Career Confessions of GenZ w/@CamSackett: Maybe You Should Take Our Smartphones Away!

Posted on March 21, 2018 by Tim Sackett

March Madness is fully upon us. This season unites us all over a love for college basketball or in my case, a love for winning money by googling an article about who the “Cinderella” teams are and somehow winning your neighborhood pool (it’s only happened once). Whether your team is out (sorry Dad) or still fighting (Go Blue!), the close matches between teams can be super distracting to everyone. I know that I was watching a game in class the other day, and I don’t even like basketball that much!

It’s been found that March Madness may potentially cost employers $4 billion in productivity. It’s almost impossible to stay focused when there’s a #16 seed beating a #1 seed! (shoutout to the person running the UMBC twitter). One negative marker of Gen-Z is our ability to be easily distracted or our inability to pay attention to one thing for long periods of time. An average college student’s attention span is somewhere between 10-15 minutes, while most classes are over an hour. Although this isn’t an argument about our screwed up education system, it does open up a conversation about how to best approach the use of things such as cell phones and social media which can be very distracting.

I’ve had a cell phone since I was 10 when a family friend forgot to pick me up at swim practice. Some younger members of Gen-Z have gotten them even younger than me. We have grown up with these distractions around us at all times, and it can be difficult to manage.

I am a big fan of teachers that try to embrace the qualities of Gen-Z rather than fight it. More and more, I see teachers and professors trying to implement activities using cell phones or allowing laptops in class. Although I commend these teachers for trying to work with us, it isn’t working. Every single time I bring my laptop to class, I end up online shopping and missing some important information. The same can be said when cell phones or social media is involved.

Although it seems I’m advocating for an eradication of all cell phones and social media use during work hours, I’m not. Frankly, I don’t really know the rules of cell phones at most offices, but I know that my Dad is pretty quick to respond to my texts during the day. What I am saying is that a healthy encouragement of no cell phone use is a good idea.

I think that something like a station where you could drop off and charge your phone for a period of time could be really beneficial to boosting productivity. When I have to get work done, I’ll go put my phone across my apartment from me and turn it off completely to avoid distractions. Whoever says they are good at multi-tasking is LYING. Whenever my phone lights up, I want to check it and I know you do too.

I don’t have a solid answer for you on this one. It’s a tricky topic that isn’t black and white, but it is important to acknowledge. It is important to remind your Gen-Z employees that they are adults and cell phones aren’t banned like they are in a lot of schools. Also, it is important to remind them that this is a place of work and they are getting paid to do a job, not to sit on their phones and send Snapchats about how bored they are (that’s all that we are doing on Snapchat. I promise!). Let me know what you think in the comments!

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 GenZ? Ask us in the comments and I’ll respond in an upcoming blog post right here on the project. Have some feedback for me? Again, please share in the comments and/or connect with me on LinkedIn.

Your Weekly Dose of HR Tech: @MontageTalent – The Better Candidate Experience

Posted on March 20, 2018 by Tim Sackett

This week on the Weekly Dose I review the interview and hiring platform Montage. Montage was started as one of those technologies that filled in some of the huge gaps that most ATS systems just didn’t address. It’s easiest to think of them as an interview platform, but over the last few years, they’ve really grown beyond that.

Montage is an enterprise level TA technology that is looking to transform how you initially interact with candidates. They work with your ATS as an integration. Montage does both on-demand types of things: text-based screening, automated recorded-voice screening, on-demand video interviews, and integrated assessments. They also do live screening and interview related activities, from scheduling and event management, to live video interviewing and the ability to do things like live coding screens (134 different languages) and whiteboard exercises.

Montage is not a low-end video-only type of interview platform, this is the real deal, that does just about everything you would ever need when it comes to screening and interviewing candidates.

What I like about Montage:

– They’ve integrated some A.I. functionality that gives recruiters an ‘assistant’ to help schedule multiple interviews/screens with candidates and hiring managers without the recruiter having to get involved beyond the initial request.

– Built for both high volume hiring with on-demand text screening, and highly specialized recruiting with interview screen sharing and whiteboard exercises available to recruiters and hiring managers.

– The platform is built to give your organization the ability to set up the process how you want it. Want one position to have an on-demand, timed video interview, great, you can do that. Another position to have a text screen, another position to have an untimed assessment, and video, and yet another to have an essay and a coding example. You can basically do anything and everything with the platform. Quite frankly, you have so many options it’s a bit overwhelming when you first look at it!

– Recruiter dashboard allows you to compare candidates and see manager feedback. You can also set up auto-reminders for both managers and candidates that will keep going until completion.

– Mobile optimized to the point that hiring managers are using the mobile functionality to consume video and other content from the platform about 85% of the time, and can respond via mobile as well with their feedback.

Montage really defines what a screening and interview platform should be like for an enterprise-level organization. You need all the bells and whistles, you need a complete ability to configure how you want, and you need the ultimate flexibility that you control. This is not a plug and play just take it off the shelf kind of product. Montage works with your team to really help you design and understand the power of the platform and all the positions you hire.

If you are hiring thousands of employees per year, across multiple disciplines, and multiple countries, Montage could a great tool for your organization to make you more efficient, deliver a better candidate experience, and increase your quality of hire. Well worth a demo. Be prepared to see a lot, because the system can do a lot. The platform definitely has the ability to transform the way you hire.

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

How to be an Adult! An Employer’s Edition

Posted on March 19, 2018 by Tim Sackett

Don’t buy into the hype! “Oh, just do what you love!” That’s not being an adult, that’s being a moron! Just do what makes you happy! No, that’s what a child does.

“Tim, we just want to hire some ‘adults’!” I hear this statement from a lot of CEOs I talk with currently!

That means most of the people they are hiring, aren’t considered adults by these leaders. Oh, they fit the demographic of being an adult from an age perspective, but they still act like children!

I tell people when I interview them and they ask about our culture I say, “We hire adults”.

That means we hire people into positions where they are responsible for something. Because we hire adults, they take responsibility for what they are responsible for. If I have to tell them to do their jobs, they’re not adults, they’re children. We don’t employee children.

I think about 70% of the positions that are open in the world could have the same title –

“Wanted: Adults”.

Those who read that and got it, could instantly be hired and they would be above average employees for you! Those who read it and didn’t understand, are part of the wonder of natural selection.

How do you be an Adult?

– You do the stuff you say you’re going to do. Not just the stuff you like, but all the stuff.

– You follow the rules that are important to follow for society to run well. Do I drive the speed limit every single time? No. Do I come to work when my employer says I need to be there? Yes.

– You assume positive intent on most things. For the most part, people will want to help you, just as you want to help others. Sometimes you run into an asshole.

– You understand that the world is more than just you and your desires.

– You speak up for what is right when you can. It’s easy to say you can always speak up for what is right, but then you wouldn’t be thinking like an adult.

– You try and help those who can’t help themselves. Who can’t, not who won’t.

My parents and grandparents would call this common sense, but I don’t think ‘being an adult’ is common sense anymore. Common sense, to be common, has to be done by most. Being an adult doesn’t seem to be very common lately!

So, you want to hire some adults? I think this starts with us recognizing that being an adult is now a skill in 2018. A very valuable skill. Need to fill a position, maybe we start by first finding adults, then determining do we need these adults to have certain skills, or can we teach adults those skills!

The key to great hiring in today’s world is not about attracting the right skills, it’s about attracting adults who aren’t just willing to work, but understand the value of work and individuals who value being an adult.

I don’t see this as a negative. I see it as an opportunity for organizations who understand this concept. We hire adults first, skills second. Organizations that do this, will be the organizations that win.

The Motley Fool has a great section in their employee handbook that talks about being an adult:

“We are careful to hire amazing people. Our goal is to unleash you to perform at your peak and stay out of your way. We don’t have lots of rules and policies here by design. You are an amazing adult and we trust you to carve your own path, set your own priorities, and ask for help when you need it.”

You are an amazing ‘adult’ and we trust you…

If only it was so simple!

3 Ways Employers Should Be Encouraging March Madness!

Posted on March 16, 2018 by Tim Sackett

For those that know me, I’m a huge basketball fan. Pro, college, AAU, high school, hell, if you really dig into my past you would probably find me hanging out at some playground breaking down the defense effort of a pickup game between grade school kids. So, when March Madness time comes around each year I’m like many of your employees. I’m trying to find the best ways to work and watch basketball, or at the very least stay up on my brackets and see who is getting upset!

With all the hype over the past few years about lost productivity, do to March Madness, in the workplace. I felt it was my duty to provide HR Pros with some helpful tips and tricks to get your staff to highly productive during this time of year.

Here are my ideas:

1. Put up TVs throughout the office. Let’s face it, you really only have one or two hoops junkies in the office, and those folks usually spend vacation time to ensure they don’t miss a minute. Everyone else just wants to see scores and highlights. They’re a casual fan. They’re willing to work a perfectly normal day, and will probably be just a productive, if not more, with the TVs steaming all the games in the background. Plus, if you get a close game or big upset, you’ll get some team excitement in the air. This also stops most of your staff trying to stream the games on their desktops for the entire afternoon.

2. Call off work those afternoons. Let’s face it, March Madness is pretty close to a national holiday as we will ever get. Doesn’t matter if you’re female or male, young or old, what religion you are, we all love the drama and excitement of March Madness. Just close the office. Make a deal with your staff to reach certain goals and if they’re met, take them to the local watering hole yourself and have some fun with it. Employees like to rally around a fun idea. You don’t have to make everything fun, all the time, but once in a while, it helps to lift productivity.

3. Shut off all access. Yep, you read that correctly. Have IT shut down all access to anything related to March Madness. Threaten to fire any employee caught checking scores on their smartphone, or calling a friend to see how it’s going. Fear! Fear is a great short-term lifter of productivity. Whether we like to admit it, or not, it’s true. If you went out right now into your office and told the entire staff at the end of the day you’re firing the least productive person, you would see productivity shoot through the roof! You would also see about half your staff, the half you want to keep, put in their notice over the next 4-6 weeks.

The reality is, most people will do business as usual. While the CNN’s of the world love to point to the millions of dollars American corporations lose during March Madness, it’s no different than so many things that can consume our thoughts in any given day.

I do think HR and leadership, each year, lose out on a great way to have fun and raise engagement during March Madness. It’s something most of your staff has some interest in, and depending on your city and the schools your employees went to, it can get heightened pretty significantly.

For the record, I’m not picking Michigan State. I want to with all my might, but I’m nervous that my bracket mojo would work the opposite, so I’ll pick someone else, and feel awesome when Sparty wins and I lose my bracket!

Are HR Conferences Responsible for Ensuring You Connect? #UltiConnect

Posted on March 15, 2018 by Tim Sackett

So, this week I’m out at Ultimate Software’s annual customer conference called Ultimate Connections. They do a great job with their conference, and like their software, they’re willing to change quickly and try stuff.

A couple of things happened while I was here and it got me thinking about what the true value of any conference is we attend. Of course, the easy answer is always – it’s about connecting with peers and learning! But, then you show up at the conference and you talk to know one, you ask no questions, and you’re back in your room by 8 pm.

Ultimate Connections has peer networking time, but like many conferences, they make these sessions, with activities, based on the size of similar organizations. This is brilliant for a number of reasons because you now will make some really good connections and share your pain and successes, and down the road when you have a question you now have a handful of people to reach out to!

Speaking of questions. You know that awkward time at the end of conference sessions when the speaker says – “So, any questions?” and you hear crickets, or that one person who will ask, “Is the powerpoint deck available?”

Ultimate figured this happens to everyone so what’s a better way to increase engagement? How about you give the session attendees a phone number to text your questions to throughout the session!? It’s simple and you can’t believe how many questions come in. As a speaker, you bring a partner who can filter similar questions and now you have some real dynamic Q&A to go along with your session!

Conferences, for the most part, are all fairly similar. You get some great content, some average, some cool keynotes, some parties, a vendor show, etc. The reality is the best conference you’ll ever attend is the one where you remember actually connecting with real people, and you maintain those connections.

That will be a great takeaway for the Ultimate team in how can they continue the great connections beyond the conference with their customers. Not only is a super value-add for the attendees, but it also ensures higher retention when you can build your professional network because of the technology you’re using.

So, as the HR conference season gets into full swing, challenge yourself to force yourself to make connections with people you don’t know and build that network!

HR Blogging is about making HR Connections #UltiConnect

Posted on March 14, 2018 by Tim Sackett

An HR friend of mine, Cheryl Nelson, and I are out at Ultimate Connections, Ultimate Software’s annual user conference. I twisted her arm to get her on video because she just started writing her own HR blog after reading hundreds of my posts!

Cheryl’s new blog is called “Kolor Me HR” check it out. Cheryl is a real-life HR leader/Pro who is in the trenches every day. I love when practitioners take up writing because that’s when you really learn that we are all in this together!

Cheryl said she was nervous about doing this video, but said, “Amazing things happen when you say Yes!” She even wrote a post on that concept! I love it! I think you’ll agree, she was great!

The Weekly Dose of HR Tech: Foresight – Workforce Planning Tech

Posted on March 13, 2018 by Tim Sackett

Today on the Weekly Dose I review workforce planning technology, Foresight.Foresight is billed as the world’s first Recruitment Forecasting technology.It creates an accurate forecast of hiring need across a specified tactical time frame.

About once a year I’m completely shocked and surprised by a technology and this is the case with Foresight. I told the Foresight team, and I’ll tell you, this is the most impressive piece of HR Technology I’ve seen in a long time!

Foresight was built by some corporate talent acquisition professionals that got sick and tired of putting out fires. What we know if TA has very little control over workforce forecasting it comes from hiring managers, CFOs, CEOs, etc. So, they built a technology that kept that in mind, and got them out of fighting the recruiting fires of ‘we need to hire 100 engineers in thirty days’, ‘oh, wait, we need to layoff 300 now instead’, ‘check that, hire 1,000 total across all functions’!

What I like about Foresight:

– The platform sends out an internal email to each hiring manager from the executive explaining what needs to take place, and takes them into the systems and walks them through a very short forecasting process (15 min.) set of questions (executive can also speak to the team via video as well).

– The process takes them through the main areas of: headcount planning, known active recruiting, potential growth needs, and interns/apprenticeships. Calculates everything in a roll-up, and gives the organization a predicted recruitment path for the next twelve months.

– Hiring managers have to follow the system, they can’t skip steps or change. They can leave comments to explain, but they have to put in something.

– Executives get updates on hiring managers not completely their forecast.

– The platform works off live, real-time data, as a position gets filled, everything is updated, someone leaves, another update. Real current recruitment needs are at your fingertips, across your entire organization. Update forecasts can be sent out monthly, quarterly, up to the organization.

– After hiring manager puts in the forecast, there is an approval roll-up that takes place, so when it all comes back to TA, the department is ready to go with full approval.

Basically, anyone in the organization, from TA leader to hiring managers, to executives, can get a list of every single role being recruited for and when that role needs to be filled.

I’m in love with this from the simplicity of how it works to how if used consistently it becomes a cultural driver around your talent strategy. Everyone is onboard and in the know of what’s going on. Clearly, this is an enterprise level technology. You probably don’t need forecasting tech if you’re hiring 100 employees a year, but 500-100,000 hires, across multiple locations and countries, you need this.

Well worth a demo if you find yourself in a very typical TA role of constantly starting and stopping, and not really having a great idea around what the organization needs to hire on an ongoing basis. Bad TA happens when you can’t get out of firefighting mode. Great TA happens when you have a plan and can go make real long-term strategies to attract great talent.

The Email Every Employee Wishes They Sent After Leaving!

Posted on March 12, 2018 by Tim Sackett

Please raise your hand if you have ever drafted an email that you desperately wanted to fire off to your entire organization, or leadership, only to delete it, so to not ruin your career? I know most of you have because sometimes, in HR, we get to deal with those poor souls who didn’t have the willpower to push ‘Delete’ and instead pushed ‘Send’.

In the HR business, we call those employees ‘Former Employees’! I’ve coined a name for those emails I like to call them ‘The Lotto Email’! It’s the email you would feel comfortable sending the moment you return from picking up that overly sized Powerball check you just won. You now have I-Don’t-Give-A-Sh*t money and you’re completely unfiltered.

I don’t hold out hope I will ever win the lottery but I imagine the email might look something like this:

Dear Fellow Employees,

I’m Rich Beeatch! (click here for context)

That being said I’d like to say a few things before not packing up any of this crap in my office and leaving forever. To make this easier for you to cut and paste and send around later, I’ll bullet point this out into chunks – USA Today style – because I know most of you are slow and lose attention quickly:

– Mr. CEO – I know you think it’s probably adorable how you make comments about every woman in the office’s ass behind closed doors, but it’s not, it’s creepy. Just like you.

– Mr. CFO – You’re an accountant, calm the f@#K down, you’re not that important. Just tell us how much money we have and go back to being boring.

– Mrs. HR – Nobody likes you. This is just confirmation. BTW, everyone lies on your engagement surveys because all the managers use them as weapons, so it’s easier to lie and make you feel like what you do actually matters. It doesn’t.

– Mrs. COO – The CEO constantly talks about your ass. Hope that makes your meetings going forward more comfortable.

– Mary – I’ve always wanted to tell you that you are drop dead gorgeous, but your low self-esteem keeps you married to a complete asshole! I’m better than that. I won’t be that asshole. Here’s our chance, walk out of here with me Jerry Maguire style and let’s do this. Otherwise, I’m probably 5 drinks and 2 hours away from making some really bad decisions at a strip club.

– Ted – You’re a douche bag, everyone hates you.

There’s a bunch of other stuff I could to say – but really the only thing I really want to say is: I’m Rich Beeatch!

See you in the parking lot, Mary.

Former Employee

Obviously, this wouldn’t be ‘my’ letter because I’m the President of my company! My letter would be a lot of thanking everyone for everything and I’ll see you around if you’re ever in the South of France on a large yacht. Plus a bunch of positive stuff and how valuable each and every employee was to me personally.

Follow by – “I’m Rich Beeatch!”

How Many Beers Does it Take to Get Your Employees to Peak Performance?

Posted on March 9, 2018 by Tim Sackett

Did you see that winter Olympic athletes were using beer as a recovery drink!?

The science says that non-alcoholic beer, used as a recovery drink for sports, is better than normal sports drinks like Gatorade. From the NPR article:

Appalachian State University’s David Nieman has studied phenols’ health effects. On the whole, phenol-rich diets tend to lower inflammation and reduce the risk of sickness, he says. “[Polyphenols] have a very unique molecular structure that can actually regulate the genes that control inflammation,” in addition to general antiviral properties, says Nieman.

In 2011, Nieman and the University of Munich’s Johannes Scherr investigated the effects of beer, which contains around 50 phenols, on athletes — whose intense physical activity can compromise their immune activity. When marathon runners were instructed to drink 1.5 liters of nonalcoholic beer a day, their risk of upper respiratory infection was reduced. The activity of white blood cells, a good indicator of inflammation, was lowered 20 percent.

All over the world, we were trying to figure out why the Germans were kicking our butts in all these events and the secret was they drink a bunch of this new ‘sports’ beer!

If non-alcoholic beer helped athletes recover more quickly from grueling workouts, then it could allow them to train harder. Scherr credits the nonalcoholic beer’s salubrious effects to its high concentration of polyphenols, immune-boosting chemicals from the plants with which its brewed.

“After that, we really had the proof: It’s really healthy and not only a marketing gag,” said Holger Eichele, the chief executive of the German Brewers Association. From 2011 to 2016, German consumption of nonalcoholic beer grew 43 percent even as overall beer consumption declined, according to Euromonitor International. New brewing techniques helped to diversify and improve the flavor, and now there are more than 400 non-alcoholic beers on the market in Germany. Germans drink more nonalcoholic beer than any nation, except Iran.

So, making beer available to our employees became super popular as a ‘benefit’ to offer up over the past decade, as employers looked to attract millennials and show how ‘super cool’ they are to work for. Work hard, play hard!

What we didn’t know, was that we had it just a tiny bit wrong! We should be giving beer to our employees, but it should be non-alcoholic beer, not the normal stuff!

The one aspect of both articles I thought had particular interest to employers was the social aspect of drinking beer. All over the world, people drink beer in mostly social settings. We tend to see drinking beer as a social activity.

So, having a beer at work isn’t necessarily a bad idea, if it was non-alcoholic and it increased our employees to interact more with each other. Plus, if it actually helps your employees recover faster from those grueling all-night coding sessions, heck, we better give it a try!

The Weekly Dose II: Google Hire’s New Gmail Add-on

Posted on March 8, 2018 by Tim Sackett

So, this week I’m giving you two doses of HR Tech because so much is happening in the space I just couldn’t get away with one thing this week! Google Hire, the ATS for SMBs, just released a new feature for their system that is something recruiters will really like!

If you haven’t heard of Google Hire, you really need to check it out if your a business under 1,000 employees and your business uses the G-suite. The G-suite being you do your email in Gmail and you use Google Calendar. That’s important because the only way you can use Google Hire is if you’re a G-suite shop.

If you don’t use the G-suite, don’t waste your time, you can’t use Hire, no matter how bad you might want to give it a look.

So, what’s new with Hire?

Hire isn’t even that old. It’s really only been on the market for about a year. So, basically it’s all new, but Google released a new Gmail add-on to Hire that is really great.

Check out the video below, but basically, the Gmail Hire add-on allows recruiters to do most of the heavy lifting in Hire, in Gmail, where most recruiters spend most of their time anyway (within their email program communicating with candidates).

The Hire add-on allows recruiters to easily see if a candidate is already in their system or will be a new candidate, makes it seamless to add a new candidate into Hire, and also lets them move candidates along the recruiting process from within Gmail, so they aren’t moving back and forth between Hire and Gmail.

Hire already logged every single candidate interaction within Gmail into Hire, but this allows recruiters to work within the G-suite in a very normal way without bouncing around between programs to interact and moves candidates through the stages of hiring.

One aspect I really liked within Hire is the ability for recruiters to reject a candidate right in Gmail, and choose if they wanted that message to go out immediately, or wait for a certain timeframe before sending. This lets recruiters immediately complete a candidate they absolutely know has no shot, and be more efficient with their time in touching candidates less.

If you’re using G-suite for email, calendar, etc., and you have less than 1,000 employees you should demo Hire, even if you’re happy with your current ATS. Why? Because it’s Google silly! Hire is inexpensive and Google will continue to innovate this product at a rapid rate.

The Tim Sackett Project

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

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