Category Archives: Branding

Married with Children Campus Recruiting

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I wonder what would happen if we recruited married with children types, like we recruit kids on college campuses?

It’s a bit upside down, don’t you think?

We have separate recruiting teams, and strategies and little uniforms our recruiting teams wear at the booth on campus. We throw pizza and beer parties at the local campus watering holes to try and entice students to want to come to our companies.

Never once, after college, have I been asked to come have free pizza and beer by a company.  I mean, I don’t know if I would take that, but I would definitely take a free babysitter and free movie with my wife.  Even if it meant I would have to listen to some recruiter tell me how great ABC, Inc. was to work for and their great childcare benefits. Throw in popcorn and drinks, and I might just sign up on the spot!

But that doesn’t happen.

You see, experienced professionals don’t want or need that kind of pampering. Only college age kids want that. Why would over tired, over worked adults want something for free?

We go to campus to find kids who have extremely hard to find skills, and pay for their last two or three years of college in exchange for them coming to work for you for the same length of time.  Would you ever offer to pay for a candidates kid’s college education if they came to work for you, in the same skill capacity?

This isn’t a college recruiting vs. experienced recruiting issue.  This is a and-and issue. We need both college recruiting and we need better recruiting of experienced professionals.  Unfortunately, while college recruiting as evolved over time, how we recruit our experienced candidates has virtually stayed the same.  We post jobs. We ask for referrals. We hold job fairs, that no person currently working in their right mind would attend. We bang on resume databases.

I wonder how your recruiting, of experienced workers, would change if you spent the amount you spend on campus, on recruiting at the neighborhoods around the locations you recruit for now? Some of you will claim that you spend more money recruiting experienced workers, but most of those costs are wrapped in headhunting costs to agencies.

Imagine showing up and putting your booth outside the big Friday Night Lights local football game.  I know in my community we get 5-7,000 people coming out to those games. That’s a heck of a lot more than you will see coming through a career fair. How about outside the college football stadium!? Ten times the that amount will be milling around.

Married with Children recruiting events could work.  The campus isn’t as defined, but standing out front the Home Depot on a Saturday, next to girls selling cookies, might just work.

How To Get a Great Job in 2015

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Last week I got a call from an old work friend. He wanted to have lunch.  He just left a position and was in transition.  Not a bad or negative job loss, just parted ways.  When you get to a certain executive point in your career, it’s rare that bad terminations take place. It’s usually, “hey, we like you, but we really want to go another direction, and we know you don’t want to go that direction, so let’s just shake hands and call it a day, here’s a big fat check.”

Executives get this.  For the most part there isn’t hard feelings, like when you were young and lost a job. I usually find that the organization the person is leaving from are super complementary, and usually takes the blame for the change.  Executives in corporate America are like NFL coaches. You get hired with the understanding that one day you’ll be fired.  It’s not that you know less, or aren’t going to be successful in your career, it’s just that the organization needs change, and you’re part of that change.

Welcome to the show, kid.

My friend decided that he was going to find his next position not through posting for positions online, or trolling corporate career pages, he was going to have lunches.  About two per week, with past work friends. Let’s connect, no pressure, we already know each other and I want to catch up.

You see, in 2015 you don’t find great jobs by filling out applications in ATSs and uploading resumes. You get great jobs because of the relationships and personal capital you’ve built up over your career.  Having lunch and reconnecting turn on a relationship machine. I believe that people, innately, want to help other people. When a friend comes to you with a situation, and you have something to offer or help, you will do that.

The problem is most people who are looking for great jobs don’t do this. They lock themselves in their home office and apply to a thousand jobs online and get upset when nothing happens. Great jobs aren’t filled by ATSs and corporate recruiters.  Great jobs are fill through relationships. Every single one of them.

Want to find a great job in 2015?

Go out to lunch.

Career Advice #137 – There Will Be Haters

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Adidas just came out with some brilliant marketing for their new football (soccer) boots (cleats). Check it out:

This can also be used as just plain good advice for everyday professionals in the work world.

You are going to have haters in your life.  You can’t do anything about it.  It’s not your problem, it’s their problem.

All you can do is be the best version of you that you can be.  Some days that might not be very good, and some days you’ll be brilliant. That’s life.

You’ll be hated for being too nice. Too smart. Not smart enough. Because others like you. Because you were born pretty. Because you were born fat. Because you talk too much, or not enough.  Some folks just find life more enjoyable when they’re hating.

Regardless, there will be haters.

 

 

Stop Trying to be Happy at Work

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In 1942 Viktor Frankl, a prominent Jewish psychiatrist, was taken to a Nazi concentration camp with his wife and parents.  Three years later, when his camp was liberated, his pregnant wife and parents had already been killed by the Nazis. He survived and in 1946 went on to write the book, “Man’s Search For Meaning“.  In this great book, Frankl writes:

“It is the very pursuit of happiness that thwarts happiness.”

What Frankl knew was that you can’t make happiness out of something outside yourself.  Riding the Waverunner doesn’t make you happy. You decide to be happy while doing that activity, but you could as easily decide to be angry or sad while doing this activity (although Daniel Tosh would disagree!).  Frankl also wrote in Man’s Search for Meaning, “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing, the last of the human freedoms — to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”

I get asked frequently by HR Pros about how they can make their employees or workplace happier.  I want to tell them about Frankl’s research and what he learned in the concentration camps.  I want to tell them that you can’t make your employees happy.  They have to decide they want to be happy, first. But, I don’t, people don’t want to hear the truth.

Coming up with ‘things’ isn’t going to make your employees happy. You might provide free lunch, which some will really like, but it also might make someone struggling with their weight, very depressed.  You might give extra time off and most of your employees will love it, but those who define themselves by their work will find this a burden.

Ultimately, I think people tend to swing a certain way on the emotional scale.  Some are usually happier than others.  Some relish in being angry or depressed, it’s their comfort zone.  They don’t know how to be any other way.  Instead of working to ‘make’ people happy, spend your time selecting happy people to come work for you.

In the middle of a concentration camp, the most horrific experiences imaginable, Frankl witnessed people who made the decision to be happy. Maybe they were happy to have one more day on earth. Maybe they were happy because, like Frankl, they discovered that the Nazis could take everything from them except their mind.

Provide the best work environment that you can.  Continue to try and make it better with the resources you have.  Give meaning to the work and the things you do.  Every organization has this, no matter what you do at your company.  Don’t pursue happiness, it’s a fleeting emotion that is impossible to maintain.  Pursue being the best organization you can be.  It doesn’t mean you have to be someone you’re not.  Just be ‘you’, and find others that like ‘you.’

2015 Candidate Bill of Rights

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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.  In 2010 (remember those days?) we had candidates coming out of our ears. In 2015, most of us are begging for talent. Welcome to the show kids!

Here were my main point back then – and what they still are 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 – good luck – see you next 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.  That might be a bit pie-in-the-sky thinking because I also know way to 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.  Have a few standards and etiquette, and some manners.  It’s not hard, it’s not expensive and you definitely don’t need to pay a consultant to show you how to do it!

Karma is biting a bunch of hack talent acquisition pros in the butt in 2015.

The Key Trait of Great Hires

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For twenty years, I’ve been hiring and firing people. I’ve been lucky enough to have some great performers, a bunch of good performers and an also a few crappy performers. It seems like every time I turn; someone has an answer for me on how to hire better. For years I have given the advice if all else fails, hire smart people. It’s not a bad strategy. For the most part, if you hire the smartest ones of the bunch, you’ll have more good performers, than bad performers. I’m talking pure intelligence, not necessarily book smarts.

But, just hiring smart people still isn’t perfect. I want to hire good, or great, people every single time. How do you do that? That’s the million dollar question.

To me there is one trait we don’t focus enough on, across all industries. Optimism.

Your ability to look at the situation and come up with positive ways to handle it. Think about your best employees, almost always there is a level of optimism they have that your lower performers don’t.

I can’t think of one great employee I’ve ever worked with that didn’t have a level of optimism that was at least greater than the norm. They might be optimistic about their future, about the companies future, about life in general. The key was they had optimism.

Optimistic people find ways to succeed because they truly believe they will succeed. Pessimistic people find ways to fail, since they believe they are bound to fail. This hiring thing can be difficult. Don’t make it more difficult by hiring people who are not optimistic about your company and the opportunity you have for them. Ask questions in the interview that get to their core belief around optimism:

– Tell me about something you’re truly optimistic about in life? (Pessimistic people have a hard time answering this. Optimistic people will answer quickly and with passion.)

– Tell me about a time something you were responsible for went really bad. How did you deal with it?

– The company has you working on a very important project and then decides to cancel it. How would you respond?

Surrounding yourself with optimistic people drives a better culture, better teams, it’s uplifting to your leadership style. I want smart people, but I truly want smart people who are optimistic about life. Those people change the world for the better, and I think they’ll do the same for my business.

How Fake Is Your Employment Brand?

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I think most employment brands are completely fake. The reason I feel this way is because HR and Executives approve the messaging.  We, HR and Executives, are the last people who really know what our employment brand truly is.  So, we end up with stuff like this:

Seems really cool!  Makes us feel good about ourselves and our organization.  But for the most part it’s one big white lie.

That’s marketing.  It’s not marketings job to tell you the truth.  It’s marketings job to get you to buy something.  Sometimes its just some crappy product or service. Sometimes its the church down the street with the cool young pastor and rock band.  Sometimes its working for your organization.

Many HR Pros and Executives get really pissed off when I say something like this.  That’s because they drink their own Kool-aid.  They truly believe the messages brought forth are the truth.  Those messages are what they hope and dream the organization to become, so they’re all bought in on making it happen.  I actually really like these people. I like people who are bought into making their organizations what their commercials are telling us they are, even when they aren’t.

Who wants to go work for an organization that puts up a commercial of some manager unable to communicate what needs to be done, and Bobby down in the accounting bitching he only got a 14 lb. turkey from the company, when last year he got a 15 lb. turkey?  No one.  But that’s truly your organization.  Organizations are like families. You have some folks in your family you don’t want the rest of the world to see, but when you take the family photo it looks like everyone is fairly normal and well adjusted.

So, how fake is your employment brand?  On a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being Goldman Sachs and 10 being Google, where does your organization fall?

Do Your Employees Really Like Your Organization? #EWS2014

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Hey, gang I’m running a sponsored post by the great folks at Spherion regarding their 2014 Emerging Workforce Study which has some really great data, check it out.

I’m a company guy.

When I make the decision to go to work for an organization, I’m both feet in.  I’ve always been that way. I’m the dork who loves to get the company logo gear and I don’t just wear it to work on ‘casual’ Friday, I’ll wear it to my families holiday get-togethers!  To me, supporting the organization you work for is a non-negotiable. I want to work with people who want to work with the organization we work for, and if you don’t, get out!

Spherion’s 2014 Emerging Workforce Study found some really interesting statistics around this, that blew my mind!  Crazy as this will seem to you, not everyone thinks like me! Check this out:

    • Only 35% of workers would say something very positive in discussing their company with other people.

35%! If you would have asked me this question, without me first seeing the data, I would have said this was 75%.  I was way off.  This is a major problem for organizations!  65% of your employees basically believe they could not say something very positive about your organization.  Ouch! That hurts.

You want to see another major disconnect that is playing into this lack of engagement?

    • 64% of companies believe their younger workers lack the business and life experience required for leadership positions.
    • While companies believe younger workers lack experience, 61% of Gen Y workers agree they have greater opportunities available to them because of their age.

Organizations are finally really starting to feel the pain of their aging Baby Boomer workforce beginning to leave their positions.  This is that ‘oh crap’ moment when you realize you don’t have the proper succession in place for the future. To make this situation worse, your younger workers believe they’re ready to ‘drive’!  They want the keys to the executive washroom, but you know they’re not ready.

Put on top of all of this, about ten years of not developing your leadership competencies because of the recession, and you my friends have some major organizational issues you are about to face!

What can you do about this? Here are a few ideas:

1. Hire people who really, really want to work for you. Brand advocates will stick with you through thick and thin, even when you’re not at your best.

2. Teach your leaders to be ‘great’ at performance management.  Spend money and time on this.  There is great technology out there that can help as well.

3. Know who your true internal influencers are on your staff, and invest in them.

There is no easy way out of this, for any of us.  But, the awesome part of this mess, is that HR can have a great impact in making our organizations better.  Time to sharpen the saw and get to work HR Pros!

 

Disclosure Language:

Spherion partnered with bloggers such as me for their Emerging Workforce Study program. As part of this program, I received compensation for my time. They did not tell me what to purchase or what to say about any idea mentioned in these posts. Spherion believes that consumers and bloggers are free to form their own opinions and share them in their own words. Spherion’s policies align with WOMMA Ethics Code, FTC guidelines and social media engagement recommendations. 

Are You Reliable or Flashy?

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I’m going to put this into a car analogy.  Reliable is a Honda Accord or a Toyota Camry.  Flashy is a Chevy Camaro or a Dodge Charger.  You really can’t be both. In the auto world the closest thing to being both is a Tesla, and most people can’t afford one of those!

You either lean one way or the other.  If you want flashy, you are comfortable with the fact you might not get to work every day, because those cars tend to break down more often.  If you want reliability, you probably aren’t turning any heads, but when you turn your key that engine is starting every time.

I find most people select people like they select cars.  You are biased one way or the other, and find most people biased towards ‘flash’.  They like the good looking people and the smooth talkers.  Damn the results.  That person made me turn my head! They must be ‘good’.  Therein lies one of the major problem we have.  Looking good has absolutely nothing to do with being good.

People look at that new Audi A8 and believe because it looks awesome, it must be awesome.  Do a little research and it becomes a bust of a buy, because it constantly breaks down and has problems.  They look at a Subaru Forester and think ‘boring’! Until they realize that thing will still be running well after you retire.

So, what I’m saying is people are basically cars, minus the extended warranty!

I tend to lean reliable.  It’s not that I don’t like pretty people who speak well.  I really do.  But I really love people who come to work every day and bust ass.  You can be both, you can be a Tesla, but let’s face it, most of us can’t afford that talent!   We make offers to Camrys.  No one pins up photos of Camrys in their bedrooms as a kid.

It’s just so easy to get sucked into flashy.  They’re all bright and shiny, and smell good, and you feel better about them representing your brand, that is until they completely screw something up.   Then you’re out there trying to explain why you hired them to begin with, knowing you can’t say the truth. “Well, have you looked at him!?  He’s gorgeous! How could we not hire him.”

So, the question to you HR and Talent Pros – are you a Toyota Camry buyer or a Chrysler 200/Dodge Avenger buyer? Same exact price point, one is a considerably better buy than the other.

 

Top HR Products for 2014!

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I like new technology, which is why I’m headed out to the HR Technology Conference this week.  HR tech has continues to transform how we deliver HR and Talent solutions to our organizations.  I’m always amazed at the new stuff that comes out each year.  Human Resource Executive named their 2014 award winners for Top HR Products last week, and the awards are given out at the HR Technology Conference.  I’ll be checking all of these out for sure, but here is a preview of the award winners:

Appcast.io – www.appcast.io

A recruiting marketing platform that helps organizations fill their hard-to-fill requisitions by marketing it to 6,000 career and consumer sites on a pay-per-applicant basis.

Entelo Diversity – www.entelo.com

Entelo claims to have a program that will help you hire black people! Or women, veterans, Hispanics, etc. Basically, you can stop trying to search job boards using words like “Black” and “Spanish”.

Halogen 1:1 Exchange – www.halogensoftware.com

Halogen takes performance management to the next level with Halogen 1:1 Exchange.  This is a one-on-one meeting-management tool that works with other Halogen TalentSpace modules and is designed to spur greater communication, collaboration and coaching. The module tracks the frequency of these one-on-one meetings to provide employers with evidence these discussions are occurring. It also correlates the impact they are having on performance ratings, engagement scores and turnover.

Health E(fx) – www.healthefx.us

Health E(fx) is a stand-alone solution designed to help employers avoid penalties while optimizing their benefits strategies, decisions and costs within the Affordable Care Act environment.

HireVue Insights – www.hirevue.com

I’ve seen this one live and it’s awesome, can’t say enough about it! Basically, it analyzes your digital interviews to automatically give you the best candidates based on 15,000+ attributes. All your candidates.  Have 1000 apply, and you know you’ll only really look at the first 25 you applied, even though number 999 might be your best? Insights solves this! Plus, tells you which hiring managers are your best at selection!

IBM Social Learning – www.ibm.com

IBM Social Learning, powered by IBM Kenexa learning solutions and IBM social-collaboration and analytics tools, is designed to help people engage with one another, contribute expertise and learn from others using interactive media in near real-time.

Match-Click – www.match-click.com

Match-Click is a video-driven recruiting platform designed to let employers give job candidates a preview of their new corporate environment and potential supervisor and co-workers, through short, 20-second video clips featuring hiring managers and would-be colleagues describing the position and the organization.

QUEsocial – www.quesocial.com

Another one I’m really interested in seeing live! QUEsocial blends employer branding and social recruiting into a social talent-acquisition Software-as-a-Service technology platform. The idea is to enable recruiters and — by extension, employers — to “amplify and extend” the employer brand through individual recruiter and sourcing networks.

RecruitiFi – www.recruitifi.com

RecruitiFi is intended to offer organizations a new way to source talent by letting them select and post jobs to 250 expert recruiters from its membership pool of approximately 2,000.

Skillrater.com – www.skillrater.com

Skillrater.com is a cloud-based performance-feedback tool that incorporates social networking and collaboration.

There will be hundreds of other companies as well. I’ll make sure to give you a run down on some companies and technology that you haven’t ever heard of, yet, when I return.  The coolest part of HR Tech is finding a company that is nothing today, but will be industry leading in 3 to 5 years.  Last year I saw Blackbook HR and their Sense product and they are blowing up – such a great piece of technology to help us with one of HR’s biggest issues – Turnover!

Who will it be this year? I can’t wait to find out.