Category Archives: Career Advice

4 Things Job Pirates Have

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It’s the holidays, so I’m going to run some “Best of” posts from the library at The Project. Enjoy. 

Dollars for donuts, Fast Company is the best publication out their for anyone in the business world!  They hit a home run in my book recently with the article: An HR Lesson from Steve Jobs – If you want Change Agents, Hire Pirates!  “Why? Because Pirates can operate when rules and safety nets breakdown.”  More from the article:

A pirate can function without a bureaucracy. Pirates support one another and support their leader in the accomplishment of a goal. A pirate can stay creative and on task in a difficult or hostile environment. A pirate can act independently and take intelligent risks, but always within the scope of the greater vision and the needs of the greater team.

Pirates are more likely to embrace change and challenge convention. “Being aggressive, egocentric, or antisocial makes it easier to ponder ideas in solitude or challenge convention,” says Dean Keith Simonton, a University of California psychology professor and an expert on creativity. “Meanwhile, resistance to change or a willingness to give up easily can derail new initiatives.” So Steve’s message was: if you’re bright, but you prefer the size and structure and traditions of the navy, go join IBM. If you’re bright and think different and are willing to go for it as part of a special, unified, and unconventional team, become a pirate.

The article is an excerpt from Steve Jobs book: What Would Steve Jobs Do?: How the Steve Jobs Way Can Inspire Anyone to Think Differently and Win by Peter Sander, and it goes into some of the hiring philosophy that Jobs had while he was at Apple.

So, what did Jobs Pirates have to have?

1. It’s not enough to be brilliant and think differently- a Pirate has to have the passion, drive and vision to deliver to the customer a game-changing product.

2. Will the person you hire, fall in love with your organization and products?

3. A Pirate is a traveler who comes to you with diverse background and experiences.

4. Even though they’re a Pirate they still have to fit into the team and come with or be able to make connections.

“So, in Steve’s book–recruit a team of diverse, well-traveled, and highly skilled pirates, and they’ll follow you anywhere.”

Dreams Are Adjustable

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I once wanted to be a teacher.  In fact, until I was about 23 years old, I thought that was going to be my future.  Then I taught, and found it wasn’t for me.  Not the teaching part, the public education administration part.  It only took one example to show me public education was fundamentally broken.

The local museum in town had this great exhibit in for only two weeks, by chance my class was studying the same thing, what luck, I thought to myself, the kids will love this! I went to my principal and told her I wanted to take the kids to museum instead our annual trip to the zoo.  “Can’t do that”, she said, “had to be approved a year in advance, but you can do it next year”. “It won’t be here next year, it’s a traveling exhibit, it’s only here this year.”, I explained.  “Sorry, won’t happen”, she replied. “What if I got parents to do this after school, or on a weekend, and it wouldn’t cost anything?”, I pleaded. “Nope, can’t let you do it, don’t waste your energy on this”, she could see my rising frustration on something that made no sense.

So, we went to the zoo. The same zoo the kids went to every year, for the same tour, same learning, same cage animals, not even trying to get out.

The writing was on the wall for me, right then and there.  These people didn’t really care about educating kids. They cared about following process and procedure. Even if it didn’t make sense.  My dream of being an educator needed an adjustment.

My dream didn’t die, I just found a new way to scratch that itch.  So many people believe if they didn’t reach their dream, that it dies.  I think that’s just an easy way to getting out of doing the hard work.  The hard work isn’t all that you put into reaching your dream. That is actually work you enjoy, you’re chasing your dream.  The hard work starts when you can’t reach your dream, or you decide the dream you had is no longer the dream you want.  The hard work starts the moment you adjust your dream to something else.

I truly believe people should chase their dreams for as long as they’re appropriate. Awesome, you want to play football in the NFL, that’s great! You’re now 38 years old and never made a roster, time to make an adjustment!  How about working in some capacity in the NFL? Coaching? Marketing?

We give people a false sense that it’s alright to chase your dreams forever.  We even give them examples of some 90 year old lady who ran her first marathon, or something like that. We encourage it. Never do we feel it’s appropriate to tell someone, “Hey, maybe it’s time to think about something else”.  Maybe it’s time to adjust your dream.  It’s okay. You won’t shrivel up and die.  It’s just a dream, they’re adjustable.

5 Reasons I’m Not Telling Where I’m Going

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There is a phenomenon that I find completely hysterical.  It’s this little game we play in our culture.  You go and accept a new position, with a new company.  You come back to your current employer and you put in your notice.  Your boss instantly says, “where are you going?” You replay with, “I’d rather not say.”

Happens, Right? Almost 100% of the time.

So, you wait the two weeks, or whatever notice it was, and the very next Monday the person updates their LinkedIn profile and posts on Facebook where they actually went.

I find this ‘dance’ we do very, very funny.

Look, I get it.  Your employees believe one of five things will happen to them if they tell you where they are going:

1. You’ll magically find some way to screw me over, because you’re upset I’m leaving you. Jealous girlfriend style.  This one is almost never happens, but it’s the first one that comes to mind for most employees!  Look, if I had that much power to screw over everyone who worked here, I wouldn’t be working here!

2. I’m not telling you because for once in this relationship, I finally have the power!  This is the real reason, for most people! You just sound like a complete freak if you actually verbalize it out loud!  I actually understand this one from a psychology position.  If you don’t feel you have control, then you get control, you’re not going to give that up easily!

3. You’ll judge me for the company I’m going to. Either way, you’re going to judged, so this is completely true!  Most organizations are like family. If you decide to leave the family, for that crackhead family down the block, I’m going to judge you!  Plan on it.

4. You’ll judge me for the position I’m going to take. See #3.  This one probably has less merit.  I was one of these people. I had in my mind a certain ‘title’ I needed to get to, so I moved around a bit in my early career, chasing titles. Then one day you wake up and realize it’s baloney. Just pay me.

5. It’s always been done that way in our culture, so let’s keep it going!  This is also a large part of what’s going on in these situations.  I took a new job. The people before me didn’t say where they were going, so I’m shouldn’t either!

My take is that you have to do you.  You don’t want to tell anyone, that’s fine, they’ll all know in about 14 days anyway. If that makes you feel all big and powerful for a few weeks, great! We should feel that way from time to time.

For myself, I have friends at every company I every worked for. Also, I wanted to maintain a professional relationship with the leaders of the organizations I’ve been with.  I told people where I was going.  We talked about it, and I tried to help them understand if it was just me, or if it was them.  Ultimately, how can we leave this point in our lives better than we found it.

My way isn’t the correct way, it’s just my way.  Everyone has to make this decision for themselves, but I’m still going to laugh at it when I hear “I’d rather not say”.

 

How to Hire a Hustler

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Hustle: (via Marriam-Webster) “to sell or promote energetically and aggressively”.

Hustle: (via Urban Dictionary) “Anything you need to do to make money”.

Hustle: (via Sackett) “Getting sh*t done with a smile”.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately on what really makes someone successful.  I know folks who are completely brilliant, in a way most of us can’t even comprehend, both intellectually and creatively. I know why they’re successful. I also know of people who don’t seem to be the smartest, or the most creative, but they are also super successful. Those are the ones that make me wonder, what makes them successful?

They know how to hustle.

I say that will a love for what they do. Most people can’t hustle. It’s not in their makeup, their DNA.  It’s not a skill you can learn, you are either born a hustler, or you’re not.  Hustling gets a negative connotation. When in reality, it’s not always negative.  I find those people who I’ve worked for that have a hustler’s mentality can be highly professional and highly successful.

The thing is, there is really no replacement for hustle.

Not every organization needs people with that skill, and I don’t think I would want an entire organization of hustlers!  You need some, though, and you need them in the right positions. Hustlers know how to get things done in an organization.  They know how to make people feel like both sides won.  Some of the best hustlers I know in HR are on the labor relations side of the business.  Contract negotiations are usually one big hustle!

I wish someone would come up with an assessment that measured someones hustle level!  Hey, HR Tech, get on that! I’m buying.

Here’s the traits I think you need to find when assessing someone’s hustle level:

1. Are they willing to what it takes to be successful in whatever role it is you’ll be putting them in?

2. Do they have an entrepreneurial spirit?

3. Are they self-driven and ambitious?

4. Do they like competition?

5. Do they enjoy interacting with others?

6. Do they have a high tolerance to handle rejection?

7. Are they coachable and willing to adapt?

I don’t care what kind of department you are running in an organization, you can benefit from having a hustler on your team.  I think you could take most street hustlers off the street, clean them up in a corporate professional way, teach them corporate language, and they would thrive in corporate America!  No formal education. No skills. Just hustle. Let’s face it, most of what we do in corporate America is hustle!

Success is Relative #8ManRotation

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It’s that time of year when college football coaches get fired because they weren’t ‘successful’.

This year’s unsuccessful coach of the year has to be Nebraska’s Bo Pelini.  Here are some of his stats:

– Won 9 games every year he has coached at Nebraska. Not averaged 9 wins. He’s won 9 games each year!

– 67-27 overall record – a +.700 winning percentage

That seems pretty freaking good!  How many of you would take 9 wins each year from your favorite college football team (Alabama fans you can’t participate!)?  I’m a huge Michigan State fan and we’ve been fortunate to have double digit win totals four out of the last five years and we’re on cloud nine! If you asked me five years ago if I would take 9 wins per year for the next five, I would have bought it for sure!

Here’s what Bo didn’t do:

– No conference titles

– No BCS bowl appearances

– At least 3 losses each season

99% of fans in the country would take 7 years in a row of 9 wins each year.  Because most of us will never come close that success on our best year.

That’s why success is relative.

Think of this with your own hires and employees.  You judge success of your new sales person on the results of the sales person that just left.  If your new sales person sells $1 million worth of products, and the old guy sold only $750K, the new person is a rock star.  That same new sales person is judge against your all time sales person at $2 million, and suddenly, they’re a piece of crap.

Nebraska holds their coaching hires against legendary Nebraska coach Tom Osborne who won 13 conference championships and 3 national titles.

This is why comparing individuals in terms of performance never really works out well.  A better way is to determine what does ‘good’ performance look like in your environment, no matter the individual. Also, what does great performance look like.  Then measure your employees against those metrics, not an individual who might have been good or bad.

Most organizations struggle with this concept, because defining good and great performance is hard.  It’s easy to compare.

Don’t allow yourself and your organization to take the easy road. It doesn’t lead you to where you want to go.

Do I believe Bo should have been fired?  Yes, but not because of his won/loss record.  Bo wasn’t a fit, culturally, with Nebraska football.  Bo had a short fuse and lost it publicly and on the field way too often for cameras to see.  This isn’t what Nebraska people want from their coach.  They’re extremely loyal fans, and don’t like to be embarrassed. Yes, they want to win, but it’s not a win-at-any-cost fandom that we’ve been accustom to seeing recently in major college athletics. Win, but win with pride and respect for the history of the program.  That’s tough. Nine wins per year, apparently doesn’t do that!

 

Sackett’s Office Holiday Party Rules

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It’s fast becoming that time of year when you’ll be invited to office holiday parties across the world!  This is one of my favorite times of the year.  Let’s face it, I’m married and 40sih, the office holiday parties are one of the few times a year I have a get out of jail free card.  “What!? You want to do shots? Well, I shouldn’t, but I want to be a ‘team’ player. You know me!”  My wife mildly puts up with me, for one night, so I can act like one of those millennials who works with me.  Usually, I’m yawning at 11pm, and wondering what I’m missing on the local news.

The HRU holiday parties are awesome. Basically, because I’m in charge of two things: 1. Ordering the food and 2. Paying the bar tab.  Which means we have plenty of variety of great things to eat, and we have an open bar.  The ‘kids’ like an open bar. It always goes over well.  I don’t have any rules.  I used to be one of those ‘bosses’ that was like, “you better show up”, which led to about 2 or 3 people being at the party that didn’t want to be. But I’ve matured, and now I’m like “don’t come if you don’t want to have fun!”

I do think some HR Pros need rules for their employees, and as usual I’m here to help you.  So, here are Sackett’s Office Holiday Party Rules:

Rule No. 1 – If you drink too much and throw up at your office holiday party, never go back to work at that job. Ever!

Rule No. 2 – If you bring a date that looks like a stripper, you’ll be forever known as the employee who brought a stripper to the office holiday party. Dress appropriately, strippers.

Rule No. 3 – There are these things called Smartphones which take pictures.  Always remember this, or you’ll be reminded of it the next morning on Facebook.

Rule No. 4 –  If you have a date that is anti-social, you might want to rethink that plan.  No one wants to deal with ‘creepy’ at an office holiday party.

Rule No. 5 – It’s okay to dance at your office holiday party. It is not okay to dance alone at your office holiday party.

Rule No. 6 – You don’t have to ask if your employer will let you expense a cab or Uber ride home. They will, 100% of the time. Be safe.

Rule No. 7 – Don’t flirt with your office crush at the office holiday party. You have 364 days a year you can do that and not look completely desperate.

Rule No. 8 – Getting your boss drunk, and making an idiot of her, isn’t funny, it’s career limiting. Be a good ‘wing-person’.

Rule No. 9 – Don’t get all religious at an office holiday party. Yes, I’m sure, Jesus is the reason for the season, but not the office holiday party season.  Jesus isn’t into that season.

Rule No. 10 – Don’t talk work.  Talk cars, or sports, or kids, or video games, or movies, or books, anything but work.  Get to know your co-workers as people.

 I’m different than most HR Pros in that I actually like holiday parties, and company picnics, and every other time we can get together as an organization that isn’t work.  We spend more time with our co-workers than our families, on a normal week.  Our co-workers become our close friends and extended family.  It’s wonderful to break bread with them and just have fun.  Learn who they are outside of work, and meet others in their life that our special to them.

So, go have fun. Don’t be stupid.  An order something expensive that you normally wouldn’t do when you’re paying the bill!

5 Things HR Pros Secretly Have to Deal With

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I really don’t give a hoot if you’re extroverted or introverted, the fact of the matter is I’m sick of you focusing on yourself and how others can pander to your every whim.  You want to know what real HR Pros have to secretly deal with every single day?  Idiots like you!

Yeah, I said it.  I don’t care that you’re a millennial, or that you’re a baby boomer, or that you’re gay, or straight, or both.  I don’t care that you need to leave every other Tuesday for some religious reason, or that you sneak out every Friday to meet someone who is not your spouse.

I’m an HR Pro and I’ve got to deal with crap that you can’t possibly fathom.  What I care about is that you actually show up to work, ready to work, excited about work, and do work.  I know, life is hard, and coming to work every single day is hard. But, I’m paying you, so just work and get over all of your hangups.

You know want to know why I feel this way? Because I’ve got to deal secret stuff, secret HR stuff, like this:

1. Figuring out how to keep it quiet that we actually do know that our females are getting paid less than our males, but we don’t actually have the money to make it right, and don’t want to get sued.  All the time hating our executives who force us to continue this idiotic practice, knowing it’s wrong.

2. Carrying around, sometimes for months, those names of our coworkers and peers who we’ll be laying off.  It sucks.  We carry around baggage that we know will ruin the lives of people we care about.  Hello, alcohol abuse.

3. Knowing which executives are sleeping with employees who are reporting to them, but knowing turning them in will be career suicide.

4. Understanding which employees are actually ‘gaming’ the system, increasing our healthcare costs, ruining it for everyone else, and wanting to scream at the top of your lungs what’s going on.  But not. Letting the ‘system’ play itself out.  I hate you employees who ‘game’ the system.

5. That hiring decisions are sometimes made based on religion, race, sex, marital status, maternity status, sexual preference status, etc., and that actually might be the best thing for the organization’s success, and the employees who rely on that success.  That many times the ‘best’ person isn’t hired for the job, but 100% of the time we say that they are.

See?  Listening to someone tell you their secrets sucks.  Your coworkers and peers don’t really want to hear your secrets.  They want you to shut up, so they can tell you stuff about themselves.  That’s the real secret.

We all have issues. There’s no way you are going to be able to understand how to deal with everyone.  The secret is to stay off the fringes professionally.  Track down the middle, be consistent and don’t break stuff, just to break it.

 

How to Kill a Hiring Manager and Get Away With It!

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My wife and I just finished watching the entire series of Breaking Bad!  All five seasons, sometimes we went three episodes deep in a night. It was tough, but we persevered. You’re welcome!

This really isn’t a Breaking Bad series post, I promise. If you haven’t seen the series, I thought it was worth it. Something funny happens to you when you watch so much darkness in such a short time.  I will warn you about that.  You begin to feel like it’s somewhat normal. Like somehow I could actually get away with the stuff Walt is doing on TV!

That leads me to how you can kill a hiring manager and get away with it!

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard recruiters say, “Ugh! I hate my hiring managers! I wish I could shoot them!” Or, something to that effect.

Next to candidates who bomb or don’t show up for interviews, Hiring Managers have to be in every recruiters Top 3 worst things they have to deal with.  “Of course, it isn’t every hiring manager”, we say out loud, so the ones that are listening think they’re still awesome, when they really suck.  “There’s only a few hiring managers that can be difficult to deal with”, we say out loud again, like it really is going to matter.

I’m guessing there must be some law about posting something on a blog about instructions on how to kill a hiring manager and get away with it.  I don’t remember reading anything from WordPress when they allowed me to sign up this blog.  You would think that would be bolded in the instruction: “HEY! Don’t write sh*t about killing hiring managers! Or you could be put in jail!” 

I better be strategic about how I word this.

Well, after watching 62 straight episodes of Breaking Bad, apparently it’s fairly easy to dissolve a body in a big 50 gallon drum with some acid.  In the show, they always wore protective gear, like rubber suits and gloves.  They also had the equipment to pick up and transport said 50 gallon drums of disgusting liquid. As you can imagine this takes care of the not getting caught part.

Here are a few ideas, for entertainment purposes only, on how you might kill a hiring manager, but of course ‘we’ never would:

1. Disgruntled Crazy Candidate.  We actually protect our hiring managers so many times they don’t even know it!  We know the crazies, but we filter them out.  Not this time! This time not only do we pass them along, but we let the Crazy Candidate in on a little feedback, “Yeah, the hiring manager hated you, and thinks you’re crazy, and here is her address…”

2. Strange White Powder on the Resume. You hear about this stuff all the time with crazies sending stuff to politicians.  I’m sure it works the same for hiring managers! But you put yourself in jeopardy as well. But, if you’ve read this far, my guess is you’re on the edge already, once one more step!

3. Nut Allergies. Hiring managers love conference room cookies!  This time all you need to do is make a special batch of your Chocolate Chip “Surprise” cookies, but don’t call them “surprise”, they’ll feel the surprise!

My guess is I’ll get at least 3 ‘unsubscribe’ emails after this goes live.  That’s always a good measurement of success as a blogger.  How many people did you alienate today?

Happy hiring folks!

P.S. – if this is the FBI or any other law enforcement agency reading this, I’m joking, this is a joke, I love my hiring managers. Well, most of them.

The Real Reason Feedback Sucks in the Corporate World

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So, yeah, I’m really lucky to have what I’ll call “professional” friends, thankfully many of which I now consider personal friends, that are willing to give me ‘real’ feedback.

What is ‘real’ feedback, you ask?

When I suck, they tell me I suck.  When I’m brilliant they tell me I suck! Just kidding. When I’m brilliant they tell me I’m brilliant.  When I can be better, they tell me that as well.

I’m Lucky.

You can’t have this in normal work feedback.

You see there are two things in a normal work feedback loop that make it impossible for you to accept and deliver real feedback.  One is competition. The other is trust.

My friends have only one intent when they give me feedback. They want me to be the best I can be at whatever it is I’m trying to be.  I/They feel absolutely no competition with me on any level.  When I do something great, they’re cheering for me.  When they do something great, I’m cheering for them.  We only want to see each other succeed. When you are delivering feedback from a place where your ONLY intent is to see the other person truly have success, then you can deliver ‘real’ feedback.

The other aspect is trust.  I must trust with all my being that they only want to see me succeed.  This way I’ll accept their feedback with nothing but positive intent and gratefulness, that they are willing to help me succeed.   When this happens, it’s magical.

I never feel defensive when my friends tell me I didn’t do ‘well’ (hat tip to Professor Marcus Stewart) enough.  I feel energized that I need to do better.  When they tell me I’m brilliant, I walk around on a cloud all day, because I know I was truly brilliant in that moment. They wouldn’t tell me otherwise.  I trust that.

That’s why feedback sucks in the corporate world.  Competition and lack of trust.  You and your boss and your peers are in a competition with each other.  You are all competing to reach the next level, many times at the sacrifice of one another. That’s why you never truly believe the feedback you’re getting.  It might be buried way deep down, but it’s there, a lack of trust that they really want to see you ‘fully’ succeed.  Succeed so much, you might take their job, or rise above them.

Feedback is different when your only intent is that you truly wish the greatest success possible for the person you are delivering it to, and they trust that it is the case.

Just a little something to strive for today, leaders.

 

You Need a Professional Tribe

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One of the things I speak about when presenting to HR pros is there need to become part of the ‘Tribe’.  Meaning, if you want to have your seat at the table, you want to gain influence with your leadership team, you need to become part of that tribe.  How do you do that? Well, every tribe is different, you need to figure that out. There is no magical answer, but my guess is they have or do something in common. Find out what that is, and slowly work yourself into that tribe!

HR people struggle with this concept.

“Tim, I just want to do my job and go home!”  Okay.  Then stop bitching that you’re not getting any respect from your executives.  You’re choosing not to be part of that tribe.  Tribes take care of themselves.

You see, most HR pros place themselves on a professional island.  Just Tom Hanks in Cast Away, they’re all by themselves, plus maybe there own little ‘Wilson’ comfort toy picked up at a SHRM conference, a Monster stuffed animal, a Careerbuilder ‘recruiter’ doll, you know the ones!

I have a really, really cool tribe.  In fact, I have many tribes.  First and foremost of have my family.  My HRU tribe is next.  I probably spend more time with them, then my real family on a daily basis!  I also have a number of other personal tribes around youth sports, neighborhood, etc.

My FOT tribe is professionally very cool and satisfying. It’s a group of HR and Talent bloggers who are super smart and snarky, and they make me laugh every day.  I support this tribe and they support me.  They make my professional world better.  They help make me get excited about what I do, and how I do it.  They challenge me to be better. There are many subsets of that tribe, like the 8 Man Rotation tribe, the greater HR blogger tribe, etc.

Tribes are important.

HR and Talent Acquisition pros need to take down their locked HR office doors. Take them right off the hinges.  Get out and start getting involved with professional tribes.  Start in your own organization first.  Do you support a department or client group?  Get into that tribe, now!  Go to lunch with them. Go for drinks after work on Friday.  Bake cookies and bring them to the tribes.  All tribes like to eat and drink! Never underestimate the importance of being a part of that tribe.

I hear from HR pros who tell me all the time, “Tim, ‘they’ just won’t listen to me. How do I get them to listen?”  My first question is to ask them what relationship they have with whomever isn’t listening. That answer is usually, none, or next to none.  They aren’t part of that tribe. That’s the real problem.

I’m not saying it’s easy to break into every tribe. It might not be, but that shouldn’t stop you from trying.  Also, you can create your own professional tribes.  There are so many people just like you that just want to be a part of a tribe.  Go find them! Start a tribe.  You’ll be better for it.