Monthly Archives: May 2015

The Public Education Summer Vacation Scam

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In about 2 weeks my 3 sons will be off of school for the summer.  That means my wife will lose her mind for the next 12 weeks as she has 3 smelly bodies running in and out of the house all day, lying around and doing what boys do. Which at this point I think entails: eating, leaving their stuff lying around, eating, watching TV/Playing Ebox, eating, texting, eating, sleeping, eating, repeat.

I’ve gotten to a point in my life where I don’t understand the American public education system any longer.  When I was a kid (old white guy rant begin now), I loved it! Three months off of school during the only time in Michigan that is nice! What a great plan!  As a parent/adult, I ceased believing this is a wise plan.

Will someone please explain to me why in 2015 we need to have kids off of school for 12 straight weeks?

Here are the answers I get:

– We need the kids to work the crops! (Not since 1930 was this a real reason!)

– We need the kids to work at the resorts for the tourism industry! (No, you don’t – you need the kids off school so parents will take their kids on vacation and spend money at your resorts)

– Kids need a break to let their brains reboot! (I won’t even justify this with a response.)

Here are the real answers:

– The Teachers Unions won’t negotiate a full year schedule because teachers love having the summers off.

– Some parents are stuck in this 1950’s notion that their kids need 12 weeks off in a row because they got it, so should their kids. (Do you see the pattern of entitlement beginning to take place…)

– Politicians don’t have the guts to do the right thing, so they stick with what is currently in place, even though it was developed over 80 years ago when their was an actual need to have kids off during the summer months.  (This reason could be used for most of what ails America.)

So, here’s what I know: Having kids home for 12 straight weeks sucks for families.  Childcare is a nightmare – many kids forced to stay home by themselves or under watched, plus the additional cost is bad for families.  Kids unlearn way too much during this time off, forcing reeducation at the beginning of each year – which wastes time and resources.

What can ‘we’ do it about since politicians refuse to do anything about it?  I think companies can solve this.  There are some issues companies have with America’s education system right now.  Companies feel kids are not prepared for the workforce, don’t have work ethic, aren’t being taught work-related skills, etc.  Instead of waiting around for the world to change, I think American Corporations can change the world ourselves.

Here are 3 things companies can do to help out Moms and help out themselves:

  1. Job Corp.  Yep, good old fashion put kids (14 yrs old and above) to work learning and training on skills companies will need in the future.  No, I’m not talking about child labor – I’m talking about starting kids out in an environment where they go to work with their parents and learn how actually to work.  Want to see some real change in America?!  Imagine having to take your 15 year old with you to work each day for 12 weeks!  Take your child to work – Everyday!  That’s Big Change!
  2. Community volunteer programs. Companies rotate paid sabbaticals for the 12 weeks where the company workers lead teams of kids on community based projects.  Help elderly fix up their homes, clean up parks and waterways, beautify our cities, clean up vacant lots, etc.  Can you imagine the change that would happen if for 30-40 hours per week, for 12 weeks all of the kids eight years and up in America were working across the country volunteering?!  That is an unimaginable change that would be so cool!
  3. Change Public Education.  Corporations need to voice strongly their displeasure with the current public school scheduling and demand a change.  Full year schedules. Longer days.  Kids will still get time off – just spread those weeks around the year where it makes better sense to learning.  This can be done.  We just have to let politicians know this by not funding their campaigns if they won’t support this change.

What would you do to help out families facing the annual summer break?

The Number One Reason Hires Fail

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“Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”

Albert Einstein

Its about that time when the HR conference season gets into full swing, so I’m beginning to prepare myself for the hundreds of conversations I’ll have with great HR Pros all over the world.  One thing that I will hear over and over, and more than anything else is: “HR just doesn’t get…”  To be honest,  I think HR gets a whole bunch, but I think many of us lack the courage it takes, at the right time, to show how much we actually get.  So we sit there with our mouths closed, and others then have this perception we don’t get it.  But we do. We just weren’t able, or ready, to put our necks on the line, at that moment.

I do agree, though, that there are still certain things we struggle with in HR.  For me, the above quote from Albert, sums up what we still struggle to appreciate in HR. We hire people for one set of skills then upon arrival, or at another point in their tenure, expect them to perform a different set of skills.  This behavior happens everyday in our organizations. It’s a classic reason at why most people fail in your organization.

I bet if you went back and measured your last 100 terminations in your organizations, 60% of your terms would fall into this category:  person wasn’t performing, but the job they were asked to do was different from what they were hired to do originally.

So, what is it that we still don’t get in HR?

We don’t get the fact that we hire for a certain set of skills and the job changes, so we now need a new set of skills.  Training and Development are still living in this dream that they can drastically change adult learners by having a 4 hour training session and having each participant sign a sheet saying they received the training. Then, we all sit around a conference table analyzing our turnover and wondering what happened, and why all these people magically turned into bad performers.  It’s not them, it’s us!

So, what can we do about it?

The first step is realizing HR, and the organization, are part of the problem.  You can’t hire a bunch of fish because you need great swimming skills, then change the skill need to climbing and expect your fish to turn into monkeys.  It has never worked, and it will never work, even if you change your department’s title from Training to Organizational Development.

So, do you just fire everyone and start over?

Maybe, if the skill needed to change is that drastically different. More realistically, we need to have better expectations on the amount of time and effort it is going to take to get people back to “average” performance, not “great” performance.

Setting realistic expectations with your operations partners will give you a better insight to what route your organization is willing to suffer through.  Either way, there will be some suffering, so plan on it and prepare for it. Then go buy a bunch of bananas, because if want those fish learn how to climb, they’re going to need a lot of incentives!

The 5 New Rules of Work

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I’m usually a big fan of Fast Company articles, but one recently seemed like the biggest contrived piece of new-aged garbage, I just had to share!

The article has a great premise: These Are The New Rules of Work.  You know, one of those articles that will show us all how we use to do work and how we now do work. Well, maybe, but also how we hope we could do work like they talk about in magazines like Fast Company, but we really don’t because we live in the real world.

Here’s a taste:

Old Rule: You commute into an office every day.

NEW RULE: WORK CAN HAPPEN WHEREVER YOU ARE, ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD.

Cute, but I actually work at a job where we go to the office each day, like most people in the world. So, while it would great to work in the Cayman Islands, my job is in Flint, and if I don’t come in, I don’t get paid. Which makes trips to the Cayman more difficult.

You get the idea.  It was written by a professional writer, not by someone who actually works a real job. Writing isn’t a real, normal job. When you write freelance, you can actually work from anywhere, because you basically work for yourself!

Here are the others:

Old Rule: Work is “9-to-5”

NEW RULE: YOU’RE ON CALL 24-7.

Well, you’re not really on call 24-7, you choose to be ‘connected’ 24-7, there’s a difference.  I do believe that ‘leaving’ your job at the office was a concept that was over blown for the most part in our parents generation. They claimed to do this, but only because they didn’t have email and smart phones and laptops. Let’s face it, our parents would have been just as connected given the same technology.

Old Rule: You have a full-time job with benefits.

NEW RULE: YOU GO FROM GIG TO GIG, PROJECT TO PROJECT.

There’s no doubt there is a rise in the use of the contingent workforce, but this doesn’t mean it’s necessarily chosen by the worker.  True, thoughts have shifted that many people no longer want to work at one company for forty years, but much of that has been shaped by companies and economics. When you live through an entire decade of layoffs and downsizing, you begin to think of the work environment as more transient. The crazy part about this mindset is organizations still feel like candidates should want to stay at a company for forty years, even though they can’t, and won’t, guarantee that for you.

Old Rule: Work-life balance is about two distinct, separate spheres.

NEW RULE: FOR BETTER OR WORSE THE LINE BETWEEN WORK AND LIFE IS ALMOST ENTIRELY DISAPPEARING.

This is the one rule I actually agree with.  Again,this is from a day when you could actually separate yourself from your work and personal life. In today’s ultra-connected world, it becomes very difficult to do this. I think most people get tired of living two separate lives, and just want to live one. This is who I am, professionally and personally, take me a whole person, or not.

Old Rule: You work for money, to support yourself and your family.

NEW RULE: YOU WORK BECAUSE YOU’RE “PASSIONATE” ABOUT A “MOVEMENT” OR A “CAUSE”—YOU HAVE TO “LOVE WHAT YOU DO.”

This is actually the single worst piece of advice ever given in mankind! Bar none.  If this was actually the case, how do you think anything would actually get done on this planet? How would store shelves get stocked. Gas stations get run. Your dinner get cooked and the dishes washed at your favorite restaurant? Do you really feel there are folks “passionate” about washing dishes for you? That they want to wash dishes for your cause of having a chicken fried steak and gravy for dinner?

Get some freaking perspective.

I think it’s great if you can work at someone you’re passionate about, good for you. But it’s definitely not necessary for you have a great life. Have a cause that is special in your life? Perfect, go for it. You know what really helps most causes? Money! If you have a job that makes great money, just imagine how you can truly help that cause.

So, what do you think about these ‘new’ rules of work?

T3 – Job Samurai and Recroup

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This week on T3 I look at two pieces of technology for job postings and job seekers, Job Samurai and Recroup.  Job Samurai is a job search engine that searches for jobs for you without you having to do any searching. Basically, they use retargeting algorithms to put jobs into ads on sites you go to visit. You register once, and after about ten days you’ll begin to notice that some of the ads on pages you go to visit are jobs you might have interest in. You can decide to click on them, or ignore them.

So, what’s retargeting?

Retargeting is a technology that you come into contact with everyday, but you probably don’t realize it. Let’s say you go to an online store and look at a pair of shoes, you might even put them in the shopping basket, but eventually decide you just aren’t going to get them.  Later that day your on Facebook and it seems like those shoes are following you! You keep seeing them in ads on every site you visit. On the side of CNN. On the top of that Mommy Blog you love. This is Retargeting.

Now imagine how you can use Retargeting in job postings and job searching.  This is what Job Samurai and Recroup are doing (both owned by same company).

Recroup is on the company side selling retargeting to organizations for their job postings.  As part of your recruitment marketing strategy you might decide that retargeting is something you must have. You’re looking for candidates with a certain set of skills and Recroup can make sure your jobs, or Ads of your jobs, are getting in front of the audience you are seeking.  Many of the top ATS systems are using Recroup’s technology to advertise their openings.

Recroup’s hope with Job Samurai is that they have found a site that will bring both of these groups together. Job seekers and organizations looking to hire, in a way that is unlike anything else being done. It’s very non-invasive for both parties.  Job seekers see ads for jobs they signed up for and said let me see jobs that match my profile. Takes seconds to sign up versus putting up profiles on a job board or continuing to look back at career sites. It’s all inclusive as Job Samurai will search sites like Indeed to pull jobs, so you don’t have to set up individual job agents.

Online retailers have had gigantic success with Retargeting.  2% of online sales come from an individual going directly to a store, the first time, to buy. 98% come from retargeting!  Think about that in terms of job seeker behavior. A job seeker comes to your site once, doesn’t see a job, and more than likely they might never return. Recroup will keep you jobs in front of candidates, and Job Samurai will make sure the talent sees the openings that are out there with their specific skill set in mind.

I love how they’ve taken a consumer driven technology and found a way to use it for talent acquisition.

Check them out!

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 One’s For You Poppi

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(Picture Above – Poppi, my Mom (far left) and three of my Aunts)

My Grandfather fought in WWII in the U.S. Navy.  After he died my Grandmother gave me his medals and pictures. I was about 13 years old. I still remember the feel of the medals and yellowing of the paper and edges of the pictures. I got older, learn to drive, went of to college, and for the life of me I’ve never been able to find that envelop of artifacts.  It pains me that I lost them.

It’s not that those pictures and pins remind me of Poppi (my name for my Grandfather), he never talked to me about the war, or I never listened, I was a kid. I remember him taking me fishing, grabbing my knee to tickle me and how he loved my grandmother.  As kids we would all wear his ‘giant’ t-shirts as pajamas to bed when we stayed over, and you could smell the Old Spice on them.

Poppi would tell my Grandmother how much he loved her as he drifted off to sleep. All of us grandkids stacked up like cordwood on the floor right outside their bedroom, the door always open.  We would giggle as he seemed to not stop telling her until we all seem to finally drift off to sleep. It left a deep impression on me on how he truly loved this woman with his entire being.

It made me love her more. As a kid you look up to your grandfather and if he loved her that much, I better try to love her at least half that much.  He was the best example of how to love someone I have had in my entire life.

So, on this Memorial Day, I remember the only soldier I ever truly knew, my Poppi.  I’m so happy he came back to marry my Grandmother, and it makes me think of all those kids who never got a chance to know their Poppi.

United We Win

The Open Office Terrorists

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So, how’s that new open office plan treating you!?

A recent study out says that it takes a normal person roughly 37 seconds to figure out working in an open office environment is going to suck! I mean, those were probably the slow people in the study, it doesn’t take a mental genius to see that going from an office where you could actually get stuff done to a bunch of people looking at each other, probably isn’t the best concept for productivity!

Okay, so that wasn’t a ‘real’ study. It was me and the voices in my head discussing the open office concept, and we all agree. Call it what you will, I’ll call it a quorum.

An actual study done GetVoip was spammed to me last week titled: The Detrimental Pitfalls of Open-Plan Offices which had the following findings:

– 95% of employees said working privately is important to them

– 89% of employees are more productive when working alone

– 63% of employees name “loud” coworkers as their #1 distraction.

“But, Tim! Open offices look so cool, and they prosper collaboration and communication and ping pong.”

Great…

But how many of you actually need more collaboration and communication?  I mean really?  Let’s be honest.

If Billy comes over to talk about The Voice one more time I’m going to gut him right here in my 8 ft by 8 ft low wall cubicle space I spend most of my time in. I’ll then use Billy’s skin to make a roof over my cubicle and finally have a little piece and quiet to actually get something done.  It’s not that I don’t like Billy. He’s was super the first three thousand times he came into talk me.  Now I want to see him die. Slowly. Painfully.

Open office space sucks because you have coworkers that are terrorists of the open office.  They come in all shapes and sizes, and they disguise themselves as actual coworkers. Here are a few examples:

1. The CrossFit Terrorist: Mandy does CrossFit. You should do CrossFit. And, apparently, the next best thing to doing CrossFit is talking about CrossFit to people who don’t give a shit about CrossFit.

2. The Vegan Terrorist: Mark is Vegan. You should be Vegan. And, apparently, the next best thing to being Vegan, is talking about begin Vegan to people who are trying to enjoy a nice fried donut and a RedBull for breakfast.

3. The Why Guy: The Why Guy can also be a Gal. They want to know why! Why are we doing this? Why are you doing what you’re doing? Why is the boss nice today? Why is the sky blue? Why are you holding a knife to your wrist?

4. The Schemer: Molly is a schemer. Molly wants you to scheme with her.  Molly doesn’t like how Missy wears hair hair and wants to get her fired. Plus Missy’s teeth are too white. Molly spends 77% of her day scheming of ways to get Missy fired, and needs to tell you all about it.

You see?  Open office plans are the devil in disguise.  If you had an actual office with a door, you could shut it. Lock it. Put up a sign that says, “I hate you! Go Away!”, but that would just look silly hanging from your chair at that table in the middle of the room you share with a bunch of terrorists!

 

Top 10 Sources of Online Hires

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Silkroad recently released some results from it’s annual client survey (also released by Indeed as you can imagine from the results!), which is a rather large sample. The chart that caught my eye was this one:

Source of hire

Keep in mind these are external online sources only. These don’t include an companies own career site, employee referrals, etc. Still the information is intriguing, and almost matches my own internal numbers for my company, which means I tend to believe the data!

Indeed being number one as a source for corporate hires isn’t not surprising. If a candidate is looking for a job today, they go to Indeed to start looking.  What is surprising is the LinkedIn number!

6% of external online hires are coming from LinkedIn!

So, you need to ask yourself: How much money are you spending on LinkedIn as compared to the other sources that are getting greater results?  Indeed, CareerBuilder, other various specialized job boards, etc.

Would have ever thought that LinkedIn would have been the exact same percentage as Craigslist!?!

Obviously, the candidates you are getting on LinkedIn are different than the candidates you’re getting on Craigslist. Not many professionals are looking for jobs on Craigslist, but you will find a ton looking for lower skilled, service level jobs.

Based on the data above here’s what you need to do:

1. Are your jobs being scraped by Indeed? Have you checked?  If not, you better make this happen! (Same for SimplyHired)

2. Are you using CareerBuilder? Postings? Resume database? Might want to check into what they’ve got going on!

3. If you have a LinkedIn Recruiter seat, are you getting a good ROI for your investment? Would you get a better ROI is that same amount of money was spent for things like sponsored jobs on Indeed, or most job posts on CareerBuilder? Maybe you need to do some testing.

4. Are you using Craigslist to help fill your lower level positions?  You know it’s free, right?

5. What the hell is Seek?  Oh, it’s a job board in Australia, you can forget about that.

6. Don’t forget about your other non-online sources: Referrals, your own career site, local state employment offices, alumni, your own internal database (this is the most under utilized source of most companies!), etc.  These probably fill more than all your online sources. How much money are you investing in them? (it’s usually a lot less than online sources and a huge miss for ROI)

How to solve one of the America’s Toughest Recruiting Challenges

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Hey, Tech Recruiters your job is really hard isn’t it?  Do you want to know a recruiting job that is about a hundred times harder than yours? Try recruiting Truck Drivers!

The Truck Driving recruiting industry is insane.  It’s reported that right now there are 36,000 Truck Driver open position in the U.S.!  Go to any major corporation that has a shipping component that is handled by semi-trucks and they have openings, many will have openings in the hundreds!  The largest trucking firms in the country have recruiting teams that dwarf the size any of the major Tech companies in Silicon Valley.

So, how do you solve such a major recruiting nightmare?

By doing this:

Okay, I hear you! “Wait, there still has to be a person in the seat!” You don’t solve the ‘driver’ problem at all!

The main problem with the Truck Driving profession is too fold:

1. They can’t attract younger workers into the profession.

2. They have high turnover.

Being able to use and operate the latest technology in any industry will attract a younger workforce.  Can you imagine the people lining up to be able to operate one of those trucks above?!  I can only imagine how this tech will revolutionize the profession of truck driving, and the skill sets needed.

Truck Drivers turnover because they don’t see a future in driving truck.  It’s seen as a low skill occupation, and a lonely one at that. Hours, weeks, months, years on the road.  Throw in the nasty-ass truck stops and you can see why our best and brightest are jumping at the thousands of open jobs.

Self driving technology opens up a whole new capacity level for the people sitting in those vehicles. I can imagine how organizations could begin training and teaching these operators an entire additional skill set to use while in vehicle, and even upon getting to their destination.  It would easily be foreseeable where your self driving vehicle operators could also become your field sales reps, quality control, etc.

If the operator, theoretically, only has to pay attention to vehicle operations 15-20% of the time, this gives them so much time to concentrate on other ways to add value to the company and to themselves.

From a recruiting perspective, I can sell that.  It’s hard to sell dirty bathroom and lot lizards to a kid who believes he has a future.

T3 – Greenhouse.io @Greenhouse

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This week on T3 I review recruiting and applicant tracking software Greenhouse. Greenhouse is one of the newer players in the ATS space having only been in the market about three years, but they’re making a ton of noise.  Primarily designed to be used in the mid-sized and under market, 1000 employees and under is their prime user base.  Heavily used in the startup and tech space (Pinterest, Uber, Twilio, Zenefits, etc.).

Greenhouse take a best in breed approach, partnering with some of the best talent acquisition tech vendors to deliver the best to their users. Companies like Entelo, HireVue, RolePoint, RecruiterFi, etc., all integrate seamlessly with Greenhouse.  I actually prefer this approach (for SMB HR & TA shops), because I like the best technology available, versus an enterprise ATS level system which is usually solid, but not fantastic.

As you can expect Greenhouse isn’t your Mom and Dad’s ATS.  Older designed ATS systems are designed around one core process and most fail because you don’t like that one process. Greenhouse is designed around the core principles of talent acquisition and all you need to do within that function, and you do it the way you want.  Greenhouse isn’t a talent acquisition software, it’s an organizational software, because everyone in your company as access, specific to their role.

5 Things I really like about Greenhouse:

1. The Interview Plan. One of the coolest things in Greenhouse is how they handle interviews. It’s a structured process that drives consistency, delivers interview kits to each interviewee, and describes their role and what they need to get out of the interview. This eliminates an interviewee interviewing with 5 different people and having them all ask virtually the same questions.

2. The Sourcing Plan.  Again, Greenhouse structures the sourcing plan in a way that everyone knows their role and what they are responsible for. They also have full integration with LinkedIn, if you have a LI recruiter license, to allow you to do all of that sourcing from one system.

3. Candidate Scorecard.  Greenhouse has designed a candidate scorecard that easily lets you compare candidates by more than just a rollup number, but by specific skills, cultural fit, qualifications and other details. This lets the organization make a more informed decision on who and why you should select one candidate over another.

4. Agency Portal. We all use staffing agencies. Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to manage all that you use within your ATS?  Greenhouse does this, and actually will show you agency performance metrics to boot!

5. Data analytics are very robust. I really liked their pipeline stats feature which you can set up by individual or team. If a candidate is stuck at one spot in process, the system alert you that you need to go kick a hiring manager in the butt and tell them to get going on a certain candidate, etc.

It’s easy to see why Greenhouse has the buzz in the industry right now from an ATS perspective. If I was running a corporate talent acquisition shop right now, they would get high consideration from me as the tool we would be using.  An ATS is an ATS, but I love how Greenhouse has taken the traditional model of an ATS and made what an ATS designed in 2015 should be.  Easy to use, intuitive, great tech and works the way we need to work in today’s tight labor market.

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.

Delivering Benefits Bad News

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Hey, gang! I wrote a book! Well, to be fair it’s an eBook. I don’t think that actually counts when being considered for a Pulitzer but none the less it’s something I wrote!

The good folks at Alex help me get this done. Meaning, I did the writing and they did all the rest!  The concept is how do we as HR pros deliver bad news during open enrollments.  Most of us have been in this situation. As we begin to prepare for the next open enrollment, like many of us are doing right now, or very soon, we already know we have some challenges.

Costs will increase, we might have to get rid of a popular benefit, or reduce benefits, etc. These are things HR and Benefit pros face every year. It’s the rare individual that just keeps getting the opportunity to give more. Let’s face it, the majority of us don’t work at Google, or companies like Google flush with cash.

Real HR pros have to deliver messages that are tough.  That’s why I wrote this book.

You can download for free at: http://info.meetalex.com/Tim-Sackett_Benefits-Bad-News_LP_Benefits-Bad-News_A.html

It’s a quick read and because it’s written by me, there might just possibly a bit of snark! I hope you enjoy it, and that you can use some of the practical advice I give.

(I am not being paid for this promotion.  I think ALEX is a pretty cool piece of HR technology that many organizations could use to help them communicate their benefit message out to their employees.  We like to talk about great employee engagement, and culture, etc., but what is proven is that employees who actually understand their benefits are more likely to stay with your company. That’s real HR.)