Monthly Archives: January 2016

Cutting the Cord of a High Performer

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There is nothing worse in HR than having to terminate a high performer.  If you’re in the game long enough you will eventually end up facing this situation. A high performer does something incredibly stupid, and even though everyone in the organization wants to keep him or her, you all know they have to go.

Nothing sucks more.

I’ve seen executives in very large companies almost lose their own jobs because they tried to save a high performer from getting fired.  We like to think only idiots and low performers get fired, but something really good performers will get fired because of bad circumstances.  Take the case of Cincinnati Bengals Linebacker Vontaze Burfict and his illegal hit on Pittsburg Steelers Wide Receiver Antonio Brown in last week’s NFL playoff game:

Let’s be clear, I’m not a fan of either team, just an observer. He could have killed Antonio Brown!

Okay, one bad hit. One bad choice. You don’t fire a person over that! Especially, a person of Vontaze’s talent. He might be the single biggest reason Cincinnati actually made the playoffs this year.

Herein lies the problem. For how great of a performer Vontaze is, he has one major issue that the Bengals and the NFL can’t ignore, he seems like he truly wants to injure other players! Vontaze now has a ‘history’ of trying to hurt opposing players with questionable and illegal hits. He was fined this year by the NFL to the tune of $169,000 in the 2015-2016 alone. His hit on Antonio Brown alone will cost upwards of million dollars in fines and lost game wages!

So, what do you do?

It’s something the Cincinnati Bengals are going to have to determine.  They can’t keep him and have him continue to do this. It’s not good for the franchise brand. Although, some will argue it actually might help their brand. In the NFL, you need white hats and black hats! Not everyone can be the good guys.

Here’s the problem you face if you’re the Bengals leadership.  You allow Vontaze to continue to play. Vontaze will do what Vontaze does, which is play dirty. He’s proven that with his actions. His past performance has shown you what his future performance will be!

This won’t come back on Vontaze. It will come back on other players on the Bengals team, more than likely a highly skilled offensive player like a quarterback or wide receiver. Vontaze will go out and hurt his next victim, and the other team will eventually retaliate. The Bengals risk this if they keep Vontaze around.

Great performer. One major career derailer.

It sucks to have to let a great performer go, but many times it’s the best thing to do for the over health and wellbeing of the organization. It never ceases to amaze me, though, at what some in the organization will do to keep that risk around.

 

Should Job Hopping Be Encouraged?

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Am I old school?

No, really? Please let me know in the comments because this recent article from Fast Company makes no sense to me! Check this out:

“JOB HOPPERS ARE BELIEVED TO HAVE A HIGHER LEARNING CURVE, BE HIGHER PERFORMERS, AND EVEN TO BE MORE LOYAL…In terms of managing your own career, if you don’t change jobs every three years, you don’t develop the skills of getting a job quickly, so then you don’t have any career stability,” (Penelope) Trunk tells Fast Company. “You’re just completely dependent on the place that you work as if it’s 1950, and you’re going to get a gold watch at the end of a 50-year term at your company.”

Really? I’m not sure Talent Acquisition leaders, across the world, share Penelope’s philosophy on job hopping!

I don’t buy any of this.

In the minds of hiring managers, Job Hoppers are Job Hoppers for a reason. Which basically comes down to you weren’t good enough to stick with any one company you were with. Sure some of that hopping might be they were in a bad company who didn’t treat them like they should have been treated. At which point, a normal person, would learn from this bad fit and choice of employer, and make a better one.

I even job hopped a little in the early part of my career. I was chasing an executive title. In hindsight, it was the dumbest thing I ever did!

This is bad advice, plain and simple.

Don’t job hop. For every person that it helps, it will hurt ten others. Hiring managers still hate to see job hopping on a resume, and they’ll question what is wrong with you if your resume looks like you job hop.

Even in the tech sector, which I work in every day, hiring managers hate to see IT pros that have ten jobs in ten years. They’ll still hire you now, because the need is so great, but eventually the economy of the IT market, supply and demand, will catch up. At that point, your job hopping resume will not be desired.

So, how do you fix this, if you’re currently in this job hopper cycle?

I recommend to job seekers that they bundle many of their ‘projects’ into one consulting job, to make it, at least, appear to be under one umbrella of an employer. We see many IT pros doing this now as contingent workers and incorporating themselves. Work several projects at different companies, but all managed under one brand. It’s not perfect, but it looks a little better.

Job hopping should never be encouraged. Making a change because your career is stagnant is something completely different. Most careers don’t get stagnant in 2-3 years!

There is a huge disconnect in mobile recruiting!

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Pew Research  came out with some cool data recently on mobile usage and recruiting and a few things actually shocked me!  Check this out:

Americans with relatively low levels of educational attainment tend to lean heavily on their smartphones for online access in general, and this also play out in the ways members of this group utilize their smartphones while looking for employment. Among Americans who have used a smartphone in some part of a job search, those with higher education levels are more likely to use their phone for basic logistical activities – such as calling a potential employer on the phone or emailing someone about a job. On the other hand, smartphone job seekers who have not attended college are substantially more likely to have used their phone for more advanced tasks, such as filling out an online job application or creating a resume or cover letter.

If you’re an HR Pro like me, you believed the opposite of this was probably true! I think most TA pros and leaders would believe they couldn’t rely on mobile recruiting technology because those with lower education (thus lower income) would not have access to a smartphone. The opposite of this is true.

Lower educated individuals actually rely more on their mobile device to get online and communicate about things surrounding employment.

Currently, in the TA space most of the mobile recruiting push is around Tech hires.  Everything you read in regards to mobile recruiting will speak to the importance of having if you hire IT, but almost nothing if you’re trying to hire unskilled workers.  In fact, conventional wisdom still holds court when it comes to unskilled recruiting – paper applications, career page applications, job fairs, etc.

So, what is the major issue facing unskilled and lower skilled job seekers?  

Employers are still stuck on resumes and applications to get someone to apply.

Have you ever filled out an application on the screen of an iPhone 5?  It sucks! You won’t complete it. You’ll go to another company that is hiring and makes it easier to apply via another means, or by giving way less information.

Employers who are struggling to hire lower-skilled workers need to make some major changes to their mobile recruiting strategy.

Here are some tips: 

1. Have a mobile recruiting strategy, specifically designed for unskilled and lowers skilled candidates

2. Figure out what is the bare minimum of information you need to have some apply to a position via their mobile device. Get the rest when you see them in person.

3. Start measuring how your candidates are coming to you. Understand, while they might come to from a job board or online resource, that is still probably done by a mobile device. We need to change our mindset about how we attract lower-skilled workers via mobile.

This is a huge eye-opener to TA pros and leaders. Take note. Lower educated workers are more likely to use a mobile device to apply to your jobs than a highly educated worker!

 

 

T3 – Modern Survey

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This week on T3 I review employee engagement and talent analytics technology Modern Survey. I’ve been aware of Modern Survey for the past five years or so, as a great employee engagement survey technology. I’m glad I took a recent look because they’ve grown up over the past few years into a really advanced human capital measurement technology.

They still do employee engagement really well, but they also do performance, onboarding, exit interviewing, 360s and a really powerful analytics dashboard that will fully integrate with your enterprise level ATS, HRIS and CRM HR systems. It’s a content agnostic system as well, which basically means if you have a survey tool you currently use, they can integrate that into their platform.

Modern Survey’s platform has seven different modules that you can mix and match with: their business intelligence tool “Heat”, mThrive for employee engagement, m360, mPerformance, mExit, mSpark for onboarding and mReasearch which manages all of the content on the platform.

5 Things I really like about Modern Survey: 

1. Modern Survey has taken continuous measurement of your employees to the next level with employee engagement pulse surveys, onboarding and exit surveys all integrated into your existing HRM systems.

2. mSpark their onboarding tool is a game changer. Not only does HR find out about potential trouble early on, the predictive analytics basically tell you who is going to turn before they even know themselves!

3. Modern Survey is a true business intelligence tool for HR.  Some vendors are beginning to sell this out in the industry, but none have it figured out on the HR side of the business like Modern has currently. Their HIPO and High Performance 9 box analytics is something you need to see. Perfect to use for workforce and succession planning.

4. Modern Survey goes beyond just giving you your own data and has integrated great benchmark analytics into their platform to give your HR team the decision-making tools it needs.

5. Modern Survey goes one step past most technology vendors and gives you the knowledge you need to go with the tools. They just don’t provide software, but they also provide the consulting you need to kick off a major project like implementing new employee engagement surveying!

Modern Survey’s President is Don MacPherson.  He’s one of the good guys, Minnesota born and bred.  Rides a white horse type of guy. Sure he needs to make money, but I truly think he would rather put out a great product then make money! Because of this, you won’t find a better vendor to work for.

Modern Survey is blowing up right now and has taken on a number of large enterprise clients, but they started in the mid-market space.  Their sweet spot is going to be 1,000 employees and above.  They work across all industries: retail, healthcare, manufacturing, entertainment, etc.  Well worth your time to check them and demo!

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

Have You Noticed, Most Companies Suck at Recruiting

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Recruiting isn’t about hiring one person. That’s easy.

It’s about consistently hiring one person, and that person should be, at the very least, as talented as the last person you hired. But, really more talented. Then, continually do that, hire better talent, over and over.

To do that, you have to be able to continually build a better mousetrap. You have to continually get better organizationally and individually.

The reason we suck at recruiting is we get satisfied with making that one hire.

“Yay! We did it.”

“Now, what?”

Great recruiting organizations aren’t satisfied with one hire. They aren’t satisfied with having all of their positions filled. They only get satisfied when they are replacing lower talent, with higher talent.

That’s a really hard place to get to. 99.99% of organizations will never get there.  It’s really hard work. Heavy lifting.

So, we give up. Screw it. We’ll just keep filling these one positions.

This is why you suck at recruiting.  Your goal is fill positions, not to make the talent in your organization better.  If increasing the talent was your goal, you would do things differently. You would act differently. Your sense of urgency would be different.

Talent Acquisition isn’t about acquiring bodies.  It’s about making the talent in your organization better. Every day. Every week. Every year.

Most companies suck at recruiting because they see recruiting as filling positions.

What is your most valuable hiring source?

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As many of you know I’m a writer over at CareerBuilder’s recruiting blog called The Hiring Site. Great group of industry practitioners writing about everything related to talent and recruiting. Because of my relationship, they share cool data with me, that I can share with you!

Some of the most eye-opening stuff I’ve gotten recently is all around hiring sources, and it’s not stuff you normally hear about or see.  Let’s face it. We (Talent Acquisition Pros) hate sharing our data because it makes us feel like we’re giving up our secret sauce!

It’s not really secret sauce, that’s the secret, we all pretty much do the same thing when it comes to talent attraction. We get referrals, we leverage our internal databases, we use job boards and postings, we pray. We pray a lot!

Here’s the data that CB shared with me from crunching the data of 1600+ CareerBuilder clients in 2015:

– 21% of hires came directly from using CareerBuilder.

– 41% of hires actually could have come from CareerBuilder, if the client was fully utilizing the technology they purchased!

– 45% of companies added more sources of hire over the past five years

– On average a candidate will use 18 sources to search for a job!

What does this really mean?

Every organization’s talent acquisition strategy has to have a multi-pronged approach.  You have jobs that you can post on CareerBuilder and find great talent. You have jobs that you will need a great referral strategy to fill. You have jobs that you’ll need outside specialized help to fill. You have jobs that need hardcore sourcing and bust-your-butt on the phone recruiting to fill. You need all these approaches, just one won’t work.

You need all these approaches, just one won’t work.

The key is are you fully utilizing the easiest, fastest sources you have?  We tend to want to discount our job board vendor (mine is CareerBuilder), but the numbers usually tell a different story.  41% of hires seems like a lot, but the data is deep! 1600 clients equal ten’s of thousands of recruiters banging on CB technology. The data is real.

What does this really mean, to you?

1. Make sure your recruiting staff is fully trained on the technology you give them. Then, retrain them!

2. Make sure you’re accurately measuring your source of hire. This is the single most important thing that recruiting leaders miss, consistently. It drives all of your purchasing decisions. I can’t tell you how many recruiters I speak with that truly believe LinkedIn is their most valuable source, and, so far, 100% of the time, the data says it’s not when we pull the numbers.

3. Are you looking at your existing internal database first? It’s the most valuable source in the industry and this is consistently underutilized.

Happy recruiting my friends!

 

Hiring Means Your Organization Failed

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Henry Ward, the CEO of eShares, wrote a post on Medium recently on How to Hire.  It’s a great piece from an executive point of view regarding the concept of talent acquisition.  Basically, Henry feels that if your organization needs to go out and hire external talent, you’ve failed as an organization:

“Hiring means we failed to execute and need help. First, let me quell a misconception. Hiring is not a consequence of success. Revenue and customers are. Hiring is a consequence of our failure to create enough leverage (see eShares 101) to grow on our own. It means we need outside help. The perfect business is a computer plugged into the internet. Starting with me, every human thereafter is overhead. And we are increasing overhead by 50%.

I want to repeat this point. We are increasing overhead by 50% because we failed to execute. It is not something to be proud of. It is humbling to go back to the labor market, hat-in-hand, asking for help…”

Want to know why your executives don’t respect HR?  Read above.  Executives think about the business differently than we do in HR and Talent Acquisition. I’m 100% sure any head of TA would believe hiring, because of business growth, equals success, not failure.

Even if you take out Henry’s example of the perfect business model being a computer plugged into the internet, he could still argue that any organization that can’t self-sustain its own growth of labor is a failure. Think about it from a training and development point of view. You hire entry level candidates and train and develop them into every part of your organization. You have a succession plan. If everything works perfectly, you never hire ‘talent’ from the outside. You just hire new, clean, entry level bodies, and create your own clone army!

Okay, at this point we still need to use outside bodies. I would guess at some point Google will create real, live human clones, then the process could be completely self-contained.

So, how does Henry Ward hire at eShares?  Here is his hiring philosophy:

  1. Hire for Strength vs Lack of Weakness
  2. Hire for Trajectory vs Experience
  3. Hire Doers vs Tellers
  4. Hire Learners vs Experts
  5. Hire Different vs Similar
  6. Always pass on ego

Pretty solid. Some of it might depend on your industry, company, etc. I’m not a huge believer in always hiring for difference. Difference causes conflict. In some organizations that is great. In some organizations that is catastrophic. Just as similar, group think, etc. is bad in many cases, it’s perfect in some cases.

Give his article a read, he goes into detail on each step with an explanation.  One of the best executive written pieces I’ve read on hiring.

Genius is Born

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It’s an argument as old as time. Is genius born or can genius be made?

I’m squarely on the genius is born camp. True genius we don’t even understand. Einstein, Mozart, Prince, Bobby Fischer, Da Vinci, etc.

I was watching 60 Minutes this weekend because I’m old, white and love Anderson Cooper. Anderson introduced us to another great example of genius:

Click here for the full 60-minute interview of Joey Alexander. 

I don’t care what Malcolm Gladwell would say, no amount of hours of practice will get you to this!

Joey was born a musical genius. He can hear something. His brain interprets the sounds. He can play it back, perfectly. Then, this is where the real genius lies, he can make it something completely new, unique, better.

I’m fascinated by this.  By the concept of geniuses altogether.

I think we probably have more geniuses around us than we know, but we work to make them fit. Fit into a role. Fit into our culture. Just fit into a pattern of normalcy that we find comforting.

Joey doesn’t fit. Thankfully.

T3 – The Complete List of 2015 HR and Talent Tech Companies Reviewed!

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I put a lot of work into reviewing a host of great HR and Talent Technology companies throughout the year. It’s something that I really love to do, and it’s has taught me so much, I can’t even tell you!

Here is the complete list of companies that I ‘officially’ reviewed in 2015:

January:

QueSocial: A social talent acquisition tool that will help you with your TA content strategy.

Avature: One of the hottest Recruitment Marketing technology platforms on the market.

Jibe: A very cool mobile recruiting and analytics solution.

February:

TalkPush: A technology that automates your normal phone screening of candidates.

NAS Recruitment Innovation: Recruitment marketing and advertising platform that helps you attract more talent.

OrgVue: HR Business Intelligence tool, one of the most powerful tools I demo’d all year!

LeoForce: Recruiting robotics software to take your sourcing to the next level.

March:

BrandAmper: Employment branding solution that utilizes the voice of your people to build your brand.

Talemetry: Recruiting marketing and automation software, one of the hottest segments in HR tech in 2015.

HarQen: Recruiting efficiency tools that help your TA shop get more done with less.

HoneIt: Digital interview platform that helps job seekers.

April:

PapirFly: Employment branding software that helps ensure consistency of your brand worldwide.

Gr8People: All in one recruitment platform solution. ATS, assessment, marketing, analytics, onboarding, etc.

Workshape: A tool that will describe your jobs in a new non-textual way, helping you hire better for organizational fit.

May:

iRevu: Micro-feedback performance management mobile real-time tool.

Breezy.HR: ATS light, Breezy is to recruitment technology what BambooHR is to HR technology.

Greenhouse.io: New ATS player for the SMB space that has partnered with some of the best recruitment technology on the planet.

June:

CoPilot: A reinvention of self-serve relocation management technology, that’s pretty sweet.

ZipRecruiter: Online job distribution and job board that took the U.S. by storm in 2015.

RecruiterSidekick: Add-on tool to your ATS that helps you mine the great talent hidden in your ATS.

PeopleDoc: Top document management and HR service delivery software on the planet, helping HR shops become more efficient.

July:

Hirabl: Specialized staffing vendor software that helps staffing companies catch missing revenue.

RocketLawyer: Online service helping your employees deal with all their personal legal needs. (Editor note: I personally made my own will using this service!)

LifeGuides: Job description type reviews by your employees to help candidates determine if this job and organization is for them.

HRCloud: HR system of record designed for the SMB market that has a very cool and modern feel.

August:

LearnKit: Custom e-learning agency that actually produces employee e-learning that isn’t cheesy.

Hyphen: Hyphen is a mobile app that allows employees to communicate anonymously, but within a company parameter.

Glassdoor Employer Center: The employer side of company review site Glassdoor and all the great tools available to employers.

September:

Betterific: A crowdsourcing, communication platform that allows employees to present and share ideas.

TalentStream Technologies: CareerBuilder’s new entry into pre-hire recruitment technology space that is very powerful.

EmployUs: A mobile app that offers employees money for giving you referrals to hire.

PaySavvy: Fully integrated payroll, HR, and time management for mid-sized companies in Canada. An alternative to ADP.

October:

Microsoft Excel: Like it or not, about 70% of in HR and TA still use Excel as a technology we rely on every day.

Halogen Software: Simply the best performance software platform on the market.

ElevatedCareers: A new career site by eHarmony that leverages their date matching technology to find you great talent.

Phenom People: The newest entrant to the Talent Relationship Marketing (TRM) technology market, that helps companies from visitor to candidate on your career site.

November:

Anthology;: Formerly Poachable, they are replacement to the traditional job placement and headhunted candidate services. 

UlitPro: One of the major HCM providers that is anchored by great customer service.

December:

Lever: A new ATS to the market that is born from CRM. Positioned to be a major player in the ATS market.

Clinch: Recruitment marketing and automation software that just might have more functionality than any of the players in the space.

StandOut: One of the newest players in performance management built on Marcus Buckingham’s philosophy of focusing on employees strengths.

Can’t wait to continue this series into 2016 and keep bringing you the latest and greatest in HR and Talent technology that is on the 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 tech space and I wanted to educate myself and share what I find.  If you want to be on T3 – send me a note.

How Much Did Your Dreams Cost?

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It’s the holidays, do yourself a favor and go out and download or Redbox the movie “Up In the Air“.  It’s a great movie for HR pros. One of the best scenes is this one (below) between George Clooney and J.K. Simmons:

Enjoy your time off, if you have it. Either way, answer me this, how much did you get paid to give up your dreams?

I got paid $20,000.  That’s how much I get paid, salary, for my first Recruiting job right out of college.

I wanted to be a college volleyball coach.  I was good at it. I loved doing it. I found my wife because of it.

$20,000.

It seems silly, now, looking back on it.  $20,000 is nothing.  My life has worked out wonderfully, but it’s a lesson I’ll pass along to my kids. Dreams are wasted on the young.  Don’t give up your chance when you are young. All too soon, you’ll reach a stage in life where your dreams won’t seem that important any longer.

We are told that the key to a happy work life is to find a job you love, and you’ll never ‘work’ another day as long as you live. About .01% of people actually find jobs they truly love. The rest of the 99.9% work jobs that are fine, but not love. You only fall in love with a job when you follow your dreams.

It’s not 100%. Sometimes your dreams end up sucking. Don’t get down about that. Many, many people suck at their dreams. That’s life. You’re allowed to change your dreams.  Just don’t wait too long to do it!