Category Archives: Career Advice

4 Things Successful Recruiters Do Every Day

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I’ve hired over one hundred recruiters in my career.  Not a ton, but a pretty good sample size.  I’ve had some of those hires go on to become great Talent Acquisition pros, as well as some who have completely bombed in the profession.  It’s not an easy profession to be successful at, but I’ve seen some basic things that the most successful recruiters, I know, do every single thing day:

  1. Daily motivation. Great recruiters are self-motivated by nature, but the best ones still find ways to give themselves that extra little kick every day. It might be one client or job order they decide they will close on that day. It might be an activity number they challenge themselves with for the day.  It might just be re-centering on a larger overall goal they are chasing and what they’re doing in that day will mean to reach that goal.
  1. Critical of their own work. The best recruiters I’ve worked with own their orders, candidates, interviews, etc. There is no blame.  An interview is a no-show, they own it.  They can look inward and go, next time I won’t have this happen because I’m going to do that one more thing to ensure it’s successful.
  1. They step up. Hey, guys we have a really critical position that just came open from a hiring manager, who wants it? The best recruiters always step up and want to work those high profile openings.  They want the challenge, and they are comfortable with the pressure.  They also step up with their ideas on how the organization can get better, and share freely.
  1. Daily focus. Successful recruiters can focus in and finish, every day. It’s so easy in recruiting to get pulled in a hundred different directions.  The most successful people stay focused on the job at hand, and don’t allow the ‘noise’ to take them off their plan.  They find ways to lock themselves in and keep going until they reach their outcome.

HR and Recruiting both have the same main daily issue we face, we turn ourselves into firefighters.  We run from made up emergency to made up emergency.  It feeds our need to feel like we accomplished something today and became a savior.

The most successful recruiters are no different.  They get the opportunity to be fire fighters, just like we all do, but they make a conscience decision not to allow themselves to slide down the pole. How can you make yourself more successful today?

Are You Staying In Your Lane?

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I think there are two types of people in the world:

  1. People who stay in their lane
  2. People who don’t stay in their lane.

The first group, lane stayers, are the type of people who follow a natural life path.  Basically, these are the people who don’t push the natural evolution of their lives. I started at this company. I worked my job. In a certain time I’ll get promoted. There is a sequence of life that I’ll follow, and for the most part, things will work out.

Those leaving their lane, don’t agree with their natural order of things. Nope, I don’t want to wait for my things to happen. I’m going to make my own things happen.  I don’t believe there is a path for me, so I’m going to create your own.

We have both of these types of people in our organization.  Unfortunately, we try and sell to people that those leaving their lane are somehow better.  When in reality, if you diagnose the best organizations you will usually find a higher percentage of people who stay in their lane.

The natural order of organizational effectiveness relies on people staying in their lane.  If we had everyone leaving their lane, it would cause chaos.  Our organizations would be in constant turmoil.

Staying in your lane is a weakness.  I started out in my career as that person who couldn’t stay in their lane.  I wanted to leave my lane constantly because I thought that was my way to success. As I got more tenured in my career, I realized that those friends and peers, who stayed in their lane, tended actually to reach a higher level of success faster!

Part of it is patience.  Part of it is loyalty.  Part of it is confidence in your abilities in the environment you’re in.

Staying your lane isn’t easy to do.  We get so much media thrown at us that tells us to get out of our lanes.  They call it a challenge.  They say we are pushing ourselves to a higher level. They are ones who also believe they need to get out of their lane.

Those, who stay in their lane, don’t usually feel a need to tell people about it.  That’s why it’s not popular. That’s why you don’t see books about it, and TED talks about it.  Staying in your lane is the new black. Try it out.

Talent Isn’t Fair

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We have a big problem with this concept in HR.

We want everything to be fair. At the core of what we do, though, is the most unfair dilemma that we can do nothing about. Our people come to us with talent.  It is never equal.  We can try to help our employees leverage the talents they have, but in the end it’s their talent, their desire.

I work my butt off, but Mary makes more sales than me, and she doesn’t put in half the effort I do!  Yep, she has more talent.

I am loyal to this company, and Bill hates this place, but he got promoted! Yep, he has more talent.

I just can’t seem to find a solution to our problem, then Sue finds it after working on it for ten minutes. Talent.

Everything we do in HR and Talent Acquisition comes down to us managing the inequalities of talent in our organizations.

Turns out, talent isn’t fair.

 

 

The Irresistible Power of Being Wanted

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It’s not 100%, but it might be close.  Some will deny this, but it’s pretty much universally accepted. We all want to be wanted by someone.

It makes us feel good to be wanted.  Not the crazy stalker kind of wanted. The kind of wanted where you know the other party wants you for all the positive reasons that are you.  That feeling is so powerful it could light up New York!

In a nutshell, that is talent acquisition.

You want someone. They may want you, they may not.  Either way, you are holding in your possession one of the most powerful feelings of all time!

People want to be wanted.

When you call someone and tell them, “I want you”, I can guarantee they will listen to what you have to say next.  100% of the time.

“Hi, my name is Tim. I want you.”

I now have your attention.  I might not have it for long, but I do have it in that moment.  That’s the key for successful recruiting. What you say next determines your success.

I have had four jobs in my entire career, over 21 years.  I’ve probably had upwards of 500 calls from recruiters wanting to talk to me about a job they have open. Each time I listened to what they had to say, initially, because it makes me feel good that someone wants me. That is a normal response. That is a majority response.

In recruiting you should never underestimate the power you hold in your hands.  Never believe the hype that people don’t want to be called or contacted about jobs. “Oh, those IT guys get ten calls a day, they don’t want to be contacted!” Yes, they do. That’s ten times a day they get a stroke to their ego. Ten times a day they feel wanted. Ten times a day where you might be offering them their dream job.

“Hi, my name is Tim. I want you.”

5 Reasons I Got My SHRM-SCP

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I’ve been known to rail against the man (SHRM) once in a while.  I only do it, because I care.  If I didn’t care about my professional organization, I could really care less how bad they come off, or the bad decisions they make.  When they decided to ditch HRCI and bring HR certification in house, I thought they butchered the communication.  Maybe one of the worst rollouts I’ve ever seen by a professional organization.

I also thought, though, that it was a smart business decision.  Why let HRCI rake in all the dough, when you can do it just as well yourself.  In fact, I wish they would have just come out and said that, originally. We don’t see any reason why as stewards of our business, we should give all this cash to some other organization. I would have loved that!

So, at the time of that announcement, in May 2014, SHRM was going to force all HRCI certified members to pay and take the new SHRM certification. This made complete sense if SHRM was doing what they said they were doing, which was to create a ‘new’ assessment of HR based on competency, because that’s what was really needed for the profession.  I was cool with that, but I wasn’t going to pay and take another test.  I’ve reached a point in my career where I don’t need letters after my name to prove my proficiency.  So, I was riding the HRCI train until it ended.

‘Surprisingly’ SHRM changed direction last week and created a new pathway for already certified HRCI members to gain the new SHRM certification by following a simple process that takes about an hour, and costs nothing. Again, brilliant, now no one really has any reason not to get the new SHRM certification, and convert over.  It’s what they should have done originally, but they couldn’t because they were trying to keep up the illusion they needed a new and improved certification, not just a money grab. Thankfully, someone came to their senses, and grabbed the money!

All of that being said, here are the 5 reasons I decided to get my SHRM Sr. Certified Professional certification:

1. We all hate conflict, and I wasn’t picking sides in some fight over money. SHRM is my professional organization.  HRCI is basically a testing center. I’ll stick with SHRM.

2. No one knows HRCI. Everyone knows SHRM. Let’s get real for a second, up until May most people thought HRCI was a department within SHRM. No one had any idea they were a separate company, unless you were deeply involved in SHRM.  Outside our industry, no one knows HRCI. SHRM is a brand for HR.

3. Ultimately, SHRM is right. Competencies assessments are better than knowledge based assessments.  Anyone can memorize answers. It takes critical thinking to answer competency based assessments correctly.

4. It was free! I wasn’t going to pay a dime to get SHRM certified and tested.  Well, maybe a dime, but not a quarter.

5. It’s hard being a pimp. Running a professional organization like SHRM and getting everyone to move in one direction, is tough! I want HR to move forward. SHRM has an advantage because of its size and scope to make this happen. Ultimately, I love the career I chose and want to see the function move forward and not fractured.

Does Hank and the crew still need to get their shit together? Yes.  A first year communications student could have launched the new SHRM cert better.  It’s a common issue that crops up for SHRM continually, and obviously is a blind spot.  They need to fix that.  You don’t need more opinions on how it should be communicated, and more input. You just need to get the right input.

Not getting this right, the first time, made our industry look like a bunch of idiots, “same old HR”.  SHRM has to do better moving forward.

Now, go get your SHRM certification, you would be silly not to.

 

Will 2015 be the year of the Quotas?

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We still haven’t really made a dent in this diversity/inclusion thing have we?  The numbers don’t lie.  81% of healthcare workers are female, less than 18% of leadership positions in healthcare are filled by females.  The same is true in the service industry, the restaurant industry, etc.  Similar numbers can be said about African Americans and Hispanics in almost every industry.

The world is changing and we keep doing the same thing.

HR shops are trying to change our behaviors and how we think, but they are working against thousands of years of ingrained behaviors.  A few training courses aren’t going to change this level of programming.

People hate quotas in hiring.  They view the word ‘quota’ in the same vane as they view other words that lead to hate speech.

No one wants quotas.

That’s the problem. Quotas work.  Quotas are a measure that organizations can see and do something about.  Oh, we need five more females. We better go hire them. It’s straightforward. It’s simple to understand.

I get what’s wrong with them, we talk about that all the time.  Rarely, do we ever talk about what’s right with quotas.  When I was in HR at Applebee’s I had a ‘diversity quota’ on my leadership staffing.  It was measured as a percent of the overall staff and our diversity in leadership was measured as females, African American, Asian, Hispanic, etc. Basically, the only thing that didn’t count was white guys.

It was frustrating to me because I had very high diversity within my leadership team, but to continue to get high ratings I had to keep hiring diversity, even if it meant that one day I would have 100% diverse leadership. This rating was important to me because I got bonused on this rating. Having a diverse leadership team was very important to Applebees.

What Applebee’s leadership knew was that I was never going to get to 100% diversity.  It wasn’t their goal.  But, they knew to move the needle on diversity we needed to start measuring the color and kinds of faces we were hiring.  Quotas.

It worked.  It showed those working for our organization that we were serious about hiring diversity, so much so, that we were going to ensure this number moved.

Quotas are bad when they are used for bad purposes and good people get hurt by this.  I wasn’t passing over better white guys when hiring leadership at Applebees.  I was searching for better diverse candidates overall and hiring them.  Our leadership makeup needs to reflect our employee makeup. That is better hiring.

Don’t discount quotas in 2015.  If you truly want to move the needle in your organization, measure it.

What do you want to hear?

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I think I might be on the cusp of the next great employee feedback mechanism for leadership.  I’ve been thinking about this concept for a long while. You see, for years I’ve had the opportunity to test out my various theories on employee feedback.  I’ve watched my own feedback theories change over the years, but they always were grounded in people truly want feedback about their performance.

That is mostly true.  People do want feedback about their performance.

Here is what also is true:

1. People want feedback about what they’ve done well.

2. People don’t want critical feedback. Someone asking you for critical feedback is really just testing you to see if you are either:

 1. Upset with them for how bad they did

2. Just seeing if you have the guts to them how bad they did

3. People really just want you to tell everyone else how great you think they are.

I think a better, more effective, way of delivering feedback to employees should start with this one question:

“What do you want to hear about your performance?”

At this point the employee will say stuff like, “I just want to hear how well I did”, or “Tell me that you appreciated my work”, or “Tell me I’m the best employee you have”.  This will then drive the conversation appropriately and keep everyone fully engaged.  “Alright, Timmy, you are doing really well. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate everything you do. You are the best employee I have.”

Timmy leaves feeling great and satisfied.  You don’t have to deal with someone losing their mind about how they are really performing. Everyone goes back to work with minimal disruption.

Yeah, I know what you really wanted to say was, “Timmy, you can do better. While I appreciate the work you do, I wish you would actually do more of it. You are like most employees hear, nothing special, but you could be.”

How does that conversation end?  Timmy is pissed. He creates a scene.  He usually ends up disrupting the work environment and kills productivity. He might even go out and find another job with someone else.

Is that what you wanted? Probably not.

So, make it easier on yourself.  Just remember to start every feedback conversation out with that one question: What do you want to hear?  They’ll tell you. They’ll be happier. You’ll be happier. Everyone can get back to work.

Feedback is is the leadership sucker test.  No one really wants to hear what you think about them.

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.

5 Things to Make 2015 Your Year!

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I have to tell you, I have a lot of optimism and excitement about 2015.  2015 is going to be my year! It can be your year as well.  I’ll share it, there’s enough to go around for us all.  I’m even going to give you some tips to help make sure 2015 is your year.

5 Things you need to make 2015 your year:

1. A plan.  Sounds easy. Sounds remedial. Sounds hacky. But you probably don’t have one.  Without a plan, 2015 will not be your year. You need a plan to drive your vision about you’re going to make 2015 your year. Get that done!

2. A tribe.  You need a tribe that knows your plan, and will hold you accountable to your plan.  You need to give them permission to hold you accountable.  When they don’t hold you accountable, you need to find a better tribe that will.  No one said you had to do this alone!  The most valuable, important people in your life are the ones who will hold you accountable to your own success, not the ones who let you off the hook.

3. A measure of success.  Call what you will: goals, metrics, analytics, etc. You need a measuring stick to know if you’re making progress to your plan.  Share these results systematically on a schedule no matter what the results say.  Sharing your bad results will actually allow your tribe to help you get back on track. Sharing your great results will allow your tribe to celebrate with you.  Share it all.

4. Perspective.  This is one I keep learning over and over.  The only person or thing holding me back from being successful, is me.  I need to know my opportunities and find ways to overcome those, almost daily.  Those will throw me off course more than anything. Self-insight is a very powerful and freeing competency.

5.  Have some fun.  I want to be successful, and I want to enjoy it.  Those are not two mutually exclusive things in my world.  I don’t want to just have fun and not be successful.  Part of my measure of success is if I’m having fun and enjoying my life while being successful.

This seems so simple, but I know it’s not.  Most of us will never put the time into really having a plan of success.  Even more will be too scared to share that plan with people who will hold us accountable to it. Still fewer will really want to see the measure of progress, or lack there of.  And, most of us lack the self-insight to really know why we keep failing.  This is very, very difficult to do.  But I’m going to do it.

I’ve got my plan.  I’ve got my tribe.  I know what my goals of success are.  I know I own my own success.

Bring it on bitches.

 

11 Rules for Hugging at Work + 2 more

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It’s the holidays, so I’m running some “Best of” posts from the past. This is my all-time most read post. Enjoy. I had 2 more rules just for you!

Hello. My name is Tim Sackett, and I’m a hugger.   Being a hugger can make for some awkward moments – what if the other person isn’t expecting a, or doesn’t want to, hug and you’re coming in arms-wide-open!?

Fast Company has an article recently titled: To Hug Or Not To Hug At Work? by Drake Baer, that delved into this subject.  Here’s a piece from the article:

“the uncomfortable feeling you get when you realize that your concept of your relationship with someone else doesn’t match their concept. The intensity of awkwardness roughly corresponds to the magnitude of difference in relationship concepts.”

I consider myself to have a number of roles: Husband, Dad, Coach, Boss, Friend, Coworker, etc.  In each of those roles I’ve hugged and will continue to hug.  Sometimes, though rarely, I’ll find someone who isn’t a hugger.  The first time I ever met Kris Dunn face-to-face, we’ve had known each other and talked frequently by phone for a year, at the HR Tech Conference – he was coming out of a session, I recognized him, he recognized me, and I went full ‘bro-hug’ (sideways handshake, other arm hug-back slap combo) on him, and I’m pretty sure he was caught off guard – but played along.  Kris is a closet hugger.  I find Southern folks are huggers, more than Northern.  Western more than Eastern.  Canadians more than Americans.  Men feel much more comfortable hugging women than other men. Women will hug anything.

I thought it was about time we had some hugging rules for the office, so here goes:

The Hugging Rules

1. Don’t Hug those you supervise. (The caveats: You can hug a subordinate if: it’s being supportive in a non-creepy way (major family or personal loss – sideways, kind of arm around the shoulder, you care about them hug);  it’s at a wedding and you are congratulating them; it’s a hug for a professional win (promotion, giant sale, big project completion, etc.) and it’s with a group, not alone in your office with the lights off; you would feel comfortable with your spouse standing next you and watching that specific hug.)

2. Hug your external customers or clients when they initiate hugging sequence.  (The caveats: Don’t hug if: it is required to get business – that’s not hugging, that harassment. Don’t let hug last more than a second or two, or it gets creepy; Don’t mention the hug afterwards, that makes you seem creepy!)

3. Don’t Hug the office person you’re having an affair with in the office.  (no explanation needed)

4. Hug peers, not just every day. (It’s alright to hug, but you don’t need to do it everyday for people you see everyday. Save some up and make it special!)

5. When you Hug, hug for real. (Nothing worse than the ‘fake hug’!  A fake hug is worse than a non-Hug.)

6. Don’t whisper – ‘You smell good’ – when hugging someone professionally. (That’s creepy – in fact don’t whisper anything while hugging!)

7. Don’t close your eyes while hugging professionally.  (That’s weird and a bit stalkerish)

8.  It is alright to announce a Hug is coming. (Some people will appreciate a – ‘Hey! Come here I’m giving you a hug – it’s been a long time!’)

9. It’s never alright to Hug from behind.  (Creepier!)

10.  Never Hug in the restroom. (Make for awkward moment when other employees walk in and see that.)

11.  If you’re questioning yourself whether it will be alright to Hug someone professionally – that is your cue that it probably isn’t.

The New Rules:

12. Don’t pat my back when you Hug me.  It makes me feel like you’re trying to burp me. I know this somehow makes you feel like people will view this as a non-affectionate hug, but it makes me feel like you feel it’s a non-affectionate hug. Just hug, or don’t hug.

13. Don’t assume you can Hug a co-workers kids (or any kid for that manner!), but if the kid tries to Hug you, you better Hug back.  My team has their kids come in all the time. I love kids. I’ll Hug their kids. But I’ll wait for the kid or the parent to give me that cue. I usually start with a ‘Hi-Five’ and some kids will just come in for the real thing! Parents are super protective of their kids. If you just start hugging on them, that can get real creepy, real fast!

 Do you have any hugging rules for the office?