Author Archives: Tim Sackett

Career Confessions of Gen-Z: Diversity of Experience Is Truly Valuable

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Growing up, I was not exposed to the most diverse community. I love my little Michigan town, but it’s pretty white. My parents tried to help me experience diversity growing up; they let me go to Japan for an exchange program in 8th grade and let me go off to college in New York. It wasn’t until these experiences that I was truly exposed to communities that were vastly different than my own.

Recently, I got the chance to attend a Diversity and Inclusion Event at the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History in Detroit through my internship at Quicken Loans. While there, I watched 2 different panels of QL employees speaking on the importance of diversity and inclusion within QL and the workplace.

One thing that really stuck with me from this event was when one of the panelists said: “We don’t hire people to check off boxes”. All of the panelists discussed how the diversity of experience was essential for diversity and inclusion to thrive. This really caused a shift in mindset for me.

Growing up, I thought that being diverse was simply the inclusion of people from all different backgrounds and communities. While that is a huge part of diversity, being of a diverse background is only one part of having diverse experiences.

I get that I’m not a minority. I’m a white male that is from a middle-class family in the MidWest. We’re a dime a dozen out here. But this helped me see that just because I’m not of a minority ethnicity or gender or some other quality doesn’t mean that I’m not diverse. Creating a background of diverse experiences is how someone like me can become more inclusive.

I believe that it is essential that we instill these values and this knowledge of diversity in Gen-Z. We are in a world that is more diverse than ever before. We need to create an environment where going out and having diverse experiences is celebrated and isn’t feared. It is vital that our educators and leaders are instilling a celebration and appreciation of diversity in their students and employees.

I’ve always known that diversity is important. But now I understand why. Bringing people together of different backgrounds and with different experiences is where you get s*** done and you get it done well. And that’s pretty freaking cool.

 

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.

The Candidate Bill of Rights (revisited)

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In November 2010 Monster.com asked me to write a post on a hot topic at that time a “Candidate Bill of Rights“.  Needless to say, I’m not a huge fan of a Candidate Bill of Rights – I’m a Capitalist and believe in a free-market system of HR and Recruiting.  Here was my main point then, and what they are still today:

Candidates –

You Don’t Have To Apply:

  • If we have a crappy working environment – you don’t have to apply
  • If we don’t pay appropriately for the market – you don’t have to apply
  • If we don’t give my employees opportunities for growth – you don’t have to apply
  • If we don’t treat you like a human – you don’t have to apply
  • If we don’t give you a full job description – you don’t have to apply
  • If we don’t tell you every step of the process – you don’t have to apply

You Don’t Have To Work Here:

  • If we make you wait endlessly without any feedback – you don’t have to work here
  • If we make you an offer that you don’t like – you don’t have to work here
  • If we don’t offer the right work-life balance – you don’t have to work here
  • If we give you a bad Candidate Experience – you don’t have to work here

Candidates – if any of the above is true – you have some decisions to make:

1. Can I live with what I know about the company and the experience they put me through to get this offer?

2. IF SO, do I want to come and work for the company?

3. IF YES – welcome aboard, you’re coming on ‘Eyes Wide Open’

4. IF NO – thanks, and good luck, we’ll keep trying to get better in case you want to apply again some other time.

You see we all have choices. If you don’t like the way I’m treating you as a candidate, don’t come and work at my company.  I would hope that most HR Pros are smart enough to get this fact. Treat candidates like garbage and they’ll stop applying for your jobs, thus making your job all the more difficult to fill.  That might be a bit pie-in-the-sky thinking because I also know way too many HR/Talent Pros that don’t get this!

They have a little bit of power and have decided to torture candidates with painfully long and arduous application and selection processes that aren’t helpful to their own companies, statistically, and definitely aren’t helpful to the candidates.  During a recession, they don’t see much impact from these horrible processes, but eventually, the tide turns and face the results of their actions.  Karma is a bitch!

So, do we need a candidate bill of rights? No!  Do you need to spend a ton of time, effort, and resources on candidate experience? No, as well!  Don’t go right ditch-left ditch and start over correcting.  Treat candidates like you would want to be treated.  Or don’t, and pay the price! Have a few standards and etiquette, and some manners.  It’s not hard and it’s not expensive.

Rehabbing Your Career In One Easy-ish Step! #8ManRotation

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It’s been a while since I written about HR and sports! It’s one of my favorite things to do. There are so many great sports stories in our lives that give us great insight into possible solutions we can actually use in real life.

This most recent example comes to us from the land of the NBA (National Basketball Association). Right now in the NBA, it’s the offseason where all the big trade deals and free-agent signings happen. You might have heard of a little-known player, Lebron James, going to the Los Angeles Lakers! This post is not about LBJ!

This post is about a player coming off a bad injury, DeMarcus “Boogie” Cousins, who played for the New Orleans Pelicans last year, and, before the injury, was arguably a top 25 player in the NBA. His numbers last year were 25 points per game, 12.9 rebounds per game, and 5.4 assists per game! Those are giant numbers.

He tears is Achilles tendon and he is becoming a free agent this season. So, he’s got a problem.

No team wants to really give him a long-term contract, because that is a bad injury and they aren’t sure how he’ll come back, plus he won’t really be ready until January, so he’ll miss part of the season. He’s only 27 years old, so he is fairly young, but big guys don’t have a great track record of coming back from this injury.

So, what should he do?

He signs a one-year, veteran mid-level exemption contract for $5.4 million. Which sounds like a lot, but in reality, he’s probably worth $20 million+ per year for 4 or 5 years if he’s not injured.  He signs this contract with the NBA Champion Golden State Warriors, who already have the best roster on the planet!

Why?

This is about rehabbing his career and rehabbing his image.

Boogie hasn’t been known as the best player you want to play with or coach. Golden State is known to be the best “team” in the NBA, in that they have mega-stars who take on roles and play within the system, and they win, and they have fun doing it. Boogie needs a place that will let him come back slowly, and not have huge pressure on him to carry a team. He also needs some of that Golden State shine on his personality to show other teams he can play with other stars and be coached.

Most people would not have done what Boogie is doing!

Boogie could have gotten more money and probably multiple years, at a discount, from some teams that are struggling and willing to take a risk on a potential superstar if he comes back strong.

Most people would have taken the longer contract and more money, but that’s not how you rehab your career!

If your career is at a bad spot there is really only one great way to rehab yourself. You got to work for the best brand/organization that you can, at whatever position they’ll hire you in for, even if that means you take a huge pay cut to do it! In a great organization, you’ll be able to move up quickly, or move to another organization and continue your path back up.

Boogie going to Golden State isn’t about winning a championship or signing a long-term deal with them. They don’t have the room for the level of deal he’ll sign. It’s about a short-term stop to rehab his body and his image, so he can sign a mega-deal next season. Be willing to put yourself into the best organization for less money, and long-term it will pay off for your exponentially!

Career Confessions from Gen Z: How Painful is Your Onboarding?

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One of the most painfully awkward experiences of my life was my college orientation. I remember being so excited to go; this is the start of a whole new journey where you’re supposed to meet all of your lifelong friends and become a whole new person! I failed to remember that forcing a group of 17 and 18-year-olds to try and become friends in an 8-hour time span probably won’t work that well. Not only did I have to suffer through one college orientation, I had to do ANOTHER one when I decided to transfer to my current school. College orientations are absolutely necessary but absolutely agonizing.

Since I detest college orientations, I am not looking forward to the lifetime of onboarding processes that I will have to endure. The average person will hold 12-15 jobs in their lifetime, and Gen-Z’ers will definitely raise that number significantly. I’m already on my 5th job and I’m 19! While I may need to accept the fact that I have many onboardings ahead of me, here is what I suggest to make them as painless as possible for everyone involved:

  1. Short and Sweet: The general rule for all onboardings should be the shorter, the better. Just because you have a full day set aside, doesn’t mean you need to use the whole thing! Many people hold the same resentment to onboardings and orientation as me and will immediately forget approximately 97% of the information given at these sessions. So, instead of spending more time droning on, have your employees get started and let them figure things out as they come!
  2. Specificity is key: I get that there’s a lot of general information that needs to be relayed to your employees, but the more specific you can be with every person’s individual needs, the better. Not only is it more efficient because it is straight to the point, but it will force your onboardie’s to pay attention because the information directly applies to them!
  3. Food, food, and more food: If you are going to make your new employees sit through a full day of onboarding, there better be food. And not just some crappy sandwich platter. Food is essential in keeping your new employees awake and alert. Also, coffee, soda, or other refreshments should be widely available as well.
  4. Cut Out the Fluff: While preparing onboarding procedures, do your best to cut out all non-essential information. We don’t need an hour presentation on your company’s culture. Let us live and learn by experiencing it ourselves!

The goal of an onboarding process should be to make everything as clear as possible to your newbies. You don’t need to get us excited about working or pump us up: odds are that us Gen-Zer’s are already excited because it’s our first real job! I just started my internship this week and I didn’t need the constant pump-up music and overdone cheering and applause (for literally everyone and everything); I’m already excited to start! So, stuff us with junk food, coffee, and essential information and then send us on our way to get started!

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.

4th of July funny t-shirts! (Warning – prepare to be offended!)

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So, basically, in America, we celebrate our independence by grilling hot dogs, drinking beer, blowing stuff up, and buying t-shirts that somehow make us feel more patriotic than we really are. In recent years, the 4th of July t-shirt game has been getting very serious! Here are some of the ones that make me laugh!

Okay, this last one just made me laugh, but it mostly has nothing to do with the 4th of July, mostly…

Happy 4th of July, my friends!

Be safe!

The Grass Isn’t Always Greener…

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This is HR’s go-to advice for employees who put in their two-week notice, especially if that employee is heading to a competitor:

“Just remember! The grass isn’t always greener!” 

HR is mostly right. I’d say here’s the actual breakdown of ‘greenest’:

  • 50% is actually about the same shade of green. You’re moving to just move. You’ll find the job, the people, the money, everything is almost the same. The only change is the name and maybe the location by a bit.
  • 30% is going to be a nice shade of light brown, meaning the grass isn’t green at all, it’s dead! HR wants to believe this number is higher but it’s not, but it’s high enough to give some folks some pause before making such a big decision.
  • 10% is way greener! Like green M&M green. Dream job green! Everything is better and you’re so happy you made the move. You found your dream job!
  • 10% isn’t grass at all. Someone replaced the grass with some other material, like in Phoenix where grass can’t grow so they pave the front yard and paint it green, or just put in rock and cactus. This is completely something you didn’t expect. You were hoping for a better job, and you got something that isn’t better but not worse, it’s not even the job you expected, so you can’t really compare.

So, you have about a 10% chance of getting what you think you’re getting. Not good odds, but like I said, most employees way overthink their odds on this and probably believe they have a 70-90% of bettering themselves when they move. Most will just stay the same or get slightly worse.

Why do we believe moving is better?

1. You’re being sold. Sold by a recruiter and a hiring manager that you’ll be moving from a trailer park to Disney World. You really, really want to believe that’s true, so you buy!

2. You over-value that what we don’t know, over what we already have. This happens in so many areas of our life. Relationships. Jobs. A table at a restaurant.

3. You over-value what others have, over what you have. Think about this for a minute. You’re so eager to get out of this job, yet others are so eager to get this job. What does that say? You’re brilliant and everyone else is an idiot? Probably not. The truth is usually somewhere in the middle.

Everyone keeps telling me all these ‘new’ young workers just want to jump from job to job. They don’t have loyalty, etc. The reality is much less about their desire to move, and more about them being more naive to the realities of changing jobs.  We all loved changing jobs until it backfires and you leave something good, for something crappy.

Once that happens, you’re less likely to change jobs the rest of your career, even if you’re in a bad job! Don’t underestimate what you currently have. It’s probably way better than you’re making it out to be, and the new gig isn’t as good as it sounds. That’s not sexy, that’s just reality.

The Real Value of Conference Speaker Feedback

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I had a friend call me last week. We spoke at the same conference and we both just got our feedback from those gigs. His feedback was mostly fine, but there were also some pretty hurtful statements people made.

I took a look at mine. To be humble, I rocked my session at the conference! So, I anticipated it would be pretty good. It was, mostly. I had 165 responses that were like this (these are actual verbatim responses):

  • Great storyteller and engages his audience.
  • Great presentation. Lots of good takeaways.
  • The BEST session I attended!!!
  • This was my favorite session of the conference! Tim was awesome! (thanks, mom!)
  • Very meaty information that energized my recruiting battery!
  • Wow! I couldn’t write fast enough!

I could go on, but you get the picture! So, there were 161 of these little nuggets of love and affirmation that I’ll carry around in my pocket for a while! There were also 4 nuggets like this:

  • The session did not meet my needs.
  • Made some bold statements that I considered to be offensive and insensitive.
  • Left the presentation with no takeaways. Content was lacking. (With “NO” takeaways! Really? Not one? Not even, I don’t think short white dudes should wear bow ties! Nothing?!) 
  • He bad mouthed Aerotek Staffing on four different occasions which I found tasteless. (it was only 3 times, FYI!) 

One big thing conferences don’t want you to do is also sell your products or services. 8% of the audience said I was trying to sell to them! I never once mentioned my own company! I talked about my blogging, which I give away for free. I guess I was trying to sell my ideas…

When I dug into my friend’s comments, what I found was he basically got the same kind of stuff. The majority was really, really positive and thankful, but there was a minority of these people that for whatever reason just didn’t like it the presentation. It could have the content. It could have been the style. It’s probably more the commenter and the day they’re having.

This is what happens when we get feedback as adult learners. We ignore all the positive stuff and we solely focus on the negative stuff, even when the negative stuff is just a minority of the overall message.

“Hey, you are a 4.7 out of 5! Awesome! Wow! Also, could you tighten up your project timelines a bit? That would just be a bonus.” Yeah, so, well, I guess I now suck at getting my projects done on time and my boss was soooo pissed!

I know many speakers who refuse to read their conference speaker feedback comments because they’ve figured out this about themselves. They’ll overly focus on the negative, obsess over it, and basically waste hours of their life overmuch to do about nothing. It was an hour we spent together. I hope you liked it, I’m sorry if you didn’t, I’ll try to better next time.

There is value in the feedback and think it basically boils down to this: 

1. Did the majority of people receive my message in a positive way?

2. Did I offend anyone, that in a normal worldly way, should feel offended?

3. If I was going to be speaking on another topic, would most of the audience be interested in hearing me speak on that topic?

I want people to get some value out of hearing me speak. I don’t want anyone to be offended, but I know some people might. I hope that number is extremely low, like one or zero. In the end, I want people to say I like how he presents and I would like to see him speak again if given the chance about another topic.

Conference feedback is about polar extremes. The people who leave comments either loved you or hated you. The person that just felt like it was ‘just fine’, has no desire or passion to leave a comment, and that would be the actual most valuable feedback a speaker could actually get!

 

The Single Biggest Factor in Finding Your Dream Job!

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I’ve been given the opportunity to speak to a number of high school and college graduating seniors. The one common question from both groups, I get frequently, is “how can I get my dream job?”  It’s a simple question, with about one million possible answers.  Which makes it a tough question to answer in front of a group.

I think I might have found the perfect answer to this question.  From Penn State football coach, James Franklin, when asked at a conference how does a graduate assistant move up in the college football coaching ranks:

“It comes down to people and opportunities for growth. I always tell people to stay broke for as long as possible.  When you have a car payment and other things like that, it becomes a factor. Keeping money out of it allows you to chase your dreams longer.”

Stay broke as long as possible.

Internet personality, Gary Vaynerchuk (Gary Vee), says basically the same thing when people ask him how they work at something they just love to do. He will tell them you need to then live the lifestyle that affords you the ability to do what you love. If you love to pet puppies all day, you can’t live in a mansion! You’ll probably live in a box.

But, if that’s truly your passion in life, then that’s what you need to do to make it happen. What he finds is people who are willing to lower their lifestyle to do what they love are usually the ones who end up making money doing what they love. The theory being they found a way to live doing what they love, and little by little, they’ll find a way to make money doing what they love. Most people are unwilling to change their lifestyle to do what they love.

I remember back to when I first got out of college and was making $20,000 at my first job.  The reality was, I could have gone almost anywhere and made $20,000.  The money wasn’t the draw of the position, the opportunity was.  If it wasn’t for me, I could go and try something else. I had a crappy car and $400 per month apartment. I didn’t have life obligations that were going to stop me from chasing a dream.

Fast forward five years and now I have a new car, a new house, and a new kid.  Chasing a dream would be much more difficult.

You hear it all the time, chasing dreams is for the young. Not because the young necessarily have better dreams or are better equipped at chasing dreams, it’s because the young can ‘afford’ to chase their dreams.  They, usually, have little holding them back, financially.  The older you get, the more responsibilities you have and the larger tax bracket you’re usually in.

Leaving a $20,000 job to chase my dream wasn’t going to be a problem. Leaving $100,000 job to chase my dream was going to be a problem.

No one really wants to tell you this in their ultra-motivational writings and speakings.  “Go chase your dream! Don’t let anything or anyone stop you!… Just be prepared to have nothing for a while!”

We never get to hear that last part.

Want to be an NFL Referee? It’s a great gig! You just have to put about 15-20 years in at being a referee at every other level where you make peanuts and have to work other jobs to make ends meet. Yes, you can get there.  No, you won’t get rich getting there.

You can definitely go out and work towards getting your dream job.   Being broke will help you with that.  It takes away the fear of failure and losing what you have.  If you have very little, losing it doesn’t seem as bad.  If you have a nice life, giving it all up, seems extremely hard.

Being broke, in a very ironic way, gives you more options, when it comes to a dream job!

The Top 7 Rookie Hiring Mistakes!

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One of my awesome recruiting managers at HRU (the technical staffing company I run) is in the process of making his first hire! It’s pretty exciting. Do you remember the first hire you ever got to make on your own?

You get nervous! You don’t want to make a mistake, because you know how awful it is to have a bad employee working for you, so the last thing you want to do is make a wrong decision. You want this first hire to be a rock star!

All of our managers who are going through the hiring process for the first time all face the same issues. They are unsure of what to really do. If you’re a parent, the best analogy I can give is when the hospital lets you leave with your newborn! Do you remember that?

You get to the lobby. You have your baby strapped into that car seat like they are about to enter a crash test site! When you reach the doors, they slide open, and you kind of look around. You’re waiting, for just a second, for someone to stop you! You can’t believe anyone would just allow you to walk out of the hospital with a baby! Did you guys even check who I am! I have a hard time throwing my clothes all the way into the hamper, and you’re just letting me leave with a baby!?!

That’s the feeling all of our managers get when they hire for the first time! Wait, you’re letting me choose!? Are you sure you’re okay with this?!

To help our new managers I put together the Top 7 Rookie Hiring Mistakes for managers to avoid. Here they are:

1. You wait for HR and/or Talent Acquisition to control the process. This is your hire, that you’ll have to manage, live with, and fire if they suck! Get involved! Immediately!

2. You fall into the trap of wanting to hire someone who is perfect. You’re not perfect. Your CEO is not perfect. No one is perfect. Hire someone who can succeed in your job, your organization, under your leadership. Don’t hire perfect.

3. You try and hire someone who is just like you! You were successful in the job, which is why you are now the leader. So, it makes sense that someone just like you will also be successful. This tactic fails more times then it succeeds because we actually suck at managing ourselves! Find someone who compliments your weaknesses, and has the skills to do the job and you’ll have a better chance to find success. You’ll also add more diversity to your team!

4. You don’t move fast enough. If you interview a very talented person, there is a good chance someone else is also interviewing this very talented person. Pull the trigger and get them before someone else steals them from you!

5. You wait too long to fire a miss-hire. First-time leaders are the worse with this. They feel like they can make anyone work! Plus, they feel more ownership since it was their first time. Stop it! This won’t be the last time you make a bad hire. Give yourself the best leadership gift ever and fire a bad hire quickly!

6. You don’t believe it’s your job to recruit and source talent. Guess what, champ? The organization gave you the keys to run a department. They believe in you. If I’m given the keys to run anything, I’m running the whole thing! It’s my department, which means I own the talent, which means I’m going to help find the right talent for my team. I know what is needed better than anyone! TA can help me, that’s great! But I own this!

7. You believe that leadership will judge you based on this hire. Leadership won’t judge you based on one hire. Leadership will judge you based on a pattern of hiring success, or lack thereof. One hire will not define you. Many hires will. R.E.L.A.X.

So, what do you think, HR and Talent Pros? What are the biggest mistakes you see Rookie managers making when it comes to hiring? Hit me in the comments!

Your Weekly Dose of HR Tech: @Filtered_ The 1st Objective Tech Interview Platform

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Today on the Weekly Dose I review the technical interview platform Filtered. Filtered is not the first technical interview platform on the market, but they might be the most advanced interviewing platform for IT talent that I’ve seen on the market.

Filtered was built by engineers who turned into Recruiters, but decided to turn back into engineers because the tech interview world was so broken they felt compelled to do something about it! What they did was build an IT interview platform that stops all of the cheating that is currently going on in the industry!

If you hire IT talent and you use some kind of coding test, etc., you already know how the game is played and won. There are massive corruption and cheating going on in IT hiring, because the current interview platforms allow for one person to log on and take an interview for another, pass it, and then the person who can’t do the work shows up, or shows up at a much higher pay rate then they should because they tested higher then what they are really capable of.

Filtered puts a stop to this in a number of ways using technology that constantly scans works, takes facial snapshots every few seconds, and utilizes machine learning to raise red flags of potential cheaters in progress of assessment.

What do I like about Filtered? 

– Filtered security is groundbreaking when it comes to stopping the cheating that is going on with your IT hiring. Filtered doesn’t allow cutting and pasting of code, it doesn’t allow the person who starts the test to get up and someone else to sit in and finish, it shows you exact GPS data of where a person is taking the test.

Why is this important? When Filtered ran a recent test for a client they were able to show one IT Contingent company the client was working with had 20+ IT assessments take place for 20+ different candidates from the exact same house in New Jersey! Cheating is going on, you are either ignoring it or don’t care!

– The Filtered team works with your IT team to create the right assessments and challenges that are needed to not just find qualified candidates but to actually find candidates that are the best that are applying.

– Recorded video interviews explaining why they did an assessment or challenge in the way they completed the task.

– Real-time data ranking so corporations can see which recruiters or which contingent firms are providing the best talent for your organization.

– Filtered shows verified skills being assessed, but also allows candidates to show other skills they might have as well, which can be verified within the system.

I love interview technology that helps organizations make better selections. One problem we’ve found out within the industry is that if people can cheat, they’ll find a way to cheat, so the technology has to stay out in front of the cheaters! Filtered is at the forefront of stopping the corruption that is taking place in the contingent IT industry.

There’s a great chance your contingent providers of IT talent are cheating your system. It’s rampant coast to coast. The most common is having someone else take the assessment, which gives you the belief you’re getting senior talent and paying for senior talent, and in reality, a junior/entry level IT person shows up to work.

I would encourage you all to demo Filtered and compare them to other technical interview platforms you are using. Filtered also has built a Data Science specific assessment as well, which is the only one I’ve seen in the industry. In a growing field like data science, it’s easy to make bad hires, so this is one more reason to look at the platform!

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.