Monthly Archives: October 2014

Fall In Love With Ideas

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I use to have this issue.  I would come up with an idea.  I really, really good idea!  I would then work to make this idea a reality.  I would spend a lot of time, energy and resources making this idea come to life.  The work became more important than the idea.

Someone really smart would come along and want to change my work.  It would frustrate me. It would anger me.  I didn’t like them messing with my work.

I fell in love with the work.  With the process.

The work and my processes became more important to me than the original idea.  I was blind to see that those who were coming to me, to try and get me to change my work, were in love with my idea, but not in love with my work.

It took me along time to understand the value wasn’t in the work, it was in the idea.  Anyone can do the work.  The work can be done a number of different ways to get the same result. But the idea was the creation, the start.  Without it, there wouldn’t be any work.

So many of the HR Pros I know have this same issue.  We take great pride in our work, so much so, that we don’t allow others to come in and help make our ideas better.  We don’t allow them to get on board and be a part of something special.  Our pride, blinds us to see just maybe there might be even a better way to make our ideas become reality.

Fall in love with the idea. Don’t fall in love with the work.

What Messaging Tool Should You Pick To Tell Off Your Boss?

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The messaging technology today is ridiculous!  There are so many ways to communicate it sometimes becomes really difficult to determine which technology to use for which messages. Think about it terms of breaking up.  I remember the first girl I had to break up with in middle school.  I had basically three ways to tell this girl I no longer ‘wanted to go out’, which entailed see each other at school. It wasn’t so much of going out, as it was meeting at school.

I could go right up to her face and tell her like a man.  But I wasn’t a man, I was a boy, and that seemed like a really awkward way to communicate, face to face. I could write her a note, give it to my buddy, who would give to her best friend, who would then give it to her.  This was the popular way but fraught with peril, as the message in these notes seemed to travel faster than the actual note.  I could call her on the home phone. This always seemed best to me, but you still risked her mom or dad picking up, and that was a fate worse than the death!

I was listening to a couple of people talk the other day in a coffee shop, and the one was telling the other, she was finally going to tell off her boss. She had enough! You go girl! But, there was a problem. No way did she want to do this face to face. She had to determine the exact right way to do it, that came across professional, but also got the message across she was serious.  (Yes, I listen to your conversation when I’m at a coffee shop acting like I’m working on my laptop)

I wanted to break in and help this poor girl with this problem, but that’s super creepy, so instead I’ll just fill you in on my take on each method:

1. Email – Seems like the logical communication method, knowing you don’t want to speak face to face. The problem is, it’s also very easy to copy and forward to HR.  From a professional standpoint it’s hard to really give it to your boss on email, because you know it’s will be used against you.  Still, I believe most people would use email.

2. Twitter – Probably the passive aggressive way to tell off your boss that is now in use!  Twitter has become the playground for the disengaged workforce of our generation.  You can tell off your boss and there is a 97% chance they’ll never see it, but many of your coworkers and friends will, and you’ll feel better. Plus, how much trouble can you actually get in with only 140 characters?

3. Facebook – First off, are you really ‘friends’ with your boss on Facebook!?  If so, Facebook messaging could actually work for telling off your boss. Definitely a bit more personal than other methods, and it’s likely your boss would probably take it that way as well.  It’s really more of a scream for help, than a tell off, though.  If you actually post the tell off of your boss publicly on Facebook, well that’s just career suicide.

4. SnapChat – Smart move, because chances are your boss is older than you and will have no idea what’s going on until it’s too late to really do anything to copy it. But it’s logistically a nightmare, because you first have to get your boss to sign up with a snapchat account, which seems like a lot of work and hand holding to eventually just tell them off! But, I can still see this being better than doing it face to face for many people!

5. Skype with video – Better than just a telephone call, this one they can at least see you, and you them but you can always click off quickly and claim technology problems.  This way you get all the benefit of telling them off to their face, but don’t have to wait around for their awkward measured responses.

6. Yammer – Okay, I’ll wait, go look it up.  It’s like your own personal social network for your organization.  Kind of like Twitter, but only for your own employees.  This would be an epic way to get yourself fired, but probably not a great tool to tell off your boss!

I still like my 13 year old boy way the best.  Tell one of your coworkers, who you know can’t keep a secret (you know the ones), all the issues you have with your boss.  Wait about 3-4 hours and go in casually to ask your boss about a project.  Your boss will ask you to come in and be super, super nice for some odd reason, almost like someone went and told him or her that you had a problem with them…

I’m Hiring! Are you sure you want to work for me?

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Okay, I’m adding a Recruiter to my team.  At hru-tech.com, we do mostly engineering and IT contract recruiting, some direct placement recruiting and some project RPO work for clients around the country.

I would put my team up against anyone.  They’re that good, and most are homegrown!  That’s right, the majority of our staff came in entry level and we smacked off that new car smell like an old bag of Taco Bell that’s been sitting in your back seat for three weeks in the summer.

I started looking around and getting the word out a couple days ago.  You would think it would be easy.  I don’t really ask for a lot, but I sure know it when I ‘hear’ it!   Recruiting is a pretty good gig.  It’s transferable. I’ve worked in 5 different states, 4 different industries and my recruiting skills I can take with me anywhere.  It’s the one thing I can guarantee you if you come work for me. You’ll always be able to find a job and make money.  Every economy needs good recruiters.

The pay is way better than your normal crappy sales jobs selling cell phones or renting cars to people that bring in their phone bill and a report card. The hours are pretty good. No weekends. A few nights here and there.  You get to interact with a great group of people. The latest and greatest recruiting tools.

What’s crazy to me is how hard it is to find people who want to do this job, and that can be good at it!  I like for people to have a four-year degree.  The actual degree isn’t as important, as the process of gaining that degree.  I find those who worked their way through college, tend to be better recruiters.  Bartenders might be the best previous job if I was forced to pick one. Any kind of job that had you on the phone talking to people would be second.

There’s also a need for people who don’t freak out when they are held accountable for results.  That eliminates most people who want to work in government or big companies.  My recruiters don’t sit around and wait to get paid.  So, self-motivation is important, as long as it’s targeted in the right direction.

Work-life balance is really important to me.  Hold on, let me define work-life balance.  Work-life balance is when you do enough work that I pay you so you can have things and do things you want to do.  It’s not you doing whatever you want at any time you feel.  That’s not balance.  Balance means equal both ways, work and life.

We aren’t saving the world.  For some people that’s really important.  We do find people some really, really good jobs.  Some people find that cool and rewarding.

I care about you as a person, and I want to see you be wildly successful.  I’ll treat you like family. The family that you actually like, not the ones you try to forget about.

The position is in Lansing, MI. No, you can’t work remote or virtual or on a boat, unless the boat is in the parking lot of our building, then you can work on a boat.

So, if you’re interested send me a note – sackett.tim@hru-tech.com.  

If you are interested, and I don’t think you’re a fit, I will actually tell you why I don’t think you’re fit.  Some people like that. Some people think they’ll like that.  Some people don’t like that at all!