Category Archives: Brilliant Mind

6 Things That Will Make You A Great HR Pro

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Yesterday, I wrote this post on a question someone asked me about How do I become a great HR Pro?  I told them to stop sucking. Then I remembered I wrote this about three years ago – it’s better than just ‘stop sucking’, although, that’s brilliant advice as well! 

The one great thing I love about going to HR and Talent conferences is that you always get reminded about what really good HR should look like.  It doesn’t mean that your shop will be there, but it gives you something to shoot for.  I’ll admit, sometimes it can be frustrating listening to some HR Pro from a great brand tell you how they ‘built’ their great employment brand through all their hard work and brilliant ideas.  All the while, not mentioning anything about “oh, yeah, and we already had this great brand that marketing spends $100 million a year to keep great!”

Regardless, seeing great HR always reminds me that great HR is obtainable for everyone.  Great HR has nothing to do with size or resources.  It has a lot to do with an HR team, even a team of one, deciding little by little we’re going to make this great!

I think there are six things you need to know to make your HR department great:

1. Know how to ‘sell’ your HR vision to the organization and your executives.  The best HR Pros I know are great storytellers and, in turn, great at selling their visions.  If you don’t have a clear vision of what you want your HR shop to look like, how do you expect others to get on board and help you get there.  Sit down, away from work, and write out exactly what you want your HR shop to look like.  Write it long-hand. Write in bullet points. Just start.  It will come.

2. Buy two pairs of shoes: one of your employees and one of your hiring managers. Try them on constantly.  These are your customers, your clients.  You need to feel their joys and pains and truly live them.  Knowing their struggles will make you design better HR programs to support them.  Support them, not you.

3. Working hard is number 1.  Working smart is number 1A.  Technology can do every single transaction in HR.  Don’t allow tasks and administrative things be why you can’t do great HR.  Get technology to do all of this busy work so you can focus on real HR deliverables.

4. Break something in your organization that everyone hates and replace it with something everyone loves.  This is usually a process of something you’ve always done, and people are telling you it still has to be done that way. Until it doesn’t, and you break it.  By the way, this doesn’t have to be something in HR.  Our leaders and our employees have so many things that frustrate them in our environments.  Just find one and get rid of it.

5. Sometimes the path of least resistance is the best solution. HR people love to fight battles for the simple act of fighting the battle. “NO! It has to be done this way!” “We will NOT allow any workarounds!”   Great HR finds the path of least resistance.  The path of greatest adoption.  The path which makes our people feel the most comfortable, even if it isn’t the path we really, really want to take.

6. Stop being an asshole. You’re in HR, you’re not a Nazi.  Just be nice.  We’re supposed to be the one group in our organization that understands.  Understands people are going to have bad days and probably say things they don’t mean.  Understands that we all will have pressures, some greater than others, but all pressure nonetheless. Understands that work is about 25% of our life, and many times that other 75% creates complete havoc in our world!

Great HR has nothing to do with HR.  Great HR has a lot to do with being a great leader, even when that might not be your position in the organization.

How do you become a great HR Pro?

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From The Project mailbag:

Tim,

I’m a recent HR graduate and I want to be great in HR.  How do I become a great HR pro like you? Is there certain things I can do, read, etc.?

Marcy

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I get asked this kind of question a lot.  I want to be a great HR pro. What do I need to do?

Ugh! That’s a hard question. There’s a lot of things you can do. There’s a lot of things you have no control over. 

S0, what do you need to do?

Just start doing great HR work! Stop waiting around for someone to allow you to do great HR work. If you want to be great, you have to show people you can be great. 

Derek Jeter didn’t wait around for someone to let him show them he was a great ShortStop. He just went out and played Shortstop. He made mistakes. He corrected those mistakes. He just kept doing it. 

You need to go ‘play’ HR. You’ll be bad at some of it. You might actually find you’re pretty damn good at some of it.  The more you play, the better you’ll get. It’s probably unrealistic you’ll be great right off the bat, but who knows, you might.  

You’re going to find that most HR pros don’t become great because they wait for someone else to tell them what to do.  You won’t become great waiting to be told what to do. You need to find out what to do on your own. How do you do that?

Educate yourself. Network with other HR pros. Find out what others are doing, and what’s working and what’s not working. Start testing things in your organization in small ways. If it works, test it in a bigger way.

Ask the people in your organization that are in charge of driving or generating revenue what they would do if they ran HR. Try some of those things. Ask them what roadblocks they have in the organization. Then work to break those down.

Walk away from other HR peers who seem to hate HR.  Great HR pros love HR. They love being involved and making a difference. They are not happy with keeping things the same.

How do you become a great HR Pro?  You just have to go and do it. If you do enough stuff, you’ll find some things that are really good. Do more of those. Do less of the stuff that sucks. Being great is really easy. More good stuff, less sucky stuff! But, you have to do stuff.

Chipotle’s HR Just Had a Major Screw Up!

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If you pay attention to the news at over the past few months you’ve heard about the E. coli outbreak at a number of Chipotle restaurants all over the U.S.:

“The FDA and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) along with state and local officials are investigating two separate outbreaks of E. coli O26 infections that have been linked to food served at Chipotle Mexican Grill restaurants in several states.

As of January 27, 2016, the CDC reports a total of 55 people infected with the outbreak strain of STEC (Shiga toxin producing E. coli) O26 from a total of 11 states in the larger outbreak: California (3), Delaware (1), Illinois (1), Kentucky (1), Maryland (1), Minnesota (2), New York (1), Ohio (3), Oregon (13), Pennsylvania (2), and Washington (27). There have been 21 reported hospitalizations. The majority of these cases were reported from Oregon and Washington during October 2015.”

No restaurant wants this to happen, ever! It has an immediate and lasting impact to sales. I worked for Applebee’s, one of the largest restaurant chains in the world, food safety was our single biggest focus and a constant worry.  Chipotle’s entire company went into immediate crisis mode when all of this was going down.

So, much so, that they decided to do an unprecedented all store closing to ‘re-train’ all employees on current, new and additional food safety measures. From Fast Company:

The company is still not clear on which ingredient brought on the E. coli outbreak, though it again confirmed that the norovirus was spread through employees who came into work while sick.

“If you are feeling sick, or if you have vomited, either at work or at home, you need to tell your manager or field leader immediately,” co-CEO Monty Moran told workers. Managers are also expected to report if an employee gets sick at work, and if a worker or customer vomits in a restaurant, the location must be shut down immediately.

Most people won’t catch what just happened. E. coli is major! Both Chipotle and the CDC never found out where the E. Coli came from. Norovirus is completely different. Restaurants have norovirus outbreaks. It’s not frequent, but more frequent than you think. It’s usually caused by a worker with stomach flu coming to work and spreading it to cooking areas, thus giving it customers and other workers.

Two very different things!

But, since we can’t find out where the E. coli came from, which was more than likely a supplier of some fresh ingredient – since it showed up in so many states and so many locations, not connected any other way, let’s show our customers we solved something else!

The problem is, Chipotle doesn’t really have a Norovirus issue. Sure they might have had one or two restaurants with an outbreak, but that is solved with a good bleach cleaning and some retraining.  Chipotle’s executive team and HR went off the deep end and instituted the following things:

  • Sick employees who have vomited at work or at home, now get 5 paid days off before they can return to work. 
  • If an employee or customer vomit at a restaurant, that restaurant must be closed down immediately. 

This is unsustainable. HR should have advised the executive team that this isn’t sustainable.

Do you know who goes and works at a Chipotle? Mainly college aged kids who love to drink and eat giant burritos!  Can you imagine the number of Chipotle employees who will be calling in sick the Monday of Spring Break to tell their manager they just vomited!? Sorry, but I’ll take my five days of pay, and I’ll do my recovering someplace warm!  I can see Chipotle restaurant managers pulling their hair out already!

Also, dumb drunk people throw-up all the time at restaurants. They don’t have Norovirus. They have the brown bottle flu! You don’t close a restaurant over that.  You clean it up really, really well. Investigate the circumstances and make a decision on what you really need to do. Chipotle just made a black and white decision, that will hurt their company.

So, I’m so freaking smart, what would I have done?

1. Give individual restaurant General Managers and Area District Managers more control over how to handle these situations, like when to close, or force an employee to stay home, and make sure it doesn’t hurt them financially by making these decisions. Local managers don’t want to close a restaurant because it impacts their bonus, which is a huge part of their compensation.

2. Hire a PR firm to explain to America that what happened at Chipotle, what really happened with the E. coli outbreak, had nothing to do with local restaurant food safety procedures. Also, what they did to ensure a higher level of safety moving forward.

What they did was all smoke and mirrors, to make people feel like they have the problem handled. By the way, they probably could have done nothing and still be in the same position. Young people are notoriously forgiving on these types of cases because they believe it still won’t happen to them!

Okay, I’m off my soapbox. What do you think?

Would You Fire Your Top Performer for Punching Another Employee?

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The world of the NBA brings us the real live HR Game Show – What Would You Do?

I know most of you could care less about professional basketball, and I promise, this post isn’t about basketball. In case you didn’t hear last week, Los Angles Clippers Allstar, Blake Griffin, punched an equipment manager of the team, Matias Testi, after a game, while out at dinner.  In the face, more than once, and he broke his hand doing it. So, now he can’t play for the next six weeks.

Most people just chalk this up to stupid, overpaid, professional athlete does wrong. Not even page 1 news. Almost happens on a weekly basis.

For those HR Pros in the audience, you know, the Clippers have a major problem now!  One employee just did bodily harm to another employee. Not only that, your BEST employee just did bodily harm to an employee that can be replaced by a million people in a second.  Your best employee can’t be replaced, and if your competition gets him, it hurts your company. That’s pretty close to the truth.

So, tell me Mr. and Mrs. HR Pro – What Would You Do?

Let’s break down some options:

1. Fire both parties. It takes to get your butt beat. Both were engaged in a verbal spat that one party took further.

2. Fire Blake. He’s twice the size of the guy he hit, and he’s at a much higher level within the company, thus his responsibility is much higher on how he acts.

3. Don’t fire either. Which is probably what’s going to happen – but would never happen in the ‘real’ world. The two parties involved are friends. Something happened that shouldn’t. The lower employee has the job of his life, constantly surrounded by millionaire athletes, he doesn’t want anyone fired. He probably wants to apologize that his head wasn’t softer so he didn’t break Blake’s hand.

4. Fire Matias. He’s replaceable. You could easily cut a severance agreement for a small price and all this goes away. Being in the position he was, he should have known not to push Blake’s buttons and the value Blake has to the franchise.

5. Suspensions all around. Suspend Blake and Matias for their involvement in the industry. The problem with this is the Clips are trying to make the playoffs, probably will, and they’ll need Blake, which is about the same time he would be coming off this injury. Are you really going to suspend your best employee for the playoffs? Heck no. I don’t care about Matias, you can suspend him, no one will notice.

A real HR pro in this situation only has one option. Fire Blake.  He’s demonstrated that he’s willing to physically harm an employee of the company, put the organization in harm’s way by missing games, and even self-implode by not controlling himself in a scenario a normal person would.

This is where reality kicks real life HR Pros in the teeth.

The real call here is to get rid of Matias.  This decision on all fronts leaves the most positive outcomes for all involved.  The Clips get rid of a low-level employee for very little money. If he’s truly a friend of Blakes, he won’t cause problems, he knows where the real money is in this relationship. You can’t leave the possibility, even the remotest, of this, happening again. With Matias on the team, this could always happen again.

Real HR Pros gasp at this scenario because we all know where this would lead in real life. The courtroom. That’s where you miss one really smart play here, that you also can use, the severance agreement. Get them to sign the paper, hand them a check, move forward. The Clips would be smart to move forward, not without their best player, but without an equipment manager, they could easily replace.

Do I do anything with Blake? Yeah, something has to happen. I probably give him the biggest fine I can under the collect bargaining agreement, and maybe even go higher, just to prove a point, knowing it will get knocked down.

Agree or disagree? Hit me in the comments!

Hey, Kid! Know Your Place.

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Something really funny happened this past week in the NBA. Kobe Bryant who was sitting out of a game against Portland, in street clothes, came out to the bench after the game had already started. All the seats were taken on the bench. So, what did Kobe do?

He made a rookie give up his seat and sit on the court. A rookie who was actually dressed to play in the game – take a look:

This is brilliant!

I want to work in an organization where when a legend walks into a meeting room, some kid gives up his seat when there isn’t one available!

I know. I know. We’re all supposed to be Servant Leaders. Kobe should have sat on the court himself and let the kid keep his seat on the bench. Screw that. Kobe is one of the greatest players to ever play the game. If he wants a seat, someone better get up and give him a seat.

For real, though, there’s something to be said about knowing your place in an organization and respecting those who came before you. Respect is earned. Kobe clearly has earned that in his final retirement year.

I can’t stand seeing formal power used in organizations. “Oh, that’s the President, he demands to have the first parking spot.”  There is a little bit of this in the clip. But, if the kid truly didn’t want to give up his seat, he probably wouldn’t have.  He even mentioned as much on Twitter, later, saying Kobe has earned his respect to give up his seat.

I hear too often from people, especially HR and leadership thought leaders, who take the opposite stance. I think we’ve gone a bit too far on this one. As I am told I need to value these young bucks coming into the organization for what they bring, they, also, need to value the years of value I’ve already brought and continue to bring.

Yeah, I said it. These damn kids need to know their place in the organization! Now get off my lawn!

Sometimes, You Quit a Job for Love

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Every once in a while you an employee who decides to move out of state, or another city, or a country, to be with the love of their life. There’s very little you can do as an HR pro or leader to keep this person. You can’t beat love. This is a story about that, but way more.

When I was in middle school my Dad did something for me that I will never be able to truly thank him for. His company, Spartan Stores, started sponsoring the Michigan Special Olympics. My Dad was asked if he would volunteer to help cook food for all the participants. He brought me along, even though I really didn’t want to go.

It was one of the best things that ever happened to me. I got to see true joy. True empathy. I got to see something that changed my life. I continued to volunteer all the way through college, then got involved heavily in coaching youth athletics, and I haven’t been back. But, I will. I only say this because I have such a special place in my heart for people living with Downs and other genetic abnormalities. They have so much to show us and offer us.

To feel love this strongly over just one thing in your life, you would be lucky. To feel this love over more than one thing in life is a godsend. Take a view, it’s only 2 minutes:

New Mexico is definitely losing, but Denver is definitely gaining!

I think it’s important to point out, there are two kinds of love here. Job love, which is very strong here. Real love, which is even stronger! When you’re employees leave you for the love of another, it can be heart wrenching on them. Do them a favor, and don’t make it harder.

Just be happy for them. Support them in every way you can. You’ll find another employee. They may never find another love of their life.

It’s Tim Sackett Day! Celebrating Michael Kelemen aka the Recruiting Animal @Animal

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January 23, 2012 my friends made that day forever be known as Tim Sackett Day!  By January 23, 2013, those same friends thought I couldn’t take another day of celebration and honor, and decided to honor another individual but still call it Tim Sackett Day! Last year on Tim Sackett Day we honored the great Victorio Milian! So, welcome to the 5th Annual Tim Sackett Day celebration!

This year we are celebrating our first Canadian on Tim Sackett Day, the Recruiting Animal, Michael Kelemen.

I have to say when the Tim Sackett Day committee first brought up Animal’s name, I wasn’t very happy.  I think Animal is basically an asshole.  That’s when the committee reminded me that I’m basically an asshole, and it’s why I was honored to begin with.  They had a very good point.

For those who don’t know Animal, he’s original to say the least.  He took recruiting and a morning zoo radio show schtick and pushed the recruiting conversation into areas no one else would ever take it.  Not me. Not Punk Rock, Laurie Ruettimann. Not anyone in our space. He says what we all think, but are afraid to say.

So, why do I think he’s an asshole?

Animal invited me on his radio show and warned me, he doesn’t pull any punches.  He was going to come at me and challenge me about how I thought about recruiting, and wanted me to back up how I thought with very specific examples.  It ended up being Animal yelling at me for thirty minutes. Here’s the show – take a listen for yourself.

In hindsight, I wasn’t ready for the Animal show.  Animal wants controversy and conflict. It makes good radio. I didn’t bring that. I also didn’t bring a set of boobs which would have helped since Animal yells way less at the ladies on his show! He’ll disagree with that last statement, which is Animal he mostly disagrees with all statements. Laurie Ruettimann claims he’s a Teddy Bear, but she has boobs, so I discount her opinion on Animal.

Why do I think Animal is the perfect person to honor on Tim Sackett Day?

Animal loves the recruiting industry. Agree with him, disagree with him, he has an extreme passion for our profession. You have to respect that! He’s been doing this since 2004!  I didn’t even start writing for Fistful of Talent until 2008!  He basically paved the way for all of us that write and speak about recruiting in the social space.

Animal calls a spade a spade.  What he really wants is for our industry to share the great stuff, and call out the bullshit. He’s like a bullshit cop. When all these people were out three or four years ago talking about how great talent communities were, he was the first to call them out and ask them to prove it. You know what you don’t hear about anymore? Talent communities.

I think my friend John Nykolaiszyn said it best the very first time I met him (to his defense it was after a few glasses of wine):

“Tim Sackett!? Fuck you! Fuck You! Fuck You!…I love you!”

John hated that my writing challenged things he truly believed in, but also loved the fact that I made him think about things in a different way. 

That, in a nutshell, is Animal. He challenges everyone to think about what we are truly doing and saying.

Please join me in celebrating the Recruiting Animal, Michael Kelemen today! Catch him on Twitter @Animal (getting “Animal” as your twitter name also shows how far in front of the game he is!), also his website and radio show: Recruiting Animal 

Oddly Enough, People Like It When You Want Them!

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If I hear one more person tell me that candidates don’t like phone calls, I’m going to shove a phone up your…

I’m not the smartest cat, but I know a couple of things.  Here are a few things I know:

1. You can’t taste the difference of well Gin and high-end Gin after 4 Gin and Tonics.

2. French Fries, Onion rings and Tator Tots taste great fried and taste awful baked.

3. Great tasting chocolate is the reason women can be single. (okay, I stole that one from my wife!)

4. Candidates with car trouble are lying.

5. People like to be told that you want them for the a job! It’s flattering. It makes them feel important. It makes them feel valued. They love to listen to what you have to say, regardless of how satisfied they are in their job.

If I called you right now with a job that was something you have always wanted, guess what would happen?  You would call me back. You would call me back almost instantly. You would run out to your car, telling the receptionist on the way out you have an urgent personal call, to hear what I have to say.

Those people. Those thought leaders. Those idiots, who are telling you candidates don’t like phone calls are LIARS!

Why are they lying to you? Here is why I think they are probably lying to you:

1. They are lazy and hope the internet will solve all of their problems.

2. They are hoping to talk the world into believing you never have to make a phone call to get a job.

3. They are scared.

I did a survey where I asked 100 people, mostly millennials, (all potential candidates, since all people are potential candidates) if I called you with your “Dream Job”, would you either pick up my call or call me back?  Would you like to know the results?

100 out of 100 said they would pick up my call or call me back! 100%!

Recruiters who say candidates don’t like phone calls are not recruiters, they’re administrative professionals. Pay them accordingly.

Hiring Means Your Organization Failed

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Henry Ward, the CEO of eShares, wrote a post on Medium recently on How to Hire.  It’s a great piece from an executive point of view regarding the concept of talent acquisition.  Basically, Henry feels that if your organization needs to go out and hire external talent, you’ve failed as an organization:

“Hiring means we failed to execute and need help. First, let me quell a misconception. Hiring is not a consequence of success. Revenue and customers are. Hiring is a consequence of our failure to create enough leverage (see eShares 101) to grow on our own. It means we need outside help. The perfect business is a computer plugged into the internet. Starting with me, every human thereafter is overhead. And we are increasing overhead by 50%.

I want to repeat this point. We are increasing overhead by 50% because we failed to execute. It is not something to be proud of. It is humbling to go back to the labor market, hat-in-hand, asking for help…”

Want to know why your executives don’t respect HR?  Read above.  Executives think about the business differently than we do in HR and Talent Acquisition. I’m 100% sure any head of TA would believe hiring, because of business growth, equals success, not failure.

Even if you take out Henry’s example of the perfect business model being a computer plugged into the internet, he could still argue that any organization that can’t self-sustain its own growth of labor is a failure. Think about it from a training and development point of view. You hire entry level candidates and train and develop them into every part of your organization. You have a succession plan. If everything works perfectly, you never hire ‘talent’ from the outside. You just hire new, clean, entry level bodies, and create your own clone army!

Okay, at this point we still need to use outside bodies. I would guess at some point Google will create real, live human clones, then the process could be completely self-contained.

So, how does Henry Ward hire at eShares?  Here is his hiring philosophy:

  1. Hire for Strength vs Lack of Weakness
  2. Hire for Trajectory vs Experience
  3. Hire Doers vs Tellers
  4. Hire Learners vs Experts
  5. Hire Different vs Similar
  6. Always pass on ego

Pretty solid. Some of it might depend on your industry, company, etc. I’m not a huge believer in always hiring for difference. Difference causes conflict. In some organizations that is great. In some organizations that is catastrophic. Just as similar, group think, etc. is bad in many cases, it’s perfect in some cases.

Give his article a read, he goes into detail on each step with an explanation.  One of the best executive written pieces I’ve read on hiring.

Genius is Born

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It’s an argument as old as time. Is genius born or can genius be made?

I’m squarely on the genius is born camp. True genius we don’t even understand. Einstein, Mozart, Prince, Bobby Fischer, Da Vinci, etc.

I was watching 60 Minutes this weekend because I’m old, white and love Anderson Cooper. Anderson introduced us to another great example of genius:

Click here for the full 60-minute interview of Joey Alexander. 

I don’t care what Malcolm Gladwell would say, no amount of hours of practice will get you to this!

Joey was born a musical genius. He can hear something. His brain interprets the sounds. He can play it back, perfectly. Then, this is where the real genius lies, he can make it something completely new, unique, better.

I’m fascinated by this.  By the concept of geniuses altogether.

I think we probably have more geniuses around us than we know, but we work to make them fit. Fit into a role. Fit into our culture. Just fit into a pattern of normalcy that we find comforting.

Joey doesn’t fit. Thankfully.