Category Archives: Branding

There Are Only 5 Real Jobs

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For those who didn’t see this last week the former NBA great and round mound of rebound Sir Charles Barkley made this comment:

“We got great lives. Why would we be miserable? Like, I’ll tell you, there’s five real jobs in the world: teacher, fireman, policeman, doctor, and somebody who’s in the armed services. Those are five real jobs.” 

For those who don’t know Charles he makes outlandish statements all the time, that’s why he gets paid more now to be a commentator on TV than he probably ever got paid to play basketball. But his statement got me to thinking, how many ‘real’ jobs are there really!?

First, you have to define ‘real’ job.  Charles believes talking about basketball on TV is probably not a ‘real’ job.  It doesn’t really add value to peoples lives further than to those who enjoy watching basketball and listening to other people talk about it.  So, it would seem that for a job to be real, it must have some value further than entertainment purposes.

Doctor’s add value beyond entertainment, but so do nurses and dentist and physical therapists.  So, are not those other health professionals ‘real’ jobs?  If we had no nurses, could doctors, theoretically, do what nurses do? Yes. Okay, so a we add another element to determine ‘real’ job. It’s a job no one else can do, but that profession could do the other jobs if they had to.

Teacher. You don’t have doctors without educators. Someone has to teach the kids to be doctors.  So, teachers are for sure a real job.  Could a teacher be a doctor?  Now, we are starting to run in circles.  Not all teachers could be doctors, some just wouldn’t be smart enough.  So, beyond, doctors and teachers, it would seem like there needs to be someone who just is simply brilliantly smart.  We don’t really have a job title for just smart guy or smart girl.

I will say fireman, policeman and armed services all seem to have a very similar skill set.  I would lump them into all one job – people savers.  That gives us really 4 jobs: Teacher, Doctor, Really Super Smart Person and People Savers.

Is there any others?

I’ve got one I think most people won’t even consider.  Sales Person.  Think of all those ‘jobs’ we have that are really just sales: Politicians, Clergy, most business professionals, educators, etc.  Our reality is that we need to people to sell us on stuff.  If no one sells, we all just sit around and wait for stuff to happen. Politicians sell us on the importance of change. Our religious leaders sell us the need to be good and get better.  Educators sell us on the importance of learning.  We are constantly being sold something.

So, for my money, there are 5 Real Jobs in the world:

1. Teacher

2. Doctor

3. Really Super Smart Person

4. People Savers

5. Sales People.

What would you consider a ‘real’ job? Hit me in the comments.

Why Your Employment Brand Really Matters

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There’s really only one reason that you should have any concern over your employment brand and it’s this:

Job at Great Brand = High Self-esteem

Stop for one minute and don’t think like a marketer, but like a normal person. Why does a normal person want to go to work for a great brand? Why would you?

Let me put it another way.  Why do you buy and wear brand name clothing?  It’s not because it’s, necessarily, better made than any other brand.  It’s because it makes you feel good to wear that brand.  People look at you and see that you’re wearing that brand.  It gives you a boost to your self-esteem.

Now, think about the brands you love. For me, I love Nike.  Always have, since I was a kid.  I have a lot of Nike stuff in my life.  When I see someone that works at Nike, I get excited.  I want to know more about how they like it, what its like, etc.  I’ve applied to work at Nike early in my career, and got shot down.  I know working for Nike would have made me feel good about myself and the company I was working for.  I have a belief that others would have been ‘impressed’ I was working for Nike.  Whether if it was true or not, that was my perception.

The only true reason your employment brand is important is because of this.  People want to work an organization that is a boost to their self-esteem.  Even if your brand is neutral in doing that, it’s a negative.  They want to work for a brand ‘they’ feel others will be impressed by for a number of varied reasons: it’s cool (Google/Zappos), it’s important (Universities/Government/FBI), they do good stuff (Hospitals/Teachers), they make a ton of money (Berkshire Hathaway), they are innovative (hot new tech firms), they are professional (law firms/banking/professional services), etc.

Your employment brand, for some segment of your hiring population, needs to raise their self-esteem.  Find out what it is about you that does that, and you’ll have employment branding figured out.

4 Ways To Find Great Talent on Glassdoor

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The next biggest recruiting play is not LinkedIn, or CareerBuilder, or Monster.  It’s Glassdoor!  But you wouldn’t know that, because you still see them as a place where former employees and zombies go to bitch about your company and bad managers.  It’s not!

Kris Dunn and I are going to show you, in this month’s FOT webinar, how smart companies are leveraging Glassdoor in their recruiting practices to steal your talent, and it’s not the crappy talent you wish would leave!

Yep, Glassdoor is sponsoring this webinar.  Yep, Kris and I made sure they knew we don’t hold back punches!  That, in and of itself, is cool, because they know we speak the truth, and they aren’t afraid of the truth getting out (BTW – we have a lot of companies not willing to do FOT webinars because of this!).

Let’s face it. HR pros have a long history of being uncomfortable with sites like Glassdoor.com. After all, the only people that use Glassdoor.com and sites like it are disgruntled ex-employees that you fired, right?

Wrong. It was wrong 5 years ago, and it’s horribly wrong today. Rather than view these types of sites as a threat, smart HR and Recruiting pros are learning how to use the reputation/rating sites to manage their employment brand, connect with candidates and make better hires.

The days of the employment brand strategy with scripted photos, smiling faces (just the right amount of diversity!) and PDFs are over.

That’s why we’re going deep on reputation sites like Glassdoor in the July version of the FOT Webinar entitled,“How Smart HR Pros are Becoming Better Marketers – By Using Company Reputation Sites Like Glassdoor.”  Join Kris Dunn and Tim Sackett from Fistful of Talent at 2pm ET on Wednesday July 30th, and we’ll hit you with the following:

– How the the yelp-ification of America—the trend towards consumer-based reviews in almost every area of our economy—is changing the way employees and candidates think about job search and employer brands. It’s second nature for your employees to rate a restaurant, a book or a movie online. That means that employees of all types (not just the ones who want to complain) are more willing than ever to participate in your brand through user review.

– Why the explosion of social media and deep coverage of every aspect of our lives through video and photos is changing the willingness of smart companies to increase their transparency.  Every employee and candidate who interacts with your company is a potential reporter, and they expect you to share the good, bad and ugly about working with your firm openly and honestly. Old versions of employment brands won’t cut it—you”re going to have to give up some control to maximize your brand.

– We’ll cover the 5 Biggest Myths about company reputation sites like Glassdoor and tell you which ones are completely BS and which ones you actually perpetrate by not fully engaging on sites like Glassdoor. We’ll hit the usual suspects here: “The only comments are from the bad employees”  and “The salary data out there isn’t factual,” and tell you why things have changed. More importantly, we’ll cover how you actually may make the myths a reality by not fully engaging on reputation sites.  Think about that last sentence: You’ve got to be in the game to influence the game.

– Last but not least, we’ll give you a 4-step playbook on how to engage on reputation sites and become more of a Marketer as an HR/Recruiting Pro.  It’s true—you wouldn’t have read this far if you didn’t want to learn more about how to use reputation sites like Glassdoor to maximize your company and your career. We’ll help you get started.

The outside world now has a huge say in how your company/employment brand is perceived, whether you engage or not. FOT thinks you should engage.  Join us for “How Smart HR Pros are Becoming Better Marketers – By Using Company Reputation Sites Like Glassdoor” at 2pm ET on Wednesday July 30th and we’ll show you how.

(FOT Note: Glassdoor is sponsoring this FOT webinar. We’re happy to have them as a sponsor and, true to their commitment to transparency, they’re letting us talk about the myths and a lot of other realities HR and Recruiting pros have experienced related to Glassdoor—without restriction. That type of balance makes them a great partner.  Join us and we promise you’ll get a balanced view—no sales pitch—as well as an insider’s guide to how to use sites like Glassdoor to become a better marketer as an HR/Recruiting pro.)

I Hate Hotwire

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I’m a Hotwire user.  My buddies, Kris Dunn and Matt Stollak, got me to use it.  The first time I was really nervous.  I didn’t like I couldn’t see what hotel and location I was getting exactly.  I loved the price I was going to pay, it was always like 40%+ off the hotel’s own reservation site.  I started using it all the time.  My kids travel for sports so I was constantly having to look up hotels and wanting someplace nice and clean, but not having to pay a ton.

I even recommended it to the parents of other kids we were traveling with. Soon entire teams were using Hotwire to book their travel.  100% of the time I was satisfied with what I got on Hotwire.  Until I wasn’t.

This past baseball tournament I got booked on Hotwire.  The deal said I was getting $119 room for $71 for a 3 star hotel.  The examples they gave me were Holiday Inn Express, Hampton Inn, etc. What I got was a Best Western that was last updated in 1973.  For $71, and the actual price on Best Western’s site was $72.37.  I save $1.37.  A little less than the $48 per night they lied to me about.

I did what any customer would do who loves working with a company.  I called customer service. That was probably my first mistake.  You see, Hotwire didn’t care if I was satisfied.  How it works is you book and pay up front, then they tell you what hotel you get.  They’ve already got your money, they don’t care if you are satisfied or not.  Their customer service rep read me the script, “in small print at the bottom of our website it specifically says…”.  It ‘specifically’ says we don’t care if you’re satisfied, suck it! (my words, not there words, but that’s basically how their customer service guy made me feel)

I then tired the email customer service route.  Same deal.  Small print.  Too bad.  Anything else we can help you with?

Nope.  Nothing else. I’ll never book with you guys again. I actually said that to both the live person and the email person.  They didn’t care.  They didn’t care they were losing a customer because I felt like I was ‘taken’ and ‘duped’ by their small print.  They easily could have have solved this be cancelling the reservation.  They would have saved me as a customer.  As someone who would have shared a positive story about Hotwire.

But the $213 sale was just too big to give up.

It’s funny how companies so easily throw away customers, for something so easily fixable.  In the end my original fear came to light.  Not knowing the place and location was a problem for me.  I own that.  Hotwire had exceeded my initial expectation with good rates at good locations.  Then I got a lemon, and I was pissed.  They seemingly didn’t care, that made me more pissed.  So, I’ll break up with them.

The moral of this story wasn’t that I got a crappy hotel and I wanted the nice one.  It is I felt lied to.  I felt like the site made it clear I was getting a $119 room for $71, when in actuality I was getting a questionable 3 star room for $71 that really costs $72.  To me, that’s shady.

 

The #1 Technical Recruiting Firm In The World

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I’m happy to announce that today that my company, HRU Technical Resources, is the #1 company in the world when it comes to Engineering and IT staffing!  Yay, me! Is that freaking awesome!!!  Wow, unbelievable, I’m so excited.  If you want to work with us, the #1 Technical Recruiting Firm in the World, just give me a call – 517-908-3156!

How’d we get that honor? Um, next question. We are #1!!!

Let’s face it, I’ve known for so long that my company is number one.  It’s pretty easy to see.  I have a rock star team of recruiters who get it at a level that far surpasses everyone else I’ve seen.  I have an Account Management and Biz Dev team that grinds every day, and my back office is full of chicks on mental steroids.  It’s always great when, not only are you recognized as number one, but when you truly deserve it as well.

My company has never gotten a position it couldn’t fill. True story.  Knows how to recruit socially and non-socially.  They literally breakdown walls in recruiting everyday.  I’m glad we decided to finally recognize ourselves for who we really are, the #1 Technical Recruiting Company in the World!

Have you really ever wondered how this stuff is measured?  Sometimes there are third party organizations that claim to be unbiased, but they only exist if those companies they are touting actually pay them some money to keep them in business.  Analyst really aren’t any different.  They do research, but at the end of the day, someone has to sponsor that research, or they can’t pay their bills.

I would say the only true measure of deciding who is better than whom would be if an organization is willing to work with you over your competition, but we know that is bogus.  Time and again I’ve run into companies who are working with #2 companies in our industry because they have a relationship, or they gave me tickets to see Katy Perry, or they drop off bagels the first Monday of every month.  This has nothing to do with who is better.

Sometimes it’s based on total revenue or number of hires, but that to doesn’t make you better, it just shows you’re bigger.  Our industry loves to use revenue as a key to success, then you’ll see staffing and RPO firms who are growing like weeds and losing money.  Is that success?  Well, yes, if you’re goal is to just buy market share.  I’m sorry but I can’t say a company is number one in anything if they’re losing money.

BusinessWeek had an article that helps straighten this all out:

“The organization in charge of policing this dispute and the several dozen like it in the U.S each year is the National Advertising Division. There are laws against publishing misleading advertisements, and in the early 1970s it seemed as if Ralph Nader-style consumer groups would result in more regulations. “There are ticking sounds that we hear in all the pressure groups, congressional hearings and other forums that are meeting to decide our fate,” said Victor Elting Jr., the chairman of the American Advertising Federation, at the time.

So the advertising industry founded the National Advertising Division in 1971. While various federal agencies and state attorneys general have authority to regulate misleading advertising, the division is the way for the industry to handle things before they get to that level. Cases often originate with one company complaining about a competitor’s sketchy claims. NAD holds hearings and asks fibbers to cut it out. While it has no enforcement power, it does have an agreement with the Federal Trade Commission that it will look at any case in which the violator doesn’t change its ways. That threat is usually enough to keep companies in line.”

So, now you know, the NAD will let us know who’s number one.

Until then, I’m still happy to announce we are #1!

The 1 Problem with Posting on LinkedIn

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LinkedIn made me internet famous for a day with my 11 Rules for Hugging at Work.  That one post got me a gig on Huffington Post, has gotten me speaking gigs and has gotten me clients at HRU.  My immediate reaction on the back channel to my close friends was “Holy Sh*t! This LinkedIn publishing thing is a game changer!”

Of course, my friends are smarter than me, and they said, slow down.  It’s great if you an “LI Influencer”, because they promote your posts out to millions of potential readers.  But, as they open the publishing ability out to everyone, let’s see what will happen.

I was in the first roll-out of 20,000.  Now everyone and anyone can’t publish on LinkedIn.  You know what?  My friends are smart.

I don’t know if you noticed, but the content stream on LI has turned into Twitter.  There is so much content, you can’t even begin to start to digest it, let alone find really good stuff.  That was my initial hope.  Oh boy, this is going to be great!  I will find all kinds of new and interesting voices! In reality, what has happened is I can’t find anyone, because there is so much crap that people write, I find myself unwilling and unable to put in the time to get through it.  So, I’ve given up.

I even have given up writing on LI’s platform, because I figure the same thing is happening to everyone else, that is happening to me.

The 1 Problem with posting on LinkedIn is that they’ve allowed too many people to post, to often.  It’s become spam.  It’s become to much to digest.  While their original concept of “Influencers” was great, the new concept of open access, I believe has blown up on them. More content does equal more clicks, I’m sure.  But, too much content just equals more garbage for their members to sift through.

There’s a great lesson here for leaders.  If you have something that works great and is getting great results, sometimes more of that one thing doesn’t equal better.  It equals worse.  As with most things in life, less is more.

Content Isn’t King

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Ideas are king.

A guy made $50K for his potato salad kickstarter campaign. Not because it was some great potato salad (content), because it was an awesome idea that was funny and people are willing to spend $10 to be a part of a funny, awesome idea that no one else thought of.  The next guy who decides to do this with coleslaw will get nothing.  The idea was already created and it was brilliant.  No one would ever start a campaign to raise money to make potato salad! Then they did.

Don’t discount great ideas.  They’re hard.  The market is fickle.  Great ideas are valuable because so few are actually created.

The Search For The Smartest Employee

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Yo! I’m on vacation this week, don’t try and come rob my house, it’s a ‘staycation’!  I’m going to run some oldies but goodies so I can let my creative juices focus on Gin and Tonics. Here you go:

I couldn’t sleep the other night, probably because of the 14 Diet Dews I had throughout the day, but I had an Epiphany while staring at the ceiling in the dark.   I figured out a way for HR Pros to find the Smartest Employee in their Company!  It isn’t a complex algorithm or a set of cognitive assessment tests – it’s a simple matrix – but it’s very effective.  Now, you might be asking yourself:

 “Why do I need to find the smartest employee in our company?”

Which would be legitimate – unfortunately at 2 a.m. I didn’t ask myself that same question – I just thought I came up with some crazy Einstein type shit!  But, like most things I deal with, I can come up with a plausible argument to why it’s important to find the smartest people in your company.  My reasons:

1. Smart people have the potential to do smart things.  In an organization you want to make the right decisions – usually dumb people don’t.

2. Smart people usually know other smart people. In an organization you want to get rid of your dumb people, and hire more smart people.

3. Smart people know the fakers.  Organizations make people selection mistakes, it happens all the time, don’t be embarrassed, just don’t let one decision turn into another by keeping a mistake.  Smart people know your bad hiring mistakes, because they can read through the B.S.

Now for the Matrix!  Like I said it’s simple – which is also why it’s genious, because anyone can do it.  It goes a little something like this (hit it!) –

First Step: down one side of your matrix list your employees by level of responsibility. Most responsible at the top, down to the least responsible at the bottom.  Some of these you’ll just have to do the eyeball test on, and slot people as you see fit – don’t get to worked up over this – just get the most responsible up top, the least down low – the ones in the middle don’t matter anyway.

Second Step: Across the top of the matrix list total compensation of each person to the corresponding column.  For the most part you should end up with a sheet that shows the most responsible person in your organization, making the most money, and slowing but surely working your way down to the least responsible, least amount of money.

Third Step: The Smart Employee Search.  Here’s where the rubber hits the road!  Now, look at your matrix and find the highest paid employee, with the corresponding least amount of experience.  Boom! You just found your smartest employee.

I told you it was easy!  This person has figured out how to, relatively, make the most money by having virtually no responsibility.  Say what you want – but that is one smart person!  You need to pull that person in and find out how to get them more engaged into your daily operations.  Don’t take this as a joke – dumb people don’t figure this out – you just don’t fall into a highly paid, low or no responsibility job – you have to work to get there.  Don’t underestimate this person’s capabilities – because guess what – everyone else has!  That’s why your working your butt off until 6pm, and they’re out the door at 3pm going to their golf league – for about $4000 less than you make. They’re going home with no stress, while you’re on your 4th therapist – this year.   They love coming to work – you have a hard time pulling yourself out of bed.

I love these employees – I try to hang with them, learn from them – I feel like I’m an anthropologist learning about a forgotten species – they intrigue me so.  A word of caution though – don’t try and capture and change these employees – don’t try and be “smarter” than they are – and change their job or their scope or their pay.  Remember, they’re smarter than you – you’ll just frustrate yourself as they find another position – doing even less for more!

Michigan HR and Talent Pros!

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Hey, just getting back from SHRM’s 2014 National Conference and it’s just one more reminder to me why I love going to HR conferences.  I get to meet new HR folks, who are passionate about HR and Talent!  I love that!

Here’s what I want to do.  I want to push myself to meet one new HR person, face to face, in Michigan for the next 52 weeks.   Let’s connect, and let’s get together.  Here’s my information:

Email – sackett.tim@hru-tech.com

Phone – 517-908-3156

Twitter – @timsackett

Reach out to me and let’s schedule a time.  I’ll come to you, or we can meet at some place close.  Coffee, lunch, an ice cream cone, a Diet Dew, whatever, let’s just make this happen.

Send me a message.  I want to fill up my calendar.  I’m in Lansing, but I’m in the Detroit Metro area a lot, also close to Grand Rapids, etc. Let’s face it, I’m centrally located and driving an hour or so, isn’t a big deal. The connections will be worth it!

Let’s do this!

Hi! I’m a Society of Human Resource Management Senior Certified Professional…

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I have some HR friends who are telling me that SHRM’s recent decision to develop their own certification is a non-issue to real trench HR pros around the world.

What do you think?  Is it a non-issue?

I think it is, but we won’t see the real effects of the change for a year or more down the road.  I recertified with HRCI this past year, so basically I’ve got three years before this becomes a real issue for me.  At that point, I have a decision to make.  Here’s my three decisions:

1. Recert with HRCI.  It’s easy, I know it, I get to keep my SPHR letters that I’ve become so comfortable with and that most people in the industry view as something that means I know at least something about HR.

2. Certify with SHRM’s new certification.  Get comfortable with a new set of letters – SHRM-SCP which seems overly long, but I think people in industry will recognize the SHRM letters and say, yeah he probably also knows something about HR.

3. Just skip it all together.  I’ve reached that 20 years of experience career mark.  Do I really need some letters to tell people I know my stuff?  Probably not.  Look, any job I’m going to have moving forward in my HR career, probably could care less if I have letters behind my name.

You might say, “wait, Tim! there are other choices!” Like, I could certify with both HRCI and SHRM! No, I don’t consider that a choice.  Why would I do that.  Let’s face it, neither organization really has put the best foot forward in this whole mess, and I don’t need a business card that says:

“Tim Sackett, SPHR, SHRM-SCP”

That’s just ridiculous, no one wants to see that, or have to explain that!

I’m wondering if SHRM believes we should just go with “Tim Sackett, SCP”, at which point someone will ask “What’s SCP?” and I’ll go “It’s Senior Certified Professional”, to which they’ll go, “of what?”, to which I’ll go, “of Human Resources”, to which they’ll go, “what is the S and the M stand for than?”  You see where this is going…

All this being said, I do have to agree with my HR friends.  In the large scheme of things this will be a non-issue.  SHRM has launched their new certification program.  Most people will go down that path.  A few will hold out and keep their HRCI certification.  I don’t know if it will be enough to save that company, I’m doubting it.

Like I said above, this is a non-issue for me for the next three years.  My reality is I’ll keep developing myself like I have for the last 20 years.  I’ll go to SHRM events. I’ll go to user events. I’ll attend webinars on topics that interest me.  Regardless of the letters, I believe in development.  That’s why in the long run this becomes a non-issue to trench HR folks.  You either believe in making yourself better, or you don’t really care much about that.  That’s what really separates professionals, not letters.