Fortnite, not athletics, is Our Saving Grace for Team Building at Work!

Posted on August 31, 2018 by Tim Sackett

Remember when it was super cool to go out and hire ex-college athletes into various roles in your company? Enterprise Rent-A-Car basically made their entire brand out of it! Pretty much every mortgage banking firm, sales office, etc. followed with the shared understanding that college athletes make great hires.

Why? It’s tough to go to school and fit in athletics. Athletes are normally self-motivated individuals who care about winning. Most are coachable. They actually like working in a ‘team’ environment.

Then came along gaming, and currently, Fortnite is the vain of every parent’s existence!

Don’t know what Fortnite is? Have you been living under a rock for the past year? Basically, Fortnite is a shooter game that has over 50 million active users. Originally it was designed where 100 people get dropped into a small online world all at the same time and you play until you’re the last one to survive. The world gets smaller and smaller every so many minutes, so that the games don’t take forever. The game forces you to move and fight. It’s super addicting. Just ask any parent with teens.

Fortnite found that the kids playing these games actually liked playing with friends so you could invite people you know to join you and try to kill each other. Then, it was duals and teams, where you get your friends together and play against other teams, or pairs. All the while the kids are all talking to each other on headsets, sometimes states and countries apart from each other.

Okay, if you don’t game, I get how all of this sounds ridiculous. The thing you’re missing is the interactions and strategy that takes place in the game.

If you stop for a few minutes and listen to these kids play, after you get through the language being used, you see real strategy and communication taking place. You see kids talking to each other, helping each other, sacrificing themselves for the good of the team, working through extreme time-sensitive decisions in the attempt to win.

Some of this stuff would make military generals super proud! But it would also make executives pretty impressed as well. Fortnite is getting kids to communicate who would previously never talk to anyone! Getting them to work together. Getting them to make tough decisions. Getting them to play 24 hours straight!

Find something you love to do and you’ll never work a day in your life. I’m not saying that Fortnite and shooter games are what you should love. I think it’s way beyond the ‘game’. The kids actually really like the communication, the strategy, and decision making that has ‘real’ implications in their current world.

We spend so many resources in our current work world to get our adults to learn how to interact well in teams. We have an entire generation entering the workforce in Gen Z, that are already demonstrating they have some pretty good skills in this area, and they didn’t even have to know how to throw a ball to show this skill set!

401(K) Program – Retirement Plan or Student Loan Repayment Plan? Both!

Posted on August 30, 2018 by Tim Sackett

If you didn’t see this week the IRS ruled on a request by a private employer to use their 401(K) plan to be utilized as a sort of a student loan repayment program. Here are the details:

“Here’s a quick (but not complete) summary of the plan proposal. According to the PLR, the taxpayer (who is anonymous in publicly released PLRs) proposed to amend its 401(k) plan to offer a student loan benefit program. Under the proposal, the employer would make nonelective contributions on behalf of the employee conditioned on the employee making student loan repayments (“SLR nonelective contribution”). The program would be voluntary and after enrolling the employee could opt-out…

Under the program, if an employee makes a student loan repayment during a pay period equal to at least 2% of the employee’s eligible compensation for the pay period, then Taxpayer will make an SLR nonelective contribution as soon as practicable after the end of the year equal to 5% of the employee’s eligible compensation for that pay period.”

So, a couple of thoughts on this proposal:

While this isn’t a perfect or complete solution, it’s something and as employers, we have to help out our employees who come in with life-altering amounts of student loan debt.
Holy crap – this is really great, innovative HR work by some private employer who is really trying to figure this stuff out! I want to meet the HR Leader/Pro who even thought of this.
It’s the chicken or the egg scenario. Do you start your retirement savings or do you first pay down debt? Obviously, this employer believes you need to solve the debt issue first, then go back and focus on the retirement.

The HR Nerd in me loves this stuff!

You had an employer who saw a major pain point with employees and hiring of potential employees. They started to brainstorm and somehow came up with an idea, what if we gave the employees money into their 401K which then would be used to pay down student loan debt, and because we are doing it through a qualified plan the IRS will work with us to make it non-taxable?

Um, what!?!?

99.9999999% of HR pros would give up on this as soon they heard IRS! But this employer decided to just ask the IRS the question and it sounds like the IRS was like, “Yeah, this makes total sense, for sure we need a few rules around this, but let’s do it!” The freaking IRS did something that makes sense?!?

So, this is a lesson for me and my HR brothers and sisters. I’m not saying anything is possible, but many things are possible if you keep trying to innovate, try stuff, and just every once in a while be naive or smart enough to just ask the question.

Keep HRing out there!

Career Confessions from Gen Z: 20 Ways to Work Better with Gen Z!

Posted on August 29, 2018 by Tim Sackett

Tuesday is one of my favorite days of the year: my birthday! Ever since I was little, I had trouble falling asleep the night before my birthday because I was so excited, and I’m a little embarrassed to admit that it isn’t any different this year. This year is a pretty big transition as I move on from my teenagers year and enter my third decade on this planet.

Pretty cool, pretty terrifying.

So, in honor of my 20 years, I compiled a list of 20 tips and tricks in order to work best with your Gen Z friends, employees, co-workers, nieces/nephews, or whoever else.

Try to limit/reduce your questions about our days/events etc. to as few as possible, especially early in the morning or late at night.
Talk to us as little as possible in the morning.
Be encouraging.
Call us on the phone instead of having us call you. (Recruiters – are you hearing this!?)
Try to accommodate our insomnia by allowing later wake-up times/work times.
Provide caffeine – for free! (good general rule for all people)
Be open to any ideas, no matter how wacky they may be.
Provide non-traditional spaces to get work done.
Be patient.
Bring food whenever a really hard/annoying task comes up that needs to be done.
Don’t be afraid to push us.
Provide guidance without completing the job for them.
When we have headphones on, it most likely means that we are focused/don’t want to be talked to.
Encourage activities that limit our constant phone use.
Give us space.
Acknowledge a job well done, but criticize when necessary.
Don’t stalk their social media profiles (at least not all the time 🙂
Embrace the youthful spirit as much as possible.
Try to give as much detail because although we may have questions, we’re probably too stubborn/scared to ask them.
If you just can’t with the hormone filled moments of rage, step away, roll your eyes, and try to move on. Chances are that’s exactly how’d we react too.

Young people are weird. But, we all were young and weird once. So, try and take that weird and turn it into something awesome.

That’s what I’m going to try and do in this new chapter. Here’s to the next 20.

This post was written by Cameron Sackett (not Tim) – you can probably tell because it lacks grammatical errors!

HR and TA Pros – have a question you would like to ask directly to a Gen Z? Ask us in the comments and I’ll respond in an upcoming blog post right here on the project. Have some feedback for me? Again, please share in the comments and/or connect with me on LinkedIn.

Your Weekly Dose of HR Tech: @Smashfly introduces Emerson!

Posted on August 28, 2018 by Tim Sackett

Today on The Weekly Dose I take a look at Smashfly’s newest addition “Emerson”. Who and what is Emerson? Emerson is an A.I. enabled recruiting assistant that is built right into the core Smashfly CRM product. Basically, Emerson guides and assists candidates across critical touchpoints in the recruiting process – from their initial visit to a company’s career site for scheduling (or re-scheduling) an interview.

Using Natural Language Processing, Emerson prompts candidates to engage and ask questions. The tech was built by Paradox (Olivia) and it’s some of the best on the market. Besides engagement, Emerson will screen candidates immediately on various critical points and fast-track those candidates who are a fit through the application process and even set up an interview if you desire.

Addressing one of the most painful and convoluted parts of the recruiting workflow, Emerson automates all aspects of interview scheduling by synching calendars and sending meeting invites, reminders and follow-ups to create an easy, stress-free experience for candidates and giving recruiters and hiring managers hours back in their weeks.

There are a ton of A.I. enabled assistants on the market, but having it built right into your recruiting CRM is a definite plus. Initial testing with Emerson has shown to extremely effective with candidates, with 90% of candidates completely a conversation by telling Emerson “Thank you!” Which speaks to how natural the experience truly is. If candidates thought it was a computer, you can best believe they wouldn’t be responding with a “thank you”!

Another piece that Smashfly has added to its arsenal is a full integration with HiringSolved, a best of breed candidate discovery sourcing engine. Combine Smashfly, with Emerson, with HiringSolved and we begin to see what a modern Recruitment Marketing Platform should look like.

One issue we’ve seen with sourcing tools, like HiringSolved, while powerful in generating profiles, it was a ton of work to connect and see who might actually be interested in your current and/or future openings. With Emerson, you can now automate most of this function, and combine all of that with the traditional power of a CRM to nurture candidates, and you can easily begin building talent pipelines for current roles and future needs.

It’s an exciting time at Smashfly. For years they were one of the top recruitment CRMs on the market but took a couple of years off without much evolution to their core product. What I see now is a very robust end-to-end recruitment marketing platform that is being built around best of breed technology. Very cool stuff! Go get a demo, I think you’ll be very impressed with how all of this tech works together to really make a TA team’s job much easier!

The Weekly Dose – 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 The Weekly Dose – just send me a note – timsackett@comcast.net

Want help with your HR & TA Tech company – send me a message about my HR Tech Advisory Board experience.

You’re Uninvited!

Posted on August 27, 2018 by Tim Sackett

I’m not terminating anyone ever again.

I can’t terminate anyone, because I don’t hire anyone. I do invite people to join me. Join me on this journey, on this path. It’s going to be a great trip. I invite them to be a part of my family. Not my ‘work’ family, but my actual family. I spend more time with my co-workers than I do with my wife and children (in terms of waking hours). So, when I invite someone to join us, it is not something I take lightly.

That’s why, from now on, I’m not terminating anyone. From now on, I’m just uninviting them to continue being a part of what we have going on. Just like a party. You were invited to attend, but you end up drinking too much and making a fool out of yourself, so now you’re uninvited. You can’t attend the next party. I don’t know about you, but when I throw a party, I never (and I mean never) invite someone I can’t stand. Sometimes a couple has issues with this, where one spouse wants to invite his or her friend, but their spouse is a complete tool and it causes issues.

Not in my family, we only invite those people we want to be around, life is too short.

Here’s the deal. When you invited someone into your family, you usually end up falling in love with them. It’s that way in business. It’s the main reason we have such a hard time firing on bad performers. We fall in love with those people we hire. “Oh, Mary, she’s such a nice person!” But, Mary, can’t tie her shoes and chew gum at the same time. So, we give Mary chances, too many chances, and pretty soon Mary is part of the family. It’s hard terminating part of the family.

I would rather just not invite Mary to attend work any longer. “Hey, Mary, we love you, but look, we aren’t going to invite you to work. We’ll still see you at 5 pm over at the bar for drinks.” Sounds so much easier, right!? It happens all the time. I use to get invited to stuff, but somewhere down the road, the group stopped inviting me. I might have been a little upset over it, but it didn’t last and I’m still friends with everyone. Termination is so permanent, it’s like death.

Being uninvited sends the same message, but there’s a part of being uninvited that says “you know what, maybe it was you, maybe it was us, but let’s just face it, together it doesn’t work.”

You’re Uninvited.

It’s Going to be Hard, but it’s Going to be Fair.

Posted on August 24, 2018 by Tim Sackett

I heard this quote recently, it was used by an old football coach to his players:

“It’s hard, but it’s fair.”

He wasn’t the first to use this and probably won’t be the last – but the line stuck with me because of how I don’t think many people in today’s age really think this way. Many want to talk about what’s fair, few want to discuss the ‘hard’ part. The football coach’s son described the meaning of what he feels the phrase means:

“It’s about sacrifice,” Toler Jr. said of the quote. “It means that if you work hard that when it’s all said and done at the end of the day, it will be fair based on your body of work. It’s about putting in the time, making sure that you’re ready for the opportunity.”

I think we all think our parents are hard on us growing up. I recall stories I tell to my own sons of my Dad waking me up on a Saturday morning at 7 am, after I was out too late the night before, and ‘making’ me help him with something, like chopping wood or cleaning the garage out. He didn’t really need my help, he was trying to teach me a lesson about choices. If I chose to stay out late at night, it was going to suck getting up early to go to school.

He shared with me stories of his father doing the same thing, one night my Dad had gotten home late, so late, he didn’t even go to bed, just started a pot of coffee and waited for my grandfather to get up, figuring that was easier than getting a couple of hours of sleep and then hearing it from my grandfather the rest of the day.

As a HR Pro, we see this every day in our workforce. There are some who work their tails off, not outwardly expecting anything additional, they’re just hard workers. Others will put in the minimum, then expect a cookie. It’s a tough life lesson for those folks. Most usually end up leaving your organization, believing they were treated unfairly, so they’ll go bounce around a few more times.

Eventually, they’ll learn to put in the work, put in the time and more times than not, things work out pretty well. Sometimes it won’t, so you go back to work even harder. It’s been very rare in my 20 year HR career that I’ve truly seen a really hard worker get screwed over. Very rare! Now I know a ton of people who think they work hard, but they don’t, and they’ll say they get screwed. But the reality is they don’t work hard, they do the same as everyone else.

Do some idiots who don’t deserve a promotion or raise sometimes get it? Yep, they sure do, but that doesn’t happen as much as you think. The hard workers tend to get the better end of the deal almost always.

I hope I can teach my sons this lesson: Life is going to be hard, but if you keep at it and put in the work, it’s going to be fair. I think that is all we can really hope for.

5 Great Excuses for Missing a Co-worker’s Wedding & 3 Bad Ones!

Posted on August 23, 2018 by Tim Sackett

I had one of my Recruiters ask for some advice this week. It wasn’t work advice, it was a little more personal. She had told a person she would attend a wedding of a family member with them but was having second thoughts. It was one of those Holy Crap moments! I don’t really like this person that much, and I don’t want to go to a family wedding with him and send the wrong message.

So, what was my advice? It started out pretty straight. Tell them the truth! “Look, dude, I’m just not that into you, and the last place on earth I want to be on Saturday evening is sitting at a table with your parents and Aunt Betty with them thinking “ours” is next!”

As you can imagine, that wasn’t going to do. Not that she didn’t want to tell him the truth, but she also didn’t want to hurt him. She was looking for a softer way to cut him loose. You know! A how-do-I-get-him-to-not-want-me-to-go excuse – like he can’t stand my breath or I have hammer toes or something!?

Now, she was truly diving into my end of the pool! You want a “Fake Reason” why you can’t go! YES! I’m in HR. I’m in Recruiting. I’m the king of fake excuses for why people don’t get the job! I’m on it!

So, here’s the first 3 I gave her:

You have “Explosive Diarrhea” (No one ever follows that up with another question! Okay, thanks, good luck with that…)
Your Dog has Cancer! (Sketchy I know, but girls and their pets…this one might work. Funny Fact: Her dog actually did have Eye Cancer but was cured, so not technically lying…)
You have to Babysit for a Co-worker! (Now this one is fraught with a problem – guys have gotten this one before and they might pull a. “Oh, I’ll come and help!” then you’re stuck and have to find some brat to babysit for the night. Funny Fact: She was like “Oh, Hell No! I have a Real Job, why would I babysit!”)

All of this brainstorming got me thinking of how I’ve personally gotten out of going to Co-workers Weddings that I didn’t want to go to.

Here are my Top 5 Excuses to Miss a Co-worker’s Wedding:

I’ll be on Vacation! This is good because you usually find out about the wedding of a co-worker way ahead of time. All you have to do is actually plan for this and take your vacation during the weekend of the wedding. Far, far away from the actual wedding.
My kid has a sports tournament out of town that weekend. A little sketchy, but it is really hard for them to verify you really didn’t have a sports tournament, and let’s face it, I’m going to my kid’s sports game (the 127th of this year) vs. your once in a lifetime moment.
I came down with the “Flu”!This one nobody believes, but it’s the go-to excuse because everyone uses it and it has been internationally certified as an acceptable lie to get out of anything.
My Mom/Dad/Grandma/Grandpa/Great Aunt Betty/etc. fell and are at the hospital. I needed to go see them. They needed my help. It was serious. Let’s face old people fall. In fact, it might be the only thing they have left to do. You hear about old people falling every day. Very usable excuse in a pinch because it’s somewhat believable and old people don’t remember later on when someone asks “How are you doing after your fall?”, and they’ll go “better” and then complain about their aches and pains.
I’ve got another Wedding that same day! Again, believable, but what you’re really saying to the person is “I’ve ranked you lower than someone else in my life. I hope you understand, but I didn’t buy you a place setting off your registry!”

What is your top excuse for not going to a co-worker’s wedding?

Career Confessions of Gen Z: On Instagram, It’s not about likes, It’s about engagement

Posted on August 22, 2018 by Tim Sackett

If you know me, you know I really like social media. I’m a big fan of almost all platforms, but I definitely have my favorites. I like Snapchat for communicating, Twitter for entertainment, and Instagram to maintain an active profile. Everyone seems to have one or two platforms that they excel at, and Instagram is mine. My family always laughs when I ask them to get “candid” pictures for me in front of scenic backgrounds or cool landscapes, but I know what’s going to get the likes!

Last week, my Dad and I were talking about what the best follower to like ratio on Instagram is and it got me thinking. I know that a good ratio for me is on my personal account (about 30%), but it sparked my curiosity. Should accounts with tens of thousands of followers have a lower ratio of likes than accounts with only a few thousand? Should personal accounts have higher ratios than brand accounts? What is a “good ratio”? I conducted some research of my own to answer these questions.

I wanted to start out by looking at the difference between personal and brand accounts. The top 2 followed people on Instagram are Selena Gomez (140 million followers) and Cristiano Ronaldo (139 million followers). I looked at their last 10 posts and calculated that between 4-5% of their followers like each post.

Account	Average Likes	Average Ratio
Selena Gomez (@selenagomez)	5.65 million	4%
Cristiano Ronaldo (@cristiano)	6.43 million	4.6%

Next, I compared these to the top followed brand accounts. The top followed brands are National Geographic (90 million) and Nike (79 million). The ratios for these top followed brands was pretty significantly less than the most followed people, at .4% and 1.3%.

Account	Average Likes	Average Ratio
National Geographic (@natgeo)	374 thousand	.4%
Nike (@nike)	1.06 million	1.3%

Now, most accounts aren’t going to have the millions of followers that these do, so I wanted to compare people and brands with more normal amounts. So, I compared my account to my favorite ice cream shop, Blake Slate Creamery.

Account	Average Likes	Average Ratio
Cameron Sackett (@cameronsackett)	419.6	27%
Blank Slate Creamery (@blankslatecreamery)	132.4	7.7%

This difference in ratios isn’t surprising to me. Instagram posts with faces get 38% more likes than posts without. Personal accounts are naturally going to have more posts with faces because people are going to show themselves on their accounts! Brands want to show their products/services and that can’t always involve an attractive person’s face.

To increase your engagement, it’s important to try and learn from these personal accounts. You want to post as many pictures/videos with people as the prominent focus. Selfies get the likes! But make it a good one, not some double chin mess 🙂

This post was written by Cameron Sackett (not Tim) – you can probably tell because it lacks grammatical errors!

Your Weekly Dose of HR Tech: @CandidateReward – The final piece of your Candidate Experience! #CoffeeIsForClosers

Posted on August 21, 2018 by Tim Sackett

Today on The Weekly Dose I review the candidate experience technology Candidate Rewards. Candidate Rewards is a new solution from the folks at Total Rewards. Candidate Rewards is basically a platform that allows you to build personalized micro-sites for each candidate to present them their offer.

The offer letter virtually hasn’t changed in years. You have a template. You plug in the salary offer. You might attach a ‘one-pager’ of your benefits that you offer, but for 90%+ of organizations that is the process for decades! Oh wait, some of us use really nice quality paper and send some swag as well…

Quick Question – Is closing candidates important to your organization?

The reality is Generation Z by 2019 will actually make up 32% of the eligible workforce, Millennials will make up 31.5%. So over 63%+ of those, you’ll be making offers to will expect a digital experience, not an email with attachments. Candidate Rewards built a platform that easily allows Talent Acquisition or HR to plus in a few details and a full-blown personalized experience is sent to each candidate.

Candidates are no different than you or I, we all want to feel special. What would make you feel more special, an offer letter template, attached to an email, or an invitation to a full website that is tailored right to each candidate’s specific needs?

What I like about Candidate Rewards:

– The average offer letter probably takes 2-3 minutes for a candidate to consume. The data shows that a candidate on average will spend about 15 minutes on a Candidate Rewards personalized offer site, checking out the total compensation, figuring out what benefits make the most sense and value to them, watching video content, checking out the culture, etc.

– One thing I know is that candidates who have significant others love to know ‘exactly’ what benefits you’ll be having. It’s rare that an offer letter ever really digs into that level of information. Candidates Rewards works with you benefit’s providers to upload each plan and allow candidates to select what they want, while the site will automatically adjust the Total Rewards statement to reflect those choices.

– The ability to tailor video content to each candidate is super powerful! It can immediately connect the candidate with your company, with their co-workers, with their new boss, etc. The options are endless.

– I love that this is one of those technologies that you will know precisely the impact it’s having. Currently, you are at “X”% candidate acceptance of offers. Once you implement Candidate Rewards you’ll be at “X”%+/-. Simple and straightforward to determine ROI.

I think some people will look at this and see it as an extravagance they don’t need. We are already at 90% acceptance rate. We’re fine. This technology is for those organization where unaccepted offers are really painful, and closing offers are critical! Think CPA firms, Nursing, Law firms, Technology – both IT and Engineering, MBAs, etc. Where every single offer being accepted is a huge deal to your organization and your TA team!

So often, we lose out on candidates because you make a salary offer of like $85K with some PTO, etc. The candidate’s own company will come back and show how the total compensation for what they’re making is way more. Or if you’re heavy into making campus offers this kind of technology is even more persuasive because now you’re just going against traditional offers and your total comp offers with the site looks way more enticing.

Candidate Rewards is well worth a demo. It super simple to use to implementation and adoption are a non-issue. Go check them out!

Want help with your HR & TA Tech company – send me a message about my HR Tech Advisory Board experience.

DisruptHR Detroit 2.0 – September 20th! Tickets Available Now! #Detroit #DisruptHR #HRParty

Posted on August 20, 2018 by Tim Sackett

Detroit Metro HR and Talent Peeps!

We’re back!!!

On September 20th in Midtown Detroit, DisruptHR Detroit 2.0 will be taking place onsite at our host Quicken Loans! The cost to attend this event is $30 which includes some great food and drinks, an exceptional list of speakers, and great prizes!

Here are our 2.0 speakers for this event:

Speakers for the 2018 DisruptHR Detroit 2.0:

Tina Marie Wholfied

Don’t Fear The Peacocks! Embracing Organizational Change through Diversity

Melissa Fairman

Make Work Suck Less!

Melanie Stern

Hiring for Culture Fit Not Add

Becky Andree

CODE RED! Leadership Development has flatlined!

But I have a Defibrillator!

Kimika Garrett

Planning with a Twist

Danielle Crane

Nobody Smokes in Church

Kat Hoyer

Stop trying to make your employees Happy

Josh Schneider

The Tingly Feeling Compass

Michelle Clark

The Power of Purpose – Stop Sucking the Life Out

of Your People!

Chris Groscurth

Hustle Smarter: Future-Ready Human Resource

Leaders

Iris Ware

They said we couldn’t do it, but we did!

Cody Grant

The Dynamic Art of Job Descriptions

Not only will this event be awesome, but this year we added an “After Party” to take place onsite for continued networking with peers and friends!

DisruptHR Detriot 1.0 had over 200+ participants and it was a sellout. This event is almost half sold already, so get your tickets today!

The Tim Sackett Project

TA & HR Expert, Dad, Backup Point Guard on my over 40 men's team

Monthly Archives: August 2018