Author Archives: Tim Sackett

87% of Employee are Thinking About a Promotion, and That’s a Problem for You! @iCIMS #ICIMSINSPIRE

Posted on by
4

iCIMS 2023 Workforce Report is out, and it’s jammed full of some great data and facts. Here’s just one that caught my eye:

iCIMS 2023 Workforce Report

Now, some will read this and think, “Wow, that’s awesome!” But if you’re a leader of people, you quickly understand how problematic this is! 87% of folks want a promotion. About 10% actually get a promotion. And we wonder why over 50% of our workforce is disengaged.

You can download the full report here.

I didn’t even give you the good stuff, here is another peak:

  • 63% of job seekers say a primary factor in their job search is whether the job is remote, hybrid, or on-prem. (editors note: shouldn’t this be 100%? 😉 What this shows is how important where the work of the job is done more than ever.
  • 80% of workers do not feel secure financially or professionally. (Ouch)
  • 2 out 5 workers claim to not have a work-life balance.
  • More here.

What about all those employees who want a promotion?! What can we do?!

This is where great leaders make their money.

Being able to provide opportunity and development, mentorship, and on-demand training programs, are all a part of the plan. The biggest part of the plan truly has little to do with all of this. Your employees must feel they can trust you with their careers. That you, with them, have created a plan and will follow through with that plan to reach their goals.

Every employee can have a plan, but are you willing to be upfront enough with them about what that might look like? For some, their path might be in a year. For others, it’s much longer, and this is where it gets really difficult. Being able to provide a great opportunity takes a combination of great tools, great leadership, effort, and patience. I find that most organizations fail on at least 2 out of 4.

Great tools can be expensive, but the ROI is strong. Great leadership is expensive and hard to maintain because we also under-invest in that as well. Effort and Patience are the two that any employee can do, and the ones who have those usually succeed, but those are also very rare. This then comes down to if our leaders were born or built. We can debate that for eternity. The reality is it’s both.

I think another great question to ask this 87% of employees would be if we can keep all things the same. Same job. Same location. Same everything. Except we give you the same raise you would get if you were promoted, would you still want the promotion? I’m guessing that 87% drops to around 25%, and that’s more doable. One in four employees wanting a promotion seems like a number that makes more sense. Our problem is how we take care of our individual contributors.

Another day, another post. Right now, you have an 87% problem. Have fun!

The Trait Every Employer is Looking for in a New Employee

Posted on by
3

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 employ 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 2021. 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 we can 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 that understand this concept. We hire adults first and 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!

America’s Blue Collar Starbucks are Big Gas Stations!

Posted on by
2

I drove from Michigan to Utah and back over the past two weeks. Twenty-six hours each way. I got to stop at a lot of big gas stations. I’m not sure you can even call them gas stations anymore! You can purchase gas, but you can also purchase coffee, soda, slushies, made-to-order breakfast, lunch, and dinner, some clothing, and so much more. They have these brand new, clean bathrooms. Some have showers. They really are amazing places! I mean, these are not your Mom and Dad’s gas stations!

All of these are on the highway. So it’s mostly a collection of all those folks who travel the highways and byways of our great country. A cross of truckers, retirees, the new van people, and folks who still don’t trust airplanes. I was taking my dogs out on vacation, and one of them was too old and too big to fly. So, we had to drive.

What I noticed on my drive west was the farther you get west, the better the big giant gas stations are! I know there are a ton of Buc-ee’s fans out there, but don’t sleep on Maverik’s, Wawa’s, Sheetz, Racetrac, Casey’s, and Kum and Go. As you come east, the gas stations get worse. Speedway in Michigan and around the midwest is really good, but once you get past Ohio, the gas stations suck. Why are gas stations better south and west? It doesn’t really make sense.

Inside a Maverik gas station

I got home and, the next morning had to stop at one of these big new gas stations in my own town. That’s when it hit me. These gas stations are the high-end coffee shop of the blue-collar workforce! I do not say that disparagingly. I say that with some affirmation. I saw all these hard-working folks getting ready for their day. Big cups of coffee, energy drinks, breakfast burritos, lottery tickets, and a full tank. (By the way, don’t sleep on big gas station breakfast burritos!)

The comradery of these folks was much more lively than I’ve seen in any stuffy Starbucks!

I was driving my suburban dad Pickup Truck, wearing my Friday casuals with a trucker cap on, so I almost didn’t stand out. I had the feeling that many of these folks stopped at this same gas station every single morning they went to work. Many probably came back for lunch and maybe even stopped on the way home if they needed something.

Neighbors and work peers swapping stories from the games the night before. Giving each other grief over some mistake someone made on a job. Asking for favors and help. It was the corporate water cooler of their day. But with a much more robust and colorful network of folks.

These big giant gas stations have it figured out. They figured out all these hard-working folks need a place to congregate before their day gets started. They need a place where they can use a clean restroom. Maybe sit for a bit and make a call. Access to wifi. Grab a bite of lunch or a cold drink in the afternoon.

I’m a big fan of the blue-collar Starbucks. I like the vibe. I like the people. I like the energy.

Creepy Bosses and Cool Moms! #HRFamous

Posted on by
Reply

On episode 108 of The HR Famous Podcast, long-time HR leaders (and friends) Jessica Lee, Madeline Laurano, and Tim Sackett come together to discuss problematic executives, all the functions HR serves, and Tim’s campus recruiting experience!

Listen below and be sure to subscribe, rate, and review (iTunes) and follow (Spotify)!

1:00 – JLee asks the crew what famous movies they haven’t seen that they should see. JLee has never seen The Shining or Princess Bride. 

4:20 – JLee mentions the news of a senior Apple executive due to him making a vile joke in a TikTok video. This viral TikTok format asks people how much money they make and what they do for work. 

7:15 – Madeline brings up a similar situation in the Boston Celtics coach getting fired for having an affair with one of his co-workers. 

11:00 – JLee and Madeline are the cool moms in town!

13:00 – JLee brings up the extra functions that HR often gets assigned to, like party and events planning. She thinks that this could be a failure upon managers and leaders for not taking accountability in something like career growth for their employees. 

16:00 – Tim talks about the 3 responsibilities he sees for a people manager: fiscal responsibility, building a well-rounded team, and maintaining and developing that well-rounded team. Then, HR can help support these functions in whatever way they can.  

22:30 – Tim asks the question “why would you outsource the most important thing to your company” while talking about RPOs and outsourcing recruiting. 

27:00 – Madeline brings up the trauma of the 2021 hiring craze and how this may impact the job security of recruiters. Tim talked about a company that he talked to that re-positioned their recruiters when there was a downturn in their company, so they didn’t have to lay anyone off. 

30:30 – JLee mentions that the people who stayed on at Marriott during the pandemic were the “swiss army knives”, the people who were versatile and could fit in anywhere. 

31:30 – Madeline asks if people will seek out being a recruiter or if it will be seen as a stepping stone to different jobs. Tim thinks that more colleges and universities will develop programs for recruiters and the importance of recruiters at companies will grow. 

34:00 – Anyone want to see a sitcom about Tim’s campus recruiting experience??

We Didn’t Train These Kids, Now We’re Going to Pay the Price!

Posted on by
Reply

Which kids? The GenZ’s? Nope, we didn’t train the Millennials! And now we’ll deal with the aftermath of a decade of undertraining and almost no development of an entire generation.

You see, for the past decade, money was basically free. Zero interest rates, and we all went around spending and hiring like the party was never going to end. Because of all this free money, no one really took the time to ensure anyone knew what they were doing. Lose $100M?! Oh well, here’s some more. Lose it faster next time!

You would think with all that free money, we could have over-trained the kids, but instead, we just paid them more and bought them dairy-free ice cream and cool hoodies. “Their training will be this startup experience, and it’s better than any formal training they’ll ever get.” In some ways, that is very true. In other ways, that’s the biggest lie we sold in the past decade.

While real-world experience is part of a great training program, free money is not. We’ve grown an entire generation of “leaders” who lack financial discipline. Most have no idea how to run a company that actually makes more revenue than it spends. This isn’t how the world runs long-term. You see, there’s this little thing successful companies call Net Income, which basically is the positive money you make from your revenue after you pay all your bills and taxes. I know. I know. All these old-school terms are boring and confusing! Profit. Revenue. Net Income. Taxes. Interest Rates.

Have you wondered why all these companies are bringing people back to the office?

No, it’s not because these bosses are old and hate you. Well, they might be old and hate you, but that’s not the reason!

It’s because the vast majority of you aren’t actually working hard enough. “Hard enough” is another old-school phrase meaning you’re work level and your pay level aren’t matching up. The old folks who sign the checks and all their financial data are telling them they need fewer of you working at home if you keep sucking.

By the way, you are right. The old folks failed you. They didn’t train you to be a productive worker. They didn’t train you to lead high-producing, effective teams. They didn’t train you to be fiscally responsible with corporate resources. Blame them if you want. They should own that.

Now they are leaving the workforce right at the beginning of the second recession you’ll see in your lifetime. The first one was when you were in college or just entering the workforce, and honestly, you acted all dramatic about how that impacted you, but it turned out pretty well for you. You entered the workforce and had a magical ten-year run where your salary and benefits seemed like monopoly money as compared to your parent’s first ten years in the workforce. Congratulations! It was an awesome time to be alive!

Now, you’ll be in charge. The GenXers are too few to take over. We have to rely on the Millennials to run the show, for the most part. It’s going to be a really hard lesson. It’s going to be painful for a lot of people. Recessions suck when you’re in the middle. That’s where the cuts hurt the worse. The folks on the upper side will weather the storm. The folks in the lower half will scrap by like they always do. They are used to life being hard. They were born into the hard, you are just visiting.

The best organizations and c-suites will double down quickly on training and educating their new leaders. Hard skills and soft skills, but mostly hard skills. We will mourn the layoff losses as unfair, but within a few years, we’ll come to realize that it was just the payoff of not understanding how to run our business. Call it a bad leader tax. Businesses weren’t meant to run on free money. Money has value, and those investing in your business expect a return in profit and net income, eventually, not user growth.

I’m not punching down on Millennials. They are a product of a decade of free money, and now we’ll deal with the aftermath. They just are going to be the ones responsible for cleaning up the mess.

In Low Hire Times, Great Recruiting is More Important!

Posted on by
5

We have been on a great run! A historic run of hiring for about a decade now. That does not happen often. For the most part, over half of the current workforce has never seen a downturn in the economy that was sustained for more than a few months. It has been a heck of a good run.

Over the past decade, recruiting has seen massive evolution and growth. Our technology has improved immensely. Our skills have improved. Our branding and recruitment marketing has improved. At no other point in history has talent acquisition wielded more power than they have over the past decade.

I mean, it almost feels like recruiters have gotten respect! (almost)

Here’s the thing.

With all of this change and growth, we will still have organizational leaders when a downturn hits who believe we can cut recruiting as one of the first things. The axiom is if we aren’t hiring, we don’t need recruiters. That makes logical sense. In reality, we don’t really stop hiring. We just hire way less.

The truth is, when we hire less, each hire takes on much more significance. Our ability to hire really well when we hire fewer increases with importance. We don’t have slack in the system to make bad hires and have them be covered up by all the other hires.

If I have to hire one hundred people per month, leadership assumes some of those will be misses. If I can only hire ten per month, I can no longer have misses! False-positive hires can not happen when you only hire a few.

Why?

If times are tough and I only get to hire a few people. Multiple factors are at play. First, my hiring number is small. Second, the business needs great performers to survive and grow. Third, we truly need to know who the great performers are before we hire them. Forth, every low performer that makes it through the process exacerbates our already dire problem.

Bad Times Are Not The Time To Cut Talent Acquisition!

Bad times are the time to double down on ensuring your TA function is humming at maximum efficiency and effort. That your technology is performing exactly as it is supposed to perform. That you have very few false positives, and your Q0H (Quality of Hire) is through the roof. Also, you need to have hunters on your team, not just farmers.

Organizations will get leaner, and TA teams will get leaner. The recruiters who should keep their jobs should not be process jockeys. I can literally hire anyone with two ounces of sense to process applications. That is a pennies-on-the-dollar job. The recruiters who thrive in a down economy are assassins. Recruiters who can go out and find the best talent and talk that talent into coming onto your sinking ship.

This past decade was not a great decade to grow assassins. Why?

You would think the opposite to be true. Everyone was hiring. The competition for talent was fierce! Why didn’t we grow more assassins?

It’s a combination of technology, flow, and ease of apply. We had this strange convergence of a time when we had millions of open jobs, a time when it was never easier to find talent, and you could apply to jobs with one click. Basically, most TA shops turned into Inbound recruiting process shops. We post jobs. People apply. We process those applications. Rinse and repeat.

If there is candidate flow to your jobs, why spend the extra effort to make sure that flow is actually good? It must be good, right?! Just process more applications. We are hiring so many it doesn’t really matter, we’ll make some great hires out of that pile. Or we won’t. It doesn’t matter, we have another pile to go through.

Assassins grow when times are tough. You need to find yourself some assassins and get ready. Winter is coming.

As Leaders Should We Involve Everyone In Decision Making?

Posted on by
1

There is an African Proverb that says:

“If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” 

It’s a paradox we face as leaders right now. We are forced to move fast because the world is moving fast. We are also forced to believe we must involve everyone. Yes, we want to go fast, and yes, we want to go far!

Typically, that turns into something like this. The Boss lady calls a meeting of the team. Everyone jumps on the Zoom call, and the lady boss says, “Hey, we need to make some changes” based on some market/industry/tech change. “So, we are going to use this time to brainstorm and make some decisions on what we should do.” We’ve all been in these meetings.

The other way this can go is no meeting, Boss lady brings in a few confidants on the team, gathers some information, and then she just makes some decisions. Good or bad, she’s the boss, and she’s paid to make these decisions. A little old school, we are told this isn’t really how it should be done anymore.

The reality is both actually work differently. One is fast, one will go far, and we need both.

As a leader, sometimes the best course of action is just to make the call if there is a need to move fast. Look, we have a new product launch that got moved up, and we need to be fully staffed in four months. I’m pulling in a few, or one, people who can handle this item, and I’m getting out of their way. Go, make this happen!

We understand, as leaders, this might piss some folks off. “Well, no one asked my opinion on this!” Yes, you are correct, and by your reaction, I can see I made the right decision by not pulling you in. We desperately needed to move fast! I wasn’t looking for input. I was looking for fast results.

Then, we have times when what we are trying to do will have a long-term impact on our organization. A bunch of moving pieces and multiple stakeholders. Moving quickly, while desirable, might not be the best course of action. We need to hear folks, and folks need to be heard. We want to go ‘far’ with this project.

My leadership comfort zone has always been to go fast. If you’re fast, you can course-correct with the extra time. If you go slow, my belief was the decision would most likely be made for you. As a leader, were you hired to make decisions or have decisions happen to you? Now, this isn’t really the case, but man, that sh*t sounded good on my PowerPoint slide deck!

“If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” 

Both strategies are correct. Both have a purpose of when to be deployed. Too often, we tend to stick with the one strategy that we feel most comfortable with as leaders. It’s important we understand what we are most comfortable with because that is also our blind spot. I have to remind myself constantly to slow down when it’s right so that we can go far.

I’ve worked with a ton of leaders who were most comfortable with going together, truly believing they were the best leader. In the end, they failed because while they were well-liked, they didn’t execute fast enough for what the business needed.

Hiring Managers! Job Seekers Are Judging You on These Two Criteria!

Posted on by
Reply

If you’re out looking for a job, it usually feels like you’re being judged on every little thing you do, have done, or potentially will do in the future. Interestingly enough, a Harvard professor discovered you’re actually only judged on two things:

“People size you up in seconds, but what exactly are they evaluating?

Harvard Business School professor Amy Cuddy has been studying first impressions alongside fellow psychologists Susan Fiske and Peter Glick for more than 15 years and has discovered patterns in these interactions.

In her book, “Presence,” Cuddy says people quickly answer two questions when they first meet you:

 â€“ Can I trust this person?

 â€“ Can I respect this person?

Psychologists refer to these dimensions as warmth and competence, respectively, and ideally, you want to be perceived as having both.

Interestingly, Cuddy says that most people, especially in a professional context, believe that competence is the more important factor. After all, they want to prove that they are smart and talented enough to handle your business.”

Trust and Respect.

I’ll add these are probably two things you’re being judged immediately following the judging that gets done on your overall appearance, which is almost instantaneous! Let’s face it, we like to hire pretty people.

Once you open your mouth, you’re being judged on how well you can trust what this person is telling me and if you respect their background, work ethic, where they came from, etc. Most of this is based on the person doing the judging, not you. I know, that sucks.

How do you help yourself?

1. Try and mirror the energy of the person who is interviewing you. If you come in all calm and cool, and the person who is interviewing is really upbeat and high energy, they’ll immediately question you as a fit.

2. Do research on who you’ll be interviewing with and try and get some sense of their background and story. Try and make some connections as fast as possible in the interview. This will help build trust and respect with this person. In today’s world, it’s not that hard to find out stuff about an individual. If HR sets up your interview, just politely ask who you will be interviewing with (the name).

3. Be interesting. Have a good story to tell, one that most people will find funny or interesting. Not too long. A good icebreaker to set off the interview in a great tone.

I tell people all the time. An interview isn’t a test, it’s just a conversation with some people you don’t know. We have these all the time. Sometimes you end up liking the people, sometimes, you don’t. If you don’t like the people you’re interviewing with, there’s a good chance you won’t like the job!

E107 – What Would It Take For an Enterprise HR Leader to Show Up At a HR Conference? #HRFamous #HRTechConf

Posted on by
Reply

On episode 107 of The HR Famous Podcast, long-time HR leaders (and friends) Jessica Lee, Madeline Laurano, and Tim Sackett come together to discuss all things 2022 HR Tech!

Listen below and be sure to subscribe, rate, and review (iTunes) and follow (Spotify)!

1:30 – Tim has recently been on the conference circuit and he’s loving the in-person energy!

2:00 – JLee was recently speaking at an event and she was asked for pictures after her talk. She asks the crew what to do in that situation. 

7:30 – Tim and Madeline went back to HR Tech and felt the big energy at the conference. Madeline says the expo was bigger than she’s ever seen

11:45 – Madeline says that the Women In Tech sessions were so packed that they couldn’t let anyone else in! 

14:45 – Tim asks JLee what would get her to come to HR Tech on a regular basis. She says that she doesn’t know if she would since she’s so inundated with content and pitches from vendors and it would feel duplicative for her to go to a vendor event. 

17:40 – Tim thinks it’s a mistake by vendors to try and influence big VPs and CHROs rather than talking to director and manager levels about their products who are actually in the trenches. 

21:45 – Tim and Madeline are really excited by some up and coming texting technologies, especially for frontline workers. 

25:45 – Madeline calls out some providers who are doing the work around skills but she notes that there are some start-ups and ATS’s who are lumped in that maybe shouldn’t be. 

29:00 – Tim asks the crew what these HR conferences are missing. JLee thinks that the conferences should provide a deck for attendees to take back to their teams and share what they learned. 

34:20 – Can we pick a better place for HR conferences? JLee is sick of Vegas but Tim and Madeline think it’s hard to host anywhere else because of the size of the conferences. 

35:30 – Tim shares a story about the “BFF Happy Hour” where Kyle Lagunas came in and started the whole party. Tim and Madeline had to play mom and dad in order to keep the event in check.

Hiring for High Give-a-Damn!

Posted on by
1

Josh Zywien, the CMO of Paradox, made a great hire recently, and I sent him a note telling him so. I like to do that. He knows he made a great hire, but it’s always nice to get a note confirming your belief! If you don’t know Josh, you should give me a follow, he’s one of the good guys in our industry.

Josh responded to my note with a statement I wanted to share because it’s profound:

I like to hire people who have a ‘high give-a-damn’! 

I absolutely love that and told him I was stealing it!

What does hiring for High Give-a-Damn Mean? 

It’s one of those intangibles you know when you see it. Like porn. Hard to explain, but when I see it, I know what it is. High Give-a-Damn (HGD) individuals don’t just care about their job and their company. HGD is pervasive in all aspects of their life. You’ll see it come out in other ways away from their career as well.

The High Give-a-Damn Traits:

  • High attention to detail
  • Live an orderly life
  • Most likely, they have a well-kept house, clean, and probably make their bed every single morning.
  • Classic fashionable dress styles that don’t stand out, but you notice them
  • They say the right things and the right times
  • They can be counted on
  • Follow-through is impeccable
  • They give a shit about stuff that matters
  • Have a habit of taking care of their physical & mental self more than the average person.

People with HGD don’t drive around in a messy car with a coffee stain on their shirt. They might not have a lot of money, but what they have, they take care of. They do more with less because part of HGD is not to waste resources, both professionally and personally. So, you take care of your stuff. Part of your ‘stuff’ is your personal self.

I’ve written about organizations “Hiring Pretty” in the past. Scientific research shows that organizations that tend to hire more attractive people actually have higher results. There is a bit of this in HGD. Individuals with HGD most likely get the most out of the attractiveness they have.

It doesn’t mean the person has to be naturally ‘pretty,’ but think of the time when you took that one selfie, that one time when you were feeling super cute, had that one hat on, the light was right, and now it’s your favorite IG photo. Yeah, that, but now what if you did that every day? That’s HGD. “Felt cute, not ever gonna delete!”

Now, at this point, you might be saying, “Tim, all of this seems superficial. There is nothing here about skill or performance, about actually being able to do the job.” Yeah, I’m not only hiring for HGD and nothing else. This is about what if I had three people who had similar skill levels, education, and experience. At that point, my tiebreaker is, who has the most HGD?

Who is going to bring the most HGD to the team? Because in the end, when I’m going to war with my team, I want people who give a damn. Yeah, we might be making widgets for crackheads, but I still want people who want to make the best widgets for crackheads. People who want to make sure that crackhead has the best experience with our product and service. (Right now, Josh is like, WTF, how did I get in a Tim Sackett Blog Post with Crackheads!?)

Not enough Hiring Managers are hiring for HGD. In fact, as a society, we have kind of gone soft on HGD. We have this belief that you can be HGD in your personal life but not your professional life, or vice versa. The reality is true that HGD is always on or never on as a personality trait. You either give a damn about your life, or you don’t. I want to be around and work with people who are HGD.