Monthly Archives: May 2016

Sackett Stats #36 – Boss Block

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I was with some HR blogging friends at a conference recently and we were talking shop. Someone had a great idea for a blog post, but said they couldn’t find any stats to back it up, so they weren’t going to write about it. My exact quote back was, “I just make stats up!”

To be fair, when I do make stats up, I tell you! It’s something like, “9 out of 10 employees who are fired (by me) want to kill their boss!”

My stats aren’t just made up! Sackett Stats are based on nothing more than twenty years of my experience working in the trenches HR and TA, across multiple industries. To be honest, though, some idiot will one day read this and think it’s a real number, stick it in their Forbes article, and they a few weeks later you’ll see it at your local SHRM meeting in a presentation deck!

Sackett Stats! Like Pew Research, but far less likely based on actual research.

Sackett Stat #36 is called Boss Block.  The concept of this statistic comes from the number of years that are between you and your boss in age. The lower the number, the less likely you’ll ever be promoted, and the more likely you are to turnover.

The average over/under Boss Block number that pushes a person to leave an organization is 5.3 years.

If your boss is more than 5.3 years older than you, you are less likely to leave the organization, believing you will eventually get a chance to be promoted. Obviously, the farther apart in age, to your boss, the less likely you are to leave on your own. If your boss is 5.3 years or less to your age, you are highly likely to leave, believing there is no chance in hell you’ll ever get promoted because you’re being Boss Blocked for promotion.

Sackett Stats – like most stats, but more believable.

The Greatest Retirement Benefits You Can Give Your Employees

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My Dad retired this past year. I’m already ‘leveraging’ him for some time. He has so much of it now! It’s like he won the time lotto and he’s throwing it around because he’s got so much of it. “Hey Dad, can I borrow a couple of hours!? It’s a busy week! I need you to pick up the kids!”

I read this article, The Huge Retirement Benefit You Probably Aren’t Expecting recently:

America is reaching a tipping point. Adults in the busiest phase of life, juggling kids and careers, number about 40 million, which is roughly equal to those near and in retirement, who typically have time on their hands. But the number of adults pressed for time is projected to grow slowly, reaching 49 million by 2050. By contrast, the number of retirees with plenty of free time will explode to 88 million, as more and more boomers retire.

When you add it all up, retirees will have 2.5 trillion hours of leisure time to fill over the next 20 years. This free time will redefine their habits and priorities—even their identities. And yet almost no one is planning for this sweeping change, according to a report from Bank of America Merrill Lynch and Age Wave.

Time is going to be the new currency of future generations. It’s like lake front property, there’s only so much. Unless you live in Dubai and have billions, then I guess you can make new lake front property!

The crazy thing is, organizations aren’t really putting that much effort into figuring this whole thing out. We’re treating it like we’ve treated retirement for decades. “Well, Bill’s retiring, let’s throw him a party, buy him a walker with a horn, and give his work to the new kid.” We aren’t thinking in a new context of what do these ‘new’ folks who are retiring really want?

What I’ve learned from Dad is we in HR are missing some things. Here are some ideas of Retirement Benefits you could offer, but you haven’t even begun to think in this new way of time:

1. Part-time, flexible Mentorships – Some people can’t wait to stop working for your organization. Many feel they’re being ‘nicely’ pushed out, or society makes them feel like ‘it’s time’ to leave. The reality, so many of your retiring employees would love to keep in touch. Help out the new kids. Lead mentor groups on how to deal with customer issues, leadership dilemmas, customer/client feedback, etc. And most would do it for free! They would volunteer their time!

2. Corporate Community Volunteer Programs – Remember, these super valuable, experienced, loyal former employees who love your brand, have a couple trillion (with a T) hours on their hands! Can you imagine how much good will you could leverage in the community if you activated your retirees as volunteers with some direction and leadership!?  It could transform your corporate presence within the markets you serve. BTW – hospitals do a great job at this! There is no reason you shouldn’t be able to do this in your organization as well.

3. C-Suite Bullship Detectors – Your executives don’t always know what’s really going on because they have a bunch of VPs kissing their ass telling them what they think they want to hear. Retirees are a great mechanism to tell your executives what is actually going on, versus what they’re being told. They’re like highly paid consultants, without the highly paid part!  We all need someone without a vested interest to tell us like it is, even when it stings a little. Your retirees would love to do this. Works really well for newer retirees who are still close to the business. Not so well once they get a ways out. You will be shocked at the bond your executives will build with these folks!

Something to think about. How are your new retirement benefits helping your former employees spend and invest their most precious commodity? Time.

 

Michael J Fox’s Perspective on Co-Workers #WorkHuman

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Michael J. Fox was one of the closing day keynotes at the WorkHuman conference this year, and he killed it like you expect. One of the key takeaways I took from his talk was in regards to all those people you work with on a day to day basis.

Mike Fox laid out two things you should think about when you think about how you interact with your co-workers:

1. Enjoy the people you work with for what they can positively contribute to you and your organization.  This is all about focusing on the strengths of those around you. If you constantly focus on what someone can’t do, you make them miserable and you stress yourself out as well.  People perform better when you allow them to do what they’re good at. When you recognize them for what they bring to the organization, not what they don’t bring.

2. If you can’t enjoy the person you work with, be thankful you’re not them. We are all going to have people in our life that we have to work with that we frankly just don’t like. Could be personality, or skills, or attitude, etc. Mike Fox said you can still find a positive out of this by focusing on the fact you’re grateful that you don’t have their challenges, and by helping those people be the best version of themselves.

I love this philosophy!

Mike Fox was very big on this concept that judging others will get you nowhere. It’s such a big part of culture. I know I do some this myself, and it’s not something I’m ever proud of. The reality is judging others says more about your inadequacies than it does about the persons you are judging. It was a great reminder.

It was a great reminder. In HR and TA we tend to believe ‘judging’ is part of our job description, but it’s not. The best HR and TA Pros I know don’t judge candidates or employees but find what is most useful of those individuals and try and put those people in positions to be successful.

Finally, Mike spoke about fear. Fear others have when they look at him. They look at him expecting to find fear in him and instead see their own fear in his eyes. That statement made me pause. He’s not fearful of his situation. He’s happy life gave him this enormous platform to change lives.

Perspective. We shouldn’t assume we know others based on our own beliefs and fears. Here’s a guy who is facing an uncertain future, but he’s embraced the joy of living one day at a time. The real secret, he didn’t share, is we all are facing life one day at time, he’s just figured it out way before us!

 

Are Happy Employees The Answer? #WorkHuman

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WorkHuman is this week and it’s one of the new transformative conferences on the landscape within the HR industry. The next generation of user conference (WorkHuman is sponsored by GloboForce) which is how do you engage an audience with awesome content and engage your brand without constantly shoving a sales pitch down your throat! WorkHuman has it figured out!

One of the best sessions had to be from happiness researcher Shawn Achor. The former Harvard researcher laid out a compelling argument on why organizations at all levels should be focusing on helping their employees be more happy. He had great examples from organizations that have focused on his research (see video below) that have gotten great results on higher productivity, higher retention and creating an environment that is more human to work in!

The whole conversation got me thinking of the chicken or egg scenario. What comes first an employee who is happy, or a happy employee?  Can you really make an unhappy person happy?

We all have that co-worker that never seems happy. They’re Eyore! Nothing ever goes right for them, nothing will ever be good, they always see the worst in every situation. I believe if you went backwards in their career with your organization, and you could see their interview, you would immediately pick up on the fact this was their core personality!

It makes sense to think that chronically unhappy people are going to be hard to make happy, thus, will probably be less effective as an employee. If as the research shows that happy people are more productive than unhappy people, or less happy people.

All skills being relatively the same, I would bet my career on the fact that if you then only focused on hiring the most happy people, you would have the same results that Shawn speaks of, without all on the ongoing programs.

Happy people, tend to be happy people almost always. It’s their natural zen. It’s where they like to live. Their natural state is to be happy. So, I would theorize that hiring those happy people would have a lasting positive impact to your organization.

Now we just need a great pre-hire assessment that measures someone’s natural level of happiness. I would think Shawn probably has the actual validated questions we could use. It would be nice if he just handed those over and let us started doing this!

Chicken or the Egg. You can try and make your employees happy, or you can hire happy people. Or, you could do both!

T3 – 100 HR & Talent Technologies You Should Know Right Now!

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My good friend William Tincup (@WilliamTincup) is probably the single smartest person I know in the HR and Talent Technology space, worldwide! That’s saying a lot because this space is filled with smart men and women.

At HR Tech Fest a couple of weeks ago, William made a comment on stage that there is roughly 21,000 HR and Talent Technology companies in the world. Seems like a number I can’t even get my head around – I might know 200 or so!

To prove his point, William quickly put together 100 of the hottest companies on the market and shared them on LinkedIn. Since most of you don’t visit LI but once or twice a month, I wanted to share them here as well.

My suggestion is to demo one of these companies each week for the next 50 weeks. One hour of development per week, 50 hours total. Any of us can do this. Pick out the ones that make the most sense to you, in your role. This will change you professionally. You’ll be smarter. You’ll see what your competition is doing. You’ll begin to think more strategically. Yes, just be looking at, and better understanding the technology that is shaping your profession!

Yes, just be looking at, and better understanding the technology that is shaping your profession!

This list is alphabetical. None of these organizations are paying me (yet). If you’re not on it, but want to be, connect with William on the Twitters and just ask.

7 Steps To Turn Around a Broken HR Department

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I had a friend start a new HR leadership position recently. When I spoke to her the other day, she talked about how the department she has inherited is completely broken. Her first question to me was, “how do I turn this thing around?”

We all have asked ourselves this question, haven’t we?

So, often you get your first shot at leadership because something is broken and a change needs to be made. Rarely, as a first leadership position, do you walk into Disneyland! Oh, look, everything is perfect, all the processes are great, all the people are hard working and get along, the budget has more money than I know what to do with!

It’s just not reality. If the department had all that, they wouldn’t be hiring you!

I gave her my steps to turning around a broken department, from my experience of turning around broken departments!

Step 1 – Don’t start by thinking you’re going to change the culture immediately. The culture is bigger than you. The only way you could truly change the culture is to go in day one, fire every single person, and implant your own new team. Culture will always win.

Step 2 – Look for low hanging fruit and pain points. Anytime you walk into a broken environment there are always simple little things you can do and change, that will be big wins. Do those first. This will buy you time to do some of the bigger things you need to do, and at least you’ll be starting with positive energy.

Step 3 – Fire bad people fast. I don’t care that they’re the only one who knows how to make changes in the system. If they’re bad, fire them. Again, the organization will thank you. And if you’re truly broken, being broken a little longer won’t matter, and now you’ll have an excuse.

Step 4 – Hire people who are loyal to you, first, the organization second. Broken departments eat up and spit out more HR leaders than you can imagine. It would be the first question I would ask when interviewing – so, how many leaders were here before me? Oh, five in five years, thanks, I’ll pass. If you’re going to put up a good fight, you need people who will die by your side.

Step 5 – Have a plan. Gain executive buy-in of that plan early. Continue to update executives on the plan. It won’t be fixed overnight, but managing up on the progress you’re making, will ensure success over the long run.

Step 6 – Build extensive relationships with your peer group in other functions as quickly as possible. To fix awful, you need friends. Friends in IT, Marketing, Finance, Operations, etc. You need those champions on your side, supporting your change. I don’t need everyone in my department to like me, I do need my other functional peer group to like and respect me if I’m going to turn this puppy around.

Step 7 – Stop saying HR is broken, or bad, or you’re fixing it. Start using language that we’re building best-in-case processes, world-class technology, market-leading functions, award-winning talent, etc. The organization needs to change the language of what HR is, to make it what it can be.

It’s the hardest, most challenging, thing you’ll ever do is turn around a broken department, but it will also be the most rewarding and best thing that ever happened to your career!

 

The Secrets Behind How Google, Amazon and Facebook Hire The Best People!

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This was a headline the other day in an article over at Qz.com by Sarah Cooper. Now, Quartz does legitimate articles so it might have been hard for some to figure out if this was actually supposed to satire or if Sarah was actually trying to help you out. I have a feeling it was a little of both! I know it was getting shared a ton, and not for its humorous qualities!

Here is what Sarah said were the big secrets of Google, Amazon, and Facebook in hiring the best people:

  1. Begin phone screens 15 minutes early, 15 minutes late, or not at all

  2. Make the interview schedule as confusing and unpredictable as possible

  3. Make sure something goes wrong during the presentation

  4. During the interview, make a ton of incorrect assumptions

  5. Ask the candidate to solve your own, specific problems

  6. Have the interview frequently move between different rooms

  7. Ask the same questions over and over and over again

  8. Conduct dual interviews with a good cop / bad cop vibe

  9. Ask a question, then start typing very loudly

  10. Three months later, call and offer the candidate a job she didn’t apply for

After each point she gave an explanation on ‘why’ should do this and what it helps point out to you about a candidate. This is why so many folks read this as a real article, and since so many Talent Pros and Leaders are starving to find out what Google, Amazon, and Facebook does, they want to believe this is true! It’s not.

What is the ‘Real’ secret to how Google, Amazon, and Facebook hire the best people?

Because They’re Freaking Google, Amazon, and Facebook! 

They don’t do anything special. They post a job. A million people apply and they wade through the masses to find great talent. Sounds tough, huh?

Apple announced the other day they’re going to be hiring some new developers in Florida. It hit the national news. Every local paper picked it up. It was on every local news and radio station. It was the talk of the town!

A local software company, who was headquartered in Florida for the last twenty years, had all of its employees in Florida, is looking for the exact same developers. They’ve been struggling to find them, and no news agency or radio show could care! They’re not Apple! Who cares.

It’s probably just because Apple has such a great ’employment’ brand….Yeah, I’m sure that’s it.

Do you want to know a real secret? 

Don’t try to be Google, Amazon, or Facebook when it comes to hiring. You’ll just look silly. You’re not them. They have brand recognition you can’t even fathom. What they do in hiring has absolutely no correlation to 99% of the companies in the world. Be you. Find a path that works for you. Strive to get others in your market, your industry to want to follow you. That’s doable.

Don’t Apply to College if You’re White, Middle Class and Male

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I heard a female comedian the other day say one of the truest things I’ve ever heard:

Look, if you’re a white dude, and you’re failing in America, you’re really a failure! You’re like the definition of failure! You can’t be a white dude and complain about how hard life is. If you’re a white guy and you’re failing at life, you’re basically saying, “I can’t find a way to be successful in a society that was built for me.” That’s America.

Which is probably why Trump is trying to make it white great again!

What this comedian was saying is no one wants to hear white dudes whine about stuff. “Oh, it’s so hard to find a job.” “Oh, I can’t afford a house in the richest part of town.” “Oh, I’m not going to be able to retire until I’m 62.” In comparison to real people problems in the world, it all sounds stupid.

Did you hear the whole Kelly and Michael drama that blew up this past week? All said and done, Kelly comes out and says, “My Dad, who drove a bus for thirty years, thinks we’re all crazy!” Privilege, at any level, isn’t supposed to whine about shit.

So, all that being said, here’s my privilege whine:

College Acceptance and Tuition Payment is completely broken! 

My middle son is about to make his college choice. He’s got some great schools that have accepted him. He has some great ones that did not. His dream school was Duke. He also really liked Northwestern, Dartmouth, and UCLA. He has a 4.05 GPA on a 4.0 scale (honors classes give you additional GPA) and a 31 on his ACT (97th percentile of all kids taking this test).  He had the grades and test scores to get into all of those schools.

What he didn’t have was something else.

What is the something else?

He didn’t come for a poor family. He didn’t come from a rich family. He wasn’t a minority. He doesn’t have some supernatural skill, like shooting a basketball. He isn’t in a wheelchair. He isn’t from another country.

He’s just this normal Midwestern kid from a middle-class family who is a super involved student-athlete, student government officer, award-winning chamber choir member, teaches swimming lessons to children, etc., etc., etc.

Basically, he falls into this no-man’s land of what colleges and universities don’t want these days. Male and White.

Can I keep whining? Whatever, it’s my blog – buckle up! 

What is the other something else, from a financial perspective?

He got into Boston College, another dream school for him, and one that wanted him to come and continue his swim career at the Division 1 level. BC also costs $68,000 per year.

Colleges and U.S. Federal Government hate kids who come from families that do the right thing.  What’s the “right thing”?  He comes from a family that pays their mortgage, saved some money for his tuition and put money away for retirement.

Apparently, all those ‘positive’ things, like being financially responsible, are not liked by colleges and the federal government. Colleges and the U.S. Government would have preferred that I didn’t work, let my house go into foreclosure and was in debt up to my eyeballs. If that was the case, both the college and U.S. Federal Government would reward my bad decision making and pay for my son to go to school, fully!

Because he comes from a family that made good decisions, Boston College, and the Federal Government thought it was a good idea for him to pay $68,000 per year to attend their fine university.

My wife and I have spent our son’s entire lives saving for them for college. We sacraficed to basically give them a fund that would pay two full years of tuition and living at a normal state four-year college. The other two years are on their own. We feel they need to shoulder some of that cost to appreciate what it is they’re investing in.

I get it. No one wants to hear about how the middle-class kid can’t go to the super high-end school of his dreams because he can’t afford it.

I’m struggling with this. I’m no different than any other parent who tells their kid when they were little, work your butt off and one day you can go to Harvard! When I should have said, work your butt off, I’ll make awful financial decisions, and then you’ll be able to go to Harvard.

Here’s what I know, and it’s a hard pill to swallow, if my son did exactly what he did (grades, involvement, etc.) and he was Hispanic (or Black, or American Indian, or from a poor country) and I had no money, he would be getting ready to enroll into Duke. But he’s not.

What did he do wrong? He was born into a white family that worked their ass off to give him every advantage in life.

White privilege is a privilege until it’s not. Until a kid’s dream is broken for something he can’t wrap his brain around. Believe me, I understand this goes both ways. I understand there are black kids who don’t even get an interview for a job because some white kid’s Dad already got them the job ‘behind the scenes’. That isn’t right either! In my mind, I don’t see the difference between these two examples.

Rant over. Colleges are going the route of corporate America. White guys are bad, everyone else is desirable, do whatever it takes, at any cost, to make sure this happens. Well, unless, your old, corporate America doesn’t like older people either, no matter what color or gender you are – but that’s a rant for a different day!

Hit him in the comments and tell me how out of touch I am, then remember this is all about a 17-year-old boy with a dream. A dream he worked his ass off to achieve.

I Haven’t Been Realizing I’m Getting Old

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I have three sons: 19, 17 and 12. When I tell people this, they have a hard time believing I’ve got kids that old. That always makes me feel good.

I guess I don’t look as old as I really am. When I look at Facebook and see the ‘kids’ I graduated with, some I don’t even recognize, they look like old people and I think to myself, holy hell Batman, I hope I don’t look like that to them!

I’m 46 years old.  In my mind, I still believe I’m 26! My body most days feels like I’m 56!

My wife smacks me at least once a day for something juvenile that comes out of my mouth. I would rather hang out with my teenage sons and listen to their music, watch their movies and play their games.

My last two vacations I’ve decided to take up surfing, because apparently I’m 14 years old.  I’m Benjamin Button, but only mentally!

I’ve been interviewing people who weren’t even born when I started my career. I’ve forgotten more shit than they even know. And, yet, they come in knowing more shit than I’ll ever know.

I’ve been getting old and I didn’t even realize it.

I figure I have 25 years left to work.  I about halfway through my career. When you look at it from that standpoint, it doesn’t seem like old, it seems like primetime! If an NBA player had a ten-year career, year five would be around the height of their ability! It’s when they would be most valuable.

So, maybe I should think of it as old, but think of it as I’m playing my MVP years, right freaking now!

It makes sense. My wife says recently it’s like I’ve been trying to work two full-time jobs. She’s probably right because I have to, you only get one chance at your MVP years. Ten years from now I won’t be going “now is the time!” Nope. It’s right now. I’ve got to make stuff happen. I’ve got win championships! Whatever the hell that means.

I wonder how many people feel this same way, but they’re at different ages?

When I as thirty, I distinctly remember thinking, “holy crap, I’m 30 years old, I need to be a VP!”  I bet there are 60-year-olds out there thinking, “it’s my time to shine!”

From 20-ish to 70-ish are your prime working years. You have 50 years of work. I know, many of you think you’ll stop working between 60-65 years of age. You won’t, that was your grandparents and maybe your parents. It’s not us. 70 is the new 60. Most of us won’t retire until we reach 70+.

50 years of work.

Take the amount of work experience you have, right now, and subtract it by 50. How many work years do you have left? What are you going to do with those years? I bet you haven’t even come close to accomplishing all that you want!

T3 – Pimp My Job Descriptions

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I think there is one thing we all still agree on, most job descriptions flat out suck! This leads to a conversation around job descriptions versus job postings. HR pros will say job descriptions are boring because a job description is a legal document. That can be debated, but it’s why most job descriptions are boring and awful and don’t work in attracting candidates!

This is how most technology is developed. Something sucks and a technologist believes they can build a better mouse trap.

Right now most boring job descriptions are ‘jazzed’ up by outside marketing and design firms that charge you a ton and basically give you either a branded template that looks the same for all job descriptions. This is similar to dropping a SmartCar engine into a Porsche. It looks great, but its still crap on the inside!

The other thing they do is basically take your job description and totally build a microsite for that position. It looks like it’s own mini-website. This is ideal but usually very expensive. Many of the new Recruitment Marketing technologies are now doing this for a fraction of the cost.

Then along comes two new technologies that basically take your boring, stale job descriptions and make them exciting and fresh for a really low cost!

These two companies are GoSizzle.io and ViziRecruiter. I’m not writing them up separately because they virtually do the exact same thing for the a very similar price. You send them your lame job description and they give you back a landing page that is fully branded, interactive and professionally designed. For pennies on the dollar that you would spend working with a big design firm to do the exact same thing.

Both have similar metrics to show that their visual stimulating microsites will drive up to 40% more traffic to your postings.  These technologies also use machine learning to recommend to you better wording for higher SEO and higher levels of engagement from job seekers.

After uploading your job description you basically get back a hyperlink URL that you can use to socially recruit on Linkedin, Facebook, Twitter, etc. For those organizations that do a lot of outbound recruiting this can be highly valuable.

If you’re mainly a post and pray shop (which most organizations are) I think this technology won’t necessarily do a lot for you. The one weakness both systems have is that while these microsites drive candidates back to your ATS process, they really do nothing for anyone who is visiting your career site and searching your jobs, or for candidates finding your job on Indeed or a job board.

This ATS integration is critical, and both are working on finding ways to make this happen. I expect some of their larger customers will help get this done soon. I’m somewhat surprised that ATSs haven’t picked up on this technology already and integrated it into their own systems. That would be ideal!

Check out both GoSizzle.io and ViziRecruiter. What they do for your job descriptions is 1000% better than what you have right now, and well worth a look, especially for the price!

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.