Author Archives: Tim Sackett

Developing Process in Theory vs. Real World

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I was traveling this past week and took a flight on Delta Airlines. I’m a big Delta fan. I’ve flown on just about every airline in the United States, and I will go out of my way to find Delta flights. One of the perks is, as a frequent flyer, you get upgraded, etc.

This week I was in first-class, as a frequent flyer perk, in if you’re flying back from Florida, during Covid, on a mid-week, mid-day flight, I’m most likely getting upgraded because it’s not a full flight. At the end of this flight, the flight attendant in the first-class came around to thank each person for their business.

20 first-class seats, about 2/3 of the seats were full. She came to each person seated in first class and said this exact same phrase to each person:

“Thank you for your business, we appreciate it.” 

So, within about 3 minutes, in a fairly small area, I heard “Thank you for your business, we appreciate it” fifteen times. While I completely understand the theory of wanting to let your best customers know they are appreciated, this exercise was a bit comical!

How did we get here? 

I’ve been flying Delta for years. So, it’s not uncommon when I’m on a flight to have a flight attendant stop by my seat and thank me for my patronage. It doesn’t happen every flight, but enough that it doesn’t surprise me. It’s usually very personal, and discrete. “Mr. Sackett, I want to thank you for flying with us today, I hope your trip was pleasant…”

The pandemic has been really rough on the airline industry.

My guess is someone at Delta, probably some executives, were sitting around and looking at data and they were like, holy crap, we need to keep our frequent flyers! They are the ones who will come back first, and we need them now more than ever! How do we “retain” our best customers!?!

Brainstorming commences. Ideas flow. The corporate machine starts to work and do its thing. Out the other end of that machine comes an edict, “From now on, every single one of our first-class passengers will be told we appreciate them!”

Sounds good in theory, not so much in real life. 

“Thank you for your service, we appreciate you””Thank you for your service, we appreciate you””Thank you for your service, we appreciate you””Thank you for your service, we appreciate you””Thank you for your service, we appreciate you””Thank you for your service, we appreciate you””Thank you for your service, we appreciate you”…

A broken record skipping over the same lyric fifteen times. It doesn’t feel thankful or appreciated, it feels like you’re making a person do this, as a condition of employment.

Again, I love Delta and the Delta brand! I will continue to fly Delta and go out of my way to fly Delta. This is a story not about Delta, but about how management doesn’t always understand what’s really going on in the field.

In theory so much of what we do as leaders make sense in the conference room. Makes sense in the email we send. It all sounds so good! “Look, we are going to make our best customers feel appreciated and wanted!” Yes! We must do that! We need to do that! It’s going to sound like, “Mr. Sackett, how are you today? Is there anything I can get you to make your flight more enjoyable? Also, please let me tell you how much we appreciate your continued business during this trying time. We couldn’t do this without you.”

That sounds nice, thoughtful.

What edicts have you sent down from up on high that sounded awesome, but totally failed in execution at ground level? How often are you asking yourself this question?

One Year of #HRFamous! Take a Behind the Scenes Look with the Crew!

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On episode 52 of The HR Famous Podcast, long-time HR leaders (and friends) Tim Sackett, Kris Dunn, and Jessica Lee come together again to discuss the one-year anniversary of the podcast! Get a behind-the-scenes look at the first year of HR Famous.

Listen (click this link if you don’t see the player) and be sure to subscribe, rate, and review (Apple Podcasts) and follow (Spotify)!

Show Highlights:

3:00 – Who do you think of when you think of “veteran hire”?  The gang has automatic comparisons to movies.

6:00 – It’s our one-year anniversary! Episode 52 marks a year of HR Famous. We can’t believe it!

8:00 – What percentage of the podcasts have you listened to? JLee has listened to them all, and KD has listened to about 70%.

8:40 – Time for a look behind the scenes of HR Famous. Tim says that they often have pre-podcast chats that might get them canceled.

11:30 – Tim asked the crew what they’ve learned from doing the pod. JLee says that she has to trust herself to wing it and she doesn’t always have to have a super-well-thought-out point of view.

13:30 – Do you listen to the podcast and read Tim’s, KD’s, and JLee’s writing? Tim has found that there’s not as much crossover as you’d think.

17:45 – Would you believe that the only person who’s cried on the podcast is KD? Tears of joy but still tears nonetheless.

20:00 – The podcast started out with the intention of being a little bit more fun but because of when the podcast started, the topics were more serious and timely.

21:45 – There is a lost episode! JLee describes the second or third episode where they discussed periods in the workplace.

24:30 – Tim always thought that he was late to the podcast gang. During the pandemic, there was a massive rise in podcasts, and now everyone and their brother has a podcast!

27:00 – Shoutout to our amazing guests! We love you Dawn, Laurie, Cameron, and all our other awesome pod friends!

28:00 – JLee was KD’s first editor at Fistful of Talent and so they have a long history together. Tim and JLee have just gotten closer in the last few years.

32:30 – KD asks JLee if she ever is drawn to certain things because she’s not getting enough feedback in her life.

36:00 – KD asks JLee what she wishes she knew before doing the podcast with Tim and himself. She says she didn’t know she’d have so much fun and she didn’t know how much of a difference a good microphone could make.

42:00 – JLee hopes that listeners of the podcast give some grace to the crew because a lot of the topics of the past year were really difficult and nuanced.

You could just say “Yes!” to everything!

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I tend to say “Yes” at about a ten to one clip of saying “No”. So far it’s worked out well for me. Most of the time I’m not quite sure what’s going to happen when I say “Yes”, but it usually works out just fine. Some of the coolest things I’ve ever been apart of were because I just said “Yes” and didn’t worry about the details.

What can go wrong when you say “Yes”? 

  1. You can take on too much and get overwhelmed and stressed out
  2. You could be taking time away from more important things in your life: family, working on stuff that is more financially viable, you-time, etc.
  3. You hate the thing you said “Yes” to,
  4. Some moron will try and take advantage of you.

What can go right when you say “Yes”? 

  1. You might actually find some really great stuff you love.
  2. You might meet and work with some awesome folks you never knew.
  3. You might find some business opportunities you didn’t expect.
  4. It just feels better in your soul to say “Yes” to others.

I’ll be honest, I probably say “yes” too much. I often have people try and take advantage of my propensity to say “Yes”. Will you do this thing? Sure! And then that “thing” takes up a lot of my time that is valuable, and the time I’m giving up is mostly benefiting the other person, and there is probably nothing they’ll do for me in return.

Pro-bono work feels great until it doesn’t.  It’s when I start questioning my life strategy of saying “Yes”. Everyone wants some free work from you, believing that it’ll all work out for the best in the long run. Which in truth, it usually does for the person getting the free work!

How can you say “Yes” more, but stay sane? 

That is really the question, right?

I think the biggest thing is to have personal boundaries you don’t compromise. Knowing when the “yes” becomes a “no more”. The reality is people aren’t trying to take advantage of you for the most part. They just are trying to do their thing, and if you don’t have boundaries they’ll keep doing their thing without much regard for your things.

Know your value. I say “yes”, but I also usually let the person know what I’m giving up to say “yes” to their thing. Even when I’m being paid. “Hey, thanks for the offer of “$X” and Yes I want to do this and help you, but normally I would be getting “$X+”. Why do I do this? It’s a boundary thing. This is my real worth, I like you or what you’re doing, I want to help, but let’s be clear, here is my real value. The value I’m giving you.

This is really hard because most people get uncomfortable with this. They don’t want to tell others what they are worth and they don’t want to make others feel uncomfortable that they aren’t paying you what you’re worth. But, if you want to say “Yes” more, you kind of have to come to grips with this!

At the end of the day, I still like saying “Yes”. I like trying new things and working with new people. It’s not for everyone, but I think it’s worth a try!

Get Back to HQ as Fast as You Can!

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I know you want to keep working remotely. It’s awesome to be able to wake up, throw on some sweats and just check email. I mean this is what “work” should be, right!? Like not really working, but getting paid for it, this is the best time to be alive!

Okay, where was I? Sorry, Bridgerton is on in the background and episode 5 so, well, you know! No. No! I wasn’t really watching, just background noise. Similar to Steve from Accounting stopping by the cube to talk about nothing.

You’re a complete idiot if you don’t go back to Headquarters! 

I’m sorry to have to be your big brother and break the news, but the future of work isn’t you sitting on your couch in sweatpants deciding if you should paint an accent wall, or add some succulents to the shelf behind your “desk” that people see when you’re on a Zoom call.

If you actually care about your career, you are pushing your leadership team to get back to work, in the office. At some point, people who make decisions are going to start promoting people and the people who will get promoted will be the people with who they have the best relationship. Oh, sorry, you thought it was skill-based, performance-based promotions! That’s cute. Anywho.

The moment someone asks if you want to return to in-office work, you say, “Yes!” You tell them, you’ll actually come in right now, this moment. You already have your desk stuff packed and are ready to come back.

Yeah, yeah, it’s a “New World of Work”! 

Like a Robinhood Game Stop trader, the world is about to teach you a lesson or two. The world of work doesn’t give a sh*t about what you actually want. Oh, we’ll tell you we do, but at the end of the month, there’s this little thing we look at called financials. Look it up, it’s important. Turns out, you working at half capacity at home, isn’t the greatest thing for our financials. I mean, it is the greatest thing for your home design skills and you teaching sign language to your cat, so there’s that!

I know, it’s me, not you. I’m sure I’m wrong.

You know what. The best companies and leaders in the world have already figured this out. They figured out if you really want high levels of collaboration. Great decision-making. Great creativity. To build the next biggest thing in the world. You kind of have to be together, not on a video.

The new world of work isn’t remote. At its best, it’s probably you get treated more like an adult. Like, “Okay, Timmy, you can not come in on Wednesday because there’s a snowstorm and we think you’ll at least stay up on email, and return a couple of calls.” The pandemic showed us the new world of work, can be more flexible, and in some additional cases, remote, but for the most part we need you back in the cube.

Why Won’t This Work? 

Basically, it because we won’t do two things:

  1. We won’t really define, in true measurable, non-subjective terms, what performance looks like for your position. If we did, you might be able to work remotely and actually meet expectations of performance.
  2. We won’t put a system in place that will truly measure what the hell you’re actually doing. The technology is out there, but you feel micromanaged that someone would actually check to see if you are doing what you’re being paid to do.

So, we’ll just have most of you come back to work. We’ll do the same dance we’ve been doing for a hundred years. It could be better, but better comes with a lot of change, and right now we don’t even change our pants daily.

In the meantime, get your ass back to HQ if you really want to advance your career. And, please, spare me the “I’m not being treated fairly” when you get passed over for a promotion while sitting on your couch in pants with animals on them.

The One Thing Most TA Leaders Miss When Creating Real Change

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Our Hiring Managers just won’t give us feedback, or give us interview times. My recruiters just won’t use our ATS or our CRM. I can’t get our executives to understand our brand isn’t what they think it is.

I had an F500 TA leader tell me last week that their biggest issue was not finding candidates, or getting qualified talent, it was simply we can not get our hiring managers to give us interview times. They desperately want and need talent, we have thousands of openings, but they won’t prioritize hiring, so we lose great candidates.

In the Talent Acquisition industry, we see a constant churn of TA leaders. Mostly they get fired because they are ineffective in creating the change they promised when they were hired. At least once per month, I’ll have some well-meaning TA leader reach out to me and ask me this question: “How do I continue to hire, using our broken processes and systems, but also build the new system and processes that I’m supposed to do?”

That’s the catch 22, right?

I wish I had some silver bullet answer for them, but I don’t. There’s no ‘one’ answer for this problem, but I think there are some core pieces to the answer that have to be met:

1 – You have to have an executive, or critical function hiring manager, who will be your champion when you break out your plan of change.

2 – An understanding by you and your team, that hiring as we know it right now, will not continue, and for a bit, we’ll probably get worse and some people might hate us, in the short run.

3 – Change only happens when you actually make change happen. (Damn, I should put that on a t-shirt!) 

The Final Step? 

You stop doing everything people are used to you and your team does. You create tension. You might just stop hiring altogether. Send a note out to your hiring managers explaining that Talent Acquisition is broken. To fix it, we have to blow it up. So, for the next 4 weeks, you are all on your own for hiring. Have fun!

Create Tension! 

The only way you’ll get lasting change is if others feel your same pain. Understand, when you stop hiring, you might just have a hiring manager who will be just fine hiring on their own! They don’t need you. If you and your team got killed in a bad ropes course team building accident tomorrow, let’s face it, the organization would still hire and move forward.

But, you’ve created tension and now you can build something new that will be “the” way you’ll be hiring moving forward. Maybe that is a rules-based approach where every single screened candidate sent to a hiring manager needs a 24-hour turnaround on feedback and also if a manager has you work on their opening they give you pre-assigned interview slots, etc.

If they don’t play along, you don’t work on their stuff.

Might you get fired? Yes. Of course. Might you get fired if you don’t change? Yes. Of course. Damn, isn’t Tension great! Also, why it’s really important to have an executive champion, who buys into your plan!

Every single TA Executive/Leader I speak with actually knows exactly how to fix their problem. Their real problem is they want to change, but they want to do it without adding Tension. That is where they fail.

Can your employees wear “Trump” masks? What about “BLM” masks? #HRFamous

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On episode 51 of The HR Famous Podcast, long-time HR leaders (and friends) Tim Sackett, Kris Dunn, and Jessica Lee come together to discuss what will be appropriate to wear to the office in the future, Whole Foods’ company culture, and the new jobs sprung by the pandemic, including “Head of Remote.”

Listen (click this link if you don’t see the player) and be sure to subscribe, rate, and review (Apple Podcasts) and follow (Spotify)!

Show Highlights:

2:00 – The triple Timmy touch is out to play today!

4:45 – Are we going to expect our employees post-pandemic to return to formal workwear? Tim thinks that more formal dress will come back naturally.

8:30 – Tim thinks that his outfits are all about the shoes. He’s also anti-tights in the office for all people.

11:00 – KD thinks that what is office appropriate also depends on what people can afford. Oftentimes we approve of the higher-end leisurewear but not the cheaper versions of the same product.

13:15 – Whole Foods was brought into court recently for reprimanding employees who wore face masks with Black Lives Matter logos on them.

14:30 – Tim thinks that Whole Foods will come to the conclusion that they need to give everyone the same face mask for uniformity. He sees this as a customer-service issue since customers need to be able to quickly and easily identify employees in the store.

17:30 – JLee brings up how Whole Foods has always had a strong people-centric culture and she thinks this is a shift for them from a culture perspective. The company has grown and is now a part of Amazon and they’re not as small as they once were.

19:30 – KD mentions that the Whole Foods near him in Birmingham is close to the Amazon distribution center that is currently voting on if they want to bring in a union.

22:00 – Do you feel guilty using Amazon’s one-day shipping? KD feels some guilt but JLee doesn’t feel any.

23:45 – Does your family have a shared Amazon Prime account? Tim’s family shares an Amazon account and he finds himself accidentally purchasing stuff that his kids put in the cart.

27:00 – JLee recently saw a job title that reads “Head of Remote.” She asks Tim and KD what they think the responsibilities of this job are.

30:15 – KD thinks this position sounds like a senior director of HR. The crew thinks it probably reports up to a CHRO.

31:30 – KD tells the tale of the flavored water machine in his office that arrived right before the pandemic hit. The machine displays the environmental impact and sadly they haven’t saved many trees since no one has been using it!

Why Does Spam Recruiting Work?

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I just got done deleting the 17th phishing email from my personal email inbox today. Comcast, Amazon, Princes from far-off lands, I’ve never been more popular and, apparently, soon to be rich!

I was asking our Cyber Security company why phishing is still such a big deal. I mean don’t we all know by now that some Nigerian Prince isn’t going to give us a million dollars, or that Amazon doesn’t send us emails asking for our credit card numbers, or passwords!? There is no way someone can be this stupid, right!?

Apparently, I’m way wrong, we are all still a lot stupid! 

The reason phishing and spam are not because they are really tricking us. It’s the sure volume of messages and cadence. While we can all spot a fake fairly easily, can you always spot a fake when it’s sent a thousand times, all different times, with all different designs and strategies. Scammers will send a million to get one click. That one click will pay off.

Therein lies the strategy of why Spam Recruiting still works. It’s not about being good, or the best, it’s about being there all the time, knowing a certain percentage of the time will be the right time! Do we like it? Well, I guess that depends on who you are. If you happen to be that one person who gets the spam recruiting message at the exact time you’re desperate for a job, then yes, you will like it!

If you are the superstar performing software engineer getting twenty spam recruiting messages a day, you hate our industry!

Spam Recruiting Works Because It Works Some of the Time

I have never met one American-based TA Leader who believes that Off-Shore Recruiting firms (you know the off-shore RPO spam emails you get constantly all day long) actually are good. For the most part, they don’t recruit, they spam. Because they pay next to nothing to their workforce, they can spam a whole bunch and still make money, even if the entire process truly sucks.

They don’t have to be good. When you’re being paid like $10 a day, all you have to do is spam a couple of thousand people a week to get one placement a month and you’re making a profit for the “man”! Any company engaging in off-shore recruiting for hiring in the U.S. is basically engaging in slave labor. But, I digress. Back to crappy recruiting.

Bad recruiting is a lot like bad sex. If you really need a job, you don’t care how you get it. Which perpetuates you just continuing to be bad.

Spam recruiting works, and will always work, because the world will always have candidates who just need a job. They don’t care that you’re awful at your job. They don’t care that you are spamming them. All they care about is getting the job. Also, if you do care. If you do hate bad spammy recruiters. It turns out you also are fine with them being awful when you’re out of a job!

Spam works because we are all vulnerable at some point. It feeds on us being weak, naive, and desperate. But, at the end of the day, it works. It doesn’t work well. But it does work. And that sucks.

The Weekly Dose: @Pandologic – The Job Advertising Platform

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Today on the Weekly Dose I review the programmatic job advertising platform, Pandologic. Programmatic job advertising has been around now for a decade, but still, it hasn’t caught on as it has with our Marketing peers who have been using the technology successfully to lure customers for decades.

95% of Talent Acquisition job advertising budget is still mostly spent on traditional types of job posting products: Indeed sponsored jobs, LinkedIn job postings, ZipRecruiter, other job boards, some radio, some TV, billboards, a sexier career site no one sees, etc. 95%! 

For the most part, TA hasn’t changed how we advertise for jobs in decades. 

While there are a number of programmatic job advertising tools on the market, Pandologic has truly gone all-in on utilizing artificial intelligence to make their technology more efficient and easier to use. One of the reasons so many great TA shops haven’t yet tested using Programmatic Job Advertising is that it quite frankly seems complex. And while the science behind can be complex, Pandologic has made a simple and intuitive platform that any TA pro can easily use to get better results on their job postings.

I like to think of Pandologic as Programmatic 2.0. It’s not just about distribution (traditional programmatic – put the job everywhere at once), but the utilization of AI-driven decision-making of when and where. Precisely placing your jobs in front of the kind of job seeker you’re looking for when they’re engaged on the internet.

What do I like about Pandologic?

  • Really the only fully-automated programmatic job advertising platform. You can set it and forget it, many of the programmatic tools take some constant watching.
  • Pandologic’s AI will constantly make micro-adjustments to get the best results, including constantly testing and making small language changes to your posting to get the best results.
  • Full AI, no human in the loop. You set your campaign goals and it goes out and gets the applicants.
  • An overall reduction in job advertising spending for the same traffic you have now or increased traffic for the same spend.
  • Easily integrated with your ATS to pull in job postings.

I’m a big fan of programmatic job advertising technology. I think too many TA leaders continue to play this game trying to figure out which “site” is the best one for them, getting into long-term relationships that cost too much money and quite frankly are inefficient. At the end of the day “advertising” is about the best results for the lowest cost.

One word of caution that I constantly try and educate TA pros and leaders on. Programmatic isn’t a silver bullet for hard-to-find talent. If you need Software Engineers in a market where there are very few Software Engineers, Programmatic technology can’t magically make Software Engineers where there are no Software Engineers! But, it can help get your job advertising in front of those few, for less money.

Pandologic for the most part is an enterprise-level TA tool. More than likely they are best utilized with organizations that hire at volume, 500+ hires per year, or it also would work for organizations hiring less, if the vast majority of roles are similar in nature (I.E., we hire 200 Nurses a year, etc.) I think every enterprise and large volume TA shop should be testing Programmatic in 2021.

The Single Most Desired Trait Employers Want: Being an Adult!

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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 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 that 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!

Build the Perfect Recruiting Stack for a Hybrid World!

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Talent acquisition has a major problem looming just over the horizon: Executives are preparing for business to accelerate in the near future and part of their plan is that talent acquisition professionals will be able to turn hiring on like a light switch. Unfortunately, the vast majority of talent acquisition departments do not have processes and technology systems in place to move this quickly.

On top of that, many of us had to reduce our recruiting budgets and teams! Now, the CEO comes down to your office and she says, “Hey! We’re getting the band back together! Get ready to hire 500 people by the end of the year!”

What are you going to do? 

Step 1: Sign up for my free webcast this week! Feb. 25th at Noon ET, 9 am on the West Coast – You get SHRM credit and a whole bunch of valuable information from yours truly!

Step 2: After the webcast – just do what I tell you! It’s super easy. Like only two steps to be super awesome at recruiting!

We will look at a bunch of strategies and technologies that organizations are using to get ready to hire in this crazy new hybrid world of work. Plus, the number one technique being used by organizations to eliminate ghosting by candidates.

Come learn how to build a light switch for your TA department and put your executive’s minds at ease for your talent attraction and hiring for 2021 and beyond.

REGISTER HERE!  (Free eBook for 5 tips for better Diversity Hiring as well!)

Thanks to Oracle Recruiting Cloud for sponsoring this SHRM Webcast!