Monthly Archives: June 2017

The Best Recruitment Marketing I’ve Seen in Years! #VueDD17

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Okay, the last post from HireVue’s Digital Disruption, but it was something I had to share! TA leader Molly Weaver at Children’s Mercy Hospital in Kansas City is killing the game! If you do an interview with Children’s on the HireVue platform, they have actual kid patients ask you the interview questions via video!

I shared one on Twitter this week under the #VueDD17 stream and I haven’t been able to get those actual videos to share, but here’s one you can get a taste of how Children’s recruitment marketing is just amazing:

You’re in 2017. Molly and the TA team at Children’s is in 3017!

Seriously, talk about driving culture through your hiring process! It’s hard not to get emotional watching these kids ask you screening questions and then you have to go answer it!

This one single idea is the best recruitment marketing I’ve seen in years.

Imagine how you could take and use this idea in your own TA shop. Casual dining, go have actual guests ask the questions for your server screening questions. Get some half-drunk guy at the bar to ask bartender questions! (okay, just kidding!)

Go connect with Molly, she’s a brilliant TA leader and if you’re at CHRO in healthcare with a crappy TA team, back up a dump truck of cash on Molly’s door and talk her into coming over to your team!

Besides transforming their screening and interviewing, Molly’s team also added in HireVue’s “Introduce Yourself” tool that gives every possible candidate to your organization the ability to tell you who they are and why you should hire them.

Molly had some awesome stories of finding and hiring candidates from this tool that they might never have found without it. Some of these folks applied to jobs at Mercy several times and never made it past the first stage. Also, an amazing 28% of these hires were diverse candidates!

Before you say you don’t have the resources to do all this awesome stuff, know that Molly and her team did this on a shoestring budget! Found the kids on their own, filmed them, kept it as real as possible, and it’s brilliant!

Really amazing stuff, I’m starting the Molly Weaver fan club, let me know if you want in!

Should Talent Acquisition Be Driving Revenue in Your Organization? #VueDD17

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I’m on a plane flying back from HireVue’s Digital Disruption in Park City, UT this week. Really well-done user conference which is more non-user conference than user conference. Agenda loaded with great TA content, a ton of really high-level TA leaders in attendance to drive great conversation and almost no product pitch!

One of the panels they had took a strange turn down the path of whether or not, as part of a great candidate experience, TA should be making consumer offers within the apply-hire process. Basically, everyone on the panel (all retail of some sort) were really excited about their ability to drive increased revenue by sending candidates consumer offers during the hire process.

“Hey, Mary, thanks for applying for the Manager of Accounting on Wednesday, we hope to get back to you soon on the next steps! In the meantime, please feel free to use this code for 35% off regular price merchandise at the Shoe Barn!” 

My first reaction was horror!

The last thing I need my TA leaders concentrating on is driving revenue. I need talent. Figure that out and then let’s talk about you and your sales capabilities!

But the more I thought I about it, the more I think I’m on the wrong side of this!

If you’re in the business of making money to stay in business, shouldn’t every single part of your organization be focused on driving revenue? I think so. Profit or Non-profit, I want an organizational culture that is about maximizing revenue so we can better serve our mission, whatever that might be.

Can TA drive revenue through candidates? Yep. The bigger your are, the more opportunity you have. Clearly, retail, dining, etc. probably have a better chance of being more successful at this task.

Word of Caution: If you want to leverage candidates to drive revenue you better first have your candidate experienced buttoned up end to end! You can’t be awful at candidate experience and think your discount offers are going to play well when the candidate is pissed off because they never even heard if you got their application!

Bad candidate experience will more than likely lead to a bad consumer experience. So, don’t think that offering a ‘Free Appetizer” to candidates who got turned down are going to make them feel better about not getting the job!

The panel offered up a great suggestion to where these offers probably fit best – after the first interview. This goes out to those candidates who you felt were worthy of the next step, give them a little thank you and an opportunity to experience your organization on the consumer side as the process moves forward.

All of these offers can be tracked and TA can actually show how much revenue they are driving to the top line of the organization. Don’t gloat too much about your $250K in revenue you gave away at a 35% discount. That margin is low, but revenue is revenue, and besides Ops, no one else in the organization can say they added to top line sales!

I actually asked one of the HireVue product people if they would be willing to tie a data point to candidates who buy the most on one of these offers! They laughed in my face! But think about the slippery slope this creates.

I want to hire ‘fans’ of my brand. My biggest fans probably spend the most in buying stuff from my brand. So, if I can offer applicants a code to buy, why wouldn’t I want to talk to the suckers candidates who bought the most!?!

Food for thought Revenue Driving TA Leaders!

The Perfect Change Model for HR #VueDD17

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I’m out in Park City, UT this week at Hirevue’s Digital Disruption conference. The conference is designed for TA pros and leaders looking to ‘disrupt’ their current TA shop and the agenda is packed with great content and speakers.

Rusty Rueff kicked off the conference with a great keynote on disruption and change. (Side editor’s note: Rusty joined a growing trend of keynotes bringing their notes on stage with them and referring to them often to ensure nothing was missed. Many ‘professional’ keynoters would consider this taboo, but I find it refreshing and more authentic)

Rusty offered up this change model:

#1 – Compelling Vision: The only way you get change started is to have a great compelling vision of what this change will be.

#2 – What’s In It For Me (WIIFM) – If you need your employees to drive change you quickly have to define what’s in it for them, and it you better make it compelling. “You get to keep your job” – is not a compelling WIIFM for most people in 2017!

#3 – Lead the Way – Servant leadership is they key. Are you doing what you say needs to be done, and are you helping in every way to get everyone on board with you?

#4 – Change the work – If you want to change the way you work, you need to change the work. What!?! So many times we want to make big changes but we are unwilling to change how we do things. That’s a problem. If you can’t attract talent, you need to stop what you’re doing, and do something new!

#5 – Make it stick – Big change is hard and it’s super easy to go back and do what you’ve always done when the initial change seems to be worse or not having the results you wanted. You must be courageous to see your vision through to completion. You might fail, but if you don’t make it stick, you’ll never know for sure.

Rusty focused on big change to big things. In the end, this is what matters.

If you focus on making small changes, or even big changes, to small things, it really has little impact. Focus on making big changes to those things that are most important to your organization that isn’t working. Swing for the fences.

This is super hard for us in HR and TA. We never want to break anything, even when it’s not really working. We’re scared of screwing something up more than it’s already screwed up. I can’t tell you how many executives I speak with that fire HR and Talent leaders simply for this reason alone. The fired leader was unwilling to take the chances needed to fix what was broken.

Are you ready to make big changes to big things?

T3 – Where are they now? The Ladders edition!

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Remember The Ladders (they go mostly by “Ladders” now)? You know the website where you could search 6-figure jobs that no one else had access to! Founded in 2003 as a job board members-only site where they guaranteed every job listed on their site had a starting salary of at least $100,000 or more.

It started off really well, they found an audience of people who actually wanted to make $100,000 or more! Who knew!? The HR bloggers and influencers were not fans. Why? Remember what started to happen around 2005?

The great recession was beginning to happen. Charging candidates a monthly subscription fee seemed a business model where you were taking advantage of people who were the one group of people you shouldn’t! Those desperately seeking work.

Since the end of the great recession, you’ve virtually heard nothing from Ladders. I’m guessing many of you are surprised to hear they are even still in business, and most of you will be more surprised to hear they’re thriving!

Why?

Timing.

What happened during the recession? Netflix. Spotify. StitchFix. Etc. Membership model ‘exclusive’ service industry came into vogue in a big way. Ladders 2003 was ahead of its time. Ladders 2017 seems to fit right into what most people like.

Sure you might not be willing to pay for access to six-figure jobs and work at upgrading your own career, but your neighbor is. Just like you pay for Spotify, but your neighbor is fine listening to the commercial version. We are in more control of our lifestyle buying behavior than ever before.

Ladders of 2017 actually seems to fit right into the candidate management behavior of today, and the consumerism of today. In 2005-ish, they didn’t seem to fit, and it’s why so many in our space worked to discredit what they were offering to candidates.

The goal of Ladders has also remained the same to organizations. Eliminate unqualified candidates to companies and recruiters. Candidates only see jobs that match their background and skill sets. Candidates can’t freely search the entire database of jobs, only those jobs that they’re matched to.

Ladders also made some changes. Still, a candidate member model that allows all recruiters to view candidates and contact all candidates for free, and post jobs for free. Ladders now offers “Indeed” type sponsored jobs for recruiters, and the ability to contact candidate members outside the system for upgraded subscriptions.

Ladders also spent a ton of resources developing their own content publication. Career-minded content and development for mid-career candidates that are in management and executive roles, and those looking to move up into those roles.

I’ve been hearing some rumblings around my network that The Ladders was alive and kicking, and actually doing very well. The original founder of The Ladders, Marc Cendella, came back as CEO after being away for a while, and that certainly helped get them back on focus.

It seems like Ladders is the one job board-type organization that is focused differently than every one of their peers. Ladders is paid by candidates (for the most part) and thus what they do is shaped by taking care of who their true client is. While recruiters and organizations can clearly take advantage of some great talent, Ladders continues to focus on their members (candidates), and find that refreshing.

In the 2017 candidate market Ladders looks to be another tool we probably need to go back and take a look at. I’ll tell you some of your recruiting peers are already doing this and finding some great talent!

Now That’s What I Call HR! Vol. 1

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So, if you’re a regular reader of this blog you know of my friend Chris Bailey, is a Brit expat who is running PWC’s HR consultancy in the Caribbean, and he lives in Cayman. Yeah, Chris has the one job on the planet that every HR pro in the world wants! And, he’s an awesome human being.

Chris also is an integral part of the team that puts on the annual Cayman HR conference. It’s like your normal state level SHRM conference, except that it’s completely awesome, in Cayman, Chris, and the team go so far overboard on making sure they run a great conference, if you run an SHRM conference, you’re now going to feel bad about yourself!

Why?

Chris and the team at Cayman Island Society of HR Professionals (who by the way have like 30 people going to SHRM national this year!) made their own musical album of HR songs for the conference! It’s on iTunes! You can buy the full thing for like $5.94! They had to create their own record label to actually get the album on iTunes! What the hell did you do for your HR conference!?

I’ll give you a review here of each song on the album since I’m clearly a critic of everything and I actually listened to Now That’s What I Call HR, Vol. 1 (insinuating there might be a Vol. 2, God help us all!):

Track 1 – HR Stars – Les Mis – Chris Bailey lead vocals – If you’re a Broadway musical fan of Les Miserables, you’ll instantly know the tune of this remake of Stars with HR lyrics in place of the original brilliance by Claude-Michel Schonberg, whom I’m sure never could foresee this happening! To Bailey’s credit, he’s probably more of a classical Broadway singer than he is a pop singer!

Track 2- Stars Original Les Mis – Chris Bailey lead vocals – Didn’t get enough of track 1, here’s another minute of the same stuff! Yep, instead of two minutes of Chris, you get three. Buckle up. For some reason, iTunes shows this track as the most popular which I can only surmise means Chris’s Mum downloaded five times.

Track 3 – Don’t Stop Believing HR – Elisa Brown & Chris Bailey lead vocals – Popular Journey remake and everyone’s favorite karaoke go-to song! We get to meet the great vocals of Elisa Brown who is awesome, and we get more of Chris destroying a song I’ll never listen to the same again.

Track 4 – HR State of Mind – Elisa Brown lead vocals – My favorite song of the album is only you don’t have to hear Bailey! Also, crafty lyrics and a great voice by Elisa. Rewriting a popular song with HR lyrics is super hard, just ask Steve Browne!

Track 5 – HR Baby – Chris Bailey lead vocals – This is actually the song that started it all for Bailey and company. Chris first performed this song at the CISHRP conference in 2015 – “If there is a problem, yo, check out HR we’ll resolve it – Ice Ice Baby” – a remake of the famous Vanilla Ice song, this is Bailey in his natural habitat.  It was a must for the album!

HR Baby By Chris Bailey from CML TV on Vimeo.

Track 6 – Vacation – Matt Brown lead vocals – hip hop, mixed up song that’s all fun and HR – great conference kick-off song. Pretty sure they CISHRP went to a local producer for this one to add a little more HR excitement to the album!

Hat tip to Chris and Elisa for putting themselves out there for the good of HR! We need more people like this in our lives.

HR conference organizers around the world, you’re on the clock.

Is Love intrinsically bigger than Fear?

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The most famous quote from Machiavelli’s book “The Prince” is:

“Better to be feared than loved, if you cannot be both.”

Uh, oh, Tim is quoting Machiavelli, this blog has jumped the shark!

I heard this quote recently on the HR conference circuit. HR speakers seem to come in two types:

1. Love is bigger than fear. This is popular and most fall into this camp. It’s a feel-good play. The first rule of HR speaking, it’s always better to make the audience feel good, than to give them something they actually need.

2. Machiavelli’s assessment, It’s better to be feared. Less popular take, but I do hear it in the form of stuff like, “I’m not here to be your friend, I’m here to get results!”

I also have smart friends who pull Machiavelli’s name out anytime they want me to feel like I’m on the wrong side of something, “How ‘Machiavellian’ of you, Tim!” Okay, I get it, you’re smarter than me, how ‘Machiavellian’ for you!

The normal breakdown of leadership goes like this. You would rather be a beloved leader than a feared leader. Those leaders who are loved will be more successful than those who are feared. You have to be one or the other. Or do you?

I think all leaders deep down in places we don’t talk about at parties (A Few Good Men reference!) want to be loved, or at the very least, well liked. It’s human nature. No one really wants to be hated. It’s stressful, people don’t want to be around you, it makes for uncomfortable hugs, etc.

On the love side, love can make you do some crazy things, but so can fear. I would drive all night to help my wife or kids with something if I thought they really needed me, even if they or I could probably find another alternative. I would also probably work all night if I thought I might lose my job and I need to pay my mortgage. Love and fear are powerful in getting us to act.

I think fear is bigger when it comes to crunch time scenarios. I might ‘love’ my boss a ton, but when the project is on the line and the company might lose a major project and cost us hundreds of jobs, fear is driving the truck, not love. Love won’t bring those jobs back, fear might just win those jobs back.

As leaders, this our dilemma. I want my team to love me, but I also need a touch of fear on the edge. It’s an imperfect balance.

What I know is love isn’t the only answer, no matter how many memes you make or posters you put it on. I don’t know if Love is bigger, it’s definitely more popular, for obvious reasons, but great leaders have used both. I want you to love me, I need you to fear me a bit, in the end, I’ll probably use both to get the job done.

The American Dream Tax

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Hasan Minhaj is an American comedian who just released his new comedy special on Netflix, Homecoming King, and it might be one of the best comedy specials I’ve seen in years! He’s funny, yes. But, he also introduces a new kind of comedy on stage that is very ‘millennial’ in nature in that it’s multi-media. It’s part TEDx, part standup, part one-man show-ish, and it’s all brilliant!

You might remember Hasan from the Daily Show or as the comedian who roasted President Trump at the White House Correspondents dinner:

He introduces a concept in the special he calls the “American Dream Tax” that his father, who was originally from India, basically was his inspiration for.  Hasan’s father believes immigrants to the U.S. need to put up with a certain level of discrimination as a ‘tax’ of living the American Dream.

He makes jokes about this, as any comedian with brown skin would, it’s a great segment if you have a chance to check it out. Hasan’s father’s point is this, we came from a country where we had a super low quality of living. We came to America and have the possibility of a much better life, for that you should be willing to put up with some crap. (I wonder how many immigrants in U.S. feel a little this way?)

We talk constantly about diversity and inclusion in our organizations. Yet, most of us truly have no idea what most immigrants go through and are willing to go through, without ever complaining. We talk about a broken H1B policy and the need for reform, but most of those on an H1B would probably even accept lower wages for the opportunity. Is this right? Of course not, but we tend to forget ourselves how great we all have it in the U.S.

You see, we don’t pay the American Dream Tax because we hold a birth certificate that says we were born here. We got lucky enough to be on American soil when we were born, and for that, we get off ‘tax’ free. Well, many of us. That’s Hasan’s issue, he’s fully American, and yet, his father still believes he should be fine with paying the ‘tax’.

If you get the chance check out Hasan’s Netflix special it’s really incredible and gives you some great insight to your American born – immigrant workers and a little of bias they go through every day, and it’s pretty freaking funny!

Do you really want to get better?

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I’ve been writing about HR, Talent, and Leadership every day going on seven years. If you go around telling people you know something about something, guess what? They’re going to ask you to tell them about something, specifically as it relates to their circumstance.  So, I get asked my advice quite a bit about talent and HR issues people are facing.

There is a bucket of questions I get asked that fall into the same type of category.  These questions all have to do with how do we ‘fix’ something that isn’t working well in their HR and/or Talent shops.  How do we get more applicants? How do we get managers to develop their people? How do we fix our crazy CEO? Etc.

I used to go right into how I would solve that problem if I was in their shoes.  Five minute solutions! I don’t know anything about you, or your situation, but let me drop five minutes of genius on you for asking! It’s consulting at its worst! But it’s fun and engaging for someone who came to see me talk about hugging and my dog for an hour.

I’ve began to change my approach, though, because I knew, like they knew, they weren’t going back to their shops and doing what I said.  The problem with my five minutes of genius, was it was ‘my’ five minutes, not theirs.  It was something I could do, but probably not something they could do.

Now, I ask this one question: Do you really want to get better? or Do you really want to change?

Right away people will quickly say, “Yes!”  Then, there is a pause, and an explanation, and sometimes from this we get to a place where they aren’t really sure they really want to get better or change.

That’s powerful!

We all believe that ‘getting better’ is the only answer, but it’s not.  Sometimes, the ROI isn’t enough to want to get better. Staying the same is actually alright.

We believe we have to fix something and we focus on it, when in reality if it stays the same we’ll be just fine.  We’ll go on living and doing great HR work.  It just seemed like the next thing to fix, but maybe it actually is fine for now, and let’s focus on something else.

Many times HR and Talent pros will find that those around them really don’t want to get better, thus they were about to launch into a failing proposition, and a rather huge frustrating experience. Better to probably wait, until everyone really wants to get better.

So, before you go out to fix the world, your world, ask yourself one very important question: Do you, they, we really want to get better?  I hope you can get a ‘yes’ answer! But if not, the world will still go on, and so will you.

T3 – @Globoforce pre-launches Life Events #WorkHuman

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Hey, last week I was at WorkHuman powered by Globoforce and they had a new product launch that kind of left many in the audience in tears! How often can you say that about a tech launch – take a look:

So, Life Events is designed to increase the quality of your work relationships. Some of us are lucky enough to have this naturally in our work environments, and we completely take it for granted when we have it.

Here’s what Eric Mosley, Globoforces CEO, had to say about Life Events:

“The lines between an employee’s life and work are constantly blending—more so now than ever before,” said Eric Mosley, CEO of Globoforce. “Our goal through Conversations and Life Events is to encourage more human-focused interactions that help create a community of growth, collaboration, and inclusion. If we work in environments where we can trust our managers to have our best interest top of mind and feel strong connections with our colleagues, we are more likely to actively participate in our success, our colleagues and the companies we work for.”

I truly believe that most people want to live one life. They want to be the same person at work as they are at home. Technology like this helps build that bridge. Job satisfaction, engagement, etc. all tend to rise as we feel we have stronger connections at work.

Does this change the world? No, probably not, but it might just make your work world a little better. I thought it was one of the more unique features I’ve seen in the space for a while and it definitely plays to a workforce that is comfortable with sharing their lives via video. While you might not be, the majority of our upcoming workforce is.

Coming later this year, check it out on the Globoforce platform.  (BTW – all the people in the video are actual Globoforce employees, and the story is completely real!)

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 – just send me a note – timsackett@comcast.net

The Sackett Commencement Speech!

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(I’m on vacation today at my nephew’s graduation! So, I thought to re-run this post made sense! Enjoy!) 

It’s that time of year when universities and high schools go through graduation ceremonies and we celebrate educational achievements.  It’s also that time of year when you get bombarded with every great commencement speech ever given.  There is clearly a recipe for giving a great commencement speech.  Here are the ingredients:

1. Make the graduates feel like they are about to accomplish something really great, and not just become part of the machine.

2. Make graduates believe like somehow they will be difference makers.

3. Make graduates think they have endless possibilities and opportunities.

4. Make graduates think the world really wants and need them and can’t wait to work with them.

5. Wear sunscreen.

I think that about sums up every great commencement speech ever given.  Let’s face it, the key to any great speech is not telling people what they need to hear, but telling them what they want to hear!

I would like to give a commencement speech.  I think it would be fun.  I like to inspire people.  Here are the main topics I would hit if I were to give a commencement speech:

1.  Work sucks, but being poor sucks more. Don’t ever think work should make you happy.  Find happiness in yourself, not what you do.

2.  You owe a lot of people, a lot of stuff.  Shut your mouth and give back to them. Stop looking for the world to keep giving you stuff.

3.  No one cares about you. Well, maybe your Mom, if you had a good Mom.  They care about what you can do for them.  Basically, you can’t do much, you’re a new grad.

4.  Don’t think you’re going to be special. 99.9% of people are just normal people, so will you.  The sooner you come to grips with this, the sooner you’ll be happy.

5.  Don’t listen to your bitter parents.  Almost always, the person who works the hardest has better outcomes in anything in life.  Once in a while, a person who doesn’t work hard, but has supremely better talent or connections than you, will kick your ass.  That’s life. Buy a helmet.

6.  Don’t listen to advice from famous people.  Their view of the world is warped through their grandiose belief somehow they made it through hard work and effort. It’s usually just good timing.

7. Find out who you care about in life, and make them a priority.  In this world, you have very few people you truly care about, and who care about you in return.  Don’t fuck that up.

8.  Make your mistakes when you’re young.  Failure is difficult, it’s profoundly more difficult when you have a mortgage and 2 kids to take care of.

9.  It’s alright that sometimes you have to kiss ass.  It doesn’t make you less of a person.

10.  Wear sunscreen.  Cancer sucks.

So, do you feel inspired now!?  Any high schools or colleges feel free to email me, I’m completely wide open on my commencement speech calendar and willing to give this speech in a moments notice!