Category Archives: Branding

Give Your Employees Permission

Posted on by
1

It’s pretty widely accepted that referral hires are the best hires that most companies make.  Pretty easy math equation on why :

Good Employee + wanting to stay a good employee + employee’s reputation = usually good people they recommend to HR/Recruiting to go after and hire

I’m like Einstein when it comes to HR math!

But, there is one piece to the equation that most all companies struggle with.  We don’t get enough of these referrals!

So, we look at our referral process. Then we go out and look at our collateral material associated with our referral program. Then we look at using technology to automate our referral program. Then we look at the numbers again – and again – we still don’t have enough of these hires…

There is still one thing we keep forgetting to do – it’s simple – which is probably why we “assume” we don’t need to do it.  We/You need to give your employees permission to do share this with their personal and professional networks – each and every time you want a referral for a certain position.

You know what we do really well in HR?  Roll-outs! We do!  We can roll-out the shit of just about any program you can think of.  We love roll-outs. We live for roll-outs! You know what we do really bad in HR?  Continuing programs after we roll them out!  The truth sucks because it’s true.

How can you get more referrals?

1.  Have a program (don’t laugh, too many still don’t)

2. When you want a referral – ask for it – each and every time.  (We tend to roll out the referral program and assume each time we post a position our employees will just naturally share it with potential referrals – they don’t)

3.  When asking for a referral specifically “Give Permission” to your employees to share this with their Facebook friends, their LinkedIn Professional network and their Tweeps. (Specifically)

BEST PRACTICE ALERT: Create email groups by department, when you get an opening for that department send an email to the group with your standard referral “permission” language – plus one other item – an easy cut and paste hyperlink that they can post or send to their networks with specific instructions on where to paste/send it to.

Giving someone “permission” to do something strikes a trigger in their mind to actually do it – it has something to do with psychology or something, I don’t know I’m an HR pro, but suffice to say it works!  Think about it, like you were a 5 year old.  Your parents tell you, you can’t ride your Green Machine in the street.  Then, one day, Mom is out getting her nails done and your Dad sees you doing circles in the driveway on that Green Machine and he goes “Hey, why don’t you take that into the street?!”  What do you do?  You immediately take that bad boy for a ride in the street! Dad “gave you permission” and you ran with it!

Referrals might be a “little” different but I’ve actually had conversation with employees who’ve said “Oh! It’s OK if I send this to my friends and family?”  Like our posting was sort of corporate secret or something!  We shouldn’t assume.  You’ll be surprised.

Now – go give your employees permission to get you some referrals!

 

 

The Law of Diminishing Title Return

Posted on by
1

“I don’t care what you call me – my title is meaningless!”

Have you heard this?  If you’re in HR long enough – you’ll hear this a number of times over your career.  You know who says this?  People making a lot of money, people who’ve been out of work and are just happy to have a job, or people who’ve been around so long they actually really don’t care anymore!

Titles are important to people – although that is not the politically correct thing to say – so hardly ever hear the truth when it comes to titles.  Don’t think titles are important in your organization – try changing some – try going, let’s say, backwards in title!  You’ll see how important it is.  The issue I see in many organizations is the concept of Title Creep.  When for whatever reason, usually the business not doing well so you don’t have money to give out, the organization starts giving out titles over raises (“Hey, Janie, doesn’t look like we have any budget money to give you your 3% raise this year, but gosh golly you sure our important to us, so we want to “promote” you to Manager!).  And you know what? That crap works for a little while! Because people love titles!

Just look at banks – they’re really funny about titles!  Everyone at a bank – and I mean everyone – is either a Vice President or a President!  Banks really have screwed up the title thing worse than any other industry.  You will see banks now that the person’s title will be Vice President – Manager of Recruiting, or Sr. Vice President – Director of Human Resources – and I wonder to myself – “So, what is it – VP or Director!? What are you?”  This is where titles go very wrong and stop having value to the individual.

The main problem with title creep is when it’s used and people feel because they have, or have had, a certain title that means they should get that title in another organization.  I interviewed a sharp person a while back who had graduated from college in HR and over the course of about 6 years went from HR Generalist, to HR Manager, to HR Director, to VP of HR in the same organization. Impressive, right?  But wait, there’s more to the story!  She lost her position do to an organizational change (that’s what we call getting fired today so the GenY’s and millennials still feel it’s not their fault) and was struggling finding another “executive” role in HR.  I asked her a couple of questions:

1. From your beginning as an HR Generalist to your final role as VP of HR, how many direct reports did you pick up?

              A: 1

2. From your HR Gen role to VP role – what responsibilities did you pick up?

             A: Well…I still do everything, but I also am now more strategic.

Oh, boy.  So, I got to share with her some advice. Stop looking for an “executive” role, find a solid HR Gen or HR Manager role – you my friend are no VP of HR!   Title Creep really hurt her.

In HR we have a major role in this concept of Diminishing Returns in regards to Titles, and that role should be to stop handing out titles like it’s candy from the bowl on the receptionist’s desk at the front door.  We should protect titles and not allow them to diluted, because most people do like them, and they can be a valuable tool in your compensation tool box, but only if you don’t use them very often.

BTW – best title ever is from K Swiss Kenny Powers commercials!

Before The Rose Ceremony – Interviewing beyond Selection

Posted on by
Reply

Join Dawn Burke and I for our October webinar (sponsored by the good folks at HireVue) – “Before the Rose Ceremony: How to Become an Employer of Choice Through Your Interview Process”, where we’ll explore the following and compare it to the meat show on the Bachelor/Bachelorette:

  1. What pre-interview, pre-phone screen features subconsciously tell a candidate that you’re different from your competitors and help you plant the initial “why you want to work here” seed
  2. The 3 things that need to be present in your initial outreach to a candidate to prevent their BS meter from exploding (aka momentum killers).
  3. 5 Key Features of the live interview process at your company that sell your culture as a Great Place to Work – regardless if you hire the candidate or not.
  4. FOT’s Top 7 Interview Questions for uncovering great info and selling the candidate on your company as an employer of choice – they won’t even realize you’re doing it (and you’ll get great info as a result).
  5. SEND IN YOUR LESS ATTRACTIVE FRIENDS TO GIVE APPROVAL! (That’s FOT in this case.)  We’ll end with a simple audit process that you can use to determine if your interview process is contributing as much as it should toward your company being viewed as a destination of choice for candidates.

Join us for “Before the Rose Ceremony” and install a couple of the interview process features we discuss, and candidates will start to view you less as the Motel 6 and more like the Ritz.  Or wherever it is that feels like an upgrade from the Motel 6.  Maybe the LaQuinta?  The W?  You tell us.  The point is when you say no to people and they still love you, you’ve arrived – just like the bachelor or the bachelorette.  We think the way you interview candidates can help you accomplish that in the recruiting process.

**This program,ORG-PROGRAM-124798, has been approved for 1.00 (General ) recertification credit hours toward PHR, SPHR and GPHR recertification through the HR Certification Institute.

REGISTER TODAY

LinkedIn’s Talent Brand Index Could be Trouble!

Posted on by
5

Ok, let’s be as transparent as possible:

1. I’m pissed at LinkedIn like a scorned girlfriend because they won’t let me buy their corporate version LinkedIn Recruiter (not that I need it – I know you can do x-ray searches or use a great product like Scavado for a fraction of the price and get the same info. – but it’s the racialist mentality of it all – “No, you can’t have it because your a bad staffing company and we only give it to good corporate recruiters) – see – scorned girlfriend.

2.  I use LinkedIn every day. Mostly to recruit employees from one company to another company, and someone pays me to do this.

3. I like using LinkedIn – solid U/I and a great recruiting tool, inexpensive.  (we call that a triple threat)

OK – On with the show!

Last week LinkedIn announced a new product at their annual Talent Connect conference, called Talent Brand Index or BrandConnect – or something like that – as you can see I wasn’t invited (which I’m actually not pissed about – I mean I’d like to go – but it’s not like the scorned girlfriend thing). Basically this is a tool/measure of how much your brand is engaged on the LinkedIn site – but it has a number of components baked into the algorithm that make this less than black and white.  I have 3 opinions of this announcement that range in 3 very different psychosis:

Pessimistic View (LinkedIn Haters)

Holy crap – this is just another way for LinkedIn to hold companies hostage over their brand!  Basically, the Talent Brand Index, if I want a higher score, forces me to encourage my employees to get on LinkedIn – the more employees I have on, the higher score I get.  Also, the more products I buy from LinkedIn, the higher my score.  I don’t want my employees to be on LinkedIn because my competition will be pimping them non-stop and I’m bound to lose some.  Plus, they keep using the words “Brand Engagement” that invariably will get confused by people as my “employee engagement” when it really has no correlation.

Optimistic View (LinkedIn Lovers)

This tool is great at showing me where I can increase my “engagement” of my brand within the product.  We trust our employees and want them to network professionally and share our brand with as many people as possible – it’s good for them, it’s good for us.  We believe we have a great place to work and increasing our brand engagement on LinkedIn will only help our recruiting efforts.  Plus, this new tool really, for the first time, gives us great insight to how people outside of our company feel and interact with our employment brand.  It’s great data!

Pragmatic View (The Middle)

If you have a “great” work environment and strong employment brand (let’s say 10% of companies) this is wonderful.  You have low turnover, high employee engagement – this will only help you recruit more folks – and more employees you have on won’t hurt you because they aren’t leaving you.  The other 90% of companies could see some impact from this – if they go out and encourage their employees to actively get on LinkedIn, in hopes of raising your Brand Index score. You have pockets that aren’t pretty and you’ll have folks that get picked off by your competition.  This will then cause you more work.  It’s not to say those people wouldn’t leave on their own – some will, regardless, but I don’t want to throw them a job fair in the lobby of our building. Reality check – most HR shops/companies don’t have the people, the money or the desire to really move the needle on increasing their “LinkedIn Brand Index” score – so this will be a non-issue for most.

Final thought –

I would like those companies who really think this is a great deal to do just 1 thing for me. Will you do that?  Today, go to your CIO and tell them you are going to have the entire Software Development team put their profiles up on LinkedIn – because you want to raise your Brand Index score.  Then let me know the results – if you still have a job, or are conscious.

 

Falling in Love with Your Job

Posted on by
Reply

Do you know what it felt like the last time you fell in love?

I mean real love?

The kind of love where you talk 42 times per day, in between text and facebook messages and feel physical pain from being apart? Ok, maybe for some of you it’s been a while – you didn’t have the texts or Facebook!  But you remember those times when you really didn’t think about anything else, or even imagine not seeing the other person the next day, hell, the next hour. Falling “in” love is one of the best parts of love – it doesn’t last that long and you never get it back.

I hear people all the time say “I love my job” and I never use to pay much attention – in fact – I’ve said it myself.  The reality is – I don’t love my job – I mean I like it a whole lot – but I love my wife, I love my kids, I love Diet Mt. Dew at 7am on a Monday morning – the important things in life.  But my job?  I’m not sure about that one.  As an HR Pro I’m suppose to work to get my employees to “love” their jobs.  Love.

Let me go all Dr. Phil on you for a second – Do you know why most relationships fail? No, it’s not the cheating. No, it’s not the drugs and/or alcohol. No, it’s not money. No, it’s not that he stop caring. No, it’s not your parents. Ok, stop it – I’ll just tell you!  Relationships fail because expectations aren’t met.  Which seems logical knowing what we know about how people fall in love, and lose their minds.  Once that calms down – the real work begins.  So, if you expect love to be the love of the first 4-6 months of a relationship – you’re going to be disappointed a whole bunch – over and over.

Jobs aren’t much different.  You get a new job and it’s usually really good!  People listen to your opinion. You seem smarter – hell – you seem better looking (primarily because people are sick of looking at their older co-workers). Everything seems better in a new job.  Then you have your 1 year anniversary and you come to find out you’re just like the other idiots you’re working with.   This is when falling in love with your job really begins – when you know about all the stuff the company hid in the closet – the past employees they think are better and smarter than you, the good old days when they made more money, etc.  Now is when you have to put some work into making it work.

I see people all the time moving around to different employers and never seeming to be satisfied.  They’re searching – not for a better job, or a better company – they’re searching for that feeling that will last.  But it never will – without them working for it.

 

HR Needs to be more like Tuna

Posted on by
Reply

When is the last time you had a Tuna fish sandwich?  It’s been a while for me, because I’m the only one in my family who likes it – but growing up I had Tuna weekly.  I mean it’s the Chicken of the Sea!  Slate recently had an article that made me remember my Tuna days:

Why did Americans fall for tuna? Because it’s cheap and bland. Most of the tuna consumed in 19th-century America was imported in cans from France and served to European guests at upscale East Coast restaurants. Mainstream Americans considered the fish too gamey, until a cannery in San Pedro Bay, Calif., figured out that the steamed white meat of albacore tuna has very little flavor if you drain the fish’s own oil and can the meat with olive or cottonseed oil instead. The company began marketing the product as a chicken alternative in 1907. It distributed thousands of free recipe booklets, which contained mostly classic chicken or canned salmon recipes with tuna as a substitute. Americans found that tuna’s flavor was hardly noticeable in the right sauce, and sales began to rise. The tuna revolution really took off, however, during World War I. European countries, and eventually the American government, bought the inexpensive canned fish to feed the troops.

You feel smarter don’t you!?  Don’t tell me you didn’t learn anything today!

So, the big question is what does Tuna have to do with HR?  Only a question I would ask!

Tuna did for itself, what HR needs to do for itself – build a reputation within your organization – a positive reputation!  Tuna didn’t go out and say we are the best and brightest – come find out what we can do for you.  Tuna went to the consumer and said – you know what – we are cheap, but we taste alright and we can show you how you can make us taste better, and once you use us – you’ll find out you’ll want to use us even more because we are a better value then all those other fish in the sea!

See what I did there – I compared what you do internally in HR to the history of Tuna – I’m losing my mind.

Too often in our organizations we don’t make it easy for our organizations to work with us – we don’t show them how – we just assume they will know how to work with us.  But the reality is, they have no real concept of what HR is capable of, what you’re capable of, until you show them.  How do you show them?  Go spend time with them and find out what they need (not what you can deliver) then figure out the recipe to what they need – a little bit of HR, a little bit of marketing, and little bit of arm twisting and BAM – they’re using you and liking it!

Yep – HR needs to be more like Tuna!

Off-shoring Your Recruiting

Posted on by
2

If you haven’t been contacted by a recruiting off-shoring company yet, put yourself into a rare segment of Talent/HR Pros.  Almost daily I receive an email or phone call – from a U.S. phone number – telling me how I can save thousands of dollars by using their services to help us recruit for our open positions.  I always find this funny since my company is a third-party recruiting company.  So, basically, they are telling me that they can save me thousands of dollars from the thousands of dollars I tell my clients we are going to save them – sounds to good to be true!

But I’m also a sucker!  Yep, I took the bait!

Here’s the deal:

  • For about $1200/month you’ll get a “Full-time Recruiter” (the price might change a little based on how many you need, volume, etc. but that’s the ballpark)
  • This “Recruiter” works Monday through Friday from 8am to 5pm EST.
  • This “Recruiter” will have a U.S. based phone number.
  • You can have contact with this recruiter via phone or email – in fact it’s encouraged.
  • This “Recruiter” is actually based in India, in a call center environment.
  • This “Recruiter” has access to the major job boards and the internet and is trained at making a basic recruiting call.
  • You can get some guarantees on how many “candidates” presented, screened, etc.
  • The “Recruiter” has an email address from your company and presents themselves as working for your company.

Here’s my reality:

  • At $1200/month I had to try it – it seemed like a small investment for some education into this off-shoring recruiting world I keep hearing about.
  • The recruiter was pleasant, a bit hard to understand, and I felt wanted to do a good job.  It also sounds like they are sitting on the busiest street corner in Mumbai! (imagine giant call center with 500 folks all on the phone at the same time – with the windows open – sitting on Time Square – that’s the sound!)
  • They basically just call off of folks they find on job boards and/or an internal database of contacts which consist of H1B candidates that need sponsorship (we had them working on some IT openings to see what they came up with)
  • In 30 days of working a JAVA Developer opening, working for a U.S. client in the Denver Metro area with a competitive wage – this off-shoring recruiting company presented zero candidates that didn’t need sponsorship and only 1 candidate overall.
  • It wasn’t an easy opening – but that’s why I gave it to them to see how this person would do.
  • After the first 3 days I got a message and a call almost daily from the Recruiter and this person’s manager asking for more orders, even though they had yet to present one candidate.  This didn’t stop. We tried at the end to give a couple more IT openings we had, that I had my internal recruiters working on to see if they would come up with different candidates – and again we got a bunch of H1B candidates.

I don’t consider this to be a total failure – the experience let me know exactly what kind of orders that an off-shoring company could handle and do well with.  Those orders would most likely be ones where you have a healthy candidate base and just don’t have the internal capacity to go through the process of screening, or you have a staff that just has a hard time picking up the phone and calling potential candidates (stop laughing – that’s most corporate HR folks – or there wouldn’t be a multi-billion dollar recruiting industry).

Would I do it again?  Probably not, although the lure of a $1200/month recruiter is very enticing – especially one that isn’t afraid of the phones, but the reality of what I got doesn’t match up with what I paid.  Now – if I had to hire for a U.S. Call center and needed someone to plow through Monster and find 50 candidates a week for us to interview – maybe that might be the key to making this thing work.

$1200 education for myself.  You don’t have to get this same education – if you are seriously considering this – call me and I’ll tell you some better options for your $1200!

 

 

What Job Hunting is Not

Posted on by
1

There is one thing I love to do each week – sit down on a Sunday morning, with most of the family still in bed, my youngest on the couch watching cartoons and me reading the Sunday paper.   It’s one of those small things in life I really like to do – my wife tells me it reminds her of her father – it probably reminds me of my father as well.  Diet Mt. Dew, Cinnamon Pop-tart and the Paper – the perfect Sunday morning.

This Sunday I actually read a column of a local writer that was really good – it was from the heart, you could tell his passion – it was about his own job search.  Job Hunting Leads to a State of Confusion – went through his most recent frustrating job search to find his current position he loves at the local paper.   It had been 20 years since he had to go through a job search, and he believed in what he had heard from the “experts” over the past 20 years on “how to get a job”.  What he found was the exact opposite – and what most of us in the profession have known all along.  You don’t get a job by having the best resume, or following the online submission process, or even answering every interview question the best – you get a job by making connections with people.  After all the science and all the technology – it still comes down to relationships and making a personal connection.

From the article:

Work skills did not translate to job-landing skills.

The concept seemed counter-intuitive to me. In fact, it went against what I thought I’d learned about job hunting in my news-gathering days. Then, history of punctuality, dependability and going the extra mile were immensely important. Writing and communication skills couldn’t be emphasized enough.

I’d written the tips many times. Now all I had to do was make a compelling case to potential employers. I couldn’t have been more off base…

My work history appeared secondary and the interview process came off as impersonal…

Interview panels seemed weirdly focused on themselves…

Interviewers seemed strangely uninterested in seeing my work…”

Sound familiar?  It’s what we put candidates through, it’s what we force our hiring managers to do – impersonal, weird, strange.

Job hunting, when you have to be hunting (i.e., I don’t have a job and need one), sucks!

Job hunting is not fun.

Job hunting is not exciting.

Job hunting is not life affirming.

As HR/Talent Pros we tend to forget this little fact.  The fact that the people we are interviewing and putting through our “process” are in the most stressful part of their life.  It’s hard to be your best, when you’re most stressed.  Less hoops and more helps are probably needed.  Something for me to think about the next time I’m interviewing someone.

 

Dream Gigantic

Posted on by
Reply

I love this.

I don’t do this enough – I don’t count myself as a dreamer – but I encourage my children to do this.  I want them to be the MLB Shortstop, the famous Fashion Designer and world renowned Environmentalist.  They have Gigantic dreams – I will do everything I can in my power to help them reach those dreams.  I won’t be the parent who tells them they are unrealistic.  I won’t be the parent to tell them they are farfetched.  I will not be the parent to tell them that their dream is out of reach.

I have a career that has taught me to be pragmatic.  I’ve seen the best and worst of people – sometimes all in the same day. When people ask me for career advice I give them the safe answer, because I know the reality of life – their dreams are longshots – most people are not willing to come close to the effort they need to exert to reach their dreams – so I give them options I think they are willing to work for – which are less than Gigantic.

Every day I have to consciously turn this off as I drive home.  You see the reason we have dreams is because we have a belief that there is something more, something better.  Dreams can be Gigantic – and you reach them through Gigantic effort.

Originality is Dangerous

Posted on by
Reply

“Originality is Dangerous”

Let that sink in for a minute.  We are told differently aren’t we?  Let me give you the quote that is from –

“Originality is dangerous. If you want to increase the sum of what is possible for human beings to say, to know, to understand and therefore in the end, to be, you actually have to go to the edges and push outward… This is the kind of art whose right to exist we must not only defend but celebrate. Art is not entertainment. At its very best, it’s a revolution.”  -Salman Rushdie, PEN World Voice Festival May 6, 2012

I tend to believe to many HR Pros are concerned with originality.  They want to create – they want new – old is somehow, not bad, it’s even worse it’s not – competent. So, we create new, believing it’s better than old.  Sometimes that is correct – but not always.

In HR we are not creating Art – we are trying to move along the process to better our people.  There is science and process behind this, not Art.  Don’t mistake this fact.  HR is not doing itself justice trying to be Art.  Stick to science – stick to what you can prove – your “Gut” will lie to you every time it gets that chance.

HR is not entertainment.  At its very best, it’s a process that does what it is supposed to.