The 3 Places You’re Going in your Career

You know that Career Path you’re currently on – I want to tell you to not get so concerned and uptight about where it’s going because the reality is – it will only go in 3 directions.  I was talking with a young HR pro last week and this person was super concerned about his career path – you know the concern – “I need to be an executive by 35 or my life is a failure” – and he was looking to me for advice.  So, I gave him my career path advice – get fired a couple of times and have your Mom promote you to President! Seems easy enough, I don’t know what all the concern is about.

The reality is – you have only 3 places you will go in your career path:

1. You’ll stay in position (No Move)

2. You’ll get promoted (Move Up)

3. You’ll get fired (Move you don’t want)

Someone might be thinking –  wait – you can have lateral movement or be demoted.  Demotion is being fired, you just couldn’t take the hint and leave.  Lateral move I consider staying in position or no move – all you did was change the color of your office, it’s the same thing.

I’ve gotten to the point in my career where I talk to younger people – just starting out in their career and I say stupid stuff like- “Ugh, these GenY and Millenials don’t get it – you have to put in your time and prove yourself – they’ve done nothing, but think they deserve to move up”.  Right? You say this stuff to don’t you!  Then I remember – I had the same freaking stupid goals – I wanted to be a VP by 35 or somehow I’d consider my life to be a failure (It didn’t happen until I was 38 – and by the time I got it – it no longer seemed important!).  Generations haven’t changed – young people have always want to move up faster than they should and believe they can handle it.

I envy people who have stayed in the same position for 20-30-40 years – COMPLETELY – envy.  To be satisfied with where you are at – not feel that need to push up or out – to chase something that in the end is meaningless – that is a feeling I don’t know – but would like to.   You know – HR Pros/Leaders contribute to this issue – we tell people they are on a career path, we feel the need to show them a career path – we make people feel like if they aren’t “chasing” their career path or climbing the ladder they are somehow less than others.  They aren’t.

 

HR Needs to be more like Tuna

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yep – HR needs to be more like Tuna!

Your Strengths Are Killing You

I’ve always been a huge fan of adult learners ignoring their weaknesses and focusing on bettering their strengths.  This goes against almost every single OD department in the corporate world – where employee weaknesses have to be improved at all costs!  Adult learning studies have proven time and again that after a certain point in a person’s life (usually once reaching adulthood) – focus on improving a weak skill will still only slightly improve even with focused training.  But, you can see better increases when focusing on bettering an adults strengths.  Let me give you a personal example – I’m terrible a grammar – always have been – I see grammar rules as something that are only important to high school English teachers. But, I love to write! Now, I could spend hours on improving my grammar – or I could spend those hours on writing better creative content – then hiring an editor to fix the crap I write.   Seems simple enough – hire an editor – Bam, people will think I’m a better writer.

But what happens when you overuse a personal strength?

I know quite a few people who have been told and given performance feedback that you have “great attention to detail” (by the way I love these folks – I hire them on my team – because they help catch my grammar mistakes!).  You get told this – you take pride in it – you now “really” focus on it – because that is what you’re known for.  Your company has a big project – really important – everyone needs to deliver – time crunch – you get the deal.  You become involved because you want every detail perfect – you want to ensure nothing leaves with an error – seems good, right?  Except for the fact that you can’t deliver on time because nothing is good enough – you keep sending stuff back to get better – to get perfect and you miss deadlines.  One small example in our normal corporate lives – but it shows how a person’s strength, something they are applauded for, can become a weakness.

Do you know what your personal strength’s are?  I bet you probably do – but do you know if you are relying on these strengths so much, they are becoming your enemy?

I’ve been told a strength of mine is that I “will tell it like it is”.  Not a bad strength to have on a leadership team – until it is.  There are times and places where “telling like it is” is very valuable, and their are times “when telling it like is is” is very dangerous.  Remember, not all of your strengths will always be strengths!

 

I Can Do Crazy Better Than You!

In HR we run into employees all the time that do “Crazy” pretty dang good!  I’m always interested in how we work around crazy.  Almost never do we just fire crazy and get rid of it – we tend to keep it around, we tend to try and fix crazy. I’m not talking about legitimate mental illness – I’m talking about employees who are perfectly “fine” but act crazy for a number of reasons – attention, they love drama, they love pushing buttons, they love being in the middle of shit – you know – work crazy.   We see it every day in our organizations.

I’ve found something that works really well for me in dealing with crazy.  Do crazy, better than the employee does crazy. Sounds crazy right?!  Here’s how it works.  Crazy employees have power because they act crazy and no one wants to jump into their crazy storm.  So, people just stay silent, try to stay away, change subjects, ignore, etc.  These are all great mechanisms to stay out of the crazy storm.  Unfortunately this just feeds the crazy storm and helps turn it into a crazy hurricane!  You see, crazy employees – here silence – silence to them is agreement – now they’ve got justification for their crazy storm because in their mind no one told them they disagree – so that must mean – they agree!  You can’t reason with crazy.

So, how do you stop crazy?  You do crazy better than they do crazy.  But you do crazy under control – you fight a crazy storm with a crazy calm.  But, let’s be clear – you still need to go crazy.  Let me give you an example:

Crazy Employee:  “My boss is out to get me!  Yesterday he told Jill “great job” and he didn’t tell me great job.  I think he’s sleeping with Jill – you need to investigate.  Also, Jill might be stealing – you didn’t hear that from me, but she just bought a new car and we make the same amount, I think – what does she make? – anyway I can’t afford a new car!”

Me: “You know what?  I want to thank you for giving me this information – I’m pulling in your boss right now and we are going to have this out!  Just sit here while I call him in – we are going to blast him!”

Crazy Employee: “Hey! Wait! Don’t call him in while I’m here – he’ll know it’s me that told you.”

Me: “Yeah – but to fire him I’m going to need you to testify at the trial. Once I fire him for sleeping with Jill, he’ll want to fight it – happens all the time – no big deal – we got him!  You’ll do fine on the witness stand.”

Crazy Employee: “Um, I don’t want to do that – just forget it”

Crazy doesn’t like to go public in front of others – crazy works best one-on-one behind closed doors where there aren’t witnesses.  You can stop crazy very quickly by going public and asking them to be crazy in front of others.  I’ve found that if I can do crazy behind closed doors better than crazy can do crazy – it tends to snap crazy back into semi-reality.  Plus, it’s fun to act crazy sometimes – as long as it’s behind closed doors!

 

Dream Gigantic

I love this.

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

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

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

The Most Overused Phrase in Corporate America

“It’s Not My Job!”

Let’s face it – it’s probably the most overused phrase in every work environment – corporate, non-profit, your kids!   I was under the impression this wasn’t really used anymore – it was just an old joke – an urban legend.  But it’s not – people are still really using this.  I speak a lot in the fall and I make a joke in one of my presentations about HR not wanting to plan the company picnic – “It’s not our Job!” and we all get a big laugh.  My point is – it should be your job – you should want to plan the company picnic – it will get you noticed – own it, do it better than anyone has ever done – make it EPIC!

“It’s Not My Job”

I have a friend that shared a little story about this type of attitude this past week.  She has a younger sister who is lucky enough to have an administrative job paying a decent wage – no college education – but she’s found good work, not great pay, decent benefits – she can eat and pay her bills.  Sounds like a lot of people in the world.  My friend, though, shared that her sister, who is 27, called her to complain about her job – again nothing new – that’s what sisters are for – you can bitch about life and move on – but this issue really was more of a this-is-why-your-life-sucks issue – it was a “It’s not my job” issue.  Her sister, who is an administrative assistant, was complaining because in her office she has to use a fax machine to get some of her work done and the freaking fax machine wasn’t working.  My friends response – get it fixed.  Simple enough.  Her sister’s response – and I quote – “It’s Not My Job!”

“It’s Not My Job”

If it’s not your job – who the hell’s job is it?!?!  Who fucking job is it to fix the damn fax machine?!?!  Oh, that’s right – it’s Ted the Fax-Machine-Repair-Guy who we keep on staff full-time and pay a salary to so when our one fax machine breaks down he can run over from playing solitaire on his computer and make sure you’re up in running in minutes!  NO!!!! You do it!  It is your job – it’s your job because it’s no one else’s job.   That how the real world works.  When it’s not in your job description, and it’s not in somebody elses job description – you do it.  You’re an adult – that’s how it works.

“It’s Not My Job”

Makes me want to shoot people.  Not figuratively, literally – I know it’s not in my job description to shoot people but I’m a team player that way – I’ll happily pick up the gun and the bullets and put idiots out of their misery.  I’ll fill that need for my company – it makes me feel good that I can pick that up and no one else will have to do it.  I’m in HR – I’ll get my hands dirty.

FILL THE VOID PEOPLE!  In every one of our work environments we have voids – and those voids need to be filled by – YOU – not someone else – YOU.  Your organization is waiting for you to fill that void – no, your are correct – it’s not on your Job Description – that’s alright – come here, give me a crayola and I’ll add it to the bottom if that makes you feel better.  There – how’s that – now go do it.

Originality is Dangerous

“Originality is Dangerous”

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

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

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

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

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

 

3 Reasons Talent Communities are NOT the Future of Employment

I know a lot of really smart, brilliant people who espouse that Talent Communities are the second coming of Christ, in regards to employment and recruiting.  Business Week even had a recent article where they called “Talent Hives” (I guess their version of “Talent Communities” – the future of employment – which means this concept is now hitting main stream and soon you’ll see June the HR Manager down at the local Tool & Die Shop trying to set up her talent community.  Here’s more from Business Week:

“These are communities of people interested in an employer (whether because they’re job hunting themselves, or just curious, or because they’re fans of the product or service the organization produces) and willing to be in two-way touch with that employer over time. (For the simplest example of a Talent Hive, think of a Facebook (FB) company page or a LinkedIn (LNKD) group). Talent Hives are popular because they’re easy to set up, and because the two-way and group communication makes it easy for companies to learn more about potential job applicants (including people who are currently working for their competitors) even when they don’t have open positions.”

Great theoretical concept.  But I think theory and practice don’t always align because the real world steps in an kicks it in and kicks them both to the curb.  Here’s 3 reasons I don’t see Talent Communities as the Future of Employment:

1. Reality – Talent Communities are established by you and ran by you (the HR/Recruitment Dept.) – that’s means you need to deliver content, sometimes unique, definitely engaging. Very few people, in HR worlds, have the skill/ability to do this.  You can shop this out, at a cost – a cost of not only money but also authenticity – there goes that community feel.  And, by the way, you’re doing this for a benefit you may, or may not, get in the future when you have an opening you believe you might have.  How many organizations are really going to do this long term? It’s a small percentage, congregated into smaller specialty industries – with really big budgets – to make it sustainable.

2. Logistics – Talent Communities assume “Talent” – that talented people you would want to hire will voluntarily want to join your content driven community and interact.  That’s a huge assumption! Gigantic!  First, you (yes, you – who else will do it) needs to go out and find the great talent that you someday want to work at your company and engage them to be apart of your community.  I don’t know about you – but 99.9% of the HR/Talent Pros I know don’t have the capacity to make this happen – either through time or skill.

3. WIFM (What’s In It For Me) – Talent Communities don’t deliver enough WIFM.  Talented people get this – they are fooled by your “Community” which isn’t really a community but a holding pen for potential future candidates and you have to know they know this. This means someone who ops into your community gets the deal – I want to work at your place – so I’m going to engage with you – and you will engage with me – and one day you’ll hire me – and you’ll use that number to justify how great Talent Communities are so I can keep this job as Talent Community Manager and justify my $50K+ salary.  How’s that work for you?

Let’s face it – I don’t know much – but I think I know a little about recruitment – and to me Talent Communities seem to be a lot of smoke and mirrors and well it’s easier/safer than just picking up the phone and finding/calling the talent you want (which is dirty and evil for some reason).  I know some folks have some great examples of Talent Communities working – good for them – I hope they keep working for them.  I guess this message goes out to the HR majority – it isn’t as easy as it might sound.  Before jumping in with both feet – make sure it’s right for you.

It’s a Long Story

Have you noticed when you ask someone a question, that is pretty simple to answer – like a “yes” or “no” question and they answer you back with “it’s a long story…” it never really is a long story.  It’s that they just don’t want to tell you what you don’t want to hear!

It’s funny that people act that way – because usually it’s really that the other party just wants some closure – just let me know!  Let me know if this sounds familiar:

Candidate: (ring, ring – that’s phone) “Hi, Tim? It’s Mary Smith, I was just calling back to see if you had any feedback on my interview?”

Tim: “Mary! (as I frantically look up Mary on my ATS) How are you? (which buys me another few seconds)”

Candidate: “Tim, I’m doing great, just anxious to hear on this position – I really want it!”

Tim: “Mary you interviewed very well but, well, it’s a long story…(then I make up some long story on my way to telling her “No, you didn’t get selected)”

We tend to see this is a way of “letting someone down easy” but in fact it’s a mechanism we use individually because we are uncomfortable at giving negative feedback and it’s rather annoying.  It draws out the conversation longer than it needs to be – usually you then say something you shouldn’t, which leads to more conversation.  We teach our hiring managers to be direct and to-the-point when delivering performance feedback – don’t “beat around the bush” – but many of us HR/Talent Pros struggle mightily trying to do just that – be direct!

Don’t make it a Long Story – make it a short story – the candidate will thank you and  your legal team will thank you.

 

 

 

The Employee Walk of Shame

I’ve lost jobs and I’ve called old employers to see if they would want to hire me back – I’ve usually gotten a response that sounded something like – “Oh, boy would we want you back – but – we just don’t have anything. Good Luck!”  Many of us in the talent game talk about our employee Alumni and how we should engage our Alumni – but very few of us really take true advantage of leveraging this network.

I was reminded of this recently when a friend of mine took a new job.  You know the deal – shorter drive, more money, growing company – oh, golly, just where do I sign!?  The fact was, it was all they said – shorter drive, more money and they were growing – but they forgot to tell him was – our operations are broken beyond repair, you will work 7 days a week and probably 12-14 hours per day because of the mess we have, but keep your head up – it’s the only way you won’t drown here!

So, now what does he do?

Already had the going away party – bar night out with the work friends with the promises to do lunches and not get disconnected – packed up and unpack the office into the new office.  Let’s face it big boy – you’re stuck!  Not so fast.  He did the single hardest thing an employee can do – he called his old boss – after 7 days – and said one thing – “I made a mistake, can I come back?”  Luckily for him – his past boss was a forward thinking leader and so this past Monday – he did the 2nd hardest thing an employee can do – he made the Employee Walk of Shame.

You can imagine the looks from people who didn’t know him well – “hey, wait a minute, didn’t you leave?” Having to tell the same story over and over – feeling like he failed, like he wasn’t good enough.

HR plays a huge part in this story because it was HR who can make this walk of shame – a little less rough.  Let’s face it, it is different.  You just don’t leave and come back like nothing happened – something did happen – there was reason he left and that reason isn’t going away.  A transition back needs to be put into place – even though he was gone 7 days.  It’s not about just plugging back in – it is about re-engaging again – finding out what we all can do better so it doesn’t happen again.

It’s also about making sure you let those employees who you truly want back – that they are welcome to come back (assuming you have the job) and not just saying that to everyone.  There are employees who leave that you say a small prayer to G*d and thank – there are others where you wish there was a prayer you could say so they wouldn’t leave.  Make it easy for your employees to do the Walk of Shame – it helps the organization – but realize they are hurting, they are embarrassed, but they are also grateful!