The End of Men

Posted on September 12, 2012 by Tim Sackett

I don’t really consider myself a “Man’s-Man” – I love to fish, go to college football games and I’ll watch back-to-back ESPN SportsCenters that are the exact same episode likes it’s brand new material – but I don’t hunt, I can arrange flowers better than my wife and musical theater is something I look forward to. Probably more metro than macho – at least from a Midwest standpoint – I’m not Manhattan Metro – I’m more Milwaukee Metro. I have 3 sons – so the topic of males is something I tend to study – I want to raise my boys to be successful men – in work, in life and in love. That is no easy task in today’s American society.

Hanna Rosin recently released the new book, The End of Men: And the Rising of Women, which looks at how society over the past 50 years has slowly but surely shifted to a point where women have begun to move ahead of men in almost every measure. This isn’t a feminist look at the topic, it’s a data driven look – and in many ways to blows away much of our traditional views on gender in our society. From a Time article on the book:

“changes in the world economy have dramatically shifted gender roles. Women have adapted more skillfully to the new socioeconomic landscape by doggedly pursuing self-improvement opportunities, rebranding as the economy requires it, and above all possessing the kind of 21st century work attributes — such as strong communication skills, collaborative leadership and flexibility — that are nudging out the brawny, stuck-in-amber guys. Rock steadiness, long a cherished masculine trait, turns out to be about as useful in our fleet-footed economy as a flint arrowhead. Life favors the adapters, and it turns out they’re more likely to be women.”

Our educational system has been pushed to include girls so much over the past 50 years – that we’ve done a right ditch-left ditch that now has forgotten how to teach boys. Forbes also had a recent article on the subject that highlighted the book Why Boys Fail: Saving Our Sons from an Educational System that is Leaving Them Behind:

Schools have in effect become microcosms of the larger economy. Richard Whitmire, author of Why Boys Fail, summarizes the trend this way: “The world has gotten more verbal, boys haven’t.”
Beyond straight verbal skills, boys tend to get tripped up by what researchers call “non-cognitive skills” meaning the ability to focus, organize yourself, and stay out of trouble….
In the late 1990s, educators acted on the correct assumption that all jobs now require more sophisticated writing. Cops now need advanced degrees and practice in communication skills; factory workers are expected to be able to fill out elaborate orders. Society expects most workers to have college-level literacy, even if their day-to-day jobs do not really require it.

So, what does all this mean? I’m not naive – I know men in executive leadership roles still dominate and in most segments in our country/world we still have major pay disparity – but these differences are changing at a historic pace and experts believe one day soon (by looking at college graduate projections) women will flip this upside down. I wonder how many HR Shops are starting to put together diversity groups of white males – my guess would be zero. I do believe that one day before my career in HR is over – HR shops will have to address an issue that involves “Developing Males” – seems almost laughable to write down. Corporations having to be concerned about encouraging and developing male leaders seems like something I would never have to worry about in our society – it was always the “natural” way – until it wasn’t.

Originality is Dangerous

Posted on September 10, 2012 by Tim Sackett

“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.

2 Reasons Women Don’t Get Hired or Promoted

Posted on August 27, 2012 by Tim Sackett

The New York Times had an article recently regarding hiring practices and succession practices at Google – and G*d knows if Google is doing it – it must be important, and we must try and do the same thing. What I liked about this article was it didn’t necessarily look at practices and processes – it looked at data – and the data found that Google – like almost every other large company – does a crappy job hiring and promoting women. Shocking, I know, if you’re a man – we had no idea this was going on! In America of all places… Beyond the obvious though, Google was able to dig into the data and find out the whys and make some practical changes that I think most companies can implement – and that I totally agree with. From the article:

“Google’s spreadsheets, for example, showed that some women who applied for jobs did not make it past the phone interview. The reason was that the women did not flaunt their achievements, so interviewers judged them unaccomplished.

Google now asks interviewers to report candidates’ answers in more detail. Google also found that women who turned down job offers had interviewed only with men. Now, a woman interviewing at Google will meet other women during the hiring process.

A result: More women are being hired.”

Here are two selection facts that impact both men and women:

1. We like to surround ourselves with people who we like – which usually means in most cases people who are similar to ourselves

2. We tend not to want to brag about our accomplishments, but our society has made it more acceptable for men to brag.

This has a major impact to your selection – and most of you are doing nothing about it. It’s very common that if you run simple demographics for your company – ANY COMPANY – you’ll see that the percentage of your female employees does not come close to the percentage of your female leadership. Why is that?

Here are two things you can do to help make the playing field more level in your organization:

1. Have women interview women. Sounds a bit sexist in a way – but if you want women to get hired into leadership positions you can’t have them going up against males being interviewed by males because the males will almost always feel more comfortable with another male candidate. Reality sucks, buy a helmet.

2. Ask specific questions regarding accomplishments and take detailed notes. Studies have found woman don’t get hired or promoted because they don’t “sell” or brag enough about their accomplishments giving their male counterparts a leg up – because the males making the hiring decisions now have “ammunition” to justify their decision to hire the male.

Let’s face it – Google is doing it – so now we all have to do it. What would we do without best practices…(maybe innovate and create new better practices – but I digress…).

Recruiting’s 2032 Nightmare

Posted on July 30, 2012 by Tim Sackett

According to a recent USA Today article the U.S. birthrate is in sharp decline and is at it’s lowest levels in the past 25 years. Here’s probably a few facts you don’t know:

– Projected 2013 birthrate in the U.S. is estimated to be 1.86

– Birthrate needed to maintain a population over a 20 year period is 2.1

Why should this concern you?

There are a number of reason – one might be that you need as many young people as old for the simple fact of having enough young people to take care of your older population. If you turn that equation upside down (Taiwan 1.1 or Portugal 1.3) you have a society full of older people and not enough young people to fill the jobs needed to keep running your society. The U.S. already has 3 Million jobs left unfilled because of lack of skilled employees – today. Imagine if you now have millions of less workers to even choose from – and by the way – skilled workers aren’t coming from other countries because their societies are growing and need them. That is what our country’s employment picture will look like in 2032. I know for many people right now this sounds very good – because of our high unemployment – but this will be a HR/Recruiting nightmare for those young HR/Talent Pros starting out their careers in the next 20 years.

Being the Futurist that I am -I’ve already provided a solution to this problem back in 2011 over at Fistful of Talent- Should You Encourage Your Employees To Have Babies – check it out. Basically my advice remains the same – as U.S. employers we need to create a positive, encouraging environment for our employees, with family-friendly policies that make our employees feel like starting a family is a good thing, and that if they do start a family their job and ability to get a promotion won’t be compromised. This is not the case as many U.S. employers right now – for both men and women in the workforce.

As HR Pros and organizations we tend to think this isn’t our issue. It will take care of itself – but as we look at countries with low birthrates, the issue doesn’t take care of itself and those countries have a worker crisis going on right now. We need to change our ways right now – we need to be family friendly employers – we need to, as HR Pros, be concerned and find solutions for our employees around daycare, flexible schedules and other practices that will help our employees with families. I know it sounds a bit the-sky-is-fallingish, but the numbers don’t lie we are headed for some of the hardest hiring this country has ever seen.

One solution I’ve thought of, that I didn’t bring up in 2011, is baby sign-on bonuses! We do it for college students – I think we start doing for babies of our best employees. I mean if parents can arrange their kids marriage, what stops us from arranging their first job? Nothing! That’s what. Imagine how happy your employees would be to cash a $20,000 check to help with baby expenses for the simple task of forcing their kid to come to work with your company upon college graduation. It seems so simple – I’m not quite sure why no one has started this yet!

58% of College Students Are Willing to Lie

Posted on July 26, 2012 by Tim Sackett

According to a recent study by NetImpact – What Workers Want in 2012 58% of College Students (1,726 total in the study) would take a 15% pay cut to work for an organization who’s values matched their own. In another study, I’m willing to coach the Los Angles Lakers for less than half what they are paying their current coach (1 total in this study)!

These studies are silly – it’s hypothetical, college kids still believe in things – like fairness and equal opportunity and you’ll always be able to drink 12 beers and get up the next morning and run 3 miles. Let’s wait for all 1,726 college students who took the study to get a job and then 5 years from now when they are employed we’ll go to them and force them to make a choice –

1. You keep your current salary and stay with your current job

2. You take a 15% pay cut and move to Employer A which happens to have the same values as you, under the current leadership team

I will bet my entire life savings that less than 58% of those people would choose to leave their current employers (no matter what job they have) and take a 15% pay cut! In fact I would be fairly confident to say only about 10% would take us up on our offer, and they were already looking or getting pushed out. So, what does the study really say? That college students being asked silly hypothetical questions for a study about how they will act in the future, are willing to lie.

Why do I think these studies are silly? Because solid, well meaning, HR Pros will go out and start recruiting folks to their organization who have the same values that “they” have. “They” being the key word. Who is “they”? Well, Tim, we went to our leadership and our managers and our employees and we did value assessment and we found that 73% of our folks valued honesty and integrity over 67% that valued hard work and a fun work place. Oh, you’ve got it figured out…

Here’s what I’m thinking – values are hard to hire – but you think they aren’t. I can hire for skills, I can hire for past performance, etc. When it comes to values and morals, I’m really throwing myself down the rabbit hole. Hiring for values and morals puts the selectors values and morals into play way too much. If Peggy is your main screener – you better damn hope Peggy shares the exact values and morals you’re trying to hire for – or you’re going to be in for a surprise down the road.

I’m not saying don’t do it – I’m saying you better weight it appropriately with some other criteria. I seem to be in the minority who still believes having the fire power to do the job, and some past performance to back it up, is still fairly important when selecting candidates. And if Humility doesn’t seem to be a part of their value chain, I think I might be able to work around that – if they can perform!

Greatness Defined – finally!

Posted on July 5, 2012 by Tim Sackett

For those who are fans of the NBC TV show Parks and Recreation you’ve probably already seen this – for those who haven’t – it’s brilliant!

Here is Ron Swanson’s Pyramid of Greatness:

So, you want some Great Leadership advice from Ron Swanson, here you go:

America: The Only Country that Matters.
Fish meat is practically a vegetable.
Capitalism: God’s way of determining who is Smart and who is Poor.
Skim Milk: Yep, it’s on there twice – Avoid It!

Sometimes, you just don’t know when Brilliance is going to find you!

Laurie Ruettimann – This one is for you!

Candidate Screener #1 – Baby Car Seats

Posted on June 18, 2012 by Tim Sackett

There are some things I hesitate to write about – and this is one of them. Sometimes, in HR, we allow are hiring managers to do somethings that should get us sent straight to hell. First class ticket – and we deserve it. I have to be careful on how I phrase this one – let’s just say there is this major U.S. company that made Billions of dollars last year, and for a number of years before that. Their product is something almost all of us have used in our lifetime. And let’s just say, that maybe, once in a while (or every time) they interview someone – male or female – they “kindly” escort this person out to their safe, security-gated, parking lot, to their interviewees car. A naive HR Pro would say, “Aren’t our hiring managers nice to do that.” A savvy HR Pro would say, “Why the hell are you doing that?!”

You clicked the link with the title – so you already know why they escort candidates to their car – they want to see if the candidate has kids. Ouch. The feeling is, they don’t want to hire folks with kids, because folks with kids need more time off, and miss work more, and, well, just aren’t as engaged as non-anchor dragging childless employees. Ouch, again. There is an HR person, or two, that will be burning in hell for allowing this to continue.

And let’s continue to say, “hypothetically” that I know a person who has witnessed this type of thing happen – hypothetically. What would you tell the candidate, hypothetically? First, I’d tell them the truth! Look you are about to be judged, in a negative way, on your desire and ability to procreate. That being said, we have a couple of options: 1. You can bail on the opportunity. (Great financial opportunity – you can imagine the culture!); 2. You can clean your car out of all incriminating evidence that you have children, like children, were once a child. Hypothetically – most people are choosing #2. That surprises me a little – but it’s dependent upon the job market, personal situations, etc. A ton of factors go into people making that type of decision – I’m not judging – I’m empathetic to the cause!

Crazy right? It’s 20 and f’ing 12! We (hypothetically) have hiring managers looking for baby seats in the back of a sedan as a legitimate screening criteria for a job. God help us.

If hypothetically the above story is true and I somehow get in a terrible accident because somehow my brake lines were cut, accidentally, just know I died with a car seat in the back of minivan – I’m not hiding it for anyone! Fight the Power!

The Value of Returning Moms to your Workforce

Posted on May 9, 2012 by Tim Sackett

I overheard on the radio about this Australian company who is rewarding returning mothers to their workforce by paying them Double their salary when they return to work, for the first 6 weeks. My first impression was – “Oh hell No – don’t let any of my female employees find out about this!”

For those who don’t know I run a very young company – not young on experience – young on average age of employee. It comes with the territory – most 3rd party recruiting companies have a fairly young workforce. Get new recruiters right out of college, train and grow them into your culture – make them part of the “family”. There’s something else that comes with all the fun and energy of a young workforce – a ton of weddings and a ton of babies! We have the standard punchlines – “Don’t drink the water here!”, etc. But the reality is, in the last 10 years – there hasn’t been a time when someone in the office hasn’t been pregnant. It’s now part of the culture.

The Australian company got me thinking – no, not about paying my returning moms double – that’s crazy talk! It got me thinking about how valuable my returning moms are to my company. It’s a huge worry I have every time one of my employees comes in to share their awesome news. “Hey, Tim I’ve got something to tell! I’m pregnant!” My response – “Awesome! I’m so happy for you! Who’s the father?” The “who’s the father” line is joke – I usually the know the father – remember – we’re a family – not much happens that we don’t know about. I honestly feel so excited for them. Internally, though, I’m going “Oh, Shit!”, because I know I’ve got a realistic 50/50 shot at getting that person back after they deliver. That’s nature – I love my job, but once I hold that baby in my arms – I love it more and I’m finding out a way where I don’t have to leave them all day.

So, now I understand why this Australian company is rewarding returning mothers. Give them a little extra incentive to return – knowing how hard it is to pull them away from their baby and start this new life as a mom and an employee. Life just got doubly hard – we’ll give you double the pay! You deserve it. As HR Pros and Organizations, we tend to struggle to really understand how difficult this transition is. We welcome the people back, we understand the sleep deprivation and the separation anxiety – but we honestly have no idea how hard it is – unless you’ve gone through it yourself.

I love returning moms for these reasons:

– They get hard work and sacrifice!

– They can juggle a hundred things at once!

– They have perspective of what is important!

– They work doubly hard to maintain a balance in their life!

So, what is your organization doing to ensure your returning moms are going to return? I know if I could afford it, I would pay them double, but beyond that what else? Think of what new Moms need – a transition plan to ease back into their “new” life, flexibility, encouragement, understanding and maybe a big bottle of wine and a sitter every so often! When we talk about the cost of retention and engagement – this is what we are talking about. Finding ways to keep your best – in my world – My mommies are my best!

Tell Your Critics To Suck It

Posted on April 25, 2012 by Tim Sackett

In the corporate world everyone is a critic! Everyone! We’ve gotten really good at a learned behavior – no longer can we send out a final product the first time. Why? Because everyone wants to trash it and change it – so it can be this really nice piece of Vanilla! Welcome to Corporate America. But you know what – this isn’t new – critics have been around since Jesus – and critics have been wrong since before Jesus! I wanted to share with you some famous things that critics got wrong:

Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125, by Ludwig van Beethoven (1824)

What the critics said in 1825: “We find Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony to be precisely one hour and five minutes long; a frightful period indeed, which puts the muscles and lungs of the band, and the patience of the audience to a severe trial…” –The Harmonicon, London, April 1825

Moby-Dick, by Herman Melville (1851)

And the critics response: When Melville died in 1891, Moby-Dickhad moved a grand total of 3,715 copies…in 40 years! The below was typical at the time of the book’s release:

“…an ill-compounded mixture of romance and matter-of-fact. The idea of a connected and collected story has obviously visited and abandoned its writer again and again in the course of composition…Our author must be henceforth numbered in the company of the incorrigibles who occasionally tantalize us with indications of genius, while they constantly summon us to endure monstrosities, carelessnesses, and other such harassing manifestations of bad taste as daring or disordered ingenuity can devise…” -Henry F. Chorley, London Athenaeum, October 25, 1851

Animal Farm, by George Orwell (1945)

What the critics said about the book we all had to read in high school: “It is impossible to sell animal stories in the USA.” –Publisher’s rejection

Here’s what I know – true creativity in what we do, does not come from running our ideas through everyone and their brother for approval. If your organization wants your employees to be truly creative and innovative – stop pushing teams. Teams don’t make masterpieces – they can do some pretty cool stuff – but pure creativity isn’t one of them. We push “Team” so hard in HR and in most organizations it sometimes makes you think like this the only way everyone in the world must work – but it’s not. An HR Pro that can determine the proper work structure throughout their organization is truly valuable – “team” isn’t always the answer – and you should have other tools in your toolbox.

You hear artist all the time say “I don’t listen to my critics”. This is valuable in that they know listening to a critic will hurt their art. Unfortunately, in business, we don’t always have the ability/decision to not listen to our critics (who could be bosses, peers, friends, etc.). In business telling your critics to “Suck It” could be a big career derailer! So, when do we go all “Suck It – It’s my project” in the workplace? First, I wouldn’t suggest you approach it, beginning with “Suck It” – although you will get their attention – I think we all have the ability in our work environment to push back appropriately when you truly know you have something that will make a difference. But, it’s about having the conviction to stand behind it and not let it get changed. That’s your marker – “am I willing to put my career/credibility/bank of influence on the line for this idea/project/etc.?” If you are – it’s time to pull out the “Suck It” card and push forward. For most of us, this might never happen in our work lives – maybe once – but it’s rare.

I think what we learn over time is that not all of our critics are bad – and some actually might help truly make us better. The key is to continue to have confidence in what you do – without it – your work critics will make your work life less than artistic.

It’s Back! FOT’s Top 25 HR/Recruiting Blogs!

Posted on March 22, 2012 by Tim Sackett

Fistful of Talent – which I’m proud to be a member of – is releasing it’s Top 25 HR and Recruiting Blogs. What’s really cool about this list – unlike some other lists I have poetically mentioned in prior posts – is this isn’t made up by some random analysis, of random metrics – this thing is totally un-apologetically 100% subjective! That’s right, we (the FOT Tribe) sent in our own Top 25 HR and Recruiting Blogs that we love to read -the blogs we are fans of – and we ranked them 1 to 25. Simple – yet very effective!

I’m not saying that it’s easy to pick the Top 25 – for starters no FOTer blog can be a part of our list – which right there eliminates probably the 10 greatest blogs on the planet! So, I might have to recommend to Kris that next year we call the list – The Top 11-35 HR and Recruiting Blogs! That being said we looked at hundreds of blogs – many of us have our personal favorites – many of us really like and read blogs that our out of the HR world – as our personal favorites. What I can tell you – is the Top 25 – are solid! If you are looking for a list of HR and Recruiting blogs to follow – you won’t go wrong with any of these!

FOT’s own Steve Boese will be doing his thing tonight at the HR Happy Hour – unveiling the winners and talking HR with some of the top HR bloggers in the business – go check him out –

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/steve-boese/2012/03/23/hr-happy-hour-141–the-hr-blog-power-rankings

HR Happy Hour Episode 141 – ‘The HR Blog Power Rankings’

The Tim Sackett Project

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

Category Archives: Diversity