Category Archives: Communication

3 Ways Contract Staffing Fails

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Contract technical staffing is what I do for a living – so I know exactly where it falls down.  I spend every day trying to talk people into why they should use contract staffing and why it makes sense.  In 13 years of being in this business, I’ve never had anyone ask me why it doesn’t work.  That might be kind of odd.  Don’t get me wrong, I’ve talked to hundreds of corporate HR and Recruiting Pros who HATE contract staffing – but 99% don’t know why they hate it.  Most believe they hate contract staffing because it’s taking their job away.  Nothing makes me smile more than to hear a really good HR Pro say “if I hire your company ‘they’ll’ have no reason to keep me around”.  It makes me smile because I know they have no idea about what we do – and I can probably convince them to use our services!

To be honest, though, there are some reasons when contract staffing fails.  If you deal with contract staffing firms, you might find that shocking to hear, because we are trained from birth not to ever say anything negative about our service.  ‘Everyone’ can use us for any recruiting need you might have!  Well, no not really.  Let me give you 3 Ways Contract Staffing Fails:

1. To Attract your competitions talent when you are equal or trailing in market compensation.  I always like to say there is no one I can’t recruit.  Given enough time and money – I could get President Obama to quit the Presidency.  But if you think a contract staffing firm is going to get your competitions best developer to leave their direct job for a contract job, for the same money or less – you’re crazy.

2. When you fall in love with the talent.  Every once in a while I a client who gets upset.  They bring on a high priced contractor, that person does great work, and the client falls in love and wants to hire them.  The problem is many contractors are contractors because they like moving from project to project.  They like you, they just don’t like-like you.  Contract staffing works really well when it’s a win-win. We have a project, you nail project – we both got what we wanted.  It fails when one party falls in love, and the other doesn’t feel the same!

3. When You Think I’m Magical. Recruiting is recruiting.  I don’t have a magical stable of candidates waiting to come to work for you. Well, I might have one or two, but not a stable. When you tell me you need something – I, usually, have to go out and find the right talent, fit, etc.  Just like you would, if you were looking to hire a direct position.  I’m not magic, I’m just good at finding technical talent.  There’s a difference.

I get why some new clients get put off by contract staffing.  I call you, tell you how amazing we are and how good we are at what we do and then you expect I’m going to have 5 perfectly screened ready to work Controls Engineers in your inbox the next morning – when you’ve been searching for 6 months and don’t have one.  Expectations are a huge issue we all face in recruiting – no matter what kind of recruiting we do.  I have to manage my clients expectations, just like you have to manage your hiring managers expectations.  Contract staffing works really well when you find a partner that makes sure your expectations and their deliverables all line up.

Want to discuss?  Contact me: sackett.tim@HRU-TECH.com, 517-908-3156 or send me a tweet @TimSackett.   I promise to under promise and over deliver.

Ex-employers, Please Send Gifts!

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Dear Applebees,

I use to work for you in Human Resources.  It was a great 3 1/2 years, I loved working for you.  I was surrounded by the most talented group of Human Resource, Operations and Training professionals I’ve ever been around.  I tell this story often, but you know when you go into a large business meeting with like 20-40 people all sitting in a large square or circle of tables?  And you look around and you instantly see a couple of slugs, people who shouldn’t even be working for the company, let alone be in this meeting.  The first time I traveled to Applebee’s headquarters for a large operations meetings and I walked into the entire group of HR professionals that the Applebee’s leadership team had assembled, I looked around the room and couldn’t find one of those people!  Then it hit me – I’m that person – I’m the slug!  It was the coolest feeling to be challenged like that – to be surrounded by talented, caring people all working to make a company great.

I’ve moved on to bigger roles and a bunch of new experiences, but I still share so many things I learned while I was with you to those HR Pros I’m connected to.  I still talk so highly of the brand and the people that make your brand what it is today.  You’ve got some really great people still working for you, even after that crappy pancake place bought you.  You’ve lost some great ones as well – I could point out a number and where they are currently working and what their numbers are – who knows, they might want to come back.  You knows, maybe I want to come back.

Tell you what.  Why don’t you send me something. Just a little something to remind me of what I’m missing – a gift card, a free appetizer coupon, a carside to go Frisbee – you could even have someone drop off lunch to my office — grilled chicken oriental roll-up .  You see, I might want to come back, but no one has ever asked.  No letters, no phone calls, no tweets or Facebook messages.  I know I left you and that probably didn’t feel very good, but I think we can all be adults about this.  I had some growing up to do, I needed to see if those fries on the other side of the street really were hotter.   You can’t blame a guy for that.

So, who knows, we were so close once – and there’s nothing to say we can’t be close again,

Tim

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Just in case you are very lost at this point – check this out from Yahoo! Also, Marissa Mayer if you want to send me stuff, I’ll even think about coming over to Yahoo! Who knows – I like gifts!

In case you’re still lost: some of the best recruits you’ll ever get, are people who’ve already worked for you and were good, but you’ve never asked them to come back.

 

Employee Retention is Easy

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What is the one thing that employees hate more than anything else?

Change.

Bar none – ‘change’ would rank as the most disliked thing that a company can do to employees.  I know, I know – all of you reading this are really progressive – you ‘love’ change, you embrace ‘change’, you’re ‘change’ advocates.  Yeah, right.  The people who say they ’embrace’ change are the same folks who go into a deep depression when their favorite TV show is cancelled.  Change for most people sucks.  People like what they know.  They like knowing that they’ll stop at the same place each morning to pick up their morning coffee and Joe behind the counter will know they like it with low fat milk and one sugar.  They like knowing that the doctor they’ve gone to since they started with you right out of college, is in your insurance plan, and they can keep going to that doctor.  They like knowing that their check will always be deposited into their bank account on the first and third Friday of each month. No. Matter. What.

That is the secret of Employee Retention.

People – your employees – don’t actually want to leave your employment.  Starting a new job, in a new location, working a new boss, etc. – Sucks!  It’s major change!  Your employees actually want to stay with you – they just don’t want their job and the company to suck.  So – you Change!  And change causes them to what?  Ugh…this is hard.

So, how do you keep your employees, without changing?

Most change fails because of the communication.  This is especially true in so many HR shops – we tend to over communicate and over complicate minor changes, with major communications!   We are implementing a new payroll system that will save us time and money, but in doing so checks will now be deposited on the second and fourth Friday of each month.  OMG!  Our employees are going to freak out – they are use to the first and third Friday!  This. Is. A. Major. Change.  We need a committee.  We need posters and wallet cards.  We need changes to our policies.  We need to have a six month transition period – where we will communicate this over and over.  We need…Stop.

What you need is a simple message out to the troops.  Hey all – payroll is getting a great new system.  We’ll have less errors, save the company a bunch of money.  We’re happy we could get them some really good technology for their function.  Checks will now come out on the second and fourth Friday of each month. Plan accordingly.  Let your supervisor know if you need some help in this transition. This will go live next pay period.  Bam!

People don’t like change.  So, don’t maximize change that doesn’t need to be maximized!   If you only communicated truly “Big” change and it “Big” change happens rarely – it doesn’t seem like change is happening all the time.  Your employees WANT to stay with you.  They HATE change.  Stop making them feel like change is happening all the time – just so you feel like you have some IMPORTANT to do.

Employee Retention is Easy, simply because deep down, your employees really don’t want to leave.

 

 

Lawyer-Up

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Years from now when I retire and look back on my career in HR I think I’m only going to be surprised about one thing.  It won’t be how crazy some employees can be, or dumb things supervisors have said to employees or even the shocking employee relations issues I’ve dealt with.  The one thing will be how totally comfortable I’ve become in dealing with lawsuits and potential lawsuits!   If you really thing about it, most people in the world are not comfortable with lawyers.  Just as HR Pros are looked at like the Grim Reaper in many organizations – no one wants to see the lawyer’s number pop up on their caller ID!  Combine the Lawyer and HR Pro together and you have most employees worst nightmare.

I’ve gotten to the point now in my career where I actually try and beat employees to the punch.  Here’s how it normally goes: Employee is either being terminated, or had a boss be a little too touchy or somehow slipped in the parking lot on a dry sunny day and HR gets a call/visit that sounds something like this:

Employee: “Yeah, well, ‘we’ve’ got a problem!”

HR Pro: “Really!? What problem do ‘we’ have?”

Employee: “Jill took my stapler and told me my ‘Boo’ is sleeping with Mary.”

HR Pro: “And…”

Employee: “And!  And that’s stealing and I’m working in a ‘hospitable’ work environment!”

HR Pro: “Hostile.”

Employee: “I’m not being “Hostile”! Oh, you’re against me to – I see how this is. I know my rights! I don’t want to have to get ‘others’ involved but I will.”

HR Pro: “Others. Oh, you mean a lawyer?” (I like to act like I’m surprised and that thought had never come to me that they might go this direction.) “Tell you what – I think you’re right on.  Have your lawyer contact me immediately so we can start working through some of these details, like how another employee stole your work issued stapler and how your “boo” is sleeping with Mary.”

That usually ends the conversation right there.

The fastest way to get an employee off ‘Lawyering-Up’ is to push them to ‘Lawyer-Up’.  The reality is for HR Pros – either way – you will either need to Lawyer-Up or you don’t, depending on the details.As an HR Pro I’ve become very comfortable with this issue.  I think about 100% of the time when  I hear from an employee that they are “going to call their attorney”, I try and tell them that is a really good idea.  I encourage them constantly to seek legal advice. Why? Because here’s another thing I’ve learned from being an HR Pro – the majority of attorneys will tell people to take a hike when they have nothing.  Honestly. We tend to think lawyers will sue for anything, but in most employment cases they won’t. 99 out of 100 times you have an employee seek legal advice – you’ll never hear from them again because some attorney will tell them – “You have no case.”  The one case you do hear from – is probably the one you already knew you had problems with already.

Yep – being told “I’m going to sue you”, who knew someone could ever hear those words and not feel nervous!? Only HR Pros and Lawyers.

 

Uncommon Trait of a Great Leader

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For those who don’t know – I had great seats for the MSU vs. Iowa basketball game last week (see pic above of me being an idiot on national TV – it was AWESOME!).  My company, HRU, does a bunch of IT business with MSU and we are big supporters (yep, I now have the infamous “donor” tag at MSU) of MSU athletics – heck, our corporate headquarters is about 2 miles from campus and roughly 1/2 of my staff are Sparty grads.  All those things being put together – I was offered a chance to travel with the MSU basketball team to the Iowa game and got a chance to sit behind the bench for the game.

So, what does this have to do with Leadership Traits?  This is probably where you’ll believe I’ll go on and on about how great MSU Head Coach Tom Izzo (he’s also the guy on the front page of this blog in the pic with me) is – because he is – but you’re wrong.  The leader I want to talk about is one of the team captains from MSU, Russel Byrd (only a sophomore).  Here’s a kid who barely plays.  Was a highly recruited kid out of high school, but still hasn’t found his shot at the college level.  I think most of Spartan Nation was stunned when he was named one of the Captains for the 2012-12013 team.  How does a kid who rarely plays, become Captain of the team?

The uncommon trait of a leader – not being the most skilled.

Normally, in most organizations, the people who ascend to leadership positions, tend to be the most skilled, or pretty close to the most skilled.  It is very rare that a person is selected who isn’t the most skilled.  Why?  Traditional thinking says how can you lead people who are better than you.  The reality is, and we know this in HR, having high skill in a function and having the ability to lead in that same function – really have zero correlation.   No doubt, many great leaders are also highly skilled, but not always.

Back to my Spartys!  What I came away with from my trip with MSU Basketball was that Russell Byrd is a natural leader.  I called him the mayor, the entire trip – I might be his biggest fan now! He never missed an opportunity to engage with those traveling with him – his teammates, his coaches, the team managers, us tag-along donors, the hotel staff, etc.  It might be a handshake, eye contact with a wink and a smile or putting his arm around you and joking around.  He was encouraging, always, he kept a positive attitude even when his own performance, that night, wasn’t what he would have wanted.  While not having a good game, he set his own feelings aside, to pick up those on his team, who were more skilled, who needed some picking up.  He put his team, before himself.

When you think about succession in your organization, I wonder how many of us really look at one’s ability to lead vs. how skilled they are.  I immediately assumed Russell Byrd would not make a good Captain for his team, based on his skill level.  I think too often, those responsible for hiring leaders, do the same thing.  We pass over many of our most influential employees and give the job to the best performer – who often struggle in that role.  I’m not saying Byrd is a great leader because he’s not the most skilled, I’m saying he’s a great leader in spite of not being the most skilled.

Great skill does not equal great leadership.  Great leadership comes from having an ability to connect with people.

 

 

 

 

 

Sales Pitch Tuesday – Why Us?

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It’s really the only question I have to answer when I call on a potential client to try and get their staffing business.

Why should you work with HRU vs. the thousands of other choices you have?

It’s not a cost issue for 99% of the business development calls I make.  If a company has decided we need to engage a staffing firm – whether it’s for direct search or contract staffing – cost has very little to do with their final decision.  Everyone likes to get the ‘best’ price – but in staffing you’re talking about talent.  I’ve never met an HR executive or operational executive that wouldn’t in a heartbeat pay thousands of dollars more for a more talented candidate versus a candidate that fits the requirements but seems like a “B” level player.  Corporate HR/Talent Pros constantly get frustrated with staffing firms for doing this!  They tell us they want “X” candidate for $80K and we send over “X” candidate for $90K.  They say they aren’t interested. So, we send over a $80K candidate.  They interview $80K candidate.  They they call us and say “Can we interview $90K candidate?”  It happens constantly.  Don’t hate the staffing company, hate the game.

It’s not a talent issue, either.  What!?  It’s not.  The reality of staffing is that all companies have the exact same access to talent.  Some companies are just faster at uncovering that talent versus others.  In my 20 years of staffing – I’ve really seen very little difference in the quality of talent good staffing firms offer up to their clients (and remember, I’ve been on both sides of the fence on this – corporate and agency).  Don’t get me wrong – bad staffing firms do very little vetting of candidates and just flow paper to you.  Good staffing firms should be sending you fully vetted candidates.  I like to tell my recruiters – “We are the sure thing!”  When a company wants to interview or hire one of our candidates, the only thing they should hear is: “When would you like them to start?”

So, what is it?  It’s a relationship issue.  When I worked with a staffing firm, I needed to have trust in the people I was working with.  I didn’t care about their brand or their process.  I cared about how much do I trust this company is going to represent us as a company to the talent base that is out there.  Period.  Don’t get wrong – they better deliver great talent – but I’m assuming that is a given – if I decided to work with them!  Trust.  Part of that trust comes with full disclosure as well.  Most staffing companies hate this!  But I came from their world – I knew the game.  So, if you wanted to play with me – I wanted to know everything.  I was going to let you make money – but I wanted to know where it was being made.  That helps me sharpen up my internal process.  If a staffing firm really wanted to be a partner with me – then this wasn’t an issue.  I wanted to see them succeed, just as they wanted to see our organization succeed.  Most corporate HR/Talent Pros don’t have this mindset. They feel staffing firms are ‘out to get them’ and not a partner.  They need to cut those relationships.

It works both ways.  I stopped doing business with a really good paying client in 2012. Why? Because they were a pain to work with and didn’t get that this relationship should work for both parties.  I want to work with people I truly like.  People I would go on vacation with.  Right now – every single one of our clients at HRU – I would go on vacation with.  I would invite them to my house for dinner.  I would look forward to having a drink with after work.  That is why I love coming to work.  It’s not stressful on either side – the way it should be.  I understand their challenges and they understand my challenges and we can have ‘real’ conversations about each other – and provide feedback.

That is pretty rare in this industry.

Want to be apart of this?  Contact me: sackett.tim@hru-tech.com; call 517-908-3156 or tweet me @TimSackett – I look forward to the conversation! Also check out my staff – I’d definitely go on vacation with any of these good looking people!

 

 

 

 

 

You’re Uninvited

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I’m not terminating anyone ever again.

I can’t terminate anyone, because I don’t hire anyone.  I do invite people to join me.  Join me on this journey, on this path – it’s going to be a trip.  I invite them to be  apart of my family.  Not my ‘work’ family, but my actual family.  I spend more time with my co-workers than I do with my wife and children (in terms of waking hours).  So, when I invite someone to join us, it is not something I take lightly.

That’s why, from now on, I’m not terminating anyone.  From now on, I’m just uninviting them to continue being a part part of what we have going on.  Just like a party.  You were invited to attend, but you end up drinking too much and making a fool out of yourself, so now you’re uninvited – you can’t attend the next party.  I don’t know about you, but when I throw a party, I never (and I mean never) invite someone I can’t stand.  Sometimes couple have issues with this – where one spouse wants to invite his or her friend, but their spouse is a complete tool and it causes issues.  Not in my family – we only invite those people we want to be around – life is too short.

Here’s the deal.  When you invited someone into your family – you usually end up falling in love with them.  It’s that way in business – it’s the main reason we have such a hard time moving on bad performers.  We fall in love with those people we hire.  “Oh, Jenny, she’s such a nice person!”  But, Jenny, can’t tie her shoes and chew gum at the same time.  So, we give Jenny chances, too many chances, and pretty soon Jenny is part of the family.  It’s hard terminating part of the family.

I would rather just not invite Jenny to attend work any longer.  “Hey, Jenny, we love you, but look, we aren’t going to invite you to work.  We’ll still see you at 5pm over at the bar for drinks.”  Sounds so much easier, right!?  It happens all the time.  I use to get invited to stuff, but somewhere down the road the group stopped inviting me.  I might have been a little upset over it, but it didn’t last and I’m still friends with everyone.  Termination is so permanent – it’s like death.  Being uninvited sends the same message – but there’s a part of being uninvited that says “you know what – maybe it was you, maybe it was us – but let’s just face it – together it doesn’t work.”

You’re Uninvited.

HR Can Succeed By Doing Less

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You know Jim Collins – the ‘Good to Great’ guy?  He has another book to, it’s called How The Mighty Fall: And Why Some Companies Never Give In.  This isn’t a book review, or for that matter an endorsement of this book.  I will say, Jim brings up one very interesting concept in this book on why companies, organizations, departments, etc. – fail.  It’s something that we do constantly within HR, and most of us would never view it as something that would actually be hurting our organization.  We do too much!

This over-riding pursuit ‘to do more’ has some drastic consequences.

I will tell my HR brothers and sisters, if you never worked in a large HR/Talent shop – you might understand where I’m going with this.  That’s because small to medium sized HR shops usually are working their tails off just to keep their heads above water.  Large HR/Talent shops are a little like the game Monopoly. You’re either making yourself larger in some way or another, or you’re going through a ‘right-sizing’ so you can start over at making yourself larger again!  Within that mentality comes this ‘more’ cycle.

Most large HR shops don’t try to reduce their work because that goes against this empire building mindset.  They try and come up with more programs, more projects, more ways to measure, more ways to ensure an employee is engaged, more ways to check the checklist to ensure compliance, more ways to well, show that you’re doing more than the other guy/gal.  If you aren’t creating more, you’re aren’t valuable and showing your worth.  No one ever got promoted in HR for eliminating programs – the saying goes!

Here’s the other way to do HR that 90% of HR/Talent Pros don’t do:

1. Eliminate any HR program/project that doesn’t save employees time (not your HR department – but the time of the actual employee).  Remember that new Open Enrollment process you put in to eliminate all of that data entry by your department – but it now takes employees 25 minutes to sign up for benefits vs. 5 minutes – that 20 minutes times the number of employees just cost your company a ton of time – which means money in the real world.

2. Develop a talent management process that works for your hiring managers, not one that makes your feel good about yourself.  That 5 page annual review sure looks great – but it’s a pain in the ass of your hiring managers, and the reality is the employees aren’t getting in more feedback.  Stop that.

3. Stop designing processes around gaining 100% compliance and start designing processes so simple you’ll have 99% compliance (which is more than you should hope for).

Doing less HR is actually harder than doing more HR!  It seems like that should be the opposite, but it’s not.  Doing less means you have to really think strategically about what your function should be delivering and what it shouldn’t.  It means you move some things out of your department, that never should have been there in the first place, but “we’re in HR and we’re suppose to do whatever we can to help.”  No, you shouldn’t.  You’re in HR – you should deliver great HR that is simple and easy to understand.  For most HR/Talent Pros that I know – this concept of doing less goes against every bone in their body.  Great HR isn’t about doing more – it’s about doing the least amount possible to deliver the services that are needed for your organization to have great people.  That is really hard to do without adding more for people to do!

 

 

 

HR! Inclusion doesn’t equal you.

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Many of you probably missed what happened to one of your HR peers recently.  This HR peer was fired, and it was upheld in courts, for using their First Amendment Rights. This was a senior level HR executive at a public university.  Here’s the article: Federal appeals court upholds termination of anti-gay human resources administrator.  From reading the title, what is the picture that immediately came to your mind?  If you didn’t say over 60, white male – you’re a liar!  The administrator is Crystal Dixon, and she’s a black female. Here’s what she did:

“A federal appeals court on Monday upheld the University of Toledo’s decision to fire a high-level human resources administrator, who wrote a newspaper opinion column challenging the idea that LGBT people deserve the same civil rights protections as members of racial minority groups. 

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit Court ruled that Crystal Dixon’s column “contradicted the very policies she was charged with creating, promoting, and enforcing, and cannot be excused as merely a statement of her own views as a private citizen.”

The court upheld a lower court’s decision to dismiss the lawsuit.

Dixon, who had been the University’s interim Associate Vice President for Human Resources, wrote the essay published in the Toledo Free Press in April 2008 in which she took aim at LGBT people.

Dixon wrote that she was greatly offended that “those person who choose the homosexual lifestyle are ‘civil rights victims.'” adding that she “cannot wake up tomorrow and not be a black woman” because she is biologically and genetically such “as my creator intended.”

I’m not here to challenge Crystal’s views on the “homosexual lifestyle” – she clearly believes something, and it’s her God given right to believe what she wants.  I don’t agree with her – I think her thought process is ignorant and callous at best.

I’m here to challenge her being fired.

You see Inclusion works really well when you’re liberal, and you have your liberal ideas, and others have to listen to your ideas because we/organizations need to be “inclusive”.  But have a differing idea, a way more conservative idea, and somehow “being inclusive” doesn’t work for you.  I think Crystal’s ideas about the LGBT community are completely ridiculous.  But, if I’m, truly, being inclusive as an organization – I don’t fire her.  I work to help her become more educated and understanding of all people in our organization.  “But Tim! She’s in a senior level HR position – she should be the one that understands this!”  But she doesn’t.

Inclusion in 90% of organizations is broken.  It’s broken because those who ‘support’ inclusion – are the same folks who don’t allow inclusive thought to be a part of your organization.  We support the gay young male who wants to hang up a poster advertising the gay pride parade this weekend, but we chastise the old white man who wants to advertise his gun show this weekend.  That’s not inclusion, that’s bigotry in the opposite direction.  Neither one of those things is wrong, or right – it’s just two different ways of thinking.

Crystal was fired for: “contradicted the very policies she was charged with creating, promoting, and enforcing, and cannot be excused as merely a statement of her own views as a private citizen.”  The Diversity and Inclusion policy she was in charge of creating I assume meant she had to think the exact same way as everyone else in her organization. Is that what “Inclusion” means to you?

HR Can’t Forget Your Past

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What I’ve found in HR is that most great lessons are taught to you by the Spice Girls.

“If you want my future, forget my past”

So, I’m going to tell you what I want. What I really, really want.

I want you to understand this one little concept – HR has the memory of an elephant!  Seriously.  If you do something wrong, if you screw up once, don’t think your going to “work through it” and change their mind in the future.  It won’t happen.  HR loves to label employees.  Oh, Steve is our best sales guy – even though he hasn’t closed a deal in 3 years.  Mary is a drama queen – because she had drama 18 months ago, but nothing since.  Doesn’t matter – HR has you labeled!

So, what should you do?

If you screw up, if you already know you’ve been labeled, if you’ve been talked to more than once about a specific issue – you need to move on with your career to a new organization. Period.  Being talked to “more than” once is key.  You can live, organizationally, after being talked to once, because it might be forgotten.  Once you’re talked to twice, or more, it’s probably documented and thus you’ll have an organizational lifetime label (or OLL as we say in the business!).  O.L.L’s happen all the time.  Sleep with one subordinate, and now you’ll always be “that” creepy boss who sleeps with their employees.  Unless you marry that person – then you’ll be labeled positively as having ‘commitment’.  Unless, you then get divorced from that person because you slept with another employees – then you’re back to “creepy boss”.

It works that way on the positive side as well.  When I was working for Applebee’s we had a General Manager who had taken a ‘broken’ restaurant and turned it around to be a ‘star’ restaurant.  We actually moved this person to two other ‘broken’ restaurants to perform their ‘magic’, but they failed both times.  Still that person’s name was brought up every single time a ‘broken’ restaurant was brought up as needing someone to fix it.  What really happened was the first restaurant they fixed had more to do with the “team” that was put in place to fix that restaurant than that one person.  When that one person was put in other similar circumstances, with different teams, they failed.  Yet – the past followed this person around like they were Mr. Broken Restaurant Fixer.  You see – it works both ways – but with the same outcome – HR isn’t going to forget your past!

Here’s the real problem with this concept – you won’t find one HR person who will admit to it!  That’s why I say – if you really, really wanna zigazig ha – you need to move on.