Monthly Archives: July 2013

I’m Going to the 2013 HR Tech Conference!

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If you read this blog you know that I’ve attended the SHRM National Conference for years.  There is also one other conference – The HR Technology Conference – that I haven’t missed for the last 4 years, and now that my friend, Steve ‘The Call Him Mr. HR Tech’ Boese, is running the show – I doubt highly I’ll miss again!   I love attending The HR Tech conference for a number of reasons that are different from why I like attending SHRM – but I think both should be on the list of every serious HR Pro.  If you can only attend one – might I recommend every other year between the two.

Here’s why I attend The HR Tech Conference:

 1. HR Technology Smarts! (Duh! Right.  But listen, great HR Tech knowledge is the one way Trench HR Pros can separate themselves from the pack!  Want to move far in your HR Career – this is a must have competency for the now and for the future.  HR Tech does something better than most in that most of the speakers I’ve seen are like you and me – they actually work in HR.)

2. The Crowd!  (The HR Tech Conference pulls in a completely different crowd than SHRM.  I love the SHRM crowd – I feel one with the Trench HR Pros who go.  HR Tech is filled with HR decision makers!  You know the ones who can say yes to buying hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions, of cool HR tools.  Plus, some really smart HR pros who think about HR differently.)

3. The HR Vendors. (Any company in the HR space trying to make a name for themselves is there.  I first met HireVue at HR Tech 3 years ago in some back little booth with nobody around – and thought – ‘Holy shit! This is the future of interviewing’ – they a bit bigger now!  At HR Tech you actually get to see the future of HR before anyone else.  It’s like going to the annual Car Shows and seeing the concept vehicles!  How we work in HR will be different 5 years from now – want to know how – attend and find out!)

The 2013 HR Technology Conference will also be the last for the ‘Godfather of HR Tech’, Bill Kutik (that’s Bill in the picture above!), as he passes on the torch to aforementioned, Steve Boese.  That is one final reason I’m attending.  Bill has had a huge impact on HR Technology in his tenure and that should be celebrated.

Here’s one reason you should attend – the gang at HR Tech (because I blog a bunch and they think I’m influential – jikes on them!) has given me a special discount code ‘SACKETT’ – which saves you $500 of the price of the conference.  Sign up HERE!

Besides the $500 – I’ll let you buy me a drink or take me to a cool Las Vegas show!  Your choice!

 

Top Recruiter Lies

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So, last week, I wrote a little HR blog post called – ‘Top Candidate Lies‘ and it got a rather large reaction.  LinkedIn’s What’s Hot picked it up from TLNT (ERE’s HR website which re-blogs some of my work) – and in a little over 8 hours, over 75,000 people read the post, and over 500 comments (at TLNT’s site)!  Cool for me, right!?  Well, let’s just say there were a ‘few’ folks who didn’t agree with my post – so I took a bit of beating – as did the Recruiting Profession in general.

Basically, from the Top Candidate Lies post, there three camps:

1. Recruiters – where about 99% agreed with the lies, and found it funny

2. Job Seekers – who honestly had one of these things happen to them, now understood that some recruiters might see these as lies, and wanted help in how they should address (I got over 50 person emails like this – which was cool and made for a busy weekend)

3. The Haters – these folks assumed all ‘candidates’ were out of work people, and they weren’t lying or had to lie to get a job.  There’s really no logic in addressing these folks, like: many candidates lie and are actually employed, candidates lie because they just don’t want to tell the recruiter the truth (more on this later) or candidates lie because most candidates lie! The Haters also pointed out that Recruiters Lie!  For which I say – “yes, yes they do!”

I love The Haters passion, though, so I wanted to go down that road of the Top Recruiter Lies – Here you go Haters!

– Send Us Your Resume, Even Though We Don’t Have a Job Lie – this was pointed out by a few people – I would say this is a ‘semi-lie’  (how do you like that haters!).  While the recruiter might not have the opening currently, they’re asking for a resume because they frequently have those openings and they never know when one is coming. The recruiter, though, is wrong by not telling you this up front, so you know what to expect.

– The Hiring Manager Hasn’t Gotten Back To Me Lie – This is a lie and not a lie – potentially!  For Corporate Recruiters this is a lie or lazy – you pick.  If you’re a corporate recruiter and tell the candidate that the hiring manager hasn’t gotten back to you – get your butt up from your desk and walk over to the hiring managers desk.  If they’re in a different location and won’t get back to you – you have an influence problem you need to work on.  Agency-wise it’s the one frustrating things recruiters have to deal with – Hiring Managers will get to ‘us’ when they feel like it, and usually after they’ve exhausted every other opportunity internally to fill the position.

– The Never Call Back the Candidate Lie – this really isn’t a lie – but The Haters pointed this out happens all the time!  For the sake of Recruiters everywhere – if you do this – please quit this profession – we (all Recruiters) Hate you as well.  You give all of us a bad name.  It takes 10 seconds to call back a candidate you spoke to a job about, and tell them “Sorry, you were not chosen – stay in touch, don’t call me again, etc.”  10 seconds!  Haters – bad Recruiters don’t call you back because they have major conflict avoidance and don’t like telling people negative stuff like – “You’re not good enough, we found someone better” or just a simple Lie “we filled it internally”.

– The You Didn’t Score High Enough On The Assessment Lie – The company you’re trying to get into might actually have cut-off scores they’ve established – the lie comes into play when a hiring manager presents someone they’ve worked with previously and that person scores the same as you – but still gets the job.  If they really like you – the assessment won’t stop them from hiring you.

– The We’ve Decided To Go Another Direction Lie – This comes along with the ‘We really liked you, but” Lie.  This is Recruiter training 101 – to not get yourself into trouble when telling a candidate they didn’t get the job – give them a reason that legally can never come back and bite you in the butt.  “We really, really, really liked but have decided to not fill the position.”  Two weeks later a job posting comes out that seems very similar but with a title change and a few description changes.  They didn’t like you.

The biggest reason Recruiters lie?  They have major conflict avoidance and are not willing to tell you the truth, which is usually there is something wrong with you – based on what they are looking for and don’t want to hurt your feelings.  Unfortunately, many candidates would actually be helped by a little Recruiter honesty – but recruiters are afraid of candidates who get told the truth – and then get charges from the EEOC, other state or federal agencies, or just get flat out sued.  Candidates have a hard time with feedback like – “you’re really creepy”, “you’re annoying” or “your personality is grating”.  So, the lies come – because Recruiters have found Lies are easier than the truth.

Ok, Haters – your turn – which Recruiter Lies did I forget?  Hit me, not literally, in the comments…

What Detroit’s Bankruptcy and Your Company Have In Common

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Big news last week was that the City of Detroit filed for bankruptcy.  Made national headlines as being the largest municipality in the history of America to do so – yet, I think most people, nationally, are really not surprised.  For decades Detroit has had a horrible reputation as being the murder capital of the world, corrupt politicians, GM going under and the government rescuing it, and everything that is wrong with unions.  Besides a few shining moments from local professional sports teams, there are really never any positive national stories coming out of Detroit.   Fast Company believed Detroit was so far beyond repair, and they were probably right, that Detroit should be bulldozed and turned into farm land.  Basically, hit the reset button.

As you know, I’m a core problem kind of person.  I believe at the heart of most issues, there is a core problem that has created all the issues your are facing.  Most organizations, like Detroit and your own companies, don’t like solving the core problem – you like solving all the little symptoms that the core problem is/has created.  People catch the common cold and take cold medicine – yet study after study show that washing your hands is really the only thing that is going to keep you getting the cold, and those same studies show most people still don’t wash their hands often enough or long enough to not catch the cold.  We like solving symptoms!  It gives us little wins and makes us feel successful. Solving core problems takes a lot of work, usually takes unpopular difficult decisions and many times the success isn’t immediately seen.

So what is Detroit’s core problem?  That is really up for debate – but it’s core Detroit is a victim of its own success. The great Automotive Industry that gave so much to the City of Detroit ended up being its downfall.  Relying solely and completely on one industry bankrupted Detroit.  Everything else is a symptom of time and function.  Rely on one product, service, etc. long enough and eventually the life cycle of that product or service will catch up with you.  The city is just a victim of that life cycle. Here’s some facts from Morgan Housel at  The Motley Fool:

“But the largest driver of Detroit’s demise is a simple, startling fact: the city’s population declined 65% in the last six decades. No city can survive such an exodus; it’s actually amazing Detroit’s finances lasted this long.

The Motor City was home to 1.9 million people in 1950, at the time nearly identical in size to Los Angeles. Today, 700,000 inhabit Detroit, or less than a fifth the size of L.A. That works out to 2.2 people leaving Detroit every hour, 24 hours a day, for the last 63 years.

If the number of people who left Detroit in the last sixty years formed their own city, it would be the nation’s ninth largest, ahead of Dallas, Texas…

Detroit shows how organizations that can’t adapt eventually crumble. Before it was a technology hub, San Francisco relied on shipping, and before that, gold mining. Before New York was the financial capital of the world, it was the garment capital of the world…Detroit was overwhelmingly reliant on the auto industry. When the fate of three companies — General Motors (NYSE: GM), Ford (NYSE: F), and Chrysler — turned, so went the entire city’s fate. Evan Soltas of Bloomberg wrote, “Detroit’s dependence on cars wasn’t exactly the problem. It was dependence itself. Cities should never go all in on any industry, cars or otherwise. It didn’t realize that until it was too late.”

Detroit can easily be your company.  Don’t kid yourself into thinking it can’t be – that is another major mistake generations of Detroit’s leaders made.  “We are different” “Everyone will always need cars.”  “Everyone will always need Facebook.” “Everyone will always need $125 running shoes.” Everyone will always need…you fill in the blank.  Diversification is the only thing that can truly mitigate your risk – and it’s one of those ‘core’ problems at almost every company.  It’s tough because we are told to ‘be the best at what you do’ and it’s hard being the best at many things and be diversified.  We can’t save Detroit – it needs to be reborn – but you can save your company – focus on core problems and stop solving symptoms.

 

Inclusion – As Defined By A Conservative White Guy

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Before I go off – let me say I’m 100% sure Pro Diversity and Inclusion camps don’t have me in mind to be their spokesperson.  You see I’m white. I’m middle-aged. I’m a male.  I tend to lean conservative in my political views, moderately.  So, if you’re really into Diversity and Inclusion – I can totally see why you’ll immediately discount everything I’m about to say.  If I was a women – a black woman – a liberal black woman – a liberal black woman in a wheelchair  – well then – I’d expect you’d listen pretty closely. Right? Don’t kid yourself.

If that’s the case – you’re as closed minded as you believe I am.

I’m completely sick and tired of hearing about Diversity and Inclusion in the way it is being advocated for by my HR brothers and sisters.  It literally makes me sick to my stomach.  Here’s why – with every program, every communication you espouse about your organization being ‘Inclusive’ – what you’re really saying is –

“ABC Company values Inclusion as long as you’re view points are the same view points that we share.”

This isn’t Inclusion!  This is ‘Exclusion’ to the definition!  But you’re selling it as Inclusion.  Am I insane!? (Don’t answer that – it was rhetorical!) Or did someone change what Inclusion really means?

You see – by my middle aged white conservative viewpoint – Inclusion means we should accept everyone – all view points, all colors, all shapes and sizes.  But when ‘I’ the middle aged white conservative guy wants to share ‘my’ beliefs – your organization doesn’t want to hear those.  What you want to hear is that I really have liberal beliefs, that I support abortion, that I think marijuana is harmless, that tattoos are super cool, that everyone should be working from home, that all people have the ability to do all jobs, that I’m not religious – and if I am it’s a religion that you totally support, and that if my religious beliefs somehow don’t support your liberal view of inclusion that I’ll never speak those views publicly and make those employees who do have different views that I uncomfortable – although it’s fine if they throw their views in my face, since that is what ‘Inclusion’ is all about…

The funny thing is – I would define myself as a fiscal conservative, socially liberal and I don’t go to church but was raised around many religions- so I can adapt and fit into almost anywhere.  But since I’m white and middle aged and voted Republican – I can’t fit into most of your Inclusion demographics – which is again is funny to me – since Inclusion is defined as:

“the act of including or the state of being included”

No where in the dictionary did the definition include: “if you believe the same things we believe ‘inclusion’ to mean” or “if you some form of minority”.  The definition is short and clear – Inclusion means everyone is included – even Me – middle aged conservative white guy!  My HR peers are forgetting the “Inclusive” part of “Inclusion”.  I’m reminded of this daily, not because of my own demographic makeup – but I have a 70 year old father still in the work force and he continues to share stories with me about how his 50 years of experience is no longer relative.  That somehow 50 years of experience is becoming worthless.  That on a daily basis – he feels his organization is less inclusive, and more exclusive – because the only people who know anything are the young.  Again – Inclusive-Exclusion at its finest.

But – I understand while you’ll discount this – I’m not liberal – I’m not a minority – the only disability I have is horrible grammar.  I don’t count.  Maybe we can call this ‘new’ Inclusion – “Inexclusion” – being inclusive to those that we share our same ideas, beliefs and opinions.  What do you think?

Why ‘Recruiter’ is the best job in HR.

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I grew up and lived most of my life in Michigan.  There are so many things I love about living in Michigan and most of those things have to deal with water and the 3 months that temperatures allow you to enjoy said water (Jun – Aug).  There is one major thing that completely drives me insane about Michigan.  Michigan is at its core an automotive manufacturing state which conjures up visions of massive assembly plants and union workers.  To say that the majority of Michigan workers feel entitled would be the largest understatement ever made.  We have grown up with our parents and grandparents telling us stories of how their overtime and bonus checks bought the family cottage, up north, and how they spent more time on their ‘pension’ than they actually spent in the plant (think about that! if you started in a union job at 18, put in your 30 years, retired at 48, on your 79 birthday you actually have had a company pay for you longer than you worked for them – at the core of the Michigan economy this is happening right now – and it’s disastrous!  Pensions weren’t created to sustain that many years, and quite frankly they aren’t sustainable under those circumstances).  Seniority, entitlement, I’ve been here longer than you, so wait your turn – are all the things I hate about my great state!

There is a saying in professional sports – “If you can play, you can play”.  Simply, this means that it doesn’t matter who you are, where you come from, how much your contract is worth – if you’re the best player, you will be playing.  We see examples of this in every sport, every year.  The kid was bagging groceries last month, now he’s start quarterback in the NFL!  You came from a rich family, poor family, no family – doesn’t matter – if you can play, you can play.  Short, tall, skinny, fat, pretty, ugly, smart, no-so smart – if you can play, you can play.  Performance on your specific field of play – is all that matters.  BTW – NHL released this video last year supporting the LGBT community (if you can play…) –

This is why I love being a recruiter!  I can play.

Doesn’t matter how long I’ve been doing it.  Doesn’t matter what education/school I came from.  Doesn’t matter what company I work for.  If you can recruit – you can recruit.  You can recruit in any industry, at any level, anywhere in the world.  Recruiting at its core is a perfect storm of showing us how accountability and performance in our profession works.  You have an opening – and either you find the person you need (success), or you don’t find the person (failure).  It’s the only position within the HR industry that is that clear cut.

I have a team of recruiters who work with me. Some have 20 years of experience, some have a few months – the thing that they all know – if you can recruit, you can recruit.  No one can take it away from you, no one can stop you from being a great recruiter.  There’s no entitlement or seniority – ‘Well, I’ve been here longer, I should be the best recruiter!’ If you want to be the best, if you have to go out and prove you’re the best.  The scorecard is your placements.  Your finds.  Can you find talent and deliver, or can’t you.  Black and white.

I love recruiting because all of us (recruiters) have the exact same opportunity.  Sure some will have more tools than others – but the reality is – if you’re a good recruiter – you need a phone and an ability to connect with people.  Tools will make you faster – not better.  A great recruiter can play.  Every day, every industry.  This is why I love recruiting.

Top Candidate Lies

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Every Monday morning I have a meeting with my recruiting team – it’s a great way to kick off the week – we share what we are working on, we talk about problems we are having on specific searches so the team can share ideas and tips, maybe even a possible candidate they know of, etc.  We also share stories!  Monday mornings are great for sharing recruiter stories – horrible interviews interviews, funny excuses candidates have, negotiating nightmares – you name it, we talk about it!

I was reminded this week how bad of liars candidates can be – we get a lot of candidate lying stories in Monday morning meetings!  So, as a shout out to my Recruiters – and all recruiters – I wanted to put together a list of the Top Candidate Lies.  When I started thinking about all the lies, I found I could break it down by category – so here goes – hit me in the comments if you have a favorite that you get – or think of one I missed:

The Education Lies

– “I have all the credits, I just didn’t graduate.”

– “I did all the classes, I just need to pay the fees to graduate.” (so you spent 4+ years going to school, got done, but that last couple of hundred dollars stopped you from graduating…)

– “I graduated from ‘State U’, but it was a long time ago, I’m not sure why they can’t verify my degree.”

– “I had a 3.0 GPA in my ‘core’ classes, but a 1.9 GPA overall…”

– “Well, it was an Engineering/Business degree.”

The Background Check Lies

– “No, I’m not on drugs.” Then fails drug screen. “Oh, you meant Marijuana as a drug…” 

– “She told me she was 18.”

– “They told me in court that never would be on my file, so I didn’t think I needed to tell you.”

–  “No, I don’t have a felony.” (Oh, that felony! But that was in Indiana…)

The Experience Lies

– “When you said Java, I thought you meant experience making coffee.”

– “I was a part of the ‘leadership’ team that was responsible for that implementation.” (So, basically you knew of a project that happened while you were working there…)

The No-Show Interview Lies

– “My car broke down.” (Either through some fantastic wrinkle in space, or gigantic amount of lying, candidates have more car trouble per capita than anyone else ever in the world who has driven a car)

– “I couldn’t find the location.” (So, your answer to this dilemma was to turn around and go home and not call and let us know you got lost?)

– “My son/daughter got sick, so I can’t make it.” (Again – crazy coincidences that happen with candidates and sick kids…)

The Termination Lies

– “It was a mutual decision that I left.” (“So, you’ll ‘mutually’ decided that you would no longer have a job?”, is the question I always ask after this statement! Candidates – this statement sounds as stupid as it reads.)

– “I (or any family member) was in a bad accident and in the hospital, so they fired me for not showing up to work.” (No they didn’t – there are some bad companies out there, but no company does this.)

– “I play on a softball team and after games we go out and have a couple drinks. The next morning my boss smelled alcohol and fired me for drinking on the job.” (This was a true lie I got from an employee – it started out as me just giving him a written warning – until I went lunch, not joking – 10 minutes later at the Chili’s down the street from the office, and there he was belly up to the bar drinking a beer…upon cleaning out his desk we found a half a fifth of vodka.)

Here’s my take on candidate lies – candidates continue to lie, because Talent/HR Pros don’t call them out on it.  We (HR) also perpetuate this problem by hiring the folks who give you the crappy lie, but don’t hire the folks who come clean and tell you the truth.

 

Check out my follow up to this post: Top Recruiter Lies!

 

 

 

The Cost of Bad Hires

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If there is one constant in HR and Recruiting – it is the fact that no one will ever agree on how much a bad hire costs an organization!  Never!  It doesn’t matter how much time you put into coming up with some algorithm, how much research to back up your numbers – it’s still going to be 90% subjective/soft numbers at best.  This is the main reason executives in our organizations think the majority of HR/Talent Pros in the world don’t get business!   We come to them with stuff like this:

“We need to reduce turnover because of Engineer who leaves us, costs the company $7,345,876.23!”

Then you go through a 73 slide PowerPoint deck showing how you came up with the calculations all the way down the parking meter expense during the interview, and when you’re done – no one believes you’re even close to an actual number.

The gang over at National Business Research Institute put together a pretty good infographic proving my point – take a look:

NBRI - The Cost of a Bad Hire Infographic

97%+ of the ‘lost’ cost is from “Training” and “Productivity Loss” – those are very subjective measures in almost all organizations.  What that says is – ‘Oh, Jimmy isn’t working out – fire him – and because he wasn’t working out we lost ‘X’ percent of productivity over any other possible replacement (which in itself is a whole other leap)’.  And, we lost 100% of training we put into Jimmy because he is now not here.  Which again is subjective, since most training isn’t one-on-one, and resources used to train are almost always not used just on one person, etc.

So, here’s a better way to figure out the cost of a bad hire:

1. Ask your head of finance or accounting what they think it costs? “Ballpark it for me?”  $10K? Sounds great! We’ll use $10K.

2. Use $10K as your cost of bad hires.

Your reality – HR’s Reality – is it really doesn’t matter what the number is – only that the powers that be in your organization all agree on the number. Stop wasting your time trying to come up with a better number – just come up with a number that those signing the check agree is probably legit.

 

The 4 Letter Word We Never Use In HR

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I’m not sure about your HR experience but in my HR experience I’ve used every 4 letter word known to man – except one.  That word is:

Luck.

This came to mind recently when I was speaking to a really close HR friend of mine who happens to work at a really great company.  The kind of company who wins all of those HR and Recruiting awards and accolades for doing ‘great’ HR work.  For being the industry leaders in HR and Talent.  For being the company ‘we’ should all follow and emulate.  My friend is funny, I like hanging out with funny people, and she told me the only reason they’ve won any of those awards is luck!  Not skill, not hard work, not better HR/Recruiting talent – it is luck.  Granted, their team had to do some work after the luck to take advantage of timing – but the Luck is the reason they got to ‘greatness’.

She says that they were your average to below average company – nothing special – when a perfect storm of timing hit them.  They had a product that became popular and they went virtually overnight from being a nobody to a somebody.  “We were the same company, but now everyone wanted to know how and what we were doing in HR and Recruiting!  Internally, we laugh about it – we weren’t doing anything new or different – but being asked to accept awards and come speak.  To hear professionals all of sudden think your something special is a pretty cool feeling!  Everyone should experience it, but it makes me sad because I know HR pros who are hell of lot more talented than I working at crappy companies doing much more than we are in HR to turn their companies around – and they’ll never get awards and no one wants to hear them speak – and quite frankly they do HR better than we do!  We got lucky…”

In HR, and probably most parts of our organization, we never want to give Luck credit for anything.  It diminishes us as professionals, and diminishes the profession.  It can’t be LUCK that is making us ‘better’ it’s our skill!   We didn’t get lucky by hiring that designer who after 5 years just had inspiration and got our company noticed, our selection process picked that person. We didn’t get lucky by winning that harassment lawsuit, it was our training.  Luck is a very bad work to use in the corporate world!  Can you imagine going into your CEO when she asks “So, how did you guys lower our turnover by 25% in the past 12 months?”, and you go “Luck”!  But how many of ‘us’ had these conversations in the past few years when we saw our turnover plummet because of the recession, and our employees having no other job choices – go into our executives and talk about our ‘processes’, our ‘engagement programs’, our ‘programs to reduce turnover’ – when in reality you could have done nothing and turnover was going to plummet.  Luck, was on our side.

I like to give Luck credit.  I’ve been very lucky in my career – and I’m always willing to give it credit.  I think luck has more to do with success than people want to give it credit for.  Sure, once luck comes your way, you better have the skill and motivation to take advantage of your situation – but luck is behind so many great pros.  I still believe in hard work and skill will take you far – but hard work, skill and luck – will take you farther!   That word Luck is real tricky.

People As Revenue Drivers

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Is everyone in your company valuable?

Your CEO will say “Yes” publicly, but privately we all know the deal – some employees are more valuable than others.  That’s life, that’s why we all don’t make the same salary.  Some skills are more valuable than others.

Do you measure the value of your employees in terms of revenue?

Most companies don’t.  Why?  It puts too much reality in the face of your employees.  It’s like drunk uncle Charlie at Christmas, no one talks about him, but everyone is keenly aware how many he’s had and when it’s time to start cutting him off.

What would happen in your company if you put together an algorithm to measure value in revenue and compensated your employees based on who are the ‘true’ revenue drivers of your company?

Hard question to answer.  You would probably see a number of things. You’d see none sales executives making a hell of a lot less, that’s for sure!  You would see individuals who had a direct impact to driving revenue be in a much higher influential position within your organization.  You would see HR begin to support areas they are not supporting right now, or not supporting as much as they should!  Like?  Like, sales training and motivation.  Like, a performance management system that didn’t lack accountability and movement out of low performers. Like, compensation models that weren’t designed to keep the masses ‘satisfied’.  Just to name a few.

I’ve seen companies begin to look at these numbers. Simply, they’ll take their total revenue divided by headcount to really just have some numbers to start playing with, when positions are filled in a timely basis.  If we can assume, in a perfect world, that ‘all’ employees have an impact to revenue, that means every single day you have an open position within your organization, at every level, you are losing revenue.  Talent Acquisition/HR is losing the company money because it can’t keep up with turnover or growth.  That’s very simplified, but the reality we face.

Too few Talent and HR Pros don’t view their jobs in that context – ‘loss of revenue’.  They have excuses reasons why they can’t fill those positions – the list is endless.  When I see organizations with hundreds and thousands of open jobs – I start calculating in my mind the millions of dollars their failed HR shops are costing their companies and stakeholders.  It’s a very sobering way to look at the HR function – # of Open Positions * Days = Loss of Revenue.  If you can come up with that number – it makes the business case to upgrade your HR shop extremely easy.  If you can’t come up with that number – I wonder how many positions you are hiring that don’t drive revenue and costing your company in unneeded expense?

I wonder how much revenue you are costing your organization, today?

HR Lady in Topeka: You’re Meaningless

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Take a look at this map depicting how big California’s population is as it relates to the rest of the United States:

Map

Each colored section represents roughly 38 Million people.  Want to know why so much focus in HR (heck, most things in the US) is spent on what California is doing?  It’s because California would be the 33rd largest ‘Country’ in the world if we allowed them to be their own country!  Want to know why your voice at SHRM is never heard?  Take a look at the map.

Every voice is important as long as it comes with 38 Million votes.  Sometimes it’s hard for us to understand why certain things happen in the U.S., especially all my HR brothers and sisters in the Midwest, until you take a look at population concentrations.  Then it becomes painfully clear.  No single state has as much influence on HR policy in this country than California.  Which potentially has big problems down the road – as many California ‘ideals’ about workplace laws and practices, might not match those in the South, Midwest, East and/or Northeast.  It’s one thing I said my entire HR career – I’ll work anywhere for the right job – except California! You want to see bad HR policy run a muck at its finest…

Don’t hate the HR Pros in California – they’re just playing the game – and paying $1 Million dollars for a 1200 sq. foot home. But, hey, it’s sunny!

What can you do about it?  Move.