Monthly Archives: December 2014

Dreams Are Adjustable

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I once wanted to be a teacher.  In fact, until I was about 23 years old, I thought that was going to be my future.  Then I taught, and found it wasn’t for me.  Not the teaching part, the public education administration part.  It only took one example to show me public education was fundamentally broken.

The local museum in town had this great exhibit in for only two weeks, by chance my class was studying the same thing, what luck, I thought to myself, the kids will love this! I went to my principal and told her I wanted to take the kids to museum instead our annual trip to the zoo.  “Can’t do that”, she said, “had to be approved a year in advance, but you can do it next year”. “It won’t be here next year, it’s a traveling exhibit, it’s only here this year.”, I explained.  “Sorry, won’t happen”, she replied. “What if I got parents to do this after school, or on a weekend, and it wouldn’t cost anything?”, I pleaded. “Nope, can’t let you do it, don’t waste your energy on this”, she could see my rising frustration on something that made no sense.

So, we went to the zoo. The same zoo the kids went to every year, for the same tour, same learning, same cage animals, not even trying to get out.

The writing was on the wall for me, right then and there.  These people didn’t really care about educating kids. They cared about following process and procedure. Even if it didn’t make sense.  My dream of being an educator needed an adjustment.

My dream didn’t die, I just found a new way to scratch that itch.  So many people believe if they didn’t reach their dream, that it dies.  I think that’s just an easy way to getting out of doing the hard work.  The hard work isn’t all that you put into reaching your dream. That is actually work you enjoy, you’re chasing your dream.  The hard work starts when you can’t reach your dream, or you decide the dream you had is no longer the dream you want.  The hard work starts the moment you adjust your dream to something else.

I truly believe people should chase their dreams for as long as they’re appropriate. Awesome, you want to play football in the NFL, that’s great! You’re now 38 years old and never made a roster, time to make an adjustment!  How about working in some capacity in the NFL? Coaching? Marketing?

We give people a false sense that it’s alright to chase your dreams forever.  We even give them examples of some 90 year old lady who ran her first marathon, or something like that. We encourage it. Never do we feel it’s appropriate to tell someone, “Hey, maybe it’s time to think about something else”.  Maybe it’s time to adjust your dream.  It’s okay. You won’t shrivel up and die.  It’s just a dream, they’re adjustable.

T3 – Workable

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T3 – Talent Tech Tuesday – 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 space and I wanted to educate myself and share what I find.  If you want to be on T3 – send me a note.

This week I took a look at the recruiting software Workable.  It’s sold as the “simple recruiting software for fast growing businesses”. It’s part ATS, part social sourcing tool, part talent acquisition process enabler, but it’s 100% simple to use. That is by far what I walked away from after my demo, I actually bolded in my notes in capital letters:”SIMPLE!”

I’ve used a lot of recruiting solutions in my career, but this one might have been the most intuitive and easy to use right out of the box.  It even let’s those proces crazy folks drop and drag the process and design it the way you want, and even change that process based on the position, hiring manager, etc.  Workable gets recruiting and keeps it to what is is.  Source candidates. Get them to apply. Phone screen them. Interview them. Make the offer. Hire them. Straightforward. Easy.

Just because it’s easy, though, it doesn’t take out all of today’s cool tools and technology.  The solution automatically pulls in LinkedIn profiles of candidates who apply, under the same email address and puts their picture on their Workable profile. The systems tracks every single touch and creates a timeline that is transparent so everyone knows what is going on, who the hold ups are, and what the next step is.

If I had an older ATS that just wasn’t working, or wasn’t using an ATS at all and on the outlook for a ‘beginner’ recruiting solution, I would definitely take a look at Workable.  Yeah, I said ‘beginner’, but that really isn’t fair, it probably fits more in the SMB space, where you just don’t’ have the resources for a full enterprise ATS solution, but you still want the tech the big boys have.  Workable is designed specifically for a SMB recruiting solution!

5 Things I really like about Workable: 

1. Simplicity in software is so hard to do. After about 30 minutes into the demo, I was pretty confident I could use the system all on my own, and be really good at it!  It’s just one of those systems that is easy to use.  That is exactly what is needed for companies growing quickly, who are usually understaffed and many areas in the business are utilizing the solution to help in hiring.

2. HR ladies will hate this, but I loved that it pulled in the candidates profile pic from LinkedIn.  Hiring managers will love this as well. It’s a simple example of how Workable understands the user of this type of solution. (BTW – you can turn this function off, HR Ladies!)

3. Automatically posts jobs on a bunch of free sites, and easy integration to your paid sites. Plus, they can get you a big discount on the big boards, through leveraging their current clients buying power as one.  Workable does all the regular stuff you expect as well, resume parsing, resume keyword searching, EEOC/OFCCP reports, source reports, candidate flow, etc.

4. Interview scheduling, email and calendar integration is very good.  Plus, you don’t get charged by user, you get charged by job, so you can every single employee in your company use the system.  This makes it easy to get adoption, when you’re not just trying to pick a small number of users to keep the cost down.

5. The ability to change and add to your process whenever you feel like it was really cool. Especially, if you’re just starting out on a big hiring project and you’re not quite sure, and you want to make some changes as you’re going.  That’s reality! Fast growing companies need to be able to change quickly and move, Workable allows you to do that, simply.

I mentioned, briefly, but Workable doesn’t charge you by user, but by job posting by month.  Need to hire 15 people one month, but none the next, Workable allows you to go up and down on pricing based on your use, and not lock you into one rate.  You can even shut it down for a period, and come back when hiring picks up and all your data will still be there. Very inexpensive for what you get!

One last thing, this would #6, but I only do five. Workable will set up a mobile friendly careers page as part of your monthly fee.  It’s a must have, they make it happen. You have no worries.

Check them out if you’re in need of a recruiting solution.  I was really impressed!

5 Reasons I’m Not Telling Where I’m Going

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There is a phenomenon that I find completely hysterical.  It’s this little game we play in our culture.  You go and accept a new position, with a new company.  You come back to your current employer and you put in your notice.  Your boss instantly says, “where are you going?” You replay with, “I’d rather not say.”

Happens, Right? Almost 100% of the time.

So, you wait the two weeks, or whatever notice it was, and the very next Monday the person updates their LinkedIn profile and posts on Facebook where they actually went.

I find this ‘dance’ we do very, very funny.

Look, I get it.  Your employees believe one of five things will happen to them if they tell you where they are going:

1. You’ll magically find some way to screw me over, because you’re upset I’m leaving you. Jealous girlfriend style.  This one is almost never happens, but it’s the first one that comes to mind for most employees!  Look, if I had that much power to screw over everyone who worked here, I wouldn’t be working here!

2. I’m not telling you because for once in this relationship, I finally have the power!  This is the real reason, for most people! You just sound like a complete freak if you actually verbalize it out loud!  I actually understand this one from a psychology position.  If you don’t feel you have control, then you get control, you’re not going to give that up easily!

3. You’ll judge me for the company I’m going to. Either way, you’re going to judged, so this is completely true!  Most organizations are like family. If you decide to leave the family, for that crackhead family down the block, I’m going to judge you!  Plan on it.

4. You’ll judge me for the position I’m going to take. See #3.  This one probably has less merit.  I was one of these people. I had in my mind a certain ‘title’ I needed to get to, so I moved around a bit in my early career, chasing titles. Then one day you wake up and realize it’s baloney. Just pay me.

5. It’s always been done that way in our culture, so let’s keep it going!  This is also a large part of what’s going on in these situations.  I took a new job. The people before me didn’t say where they were going, so I’m shouldn’t either!

My take is that you have to do you.  You don’t want to tell anyone, that’s fine, they’ll all know in about 14 days anyway. If that makes you feel all big and powerful for a few weeks, great! We should feel that way from time to time.

For myself, I have friends at every company I every worked for. Also, I wanted to maintain a professional relationship with the leaders of the organizations I’ve been with.  I told people where I was going.  We talked about it, and I tried to help them understand if it was just me, or if it was them.  Ultimately, how can we leave this point in our lives better than we found it.

My way isn’t the correct way, it’s just my way.  Everyone has to make this decision for themselves, but I’m still going to laugh at it when I hear “I’d rather not say”.

 

How to Hire a Hustler

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Hustle: (via Marriam-Webster) “to sell or promote energetically and aggressively”.

Hustle: (via Urban Dictionary) “Anything you need to do to make money”.

Hustle: (via Sackett) “Getting sh*t done with a smile”.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately on what really makes someone successful.  I know folks who are completely brilliant, in a way most of us can’t even comprehend, both intellectually and creatively. I know why they’re successful. I also know of people who don’t seem to be the smartest, or the most creative, but they are also super successful. Those are the ones that make me wonder, what makes them successful?

They know how to hustle.

I say that will a love for what they do. Most people can’t hustle. It’s not in their makeup, their DNA.  It’s not a skill you can learn, you are either born a hustler, or you’re not.  Hustling gets a negative connotation. When in reality, it’s not always negative.  I find those people who I’ve worked for that have a hustler’s mentality can be highly professional and highly successful.

The thing is, there is really no replacement for hustle.

Not every organization needs people with that skill, and I don’t think I would want an entire organization of hustlers!  You need some, though, and you need them in the right positions. Hustlers know how to get things done in an organization.  They know how to make people feel like both sides won.  Some of the best hustlers I know in HR are on the labor relations side of the business.  Contract negotiations are usually one big hustle!

I wish someone would come up with an assessment that measured someones hustle level!  Hey, HR Tech, get on that! I’m buying.

Here’s the traits I think you need to find when assessing someone’s hustle level:

1. Are they willing to what it takes to be successful in whatever role it is you’ll be putting them in?

2. Do they have an entrepreneurial spirit?

3. Are they self-driven and ambitious?

4. Do they like competition?

5. Do they enjoy interacting with others?

6. Do they have a high tolerance to handle rejection?

7. Are they coachable and willing to adapt?

I don’t care what kind of department you are running in an organization, you can benefit from having a hustler on your team.  I think you could take most street hustlers off the street, clean them up in a corporate professional way, teach them corporate language, and they would thrive in corporate America!  No formal education. No skills. Just hustle. Let’s face it, most of what we do in corporate America is hustle!

The Real HR and Talent Job Titles

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I have a feeling HR and Talent Acquisition would look a lot different if we were to use job titles that more clearly explained what those roles actually did.  Here are some of the ideas I had:

Current Job Title Actual Duties Job Title
Corporate Recruiter Post Jobs on Internal Career Site Pro
Agency Recruiter Mine Resume Database Pro
Corporate Sourcing Pro Search the Internet All Day Pro
Agency Sourcing Pro Search the Internet All Day and All Night Pro
Employee Relations Manager Professional Kleenex Hander-Outer
Employment Brand Manager Professional Work Environment Maker-Upper
Compensation Pro Market Ranger Maker-Upper
Benefits Pro Finder of Benefits I Like Pro
Diversity Manager Developer of United Colors of Benetton Culture
Human Resource Manager Employee Fire Fighter
Human Resource Director People Accountability Officer
Vice President of Human Resources Wizard of People Bull Shit
Chief Human Resource Officer Deepak Chopra of Corporate Leadership

 

What do you think?  Do you have better ones?  Share them in the comments!

How Fake Is Your Employment Brand?

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I think most employment brands are completely fake. The reason I feel this way is because HR and Executives approve the messaging.  We, HR and Executives, are the last people who really know what our employment brand truly is.  So, we end up with stuff like this:

Seems really cool!  Makes us feel good about ourselves and our organization.  But for the most part it’s one big white lie.

That’s marketing.  It’s not marketings job to tell you the truth.  It’s marketings job to get you to buy something.  Sometimes its just some crappy product or service. Sometimes its the church down the street with the cool young pastor and rock band.  Sometimes its working for your organization.

Many HR Pros and Executives get really pissed off when I say something like this.  That’s because they drink their own Kool-aid.  They truly believe the messages brought forth are the truth.  Those messages are what they hope and dream the organization to become, so they’re all bought in on making it happen.  I actually really like these people. I like people who are bought into making their organizations what their commercials are telling us they are, even when they aren’t.

Who wants to go work for an organization that puts up a commercial of some manager unable to communicate what needs to be done, and Bobby down in the accounting bitching he only got a 14 lb. turkey from the company, when last year he got a 15 lb. turkey?  No one.  But that’s truly your organization.  Organizations are like families. You have some folks in your family you don’t want the rest of the world to see, but when you take the family photo it looks like everyone is fairly normal and well adjusted.

So, how fake is your employment brand?  On a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being Goldman Sachs and 10 being Google, where does your organization fall?

T3 – Swoop Talent

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T3 – Talent Tech Tuesday – 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 space and I wanted to educate myself and share what I find.  If you want to be T3 – send me a note.

This week I’m looking at Swoop Talent.  When I first contacted, industry veteran, Stacy Chapman to talk to her about her company Swoop, I assumed I would be demoing a basic, straight forward people aggregator.  Boy, was I wrong, and in for a treat!  That is how Swoop first got started, but that is not where it’s going.

Swoop is a social sourcing tool for sure, but they are beginning to pivot away from just social sourcing, people aggregation, and into the world of solving talent acquisitions problems of having all of the people record data amongst disparate systems.  What does that mean?  Right now you have candidate data all over the place. Your own ATS. Social profiles on systems like LinkedIn, social profiles from people aggregators, your employee referral tool, etc. Basically, you’ve got potential candidates strung all over the place.

Sure you try and pull them all into your ATS, but even your ATS can be bear to search and retrieve.  Swoop solves all of this by building one talent record off all of your data from ATS to Email to CRM to Resumes to Social, and gives you one single view of talent.  Going to do campus hiring and the college kids are handing you paper resumes? Swoop allows you to take a pic with your phone and automatically builds a talent record of this kid, with their resume and their social profiles.

Swoop basically takes the overlap of records out of your disparate systems and gives you one true view of what your talent landscape truly looks like. Why is this important? You need to know what system(s) are delivering you the most talent, the best talent, how should I spend my recruitment marketing dollars.  Swoop answers all these questions, and has great data visualization as well, to help tell the story of what’s going on in the markets you’re going after.

5 Things I really liked about Swoop: 

1. Swoop integrates your own ATS data.  This allows you to use their search capability to mine your own ATS. Can’t stand Taleo’s search functionality? Swoop solves this.

2. Swoop still has over 150 million talent profiles, so you still get great sourcing technology, the difference is unifying this with all your other data gives you a much more complete sourcing tool, that eliminates the overlap and waste.  Plus, it automatically updates profiles as well, behind the scene, so you aren’t looking at some old ATS record from three years ago.

3. The product actually mines and helps uncover some real talent gold within your own ATS.  I see this constantly with RPO clients we work with. Once we get into their ATS, we find great talent just sitting there they had no idea was already in their system.

4. Swoop gives talent executives an understanding about talent markets they operate in unlike anything else I’ve seen.  This is important when making financial decisions on what products to continue, to purchase new, to stop using altogether, etc.

5. The college recruiting piece is easy.  For those that go out to campus and need to get all this data back into their systems, you know what a pain this can be. Swoop makes this really easy, and functional.

Not many people know the capabilities of where Swoop is right now.  They haven’t gone out publicly in a big way yet, and marketing will start soon. This is an enterprise play to be sure, implementation costs run $10-20K based on size, and annual costs run around $.15 or less per record. Overall, that isn’t really that big of a cost when you really understand the capabilities you gain with Swoop.

If you’re using a bunch of tools right now to source talent it’s really worth your time to demo Swoop and see how they can help you. If you’re using one of the giant HRM systems, like Taleo, Bullhorn, Successfactors, etc., it’s also probably worth your time to demo as well.

The Biggest HR Issue No One Is Talking About for 2015 #EWS2014

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Hey, gang I’m running a sponsored post by the great folks at Spherion regarding their 2014 Emerging Workforce Study which has some really great data, check it out. You can win a $100 American Express gift card by just commenting on this post with your favorite EWS Statistic, sharing this post on Facebook and/or Tweeting this post with the #EWS2014.  That’s easy, go do it! You know you need the extra scratch for the holidays!

I’ve been asked by about dozen people to give my HR and Talent predictions for 2015.  I haven’t done any yet, because there is really one, serious, one that came to mind.  The one prediction that is keeping me up at night, is RETENTION!  More specifically, how do we retain our employees as the options for their talent continue to increase.

Here are some alarming points from the Emerging Workforce Study:

    • 25 percent of all workers are likely to look for a new job in the next 12 months.
    • Companies report they have only put in minimal effort to retain their workers.
    • Companies that do not have retention programs in place have 61 percent more expected turnover in the next 12 months, compared to companies who have retention programs in place (average expected turnover 21 percent vs. 12 percent\

One of the main problems is that employers and employees wholeheartedly disagree on what drives retention. Employers focus more on intangible items, feeling that the management climate (89%), an employee’s relationship with his or her supervisor (85%) and the culture and work environment (81%) are most important when retaining employees.  Not surprisingly, employees focus more on ‘bread and butter’ issues, feeling that financial compensation (78%), benefits (76%) and growth and earnings potential (71%) are most important in retaining employees.

 The reality is Retention in HR use to be a ‘sexy’ topic to talk about and game plan.  The recession hit a decade ago, and retention was no longer an issue. It was virtually forgotten about for 10 years!  No one cared.  Employees were staying because there weren’t any jobs.  That is rapidly changing and we have an entire generation of leadership and HR that doesn’t even really understand how to retain their own talent.

Isn’t there an App for that?  Probably, but it doesn’t really work!

Retention is one of those crazy things that takes a lot of effort by a lot of people to make it work.  Great leadership. Check.  Great compensation and benefits. Check. Great work environment. Check.  Growth potential. Check.  Retention is all about ‘blocking and tackling’.  You have to do all the basic leadership and HR things well.  Let one go, and Bam! You have a retention problem.  You can cover up problems by doing one of these things really well, but it’s a short term solution.  You pay the best! Great, you bought yourself some time. You have horrible leaders? Great pay only works so long before people will leave!

Retaining your best workers will be one of the most talked about issues by the end of 2015.  By then the unemployment numbers will be low enough where bad companies can no longer get good talent, or the good talent they have will be leaving for better companies.  That’s the tipping point.  We are quickly getting there.  Are you ready?

 

Disclosure Language:

Spherion partnered with bloggers such as me for their Emerging Workforce Study program. As part of this program, I received compensation for my time. They did not tell me what to purchase or what to say about any idea mentioned in these posts. Spherion believes that consumers and bloggers are free to form their own opinions and share them in their own words. Spherion’s policies align with WOMMA Ethics Code, FTC guidelines and social media engagement recommendations. 

3 Things HR Pros Should Never Apologize For

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I think HR Pros apologize way too much, and I got the idea from the Fast Company article – “3 Things Professional Women Should Stop Apologizing For“, which are:

  1. Their Financial Expectations (I.E., pay us the same!)
  2. Their Physical Appearance (I.E., Sorry we aren’t club ready – I was up with a sick kid all night!)
  3. Their Professional Accomplishments (I.E., Just because I’m a woman doesn’t mean I can’t brag about what I do great!)

It’s a great article, check it out.  This got me thinking about all things we Apologize for in HR – that we should stop apologizing for – so here’s the Top 3 Things HR Pros should stop apologizing for:

1. You Getting Fired!  Oh, boy this could be #1, #2 and #3!  I can’t tell you how many HR folks I’ve trained over the past 20 years that I’ve specifically said “When you let this person go – Don’t apologize!”  I mean truly, what are you saying! “I’m sorry you are terrible at your job, or made the decision to sexually harass your co-worker,  you’re fired!”  When you really stop and think about it, it even sounds funny.

2. You Not Getting Promoted.  This is almost the same as apologizing for getting fired.  Instead of apologizing to someone for not getting promoted, how about you give them a great development plan so they can actually get promoted!  Organizations can be big hairy breathing things, and sometimes decisions are made and you won’t know the reasons.  HR Pros shouldn’t apologize for you not getting promoted, but they should help you navigate the political and organizational landscape.

3. You not liking your Boss, your Job, your Pay.  Ugh!  We tend to apologize for all these personal ‘happy’ choices a person makes.  The last time I checked, I never forced anyone to take a job, or forced them to accept the pay I was offering them, or forced them to work in the occupation or career they chose.  These are their own personal choices, if you don’t like it, LEAVE!  Go be happy somewhere else.  I hope that you’ll be happy here, but I can’t force you to be happy. I’ll try and give you a solid leader, with good pay and challenging work, but sometimes what I see as solid, good and challenging might not meet your expectations.  That’s when you need to make a happiness decision!

So, what should you apologize for a HR Pro?  I can think of two things that I apologize for on a regular basis: 1) Things I can Control (If I control it, and I screw it up, I need to offer you an apology); 2) Surprises!  (I might not be able to control surprises, but they suck when it comes to business and your livelihood.  I apologize for surprises because in HR it’s my job to make sure those don’t happen to you as an employee).

Success is Relative #8ManRotation

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It’s that time of year when college football coaches get fired because they weren’t ‘successful’.

This year’s unsuccessful coach of the year has to be Nebraska’s Bo Pelini.  Here are some of his stats:

– Won 9 games every year he has coached at Nebraska. Not averaged 9 wins. He’s won 9 games each year!

– 67-27 overall record – a +.700 winning percentage

That seems pretty freaking good!  How many of you would take 9 wins each year from your favorite college football team (Alabama fans you can’t participate!)?  I’m a huge Michigan State fan and we’ve been fortunate to have double digit win totals four out of the last five years and we’re on cloud nine! If you asked me five years ago if I would take 9 wins per year for the next five, I would have bought it for sure!

Here’s what Bo didn’t do:

– No conference titles

– No BCS bowl appearances

– At least 3 losses each season

99% of fans in the country would take 7 years in a row of 9 wins each year.  Because most of us will never come close that success on our best year.

That’s why success is relative.

Think of this with your own hires and employees.  You judge success of your new sales person on the results of the sales person that just left.  If your new sales person sells $1 million worth of products, and the old guy sold only $750K, the new person is a rock star.  That same new sales person is judge against your all time sales person at $2 million, and suddenly, they’re a piece of crap.

Nebraska holds their coaching hires against legendary Nebraska coach Tom Osborne who won 13 conference championships and 3 national titles.

This is why comparing individuals in terms of performance never really works out well.  A better way is to determine what does ‘good’ performance look like in your environment, no matter the individual. Also, what does great performance look like.  Then measure your employees against those metrics, not an individual who might have been good or bad.

Most organizations struggle with this concept, because defining good and great performance is hard.  It’s easy to compare.

Don’t allow yourself and your organization to take the easy road. It doesn’t lead you to where you want to go.

Do I believe Bo should have been fired?  Yes, but not because of his won/loss record.  Bo wasn’t a fit, culturally, with Nebraska football.  Bo had a short fuse and lost it publicly and on the field way too often for cameras to see.  This isn’t what Nebraska people want from their coach.  They’re extremely loyal fans, and don’t like to be embarrassed. Yes, they want to win, but it’s not a win-at-any-cost fandom that we’ve been accustom to seeing recently in major college athletics. Win, but win with pride and respect for the history of the program.  That’s tough. Nine wins per year, apparently doesn’t do that!