LinkedIn and Microsoft launch “Resume Assistant” and it’s a big deal!

Posted on November 9, 2017 by Tim Sackett

Big announcement today coming out Microsoft/LinkedIn. The two companies are figuring out more and more how to integrate LinkedIn into the Microsoft office ecosystem and their new Resume Assistant is the first major feature announcement.

What’s Resume Assistant?

Microsoft’s Resume Assistant is a Word product integration that brings the power of LinkedIn directly into Word when you’re crafting or updating your resume.

How does Resume Assistant work?

It’s pretty easy. You upload or open an existing resume, made an old resume you have, and Word will automatically recognize that document is a resume and open up the LinkedIn integration. The integration pops up as a right-side window in Word so that your resume is on one side of Word and the LinkedIn Resume Assitant is on the other.

From here, Resume Assistant will do a lot of things but mostly use artificial intelligence to help you craft a better resume that will more likely be selected for jobs by recruiters. Resume Assistant does this through analyzing LinkedIn data of those profiles, work experiences, titles, etc. that are getting hired and moving into new roles via profile changes.

Don’t know how to phrase your work experience? The Resume Assistant will pull in specific examples, similar to you, of people who got hired and show you phrases, skills, and words that will help you get hired. RA will also easily allow you to go directly to other profiles on LinkedIn from Word to see how others have structured their profile.

Why is this a big deal?

So, Microsoft and LinkedIn shared a bunch of data that led to this product creation:

LinkedIn data shows ‘job hopping’ has doubled in the past twenty years
LinkedIn is seeing 40% growth in job applies through LI
On average 100 candidates are applying for each position on LinkedIn
80% of resume updates in the U.S. happen in Microsoft Word

Okay, and, so?!

Connect the dots! One part of the Resume Assistant is to also show each Word user updating their resume the jobs that most match the resume being created. So, 80% of job seekers will have LinkedIn’s 11 million jobs showing up in Word, right next to their resume while they’re updating and thinking about looking for a new job!!!

I would not want to be a job board today and be reading this. In fact, for how much Google has been swinging its weight around recently, this is also a pretty big punch back from LinkedIn and Microsoft to let them know they are not giving job search away!

Game changer!

Think about how many people use Microsoft Word. 100% of those people will now have a direct link to LinkedIn and the LI jobs when they are doing anything with their resume – Resume Assistant opens automatically when a resume is detected. It’s really a genius move by LI and MS.

If this is the first integration that the two sides have figured out, I can’t wait to see future integrations as well, and from the sound of things, both sides are moving quickly to make these a realities.

One note of importance. Resume Assistant will launch today for Microsoft 365 Insiders, at the beginning of 2018 for all Microsoft 365 users, and soon after for all other Word platforms.

Care. More.

Posted on October 30, 2017 by Tim Sackett

My wife loves a super funny scene from the moving “Knocked Up”, here’s the scene:

“Care more!” My wife and I laugh at this because this one scene defines most marriages with kids!

I like “care more”. I want those I work with to care more. To care as much as I do. Care more about what we do. Care more about each other. Care more about your own development. Care more about our customers.

Care more!

Here’s the problem with ‘Care More!’ You’re assuming those around you don’t care more. Think about that for a moment. What if it was you being told to ‘care more’?

Feels like an insult, doesn’t it?

As leaders, we constantly feel like we care more about everything than all of those who work for us, but that’s just not true. It feels that way because we are surrounded by people who also care, but we are caring about different things at different times.

I’m surrounded by great people at my company, HRU Technical Resources, who are constantly caring more, but often it’s just not that we are aligned on our caring! I’m caring about something one day, and they also have things they are caring about. Some days we are all caring about the same thing, some days we are caring about different things.

When I first started as a leader in my career I would have high frustration over ‘care more’. I wanted every single person who I worked with to care as much as I did about the exact same things that I did. Let’s be honest, this is a behavior that still crops up for me from time to time!

What I’ve learned, is that almost every person that I have worked with does care more. The key is understanding what they care about, letting them know that I understand what they care about, and also have them know what I care about. I think this alignment lets all of us help each other.

Most employees working for you want to ‘care more’ about something. It’s not my job to judge what they care about, but to support them in caring more for what is important to them, not getting them to only ‘care more’ to what’s important to me.

That’s my key to great leadership and a happy marriage! Understand what others care more about. Help them care more. Don’t judge what someone else is caring more about. Let others know what you care more about so they aren’t assuming or guessing what you care more about.

The people I don’t want in my life are those who don’t want to care more about anything. I have no room for that!

Does Your Annual Review Process Include Terminations?

Posted on October 18, 2017 by Tim Sackett

By now most of you probably have had the chance to read the Telsla article where they terminated 400 employees directly after their annual review process. If not, check out the link. Also, my buddy Kris Dunn did a great write up on Tesla’s ‘unique’ culture as well over at the HR Capitalist.(Go Check it Out!)

My take is a bit different from Kris’s. Sure Tesla is a unique culture that has been ultra successful, but I’m wondering from an employee performance point of view, is firing employees during your annual process something that drives a sustainable culture?

Tesla is ultra cool, everyone wants “Tesla” on their resume or in their client list. Does that continue to be the case if you treat employees like this? I’m all for firing bad, underperforming employees, we all need to do this more and quicker. I think we all agree on that.

The question is, do you fire employees during your annual review process?

I’m wondering what the day or week before annual review time looks like at Tesla? Probably a lot of going away lunches and after hour drinks, but for everyone since no one really knows who will get ‘cut’ this time. Can you imagine those lunches!?

“Hey, team, everyone is invited to lunch next Thursday, just because, well, you know, it’s annual review time and we just want to say ‘thanks’ (“Thanks” now meaning “Goodbye” in Tesla speak) for all of your hard work, and, well, again, you just never know when one of us might want to do something else, and, oh gosh, we just never spend enough time together, so let’s break some bread!”

I’m also guessing the Friday after Tesla Annual Performance Review week is one big giant after-party!

Let’s face it, firing anyone during performance evaluation time is an awful way to run that process. You wait around for once a year to do most of your terminations, you’re not doing employee performance well at all!

If you have performance issues, high-performance companies address those issues immediately, work to correct, and if that doesn’t happen, they move to terminate as soon as it’s clear performance will not improve. Or you can wait around for f’ing ‘Death Day’ once a year and add a million times more stress to the process than is ever needed.

But what do I know, I mean it’s Tesla and Tesla knows all. Can’t wait to meet the ‘unicorn’ HR leader from Tesla at next conference I go to explain how brilliant they are for coming up with this nightmare.

HR on my friends.

GenX Rant: You’re not lonely, you’re just an idiot…

Posted on October 5, 2017 by Tim Sackett

So, the Washington Post ran an article this week where the former Surgeon General states that the U.S. has a “loneliness epidemic” it’s currently facing. A what?!

From the article:

“Vivek H. Murthy, who became the U.S. surgeon general in late 2014 after a lengthy confirmation battle over his remarks about guns being a health-care issue, added emotional well-being and loneliness to his list of big public health worries.

Now he’s writing about the impact the workplace has on those issues, taking his concerns to employers and speaking out about how the “loneliness epidemic” plays out on the job. In a new cover story in the Harvard Business Review, Murthy treats loneliness like a public health crisis, and the workplace as one of the primary places where it can get better — or worse. “Our social connections are in fact largely influenced by the institutions and settings where we spend the majority of our time,” Murthy said in an interview with The Washington Post. “That includes the workplace.”

Have we lost our f#*king minds!?

So, Timmy doesn’t make friends at work, goes home and spends eight straight hours on social media, or binge watches 8 episodes of Breaking Bad and feels like no one is his friend. That not an epidemic. Tim is an idiot!

I wasn’t a lonely kid, and I didn’t grow up being a lonely adult. Why? My parents would physically lock me out of the house from like after school to whenever the street lights came on. I was no ‘allowed’ in the house. They forced me to got out and make friends. It’s a learned skill, making friends. They said only one thing, “Go make friends.”

No instructions. No scheduled playgroups. Get your lazy ass outside and make friends. It’s not hard, just don’t be an idiot to the other kids who are were also forced outside. A ‘friend’ is not a social connection. It’s someone you physically talk to, touch, you know what each other’s likes and hates. You know their dreams and fears.

So, here we are in 2017, we can’t find enough talent, we’re struggling to help our leaders manage the performance of our workforce, and now we have to teach adults how to make friends? You have to be freaking kidding me!

A decade ago Gallup found out the ‘trick’ too happy employees is they have a ‘best friend’ at work. Little did we know, then, but apparently we do today, HR would become best friend matchmaker for friendship illiterate millennials who couldn’t look up from their phones for fifteen seconds to say an actual “hello” to Timmy as he walked by.

I give up. We’re all morons. Society is lost. China, please come takeover already…

Are You Hiring Raw Talent?

Posted on October 2, 2017 by Tim Sackett

Last week I got invited down to Rock Ventures (Dan Gilbert – the owner of the Cleveland Cavaliers and Quicken Loans – yeah that Rock Ventures) to do the closing keynote for their HR and Talent Summit across the family of companies in Downtown Detroit! Fun, fast-moving culture. Seemingly every CEO of the 130 Rock Venture companies looked to be 30-ish!

As you can imagine, fast-growing organization, that can grow or hire enough talent fast enough to keep up.

One of the sessions was led by Victor You, CEO of Rock Connections, which is a call center that was built for Quicken Loans, but they found out other companies needed a high-quality call center, so they started selling their services. Most of the Rock Venture companies have a similar story. Idea by an employee, run with it, if you can make it happen, you become the CEO!

Rock Ventures is a Detroit company. When I say “Detroit” I mean “Detroit”. The entire campus is downtown Detroit. They hire Detroit city citizens. They are almost singlehandedly turning Detroit into one of the hottest growing cities in the U.S. Therein lies Victor’s problem as a CEO of a fast-growing startup.

Rock doesn’t want to have to relocate everyone they hire to Detroit. They want to hire those people already in Detroit. As you can imagine there’s a skills gap. The normal Detroit citizen is like most urban center citizens. Lower educated, lower income, less likely to have a college education.

Victor graduated from the University of Michigan. Engineering grad who didn’t like engineering. So, he went and sold mortgages. Did pretty well. Good enough that Dan Gilbert made him CEO of a company! What I love about Victor is he gets talent. He gets talent at a very different level than 99% of CEOs on the planet.

Victor explained it the group as “Raw” talent versus experiential talent. Almost all of us hire experiential talent. We have a job opening. That job needs a certain level of experience. So, that’s what we recruit and hire.

Victor doesn’t look for experience. Victor looks for raw talent attributes. What are those?

Hard working
Pride in the work they do
Wants to be apart of something bigger than them
Never satisfied

He saw that many Detroiters had these attributes, but no one was willing to give them a shot because they didn’t have the ‘experience’. He was like, “we can teach them the job”, it’s harder to teach them the raw talent attributes. In fact, you can’t teach those raw talent attributes.

The results have been off the charts! Great retention. High performance. High diversity. High concentration of Detroiters.

In a tight talent economy, you need to start changing the way you do things. We need to open up these modern day ‘apprenticeships’. We need more CEO leadership like Victor You.

Being a Fair Leader Won’t Get You Promoted!

Posted on September 19, 2017 by Tim Sackett

Look out HR Leaders this one is going to sting a little – from The Harvard Business Review:

“In management, fairness is a virtue. Numerous academic studies have shown that the most effective leaders are generally those who give employees a voice, treat them with dignity and consistency, and base decisions on accurate and complete information.

But there’s a hidden cost to this behavior. We’ve found that although fair managers earn respect, they’re seen as less powerful than other managers—less in control of resources, less able to reward and punish—and that may hurt their odds of attaining certain key, contentious leadership roles.”

Wow, that really flies in the face of all that we’ve been taught by our HR Heroes, doesn’t it! Well, not exactly, just because treating employees fairly and with respect might not get you promoted, it doesn’t make it the wrong thing to do. That’s a hard pill to swallow though, right?

How many times in your career have you looked at someone who was promoted and said to yourself “how the hell did they get promoted!?” It’s usually the leader who is pushing people around, and no one likes, and the CEO taps them on the shoulder for the next VP role. Some more from the HBR article:

“We’ve long wondered why managers don’t always behave fairly because doing so would clearly benefit their organizations: Studies show that the success of change initiatives depends largely on fair implementation. Our research suggests an answer. Managers see respect and power as two mutually exclusive avenues to influence, and many choose the latter. Although this appears to be the more rational choice, it’s not always the correct one—and it poses big risks for organizations.”

Do you know why managers choose “Power” over “Respect” as a leadership style? It’s easier! I mean way EASIER! Positional power makes your job so much easier to move things through organizations and get things done, but you burn a lot of bridges and relationships on that path.

Getting things accomplished through mutual respect and influence can take time, but ultimately is more rewarding. Time tends to be the big factor with this, though. In today’s organizations we frequently feel pushed by time to get things done – Now – and that “now” tends not to work well with “respect”. More from HBR:

“Companies can benefit from placing more value on fairness when assessing managerial performance. Our early follow-up research suggests that managers whose style is based on respect can gain power. Their path upward may be difficult, but it’s one worth taking, for their company’s sake as well as their own.”

Thus, this is the key! Want to build Great leaders in your organization? Give them this time to get things done through leading with a style based in respect. Want to get something done tomorrow, and not care about how your employees are getting treated? Let positional power rule the day, and be comfortable with your leaders throwing their weight around the office to get things done.

Let’s face it, this isn’t an all or nothing exclusive thing. We need our leaders to do both – treat employees with respect, and get results quickly. That’s why we have HR! That is a tough thing to accomplish, but HR Pros can help leaders accomplish this task.

It’s Better to Make a Wrong Decision Fast

Posted on September 15, 2017 by Tim Sackett

For those that don’t know I played and coached volleyball for a great deal of my life. Being from Michigan I can tell you that is rare (being a male) and I got called “gay” more than once while fundraising to make money to pay for traveling nationally for major tournaments (I think the actual phrases were more like “don’t girls only play volleyball”, etc. Welcome to the rust belt).

Anyway, one piece of my coaching stuck with me (we used with our middle blockers) that I also have used into my adult life and I use it still today:

It’s better to make a wrong decision fast, then make the right decision to slow.

Why? In volleyball, when you go to block you have to make split second decisions. You have 3 options: block middle, block right side hitter, or block left side hitter. You rely on your instincts, you rely on communication from your teammates and you survey the situation (where is the pass coming from, where is the setter, how far off the net is the setter, etc.), then you make a decision.

The problem most middle blockers have at a young age is they want to be up on every block. They want to make the right decision every time, but by doing this, they rarely make it to block any position because they are frozen with indecision. I taught my middles to decide quickly and then do it. Do it 110%! Go to which ever spot you decided to block and block and even if the ball went to another position!

Why? Some positive things happen by you making the wrong decision quickly. For starters it allows your teammates to make adjustments they need to make to try and get the best possible outcome. Believe me your back row players know you made the wrong decision because they’re staring down the hitter with only one blocker! BUT, it also allows them to know how to try and defend that.

If you’re late, and you have a hole in the middle of the block and now they have to guess where to go. Fill the hole, cover the line, take the cross, etc. It becomes a guessing game. One which you rarely win. What happens if you make the right decision to slow? About 99% of the time, what was going to happen, already happened. You didn’t make the decision, it was made for you. I like being in control, so this isn’t an option I like.

So what? What the heck does this have anything to do with you becoming a better leader?

Fast Company has a wonderful article on this concept called: Why Keeping Your Options Open is Really, Really Bad Idea – from the article:

Why does keeping our options open make us less happy? Because once we make a final, no-turning-back decision, the psychological immune system kicks in. This is how psychologists like Gilbert refer to the mind’s uncanny ability to make us feel good about our decisions. Once we’ve committed to a course of action, we stop thinking about alternatives. Or, if we do bother to think about them, we think about how lousy they are compared to our clearly superior and awesome choice.

Most of us have had to make a choice between two colleges, or job offers, or apartments. You may have had to choose which candidate to hire for a job, or which vendor your company would engage for a project. When you were making your decision, it was probably a tough one–every option had significant pros and cons. But after you made that decision, did you ever wonder how you could have even considered the now obviously inferior alternative?…

When you keep your options open, however, you can’t stop thinking about the downside–because you’re still trying to figure out if you made the right choice. The psychological immune system doesn’t kick in, and you’re left feeling less happy about whatever choice you end up making.

This brings us to the other problem with reversible decisions–new research shows that they don’t just rob you of happiness, they also lead to poorer performance.

I tend to run into this with younger workers who want to make the right choice, fearing “death” or some other less desirable outcome if they make the wrong choice. They tend to defer decision making to their boss or a peer instead of making it themselves, thus giving away the chance for superior performance.

When in reality, all I want is for them to make any choice, and we’ll live with the outcome. I hire great people, so I’m sure they’ll make very wise, research driven decisions, and even then, sometimes they’ll fail. I’m willing to live with that. If it’s fast! Because that allows us to adjust and find a way to make it right.

Two things at play in this concept: 1. Fast action; 2. Failure is an option, that we can live with. Give me those two things, and I’ll show you an organization that is on the move and that can block pretty well!

The Secret to High Performance? Stay in your Box!

Posted on September 7, 2017 by Tim Sackett

I was reminded of something recently – getting out of the box – isn’t comfortable.

Now – I know what some of your are thinking – “But, Tim, you need to get out of the box to challenge yourself, to push the limits, to get you and your organization better!”

Really?

Or have we been sold this by this eras snake oil salesmen and women (leadership trainers, life coaches, every motivation, and leadership book written in the last 20 years)?

I’m not sure.

Here’s what I know:

1. People perform better when they know their boundaries. (their box)

2. There is comfort in knowing what to expect, with comfort comes sustained performance long-term.

3. In reality, a very small percentage of your employees will actually perform above their average performance being “out of the box”.

We as HR Pros tend to go a little overboard sometimes, in the attempt to “help out” the cause within our organization. That can be both good and bad. Things are going as well as they could be, so we push to get everyone out of their box and reinvent themselves, in hopes that this will lead to better performance and higher organizational results.

When in fact, many times, it will lead to the exact opposite. Not everyone is wired to get “out of the box”. In fact probably at a minimum 80% of the workforce should stay in their box, and keep plugging along with their solid performance that they are already giving you.

The trick to great HR in getting great performance is to find those race horses who you can push out of the box, and they show you a whole other level of performance that you and they didn’t know existed. But if you keep pushing plow horses out on to the track in hopes of turning them into a race horse you, and they will fail.

So, don’t drink the Kool-aid and believe everyone can and wants to be out of the box thinkers and performers. Not everyone does and you limit yourself by thinking in such general terms.

When You Want It More Than They Want It

Posted on September 6, 2017 by Tim Sackett

You know what? Being an HR Pro isn’t tough, being a Dad/parent is tough! But, sometimes they seem to be very similar jobs.

I was reminded this weekend that many times in life, you want more for your kids/employees than they might want for themselves. We run into that frequently as HR Pros – you sit through 100’s if not 1000’s, performance management reviews, and in many of those, the conversation is centered around asking the employee,”Well, what do you want out of your career?”

The smart ones usually tell you what you want to here, the not-so-smart ones will tell you something totally off the wall, but either way, you end up feeling like you’re doing the parenting!

Recently, I was taught a lesson that I’ve taught many people in my career. The usual scenario is me sitting with an executive or hiring manager, explaining to them there is nothing we can do to change this employee if they are not willing to change this for themselves first. Seems simple, right!?

We can offer the best tools, the best teachers and mentors, send them away to great conferences and nothing happens, it’s the same old employee that we had before. We (HR, leadership, etc.) keep trying to change the individual, but the individual hasn’t decided, yet, that they are willing to change. In a nut shell, this is Performance Management, and there is a ton of performance management in Parenting!

For me, this is about wanting to turn one of my sons into something they are not, or are not yet ready to become. I can yell and push and plead and do everything my Dad probably did to me but if he hasn’t made up his mind to change, it’s just not going to happen.

It’s funny how we all teach and train things that we haven’t really experienced or understand. It’s in our DNA to want more for those we care about most. If you are a great leader/HR Pro and you care about your employees, you innately want them to reach their highest potential, it’s a natural feeling. The hardest part is getting to the point where you understand that no matter how much you want your employee to change for the better they have to want to change, first before any step forward will take place. The hardest thing to do as a leader/parent is to wait for this to happen.

So, don’t stop giving them the opportunity because you don’t know when the light will come on when the desire to change will take over. It could happen at any time. We set the table, we invite them to eat, then they either come and eat or they don’t. The next day, we set the table again and again and again.

One of my favorite quotes of all time comes from Leo Buscaglia (who is a wonderful writer and teacher), Leo says: “We don’t love to be loved in return, we love to love.” As HR Pros/Leaders/Parents I think Leo has it right. We don’t try and make those we care about better, for something we are going to get in return, we try and make them better (and continue to try) for the simple reason, it’s the right thing to do.

The hard part is we know, we see the potential usually because, we didn’t reach that potential ourselves, and through that experience, we want to make sure others don’t miss their opportunity. So, we will head back to the gym, a little smarter, a little wiser and, yeah, I’ll probably still yell a little too much…

Dream Gigantic

Posted on August 30, 2017 by Tim Sackett

I love this concept. It feels hopeful and aspirational.

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 tell myself I won’t be the parent who tells them they are unrealistic. I won’t be the parent to tell them they are far-fetched. I will not be the parent to tell them that their dream is out of reach. I have to keep telling myself this because as a parent it’s hard.

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 and 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 usually less than Gigantic.

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

The Tim Sackett Project

TA & HR Expert, Dad, Backup Point Guard on my over 40 men's team

Category Archives: Development