeah, that’s a half of million dollars! That’s life changing money for most people!

Here is something else that came out of the study that I thought was fascinating, people who are ‘agreeable’ by nature, actually make less money!

It may surprise you to learn that more “agreeable” men earn significantly less. Being one standard deviation higher on agreeableness reduces lifetime earnings by about 8 percent, or $267,600. In this context, you can think of agreeableness as meaning a person is less antagonistic and more likely to consider the interests of others. You might have thought agreeableness would be correlated with higher earnings but alas not.

So, here we are as HR pros telling all of our employees who want to be leaders they should be more ‘agreeable’, put the interests of others above your own, etc. What we are really telling them is “hey, here’s how to ensure you’ll make less money in your career!”

I think we see this in our world today. We tend to want to believe we all want ‘servant leaders’ when it comes to someone leading us individually, or leading our companies. But, for the most part, most of our great leaders we can point to, male and female, are still overwhelmingly extroverted and mostly directive in their style of leadership.

One last thing that came out of the study is that being smart and being extroverted is not correlated. Why does this matter? Well, being smart does correlate to higher income as well. So, when we go try and select great employees we tend to just look at intelligence. Which is necessarily bad. If you are going to try to increase your talent, starting with smart people is never a bad idea, but in the long run, it’s more than just IQ:

Another interesting result from the data is that IQ and conscientiousness are not very well correlated. That implies that finding ideal workers isn’t so easy. The quality of openness, however, is moderately positively correlated with IQ, so you might expect that the smarter workers are more willing to experiment and try new things.

So, do you have to be extroverted to make more money? No, but it’s easier and more likely if you are. If you’re introverted, by nature, it wouldn’t hurt to work on your outwardly extroverted self. We all have the ability to be extroverted and introverted in certain situations. The key for earning more income is being extroverted in a professional setting.

Okay, my introverted friends! Tell me why this research is complete B.S.!

Your Weekly Dose of HR Tech: Kashable – Low Cost Loans for Employees (@GetKashable)

Today on The Weekly Dose I take a look at the HR Tech, voluntary employee benefit and financing solution for your employees called Kashable. Kashable is basically a simple way for your employees to borrow money, where you as a company are not involved, but can still ensure they get the assistance they need!

Here’s the scenario – Timmy walks into your office. He’s got a problem. His car broke down over the weekend. He needs new brakes. He has no savings and no way to get the money. Without his car, Timmy stops coming to work.

You’ve had this conversation before, haven’t you? In fact, you probably will have it this week!

Here’s the problem. Your company and you in HR don’t want to become a bank. Loaning out money to employees, through your company, always becomes a nightmare. This is why I was so intrigued with a technology like Kashable.

Kashable gives your employees access to low-cost loans based on a percentage of their take-home pay. You as the employer, only facilitate the repayment through payroll deduction, but ultimately you are not responsible for repayment.

Having this option for employees is important! 

Here’s what way too many of our employees do in a cash crisis situation. They choose bad money options! 401K loans, high-interest credit cards, cash advance shops, or they go without something that is critical, like health insurance or a medication, etc. All of which puts them in a worse situation long term than where they started. The problem is, most of our employers have a bad or low credit and don’t have access to cheaper capital alternatives.

What I like about Kashable: 

– Gets the employer out of the loan business and puts it back where it belongs, in the hands of a financial institution that I have validated will do right by employees.

– Kashable reports directly to the credit bureaus, allowing your employees to build positive credit on these smaller amount loans that are paid back through payroll deduction.

– Kashable doesn’t allow employees to take a loan that can’t afford, so they are also teaching them responsible financing. The average amount of a weekly repayment is 5-10% of their takehome, so they don’t put themselves in a worse situation. They also only allow an employee to have one loan at a time.

– Many of your employees have a bad credit and could never get a low-cost loan, but with Kashable because they are employed by you, they will have access to this financing mechanism.

– Gives a credit option to your employees have no credit as well (high school grads, college grads, H1B workers, etc.).

Kashable has data to show that 35-40% of employees who use the service use it to pay down higher interest debt they have. So, already you’re helping to teach them to get away from the nightmare too many of our employee get caught in with high-interest credit.

I’m in love with any kind of technology that helps my employees and helps me and my organization. I’ve been in the bad situation of having to loan my employees money and how that usually ends up bad. I’ve begged my banking partners to give me an option like this, but they never would because they had to follow traditional banking rules. Kashable takes on the loan risk, and they do it because they know your employees are an actual fairly low risk.

Go check them out and do a demo – www.kashable.com


The Weekly Dose – is a weekly series here at The Project to educate and inform everyone who stops by on a daily/weekly basis on some great recruiting and sourcing technologies that are on the market.  None of the companies who I highlight are paying me for this promotion.  There are so many really cool things going on in the tech space and I wanted to educate myself and share what I find.  If you want to be on The Weekly Dose – just send me a note – timsackett@comcast.net

Want help with your HR & TA Tech company – send me a message about my HR Tech Advisory Board experience.

I’m in Indeed Jail! Help me!!! #FreeTimSackett

Do you remember when getting stuck in LinkedIn Jail was all the rage!? I do! It was awful! There you were stuck on the outside looking in not being able to use a valuable tool you used every day to help you do your job.

I’m in Indeed Jail!

It’s somewhat like being in LinkedIn Jail, but different. When you got put into LinkedIn Jail, LinkedIn decided that that right thing to do was to let us know why we were in jail, and then, specifically, how do you get yourself out of LinkedIn Jail. Seems like a good business strategy.

How does Indeed get you all of those great candidates?

The Indeed model built a decade ago was freaking brilliant! Basically, the idea was scrap all the jobs from all the career sites so candidates will have one place to go to search for jobs. No one understood Google SEO at the time, so they scraped the jobs, then bought all the SEO and owned the space.

So, any candidate who was searching for a job on Google the first thing that would come up, always, was an Indeed link. They trained entire generations to search for jobs by going to Indeed. Brilliant!

Now, Google came along eventually and woke up to this and said, “Hey, wait, candidates are searching on Google for things like “Jobs near me” and we are sending them to Indeed for things that aren’t even what they are truly looking for. We can do this better!” Hello, Google for Jobs!

Google for Jobs decided “candidates are the most important thing”. Your Indeed sales rep will tell you this as well, although, they didn’t ever say this until Google for Jobs came along! So, Google changes the game, stops indexing Indeed (which is like a death sentence to companies that rely on Google search traffic), and says we can deliver a better job search for candidates.

So, Indeed is basically a dead man walking, but they have this window of time when we still have the entire world trained to go to Indeed and not Google. So, how do you take advantage of this phenomenon? INDEED JAIL!!! Cut off the non-suspecting companies of their free traffic and charge them money before they realize they don’t really need to do this because Google will give them the traffic they need.

So, what’s Indeed Jail?

Indeed Jail is when Indeed makes the decision to stop scrapping your career site and posting your jobs on Indeed. Almost every company at some point in the past decade has enjoyed a lot of free, organic traffic from having their job posting on Indeed. It was an AWESOME business strategy. It basically followed LinkedIn’s strategy, who followed basic drug dealing strategy.

Get people hooked on your product, then take it away and make them pay if they want it. I don’t say that to be mean! It freaking works really, really well! LinkedIn is a multi-Billion dollar company that got bought by Microsoft.

Indeed Jail is when Indeed stops giving you those free hits! Now, they just don’t take it away for no reason. My reason to be cut off, I was told, was because of a magical, mythical division within Indeed called “Search Quality”. My Indeed Rep didn’t shut me off, no! It was “Search Quality” who shut me off, and my Indeed Rep has absolutely nothing to do with Search Quality. In fact, they run almost as a separate company, locked away in an undisclosed, secret location!

My “Search Quality” issue was I’m a staffing company. An example of my issue is we work with a major employer to fill contract positions, not a position they would hire direct. The company gave us a job description for the contract position, which was basically the exact same JD they use to hire direct. Because the direct employer has priority at Indeed, and my posting was ‘too similar” my ‘search quality’ was bad.

Okay, I’m in Jail, Ouch, that hurts! Help me fix it! 

Let me say, I’m paying and have paid money to Indeed for various products, so it’s not like I’m not a customer. So, when you ask someone you’re paying for help, you expect help. But Indeed has no interest in helping you fix your search quality issue because that would mean you would get the product for free again!

I would love to tell you this is a staffing industry only issue, but it’s not. Little by little, and I have specific examples, corporate Talent Acquisition is also getting hit with ‘search quality’ issues and losing their free traffic from Indeed.

How can that be!?

Believe me, the corporate TA leaders I’m talking to are wondering the same thing. In one example, an Ohio-based employer is hiring hundreds of sales-related positions per year. They don’t use any staffing or RPO vendors, all the work is done in-house for direct positions. They have a big growth initiative so they went from maybe 50 openings to 200 openings, and Indeed cut them off! Because of ‘search quality’, and again, their rep would/could not help them.

I have a feeling this isn’t going to end well for Indeed. Right now they’re flying high! Going to hire thousands of more employees, which makes complete sense, because if you shut everyone off of free traffic, you’ll have a lot of TA pros panicking and buying Indeed products. At least until they discover it continues to cost more for less and less traffic as Google no longer indexes Indeed.

I’ve sent emails to the highest reaches of Indeed, pleading for help, and the only response I got back was from my rep offering to sell me more products!

I explained that I want this to be positive! Show me how to fix me, and I’ll show others how to fix themselves! Along the way, it’s a win/win since the more we understand about the Indeed products and services and feel like a vendor is truly helping us, we (as an industry) will support them!

Crickets!!! Crickets, I say, Chris Hyams!!!

So, what should you do to NOT get yourself in Indeed Jail?  

1. Never pay one dime to Indeed!!!

  • So one thing that has been pretty consistent with everyone I’ve spoken to that got put into Indeed Jail is that they were all (100%) paying customers of Indeed. Almost, like Indeed knew we were willing to pay for traffic, so they put us into jail on purpose! Up until the point of becoming a paid Indeed customer, none of the people I spoke ever had issues with being put in Indeed Jail!

2. Make sure you understand what is ‘bad’ search quality for Indeed. Good luck with this!

3. Enjoy the free traffic while you have it because eventually everyone will be shut off. Drug dealing works because we get addicted. You’re currently addicted to free Indeed traffic. That isn’t a sustainable model for a business.

So, what do you do if you’re already in Indeed Jail? 

1. Understand you’re not alone.

2. Understand that your true reality is you can live without Indeed traffic, and slowly but surely the traffic you get from Google will be greater. So, focus on ensuring your ATS and Jobs are as aligned as possible with the Google Job Schema – it’s super important!

3. Understand if you want more Indeed hits, you better get ready to pay for them from Indeed.

4. Understand Indeed has no vested interested in helping you fix your search quality issue, even if you’re a paid customer because it costs them money.

5. Look at Programmatic Job Advertising tools like: JobAdX, Talroo, Appcast, etc. Increase your posting strategy with sites like ZipRecruiter, CareerBuilder, Monster, LinkedIn, etc.  Invest in your own database with some talent rediscovery tools, use CRM technology, build and nurture your pipelines of talent.

My Offer Still Stands!

Chris Hyams, the President of Indeed, get your team to help fix my stuff and I’ll be your biggest fan in advocating and teaching others how to do right by candidates and by Indeed to make the world a better place. That’s all I ever wanted, for you to just help me. Help a paying customer fix their stuff. But you refused.

#FreeTimSackett