I’m keynoting the HRM Tech Asia conference in 2023, and as part of that, HRM Magazine did an interview with me for their Aug/Sept Magazine. The idea is we all want to offer flexibility. Our employees and candidates are demanding flexibility, but building a solid culture across all of these work environments is very complex!
Here’s some of what I had to say:
You can read the full article by clicking here!
I found some cool data that probably got overlooked a while back from CB Insights. Now, this data is from 2016, but it’s super relevant!
CB Insights did some testing with their own email newsletter that went out to 175K+. A very big sample, and the reality is they have the exact same goal as we all do, Get Candidates to Open Our Email!
These four things work really well in getting people to open your email:
1. Brand Names. CB found that using a big brand name like Apple, Google, Nike, etc., in your subject line increases your odds greatly of getting someone to open your email. Now, you might be asking yourself, “Tim, how the heck am I going to use a brand name in my recruiting emails!?” How about something like, “3 Ways we are a better place to work than Apple!”
2. Short Titles. Less is more when it comes to attention-grabbing subject lines! I suggest under five words if possible. “Are we paying too much?” or “I’ve Got a Quick Question” or “Sackett” – Yep, in my own testing, the one email that gets open at a higher rate than any other is when I only put my last name in the subject line!
3. Negativity. This seems counter-intuitive. No way! People love positivity. You are right, but negativity draws them in! “How Candidates Fall on their Face!” will get opened way more than “How Candidates Succeed!” Again, in ten years of blogging and making headlines, this data also rings true. I get way more interaction on negative headlines than positive headlines.
4. Surprises. Different viewpoints that people don’t expect. “Punching Your Boss Can Get You a Raise!” or “Older Workers Have More Energy Than Millennials!” or “Hiring Dumb People!” Basically, people open these because they don’t agree with the headline. What the heck is Tim talking about today!?!
So, if all of these things work. What does CB Insights say doesn’t work?
What should we stop doing with our subject lines?
The key to great email subject lines is they get opened! If you send out a hundred emails to candidates and no one opens them, it doesn’t matter what the content is and how much time you spent making it perfect. Get Them To Open Your Emails! Is the single most important thing you should worry about first!
It’s very Recruiting 101, and it’s something almost every recruiting shop struggles with, but then we go and focus on the picture we’re using. Does it have a puppy and a kid in a wheelchair? No, stop the presses! Stop it. Fix the basics first, then worry about doing the higher-level stuff.
What is your most responsive email subject line?
I had a great conversation with the co-founder and President of Greenhouse Software, Jon Stross. Jon developed a model he calls the Hiring Maturity Model. Basically, it’s a scale or curve of where your recruiting department is in terms of technology maturity.
Part of that conversation was a fascinating piece about why we keep technology that isn’t moving us forward or making us successful. Don’t say budget! It’s not budget! Let me explain that.
What are the four reasons why we would rather keep stuff we have versus get stuff we actually need?
1. We fear the pain of change. “Moving from one ATS to another ATS is hard work and takes years, and it’s just not worth it, Tim!” You’re wrong. It was that way when we had on-premise software, but with modern-day Saas platforms, this isn’t as painful by a mile! My most recent ATS change took six weeks, and we had zero downtime because we kept the legacy system going while we got used to the new system.
2. We fear short-term lower performance over the benefit of long-term gains. Well, it might not be great, but we know what we have. What if we change and it’s worse!? It won’t be because you will do your due diligence and research, and you’ll make sure it will be exponentially better! If what you have isn’t that good, you must be willing to build something better. Your organization needs you to do this.
3. We feel stupid and don’t know the technology enough to advocate for change. This is very legitimate. I feel stupid every single day about technology. I’ve got some stupid thing with my Macbook going on, and I can’t figure it out. And it drives me crazy! Demo. Demo. Demo. I felt stupid about our TA Tech space, and I just started demoing everything I could find, and it opened up a completely new world of what is possible in talent acquisition.
4. It was your call, originally, to get what you have, so bailing on it now looks bad on you. Do you still have an iPhone 4? No!?! What!?! Why not!? When the iPhone 4 was launched, it was AWESOME! Oh, wait, the iPhone 12 is better? Turns out, technology improves. What you thought was best two or three years ago is now a dinosaur in the technology world. So, just like IT, Finance, and Operations, it’s okay to say, hey, the tech we have now isn’t what we need today to stay competitive for talent.
Did I say demo? For the love of St. Petersburg, Demo! It’s the single best thing you can do to develop yourself around getting smarter about the technology in your functional professional area of expertise.
Too many of us keep processes and systems way too long for reasons that, when you really dig into it, don’t even make sense. “Well, Tim, we have to use this ATS because payroll is tied to it, and payroll says we can’t change.” Um, what!? Does payroll drive revenue for the organization? Does payroll find and develop talent for the future of the organization? Stop it! Stop the excuses.
Oh, Budget!
I forgot it’s the pandemic. You don’t have a budget. Actually, you do. I mean, you’re already spending it on crappy software that isn’t working for you. Stop spending that, and you have all kinds of budgets! I have never met one CEO/CIO/CFO who, when shown a better, more efficient way of doing business wasn’t all in on giving it a try if it didn’t cost them more money. Same money? Okay, let’s do it!
Check out the Greenhouse podcast with Jon and me. He’s a great dude. I love his voice and cadence. I could listen to him all day!
If you know me, you know I love talking about beauty and attractiveness and the impact it has on work! We like to think that how you look has nothing to do with how you perform. Ugly people are told that from birth! “It doesn’t matter how you look, Timmy. You can still be great!”
Academically, that actually does prove out very well, in study after study. In fact, it’s kind of the opposite, and it might be the biggest thing no one talks about at work. This week the newest beauty study hit the street titled, “Student beauty and grades under in-person and remote teaching.”
Okay, I know you’re saying this says student, not employ, so it doesn’t count! Bare with me…
First, this is a legit study, not some vendor survey thing. This was done by a legit PhD at a legit university.
What does the study say?
Why does this matter to remote work?
If we know there is a beauty premium in human behavior when judging the performance of students, how hard is it really for us to believe our supervisors and managers also don’t have a beauty premium when it comes to determining work performance? I would argue that there is very little difference between the two judging activities.
This means as many of our jobs switch to remote, we now have an issue with women having their performance judged harsher than men when working in a remote environment because they will no longer get any beauty premium. Again, this only works with beautiful people. The ugly ones were already getting judged more harshly.
We love to believe that remote work favors females for a number of reasons. Saving time on the commute, easier to arrange care for kids and those they might be responsible for, etc. But now we have this issue!
The work beauty premium is real, and it’s not!
The beauty premium is measurable and has been proven in a number of studies. When judging people, we find it more difficult to judge pretty people harshly but easier to beat down ugly people. It’s not real because it’s totally an unconscious bias that even when we know it’s a problem, we ignore it and keep promoting pretty people over maybe higher performing people who aren’t as pretty.
I just find all of this so fascinating! Two-fold, one in that I’m not what any study would find as traditionally “beautiful” from the male standpoint, and that over a long period of time, centuries, genetically, this actually plays out across all cultures. While one culture might like light skin, tall, slender, and those people will have a beauty premium. Another culture might prefer dark, short, chubby people, and that beauty premium plays itself out.
I just need to find the one culture that likes gingers!
If we could all just be on the same page with most things, life would be considerably easier. I work with a lot of Talent Acquisition and HR leaders who are new to the role, and one of the things I try to advise them on is ensuring the c-suite knows exactly what their plan is, and to make sure it’s also the c-suite’s plan!
I find rarely the two are on the same page about what’s most important and it’s the major reason most HR and TA leaders fail in their role. Nothing to do with functional expertise, and everything to do with misalignment of priorities!
The Conference Board recently did a survey with 750 c-suite executives about this very topic, and here are the results:
Is Promoting Your Hybrid Work Model Your #1 Priority in Talent Acquisition!?
No, it’s not!
Now, moving more quickly in your process to get people hired and onboard definitely might be. Adding automation and technology that will definitely help will be high on your list. Having a more efficient recruiting process would also be very high. So, not completely a misalignment, but #1 seems completely off-base!
I wonder how many heads of TA or HR would have promoting our Hybrid Work Model as their #1 priority right now? I doubt it would be a ton. My guess is filling jobs and doing all those things underneath #1 would be much higher, and promoting hybrid would be way down the list.
What should you do with this information?
It’s a great reminder that throughout the year, we should be setting up some one-on-one time with our individual c-suite leaders to ensure their priorities around talent and our priorities around talent align. If they don’t, we need to make sure we have those discussions and leave the room on the same page moving forward!
Too many of us assume we are on the same page without verifying. I find that these discussions are usually the most valuable you’ll have, and just like our business priorities, we have to do frequent check-ins to ensure those priorities aren’t changing.
What is your #1 priority in Talent Acquisition right now? Hit me in the comments.
Last week I sat down with two of the best in the business when it comes to TA knowledge, my partner in crime on HR Famous, Madeline Laurano, and our good friend, Kyle Lagunas. Jobvite acquired best-of-breed ATS Lever after acquiring a whole bunch of other great TA technologies over the past two years. This now gives Jobvite/Employ three ATSs under their umbrella of products!
The best part of this is this is exactly how we talk shop when we are together sharing drinks at some conference! The three of us will all be out at The HR Technology Conference on September 13-16. Come join us!