Monthly Archives: June 2019

Every HR and TA Tech Vendor Should Go To @SHRM National for this One Reason! #SHRM

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I absolutely love going to the SHRM National Conference.  I’ve been 8 out of the last 9 years. I’ve spoken at many. I’ve been a part of the blogger team at many. I’ve had real conversations with real HR and Talent pros at every single one.

If I was advising HR and TA Technology vendor teams (oh wait, I do) I would tell them to take their product teams to SHRM National and make them go to sessions, meet real HR people, walk the expo and observe and listen, and invite a group of customers to dinner or drinks.

Why?

You (HR and TA tech vendors) are not listening to the masses.

For the most part, most teams building HR and TA technology are not and have never been HR or TA practitioners. They are technologist by trade and are looking to solve problems. The problem is, this leads to solving problems for the 1% not the 99%.

When you sit in sessions at the SHRM conference you get to hear real-life HR and Talent. What you quickly realize is that the problems in the field, are much lower than you’re trying to solve for, and much more common. We (the HR and Talent community) want easy-buttons, not higher levels of technology. We want simplicity and shit that works.

You make us believe this is a single point solution, a suite. It’s not and we get pissed off because your promises end up making us look like idiots. We want great payroll, great HRIS, great recruiting, great performance management, etc. You give us great of one or two things, and then average for the rest, leaving most of the organization upset and believing we have no idea what we are doing, and then IT and Finance picks our technology and screws up everything.

When you have real conversations with real HR pros you learn what our real pain is, and then you can learn how to solve that. SHRM National gives you the best opportunity to actually see this in a giant way. Once you go, you can’t stop thinking about what you just learned, what you just experienced.

I go to SHRM National every year because it grounds me in reality. The reality that each day, if I truly want to help, my people are SHRM people. I need that reminder because it’s too easy to walk away from those doing the actual work and think it’s the 1%ers who I should really be focusing on. It’s not.

What’s the one reason you should attend SHRM if you’re building technology for this space? 

Because the attendees at SHRM National is who you are really building technology for. This is the cross section of your user community, all together in one place, with a desire to improve themselves and their organizations. They made a commitment to show up and develop themselves. They care.

I hear from way too many HR and TA tech vendors that SHRM is a waste of time. “There are no buyers there, Tim!”

Yeah, probably not a ton of enterprise buyers, or folks who will ultimately sign the contract. But, it’s loaded with HR and TA pros and leaders who have the budget authority of $5K, $10K, $25K. But I guess those amounts aren’t interesting to you.

20,000+ HR and Recruiting pros were in Vegas this week, all of whom are using HR and TA technology. All of whom were looking to make themselves and their organizations successful.

I’m not saying you need to go drop big money in the expo, but you should at least send some folks from the product team out to do some due diligence around what reality is, every once in a while.

How can a HR vendor standout in a sea of competition? #SHRM19

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Just flying back from the SHRM National Conference. This SHRM conference was the biggest ever. Over 20,000 HR and TA pros and leaders all in one location. Thousands of others from vendors and support staff. It was a bit crazy and awesome all at the same time.

When you go into the expo of SHRM National (and other giant conferences like the HR Technology Conference in Vegas in October) it can be a bit overwhelming. Not only for the attendees but for the vendors as well. How the heck are you supposed to connect with the people you want? Both sides, by the way, have this problem.

Vendors only want to connect with a small segment of those attending, their actual buyers. Attendees also only want to connect with a small segment within the expo, those products, and services they actually have a need for. The current design of expos at large conferences doesn’t help either side.

Do you know why Home Depot and Lowes build across the street from each other? If someone wants to buy home repair type of items it makes it super convenient for them to be so close. One location doesn’t have what you need, the other might and it’s right across the street.

What if expos put all the same types of tech within the same areas? Need a recruiting tool? Go over to the Recruiting section of the expo and you can see all of the products, solutions, and vendors in one place. Need performance management tech, go over to the performance management selection area, etc.

Seems like this would actually be a better design for both sides, yet we don’t do this because of traditional sales strategies of the conference community. How much are you willing to pay for prime spots and how long have you been coming? Thus we end up with this scatter blot of an expo floor with people wandering around aimlessly collecting bad swag.

I don’t think any conference will change anytime soon, but sometimes you just have to throw out ideas to the universe and see what happens.

So, how can you stand out in a world of expo chaos?

  1. You can’t just sit in your booth and wait for people to find you. Hire some “interns” for the week and have them moving around the expo dressed up in a way people will take notice and want to find your booth.
  2. Give an email, direct mail offer so enticing that people have to show up to your booth. Come to our booth, do a 20-minute demo, and we’ll give you a $25 gift card to whatever. People who aren’t interested in you will not waste twenty minutes for $25 bucks so the lead gen is good and cheap.
  3. Zig when others are zagging. You can have the most expensive, and brightest booth on the planet or you can do something totally different. I’ve seen companies just put down astroturf and fill it with puppies and their space was full all day. I have an idea that you could go buy a bunch of really high-end women’s shoes. Shoes that every woman is interested in trying on, but in reality could never afford. You basically use your booth a shoe store, but you aren’t selling them, you’re just giving them the experience of trying them on and seeing if they would actually want these for real, without the stress of going into these high-end stores. Your salespeople turn into old-school shoe salespersons and have great conversations. In the end, the women trying on shoes can register to win the shoes they like the most. You would have a line into your booth for the entire show. (partner with Zappos or something and probably can get the shoes at cost for the try-on experience)
  4. Celebrity guest and photo opportunity. You would be amazed at how cheap you can get someone to come to your booth for an hour. Again, partner this with an ‘if you demo, you get to get your photo at the meet and greet” of this celebrity. It might cost you another $10-20K, but if that turns into an additional 200 demos, you win! We are in a world where we are all enamored by celebrities.
  5. Make it extremely clear what you do. I can walk by 90% of booths and have absolutely no idea what you do and why I would want to buy your product. In big expo environments, less than 10% of the audience is your potential buyer, so you can’t miss anyone, and if one of those buyers walks past your booth because it’s not 100% clear what you do, you lost. No, we don’t know your brand. Just tell us!

I know you already spend a tremendous amount getting the booth, the swag, and having your entire team travel out to the event, but if you don’t attract buyers, all of that expense is just a waste! In expo lead gen, you are either all in or you’re just burning a giant pile of cash.

The best booth experience is one where you are only attracting the buyers you want and not spending half your time handing out stuffed animals to people who don’t know you and will never buy your stuff. I know it’s a risk not doing what everyone else is doing, but great marketing is risky.

This is HR! The Podcast – Episode #2 is out! @Kris_Dunn, @Jessica_Lee and Me! #SHRM19

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[buzzsprout episode=’1315399′ player=’true’]

In this episode of THIS IS HR, Kris Dunn (CHRO at Kinetix), Jessica Lee (VP of Brand Talent, Marriott), and I hit the following topics:

—A recent report on employee activism at companies like Google, Microsoft and Salesforce. If a small section of your employees starts protesting against your business plan or specific clients you serve, what do you do as an HR Pro? The gang digs in and finds that it’s complicated (2:53)

—The team tries to bring the outrage at a new Netflix series, hosted by Dustin from Stranger Things, that take advantage of unemployed people who think they’ve finally landed a job.  They find their outrage uneven and too pedestrian so they start brainstorming Netflix pitches with an HR theme that would be cool (11:53)

—An exploration of the trend across some cities to enact mandatory sick leave laws.  Good thing or bad thing?  The gang digs in (18:51)

KD closes it out by going to the mailbag and getting a simple question from a manufacturing HR Pro on favorite interview questions, which Tim and JLee turn into a potentially ill-advised primer on passion in your job (27:21)

BONUS: We uncover that that one of the gang is stressed about prepping for Maternity Leave, while another one’s not stressed but always preparing for the unexpected like a boy/girl scout.

What could go wrong with topics like these?  Give it a listen!

Enjoy!

Also, if you want to get your question into the “Mailbag” just hit me in the comments or send me an email to timsackett@comcast.net!

 

Job Descriptions vs. Job Postings with @LRuettimann and I (Video) @HRTMSInc #SHRM19

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Laurie Ruettimann and I discuss the differences between a job description and a job posting and review a great piece of technology called, JDXpert, we did a demo on. Check it out!

HRTMS Inc. is a human resources software company that specializes in Job Information and Description Management. Its groundbreaking solution JDXpert allows you to bring structure and efficiencies to the way job information is constructed, managed and stored. HRTMS works with a wide range of organizations including manufacturing, healthcare, education, retail, finance, pharmaceuticals, energy, technology, hospitality, professional services, and media services. Since its release in 2010, JDXpert continues to be the most comprehensive and powerful job description management tool on the market.

HRTMS is allowing Laurie and I to give away a free Ebook – “10 Ways To Improve Your Job Descriptions”! (Just click on the link to download!)

 

You Can’t Teach Your Employees to be Human! #Transform

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You might have seen this in the news a few weeks back. Mom and Dad take their Autistic son to a Universal Theme Park in Orlando. The son is over the top excited for the Spiderman ride, and Murphy’s Law comes into play.

The family gets to the ride and it’s broken down. The son loses it. Full blown, five-alarm tantrum on the ground in front of the ride. Mom and Dad are doing all they can to help him calm down, he’s having none of it, when this happens:

So, you see the son with his headphones and you see an actual park employee from Universal from the Spiderman ride who came over and got on the ground and just laid down with this child. Let everyone know who was gawking that you know, it’s okay, some days the Spiderman ride breaks down and it sucks and we all want to scream about it.

The child eventually calmed down with the help of the employee. The parents were all so grateful for the assist and help.

This is a great human story. This is also a great story for Universal’s recruiting team! Let’s be honest. The reality is, the TA team really had nothing to do with this. They ran their process, and out of that, got lucky enough to hire a person who had these capabilities and a giant heart.

You can’t expect or set out to hire, individuals like this woman. She’s a unicorn. In fact, I would bet that Universal in their training would probably use an example like this of what not to do from a liability standpoint! All that said, it happened and it was wonderful.

You might see a story like this and say to yourself, “we need to add this example into our onboarding so that our new employees know this is what we want them to be like!” That’s really unfair to your new hires. Some might see this and think that’s the scariest thing I can imagine, but they might be willing to do a thousand other great things.

The biggest learning from an HR standpoint on this for me is that we can’t eliminate risk in our environments. Things are going to happen. We hope we hire and train employees to do the ‘right’ thing. To be kind. To be human. To do what they would want someone to do for them in a similar circumstance.

Also, to know, when we ask our employees to take the risk of being kind, being human, etc. that sometimes it’s going to backfire, but if it was done with positive intent and good heart we are willing to take that risk.

Why Don’t We Have a ‘Yelp’ for HR Tech?

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The HR Technology ecosystem is a multi-billion a year enterprise. It is estimated that there are over 20,000 different HR technology solutions in the marketplace. If you can think of it, there are at least a dozen solutions on the market or in development in our space.

Every single day, in some form or fashion, I have some ask me a question about which solution they should select? While I demo and review over a hundred different technologies across the entire landscape of HR technology each year, I only see a small fraction of what’s on the market, and within a year of seeing a certain technology, most have changed so much that you would need to demo them all over again.

All of this makes me wonder why don’t we have a practitioner lead site, like Yelp, where we all share and talk about the technology we’ve used, implemented, demoed, purchased, etc.

There are small pockets of this in certain spaces. Chris Hoyt and Gerry Crispin, the two principles at CareerXroads, started something like this for their members. ATAP has talked about starting this for our members. SHRM has chat boards that are active with members who are asking these questions and sharing. But the reality is, there isn’t a one-stop shop to get these answers, especially if you’re an SMB HR shop!

The enterprise HR shops will go to places like Bersin by Deloitte, Gartner, Forrester, IDC, etc. and pay a ton of money to work with specialized analysts in the field who work to try and stay on top of the tech. Some will go with smaller specialized firms shops like Aptitude Research, Lighthouse, HRWins, H3 HR Advisors, etc.

It seems crazy to me that we can’t just log into a TripAdvisor-type site, search for “Workday” and hundreds, if not thousands of reviews come up. New reviews, old reviews, reviews segments by module, etc. Segmented chat groups talking about how good or bad a tech company is at implementation. A group about how much they are paying for a tech!

Why isn’t this a thing!?!

I think there might be some reasons:

  1. We all think our tech stack is some big differentiator and the secret sauce of our success. (This isn’t true, by the way)
  2. The HR Technology community, especially the biggest players, have nothing to gain from a site like this.
  3. You have to start something like this without a revenue model and hope that somehow down the road, the revenue model is the data you collect. (I would think someone like TechStars, etc. would easily find funding for a site like this)
  4. It’s so hard to get all those parties together in one place – HR, benefits, compensation, recruiting, LOD, etc. We all have our own associations and spend time on separate sites.

I wish we had this. Imagine the power of our collective knowledge of what we are using that is working and what we are using, or have used, that isn’t working!? Holy crap, the time and resources we could save our organizations!

What do you think? Do we need this? Why don’t we have it?

 

This is HR! A new Podcast from @Kris_Dunn, @Jessica_Lee and I! Check it out!

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Hey gang!

Wanted to share a new podcast that I launched with my two of my close friends Kris Dunn and Jessica Lee, called “This is HR!”

[buzzsprout episode=’1274377′ player=’true’]

In the pilot of THIS IS HR, Jessica Lee (VP of Brand Talent, Marriott) is joined by Kris Dunn (CHRO at Kinetix) and I for a discussion of industry news that only true HR pros could love.

 

The gang covers:

–research from the Lean In organization indicating 60% of male managers are afraid to have a 1-1 with female direct reports (5:45)

–recent layoffs at Ford Motor Company including a kinder, gentler approach allowing downsized employees to hang out for a few days after getting the news (14:06)

–D&I training rolled out by Sephora after recording artist SZA reported being profiled (22:15)

 

KD closes it out by reaching in the mailbag and pulling out a gem from an HR pro who is trying to tackle inclusion within an office full of straight people (30:18)

 

BONUS: Disclosures that one of the gang’s HR job includes Yachts (as opposed to Yacht Rock), kids with MTV internship stories and references to a guy named “Puck” from one of the first Real World seasons from MTV.  Shout out, Gen X… we haven’t forgotten you.

 

What could go wrong?  Take a listen!

Do you have an expiration date on your offer letters? #ghOPEN

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I was out at Greenhouse OPEN this week and got into a conversation with a group of TA leaders about whether or not you should have expiration dates on offers. Which brings up a couple of things we need to discuss:

  1. Do you have candidates first verbally approve an offer before you send them the ‘official’ offer in writing?
  2. If you have expiration dates on an offer, how long do you give someone?

It was about 50/50 with the TA leaders on obtaining verbal approval first on offers. Basically, there seem to be two types of philosophies around this. Either you train your recruiters to pre-close and get them to verbally accept hoping that there will be limited negotiation once the final offer goes out. Or you just send, either believing you are offering what they want or hoping you are, and there won’t be much negotiation that takes place.

I’m fully in support of the pre-close and getting a verbal acceptance before sending out a final offer. I think it’s a massive misuse of resources to send out an offer, formally, then begin negotiations and continue to send out more offers. But, I also get that in many industries, still today, sending out a formal offer is needed because candidates have multiples coming in all at the same time.

In terms of expiration dates on offer letters, I think giving a candidate five working days is more than enough, especially if you’ve pre-closed. The leaders I was speaking to were between 48 hours and two-weeks.

I did bring up the concept of what if you explicitly made the offer letter have a much longer expiration like six months or one year? Could you potentially pick up some great talent that chooses to take another offer, for whatever reason, but got into that job or company and felt like they made a mistake and wanted a second chance with you?

We tend to never go back to candidates who turn us down, but in reality, they are all talent worth continuing to pursue. A certain number of candidates who turn you down will regret it soon after, and if you make them feel like they are welcome to come back and accept a later time, it might have a very happy ending.

Of course, extended expirations would only work in organizations and positions where you are continually going out and recruiting for those spots on an ongoing basis. Also, you could always rescind an offer at any point if you feel you no longer needed that talent in the organization.

It’s an interesting conversation to have with your hiring managers. Even if you’re not the “prettiest girl on the block” in terms of the offer, you still want to put some pressure on the candidate to make up their mind. Having an expiration time on the offer letter does put some pressure on them to make up their mind and move forward.

What do you think? Do you put expiration dates on offer letters? If so, how long?

Do you do Capacity Modeling in Recruiting? You should be! #ghOPEN

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Out at Greenhouse OPEN this week and I was completely captivated by one of the sessions and the topic of Capacity Modeling in recruiting. It was introduced at the conference by Shane Noe of Box, and he was cool enough to share a url so everyone can download the information to do it on your own.

I love that!

So, what is Capacity Modeling and why is important for TA and HR Leaders add this to their recruiting operations?

In simple terms, Capacity Modeling is the process of determining the production capacity needed by an organization to meet changing demands for its products. In recruiting then it’s the process of determining your recruiting capacity needed by the organization to meet the demands of your talent needs.

Here’s what happens in real life. Your talent acquisition team is working their butts off day in and day out. Little by little you keep getting a bit better, but most days you’re still just keeping your heads above water. But still, you’re making it happen!

Then the CEO comes into your office on an idle Thursday and says we’ve made some decisions and it’s going to have an impact on recruiting. We’ve decided to make an investment in “X” and as such we will need to hire an additional 300 employees in the next 12 months. Can you make this happen?

The savvy TA leader will say “No!” immediately! Most TA leaders will say “Of course! Just let us know what you need and we’ll make it happen!” That’s failure point number one.

You truly have no idea if you can make this happen. What you know is it feels like you’re at full capacity and hiring an additional 30 new people will kill you, 300? You might as well just quit now.

Capacity Modeling allows you to tell your CEO, “let me show you some data about where we are at, and how we can meet your needs”. We are currently at 87% capacity. The best practice is to be at 85% since we will always have stuff pop up and we need that extra cushion. If you would like us to hire an additional 300 that would put us at “X” over capacity, so we will need the following time and resources to meet that need.

That my friends is a powerful conversation that puts you at a completely different level in your career. Too often we just throw ourselves on the sword and say we can do something when we really have no idea if we can do it, and we mostly fail. We have to better than that. Take a look at Shane’s information. It’s a bit technical but very doable and worth it!

Greenhouse Open is a non-user user conference. GH has put a ton of time into producing some of the best recruiting content on the planet for its users, but I would say as a recruiting conference alone it’s one of the better ones I’ve attended. Kudos to them. If you’re looking for a top Hiring Platform that meets your end to end talent needs, you should be demoing Greenhouse.

5 Usable Excuses Not to Attend a Co-worker’s Wedding!

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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 the 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:

  1. You have VD! (Ok, I know this is strong right out of the gate – but let’s face the facts – most dudes will run from this!  Funny Fact: She is a millennial and had no idea what “VD” was! I’m old! Using WWII references like it was cool 2015 slang!)
  2. 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…)
  3. You have to Babysit for a Co-worker! (Now this one is fraught with problems, 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 is my Top 5 Excuses to  Miss a Co-worker’s Wedding:

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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.
  4. 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. This is a 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.
  5. 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?