Monthly Archives: October 2018

Is Your Work Fun? The Secret to Being Ultra-Productive.

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You’ve probably heard all the business-psycho babble around “if you work doing something you love to do, you’ll never work another day in your life!” Of, if you work at something that makes you happy you’ll always love your work. Blah, blah, blah, it sounds like all you really need is a Life Coach!

I’m just kidding, a little.

I’m not a life coach kind of person. I mean I’ll take your $500 per session to tell you crap you already know, but blow hot air up your butt, so now you feel better about what you already know, but your $500 less rich. I’d so life coach you right now! You’d feel me all up in your mind. Let’s do this!

So, here’s what I think I’ve learned in the past twenty years about what it takes to have a happy, productive career:

  1. Do what you love, even if you can’t make money at it.
  2. Enjoy being poor.

So, now comes along the next brilliant idea around productivity and performance – Just Have Fun!

Yeah, turns out you’ll love your job if it’s fun to do! Shockingly, keen insight into this one, I know!

So, that’s your secret to being Ultra-productive! Just have fun. But not too much fun because then you’ll be ultra-nonproductive! Turns out there’s a fine line with fun. You want just enough fun to be productive, but not too much fun to be unproductive. See why it’s super easy to manage productive teams!?

I think where most people miss on the ‘fun at work’ play is that it’s not about being fun all the time. Nothing is fun all the time. I think it’s super fun to ride on a Jetski! One time I hit a wave on got thrown off that Jetski going 60 mph and skipped across the water and was pretty sure I was dead. That wasn’t super fun at all, but it’s still fun to ride on a Jetski!

It’s about having enough fun that you look forward to coming back and doing that work or that job again. That’s the line of fun every manager and every employee should strive for. Do you want to come back? Not do I “have” to come back? Do you really want to get up in the morning and go to work because you know there’s enough enjoyment in what you do that it makes sense to do that?

By the way, Fun at Work does not equal I Love my Job! I have had really crappy jobs that were super fun because of a number of reasons! I had to work midnights at a theater where we would just crack open beers once the last movie started. Super fun, awful hours. I once had a job running an ice cream cart at the zoo. I sat and watched Monkey’s all day, and ate ice cream. Crappy job, pretty fun.

Being productive and having fun at work makes sense. If you’re having fun, you’re energized, if you’re energized you’re probably more productive. The hard part is to figure out how to have ‘appropriate’ fun at work. I find ‘appropriate’ fun isn’t fun, so that’s always a problem!

Your Weekly Dose of HR Tech: @Hiretual – Find, Engage, and Pipeline Candidates

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Today on the Weekly Dose I review the sourcing technology Hiretual (Hire-Tool). So, I’ve been hearing from my sourcing friends for about two years that Hiretual is awesome and I need to check them out. Hiretual is a modern sourcing technology platform that allows a Sourcer or Recruiter to quickly search for possible talent online from dozens of different possible sources.

There’s now an entire verticle in the recruiting technology industry dedicated to sourcing technology and Hiretual falls squarely in that camp. I’m keen on saying that it’s never been easier in the history of recruiting to find talent, and it’s that way because of sourcing tools like Hiretual. Hiretual spiders the web finding profiles of potential talent that meet your exact search criteria from over 30 different channels. Places like LinkedIn, Github, Facebook, etc.

Hiretual is simple to use. You can build a custom search for what you’re looking for, or simply drop in a job description and the system will automatically pull the data it needs to begin the search. It will then do an initial search and have you rate the quality of the candidates. This helps the AI within Hiretual to begin learning what it is exactly you’re looking for and return better candidates.

What I like about Hiretual: 

– You can target competitors or specific companies you want to see candidates from and the technology will search for just individuals with a background at those organizations.

– If you search for candidates with government clearances, Hiretual can specifically help you with this. I’m amazed at how many times a year I’m asked directly about this capability.

– You can run multiple searches simultaneously, and save searches you run frequently.

– You can message and nurture candidates right from Hiretual.

Sourcing technology, like Hiretual, aren’t a recruiting silver bullet. I’m in love with this type of technology, but it won’t magically find you, candidates. It will magically find you talent, that you then have to ‘sell’ them a reason on why they should want to talk to you and come work for your organization. For the most part, Hiretual is returning passive candidates, not active. This is a struggle for recruiters and sourcers who only know how to work with active candidates.

Hiretual is super powerful in helping you find people with the skills you desire, but you still need to get them interested in you. If you and your team are ready to start recruiting passive candidates than this is definitely a technology you need to demo!

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.

Team Woke vs. Team Resentful!

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Have you been feeling like you don’t fit in recently? Like both sides might not be what you’re looking for? Like ‘these folks are crazy!”?

Welcome to America!

The Atlantic had a brilliant article recently where a study from Harvard says it’s not ‘you’, it’s actually ‘them’ –

“On social media, the country seems to divide into two neat camps: Call them the woke and the resentful. Team Resentment is manned—pun very much intended—by people who are predominantly old and almost exclusively white. Team Woke is young, likely to be female, and predominantly black, brown, or Asian (though white “allies” do their dutiful part). These teams are roughly equal in number, and they disagree most vehemently, as well as most routinely, about the catchall known as political correctness.

Reality is nothing like this. As scholars Stephen Hawkins, Daniel Yudkin, Miriam Juan-Torres, and Tim Dixon argue in a report published Wednesday, “Hidden Tribes: A Study of America’s Polarized Landscape,” most Americans don’t fit into either of these camps. They also share more common ground than the daily fights on social media might suggest—including a general aversion to PC culture.”

As you know, if you’re a regular reader of The Project, I tend to be of the not politically correct persuasion, but not necessarily outwardly so. I like humor. The best humor is usually not politically correct, regardless of what side you’re on politically. I like to believe I have a highly tuned sense of humor, so I can find something funny, when I know it’s wrong, because, context matters.

Most members of the “exhausted majority,” and then some, dislike political correctness. Among the general population, a full 80 percent believe that “political correctness is a problem in our country.” Even young people are uncomfortable with it, including 74 percent ages 24 to 29, and 79 percent under age 24. On this particular issue, the woke are in a clear minority across all ages.

Youth isn’t a good proxy for support of political correctness—and it turns out race isn’t, either.

Whites are ever so slightly less likely than average to believe that political correctness is a problem in the country: 79 percent of them share this sentiment. Instead, it is Asians (82 percent), Hispanics (87percent), and American Indians (88 percent) who are most likely to oppose political correctness. As one 40-year-old American Indian in Oklahoma said in his focus group, according to the report:

It seems like everyday you wake up something has changed … Do you say Jew? Or Jewish? Is it a black guy? African-American? … You are on your toes because you never know what to say. So political correctness in that sense is scary.

So, for the most part, we tend to look at political correctness the same – we don’t agree it’s helping. In fact, it might be driving us further apart because those who believe it strongly, on either side, use it as black or white, without any opportunity for gray, or understanding.

“There is, however, plenty of additional support for the idea that the social views of most Americans are not nearly as neatly divided by age or race as is commonly believed. According to the Pew Research Center, for example, only 26 percent of black Americans consider themselves liberal. And in the More in Common study, nearly half of Latinos argued that “many people nowadays are too sensitive to how Muslims are treated,” while two in five African Americans agreed that “immigration nowadays is bad for America.”

So, what’s the risk? The risk is we tend to listen to a minority viewpoint, on both sides, believing it’s at least a 50% viewpoint when in reality it might only be a 1/5 or less viewpoint of the whole. By the way, we do this in business as well, all the time! Your executives want to know how your employees are feeling, so you do a survey of your 1,000 employees.

200 actually perform the survey, 1/5, and we go back to our executive team and say our “employees” believe “X”. So, we need to change X, Y, and Z. When in reality, only 20% of employees actually believe “X”. And we wonder why we can never really get our arms around engagement!

The problem of political correctness on worldviews shows this same behavior:

“The gap between the progressive perception and the reality of public views on this issue could do damage to the institutions that the woke elite collectively run. A publication whose editors think they represent the views of a majority of Americans when they actually speak to a small minority of the country may eventually see its influence wane and its readership decline. And a political candidate who believes she is speaking for half of the population when she is actually voicing the opinions of one-fifth is likely to lose the next election.”

I have so many friends who couldn’t believe that Trump was voted President (for the official record – I did not vote for Trump! But I understand how it happened!), and they are 100% sure he won’t be voted in again. 100%!

Yet, we fail to understand the majority in the middle, caught between outliers on both sides, who are being continually hammered for not being politically correct and thinking this will magically change them to the correct side. So, I’m not Team Woke or Team Resentful, I’m Team Somewhere in the Middle, but I’m definitely far from alone!

Teens Feel Speaking In Class is Unreasonable & Discriminatory. What do you think?

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A recent article in The Atlantic brought up is seemingly troubling subject. Teens are voicing their opinion that being forced to speak up in classes is discriminatory:

“in the past few years, students have started calling out in-class presentations as discriminatory to those with anxiety, demanding that teachers offer alternative options. This week, a tweet posted by a 15-year-old high-school student declaring “Stop forcing students to present in front of the class and give them a choice not to” garnered more than 130,000 retweets and nearly half a million likes. A similar sentiment tweeted in January also racked up thousands of likes and retweets. And teachers are listening.” 

Hmmm. I’ve got some thoughts…

I was out at LinkedIn’s Talent Connect recruiting conference this past week. Great content, engaged recruiting pros and leaders, and a lot of great data being shared. One of those data points shared by CEO Jeff Weiner was the largest skills gap currently in need by employers. Can you guess which skill was most needed?

  • Tech/IT/coding-type of skills? No, but not a bad guess!
  • Healthcare/Nursing skills? No, but another great guess!

The #1 most sought after skill by employers is Oral Communication!

Turns out that we have a ton of kids coming into the workforce that have a hard time communicating orally! Hmmm…

Yeah, so we should probably not make kids who have anxiety over public speaking not speak in the safe environment of a classroom in front of a trained educator!

You know what, most people have anxiety about public speaking. The answer isn’t let’s try and find ways for these kids not to speak, its let’s find ways to get these kids to begin speaking in small ways where they start to gain confidence and little by little start ramping up how and where they speak.

Education isn’t about making some comfortable. It’s about making you uncomfortable in a safe way. If we know kids need oral communication skills to be successful in the work world, we must demand that our educators help make this happen.

I get we are in a time where kids have a great platform to voice their opinions and desires. Good for them! It’s awesome time to be alive. Also, these are kids. Kids can be super smart, and super short sited. It’s our job as adults to say, “I hear you! Public speaking in front of your peers is hard. That’s why you actually need to do it more, not less.”

So, knowing this is a skill that most adults also struggle with, what do you think? Should we be finding alternatives for kids who don’t want to speak in front of their class, or should we make them stand up and speak?

I’m all for making them uncomfortable and teaching them a skill that will help them the rest of their life. I don’t need them to get on stage and speak in front of an audience, but I do need them to be in a meeting with ten co-workers and be willing and active in that conversation!

What if you let your TA Interns run your campus Career Fairs? #TC18Live

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I’ve noticed something when I go onto campus for career fairs. The TA Pros that are there representing your company, don’t really want to be there. They don’t really want to be talking to students. They find this beneath them in many aspects.

That is if you’re over one year out of college! It seems like the only people who want to go on campus are your new hire recruiters. They’re super excited to go on campus! Then they get a year out and the culture beats them down and they become too ‘professional’ to talk to lame students who only want an internship, or they just want some of your swag!

Here’s what I know, when your TA interns go back to school for the year, they would love to represent you on campus to students at the fall and spring career fair! LOVE!  They would advocate for you, like your own people ever could!

What would it cost you? Like a few hours of $15/hr wage or something like that!

What would you get in return?

– “Recruiters” who love being at that career fair!

– “Recruiters” who love being at that school!

– “Recruiters” that candidates at that school would listen to!

– “Recruiters” that would do a better job than your current team!

What could go wrong?

I mean really, what would really go wrong if the interns took over a career fair? I’m guessing absolutely nothing! Oh, they might not spin bull shit as good as your internal team could spin bull shit, but on the positive side, Gen Z doesn’t really react to that style anyway!

The reality is Interns will take career fairs more seriously than your normal team. They are trying to impress you. They are trying to impress their classmates. They’ll give it their all. When was the last time you looked at your internal team and thought, “Oh boy, the team really gave it 110% on campus this season!” Never! You never thought this!

This isn’t about your team not doing well. They do fine! They’re representing you just fine. Fine. No, really, fine! The question is, do you want ‘fine’?

Sometimes the craziest ideas are the best ideas! I mean, if you have a campus that you’re just not making it happen, what do you really have to lose? Let the interns take over and they might just surprise you on how great they do. If they fail, oh well, you were sucking on that campus anyway!

Never Say “No” for a Candidate! #TC18Live

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Average recruiters say “No” for candidates a lot! It sounds like this:

“You probably won’t be interested in this, but…”

“I’m doubting this is for you, but…”

“I’m guessing this position is below you, but…”

Average recruiters give candidates an excuse to say No, even before we know if the candidate is interested or not!

Because we all know how the above statements end! “You’re right, that position is below me, but thanks for calling.” Hang up. “You’re right, I’m not interested. Thanks. Bye.”

Great recruiters don’t do this. Great recruiters use silence as their friend!

A great recruiter will ask a candidate a question and then they’ll shut up. They won’t fill the silence. They will wait. 5 seconds. 10 seconds. Just wait…

It’s so hard! We naturally want to fill that silence with something, and average recruiters fill that silence with bad answers and excuses to the question we need the candidate to say “yes” to!

Great recruiters use the powerful psychological tool in the world – a candidate’s desire to be desired!

“Mary! It’s Tim over at HRU! I’ve been waiting so long to talk to you! I had a conversation yesterday with Sue, our group manager, about you. We both agreed, if we can get you over here, you’ll change our life! Do you have a minute to discuss?”

OF COURSE, I DO! Tell me more about how great I am!

Great recruiters never even believe a candidate isn’t interested or the position is beneath the candidate. All they see is a great opportunity to introduce a candidate to a potentially great opportunity, and make that candidate’s life better.  They know they’ll hear a “Yes” I want to hear more!

Average recruiters know they’ll hear a “No” before they pick up the phone. Well, the last person said “No”, so I’m sure this person will say “No”. Average recruiters won’t even call the best candidates, already believing they’ve lost.

I love green-as-grass, brand new recruiters because they don’t even know this concept yet! Every time I hire a new recruiter who doesn’t have experience, they always, 100% of the time, find candidates that no one else on the team will. Why? Because they just call everyone! No preconceived notion that a candidate could even say “No”!

The experienced recruiters around entry level recruiters will always ask, “How’d you find that person?!” Um, I called them.

Today, pick up the phone like you’ll never hear “no” and start making calls. Reach out to the candidates that you think will never say “yes”. Something amazing will happen. A few will say “yes”!

 

Your Weekly Dose of HR Technology: @Dice4Employers – New IntelliSearch Helps Uncover More IT Talent!

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Today on The Weekly Dose I review Dice’s new product offering IntelliSearch. IntelliSearch is a proprietary recommendation engine simplifies the complexity of candidate search by allowing recruiters to input a job description, the ideal resume, or a list of skills to return relevant matches.  Boolean expertise is no longer required.

IntelliSearch is super easy to use. Just cut and paste a job description or even a resume of a hire or candidate your hiring manager loves and IntelliSearch will go out and find others that fit the criteria you need.

Dice’s IntelliSearch uses machine learning and A.I. to quickly match candidates to your requirements without you as the recruiter having to have deep technical knowledge about the type of candidates you’re looking for.

One of the issues I hear about constantly from corporate TA Pros around new sourcing technology is that they now have way too many candidates to search through and while they can find more ‘potential’ candidates than ever before, the tech has actually made their job harder!

Dice attempts to solve this problem with the IntelliSearch matching technology. The Dice funnel starts with hundreds of millions of potential profiles that can be found around the web, and quickly gets that number down to a few millions of actual candidates in the hiring pool in the U.S.

From there they return the best possible fits with contact information and a new feature to Dice which is “Likely to Switch” signal based on a number of factors in their algorithm. Based on these factors Dice will give you a Green, Yellow, or Red signal in terms of the potential that a candidate is ready to switch to a new job.

IntelliSearch is also driven by Semantic Search, not Boolean Search. Why does this matter? Semantic search describes a search engine’s attempt to generate the most accurate results possible by understanding:

  • Searcher intent.
  • Query context.
  • The relationships between words.

In layman’s terms, semantic search seeks to understand natural language the way a human would. Whereas Boolean is basically searching on keywords. Semantic search will produce a higher quality of search results.

The Bottomline? 

If you haven’t taken a look at Dice recently, it’s worth a new look, especially if you’re struggling to find IT talent, and you don’t consider yourself a full time IT recruiter. I find those who are less ‘techy’ will really be helped by Dice’s new IntelliSearch!

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.

Your EEOC Job Posting Statements are Hurting Your Diversity Hiring!

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Employers discriminate in hiring. This is a fact. It’s been a fact for generations. It’s the main reason anti-discrimination statements show up on job postings. That and it’s the law for Public employers and Government contractors who are required to have these statements. Many private employers use these as well to show they don’t discriminate in hiring.

For fifty years we’ve seen these statements on job descriptions and job advertisements. Recently, two Economists from the University of Chicago did a study looking at the impact of candidate behavior when these statements are added to a job posting and their findings were shocking!

In their study, the two economists posted advertisements for an administrative assistant job in ten large American cities. Of the 2,300 applicants who expressed interest, half were given a standard job description and the other half were given a description with an equal-opportunity statement promising that “all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to sex, colour, age or any other protected characteristics”.

 

For racial minorities, those who received the pro-diversity statement were 30% less likely to apply for the job—and the effect appeared to be worse in cities with white majorities (see chart). In a follow-up survey, the prospective applicants said the statement prompted worries that they would be token diversity hires.

30% Less Likely To Apply!!! 

What the what?!?!

This isn’t a study that was done decades ago. This was done in the past twelve months!

So, what should we do? 

One thing the study found that had a positive impact on increasing diversity application is to show your senior executives, including your CEO, talk in a ‘real’ transparent way on the impact that diversity has on your organization.

No, not some overly-produced puff piece about how we are all part of the same rainbow. Include video on your career site with your CEO telling stories about how D&I isn’t just a marketing tactic, but how it’s really impacted the organization in a positive way.

Have diverse employees ask the CEO question that gets to the heart of where D&I is in your organization. Don’t be afraid about keeping this conversation open and maybe a bit uncomfortable. The more real, the more candidates will understand that you’re really trying to make a difference.

If you really want to make sure you’re not missing great minority applicants who are skipping even applying to you, embed these videos right into your job postings!

Don’t think that when you put an “EEOC” statement at the end of your job posting is letting a diverse candidate pool know you’re a great place for them to work. They don’t buy it! You have to be better than that!

7+ High Volume, Low Unemployment Recruitment Strategies!

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Gather ‘round talent buffs and let me tell you a story – of a time not so long ago in a land not so far away. A little agency called The Bureau of Labor Statistics (you may have heard of them) released a report claiming that the unemployment rate dropped below 4% for the first time in 15 years. Did I mention that this is a true story?

That’s right, in April 2018 the unemployment numbers dropped to 3.9% in the good ol‘ US of A. This information is great for the domestic economy, but not so great for employers who are using outdated tactics to build their teams.

But have no fear – Fistful of Talent and Canvas have put me on the case to help organizations refresh their TA approaches during our WEBINAR, Help! We Can’t Hire Anyone! How to Hire When Unemployment is at Historic Lows (Click to register), on October 9th at 12 PM ET.

I’ll be dropping the following silver bullets of recruiting wisdom. When used together these bullets can help you hit the hiring bullseye every time:

* Not one, not two, but SEVEN new strategies to attract the best of the best during this low-unemployment era, from hourly workers to C-suite-grade talent

* The top talent attraction technology working for high-volume recruiting teams RIGHT NOW to level the playing field in this hot job market

* Three moves you are currently making that are putting a damper on your hiring efforts, and how you can make your recruiting dollars really count

It’s all going down on October 9th at 12 PM ET – register to save your spot for our WEBINAR, Help! We Can’t Hire Anyone! How to Hire When Unemployment is at Historic Lows (Click to register), TODAY to make your TA shop full-employment environment proof)

Register Here! 

I won’t be handing out one silver bullet in this webinar, I’ll be handing out handfuls! There isn’t a single silver bullet that will fix the problems we have, but a bunch that when used together, will help your organization succeed in hiring…even when unemployment drops below 4%.

About Canvas:
Canvas is the first text-based intelligent interviewing system that empowers organizations and recruiters to screen more job candidates and market employment brands. For more information, visit www.gocanvas.io and follow Canvas on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn.

Learnings from @ImMollyBloom and Molly’s Game at #RNL18

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Out at Jobvite’s Recruiter Nation Live conference and had the opportunity to see Molly Bloom, author of the book and screenplay of Molly’s Game. If you haven’t seen the moving or read the book, go do it, great story.

I was fascinated because at her core Molly is a world-class athlete who had to stop competing due to major injuries, but it’s rare for anyone to become world-class in anything. She became famous because she figured out how to make a ton of money running private high stakes poker games for super wealthy people, which ultimately led to legal trouble.

Much of Molly’s legal troubles were because she refused to give up all the famous, rich, and powerful people who were playing in her games, which made her unique in not selling out to save herself.

I always cautious when it comes to ‘celebrities’ who are keynoting at a conference. For the most part, they are fairly entertaining and polished, but the substance is usually fluff. Molly Bloom was unlike any ‘celebrity’ keynote I’ve ever listened to, and I have a great idea she would be an awesome person to sit down within private over a glass of wine and just hear some amazing stories!

Here are some of the great quotes and ideas she shared from her life:

– “I’m always cautious about imparting advice…because I’m a convicted felon!” She said while laughing! I love the self-depreciation and awareness she had about her. She understands she’s famous because of a story where she got convicted of a crime. Not a situation to brag about, but she had great learnings from going through that life experience.

– “Anybody is reachable and everyone wants to feel special.” Molly understood the basic psychology of the world. We all want to feel special, and if you can make someone feel special you have true power. Also, if you really want or need to get in touch with almost anyone in the world, you can do it if you try hard enough – which she was able to get to a major Hollywood director to pitch her screenplay, with no experience in movies!

– “There’s no amount of money or freedom worth it if you don’t like yourself.” Molly exceeded every goal she ever had in terms of making money, and she wasn’t happy. She also was given the opportunity for freedom by ‘just’ throwing a bunch of people under the bus, but she couldn’t live with herself if she did that. So, want to be happy? Stop changing everything around and just focus on accepting yourself.

– “Everything comes down to relationships.” Molly was able to start and build the largest private poker game in the world with millions of dollars flowing through it each night because she made and established the relationships. Not knowledge. Not who her parents were. She made relationships and learned how to leverage their relationships.

– My favorite quote – “I didn’t succeed because I didn’t prepare. I didn’t succeed because I tripped over a stick that I never could have anticipated being on the course, it was random, and sometimes that happens in life.” We are told all we have to do is prepare and work harder and blah, blah, blah. If we do all that we will succeed. And then we do that and we don’t. That’s life! That happened to Molly in her athletic career and it was super hard for her to come to grips over that, but she did. Life isn’t fair and sometimes it’s going to suck, but you pick yourself up and you move forward. Love it!

What I really liked about Molly Bloom was her lack of polish around speaking. She made some mistakes in what she wanted to say and she would back up and correct herself and laugh at herself. She sometimes messed up her own story. But she seemed extremely real and transparent. That’s rare at a conference, it’s rare in most of our lives. But, it’s very cool to listen to!