Category Archives: Employee Experience

Why To Leave Your Job

Posted on by
1

There are countless ways to lose your job—layoffs, company shutdowns, or inappropriate behavior. You name it, someone has lost their job because of it!

The truth is, most people leave their jobs by choice, and it isn’t only about getting a bigger paycheck or a higher position.

In fact, there are four main reasons people choose to leave their jobs:

1. Bad Boss

A lot of people quit because they can’t stand their boss. If employees feel unappreciated or unsupported, they’ll start looking for new opportunities. It’s important for leaders to have good relationships with their employees, as a bad boss leads to a LOT of people quitting.

2. Wrong Job Fit

Sometimes, a job just isn’t the right fit. This can become clear pretty quickly, leading employees to look for roles that better match their skills and interests. In many of the jobs we hire for, the key to success is finding the right fit. It’s all about matching the right person to the right role and showing up consistently. It’s surprising how often we overlook this simple truth!

3. Commute Problems

Commute times can seriously mess with job happiness. Some folks don’t mind a long drive, but others lose their minds if it takes even a few minutes longer. A rough commute can burn people out and make them hate their jobs.

4. Culture Clash

Workplace culture is a big deal. Employees need to feel comfortable and in tune with their company’s values and environment. If the culture feels wrong, employees might feel out of place and unhappy!  Everyone has a preference culture. Find yours!

These four reasons cover about 99% of why folks decide to ditch a job. Sure, some will tell you they left for a fat raise or a fancy title, but often all of that can usually be had at their current employer with a little patience and some conversations.

How often should you get a promotion?

Posted on by
Reply

How often do you think you should get a promotion?

According to Ian Siegel, CEO of ZipRecruiter, you should aim for a promotion about every three years. Do you agree?

Siegel thinks if you’re not moving up within three years, there might be an issue. Imagine you start working at 22, right out of college. Your first job could be an HR Generalist. By 25, you might move up to Senior HR Generalist, then HR Manager by 28, Senior HR Manager by 31, HR Director by 34, Senior HR Director by 37, and Vice President of HR by 41.

When I look back on my own career, I had a goal to become a Vice President by 35. I’ve mentioned this before. I achieved it at 38, but then I realized titles aren’t as important as I thought.

They vary a lot depending on the company size. Becoming a VP in a small company with 250 people is very different from becoming a VP in a big company with 25,000 employees.

Titles often don’t mean much outside your own company. For example, being a VP with just a couple of direct reports is not the same as managing a large team. So, focus more on your responsibilities and the impact you make rather than just the title.

For big companies, Siegel’s three-year promotion idea can work if you meet certain conditions. You need to be ambitious, willing to relocate, have special skills or education, be open to learning different parts of the business, and be good at workplace politics. Just showing up and doing your job isn’t enough for a promotion. You need to show your value and your desire to grow.

There are a few ways to move up faster. Make sure your boss knows you want to advance and are willing to help them succeed too. Create your own development plan and get your boss to support it. Remember, it’s your responsibility to follow through on this plan. Be patient and strategic; sometimes promotions come quickly, sometimes they take longer. Avoid jumping to a new company just for a title because that can (and usually will) backfire.

Promotions aren’t just about time in a role but about positioning yourself well. Focus on your growth, communicate your goals, and be patient. Sure job titles can open doors, but your skills and contributions are what really matter in the end.

Remote Work killed Work!

Posted on by
2

Okay, Zoom, Teams, Google Meet, BlueJeans (remember that one!?), etc. all killed work!

According to a recent study by Microsoft, which knows everything we do at work because it has access to every one of our calendars, our meetings have increased 300% since 2020!!

300% is not a small number!!

Why? We think if you’re working remotely, the only way to prove you’re working is by having more meetings. It turns out we suck at understanding how to measure work and performance. We always have, but this is just one giant data point to show how bad we suck at measuring work!

So, no matter where you work – remote, on-prem, hybrid- we all sit around and have meetings to ensure we are all working. The definition of insanity is what?

Stop f*cking having meetings!!

I know that is easier said than done. Too many people in organizations define their existence by meetings. We are addicted to meeting culture. If we don’t have a real work product to show people what we are doing, we must give them some “meeting product.”

Here’s how you stop “meeting culture”:

1. Never allow anyone to schedule one-hour meetings. Make a rule. It has to be under an hour or over an hour, but it can’t be one hour. (Just test it—you’ll be shocked at what happens!)

2. The agenda for every meeting must be sent out 24 hours before the meeting, or it will be automatically canceled. The agenda must clearly state the purpose of the meeting and its outcomes.

3. Have AI record every single meeting and save those recordings. When people are recorded, they tend to f*ck around less and get to the point.

4. Post a list on your public intranet or email out a scoreboard showing who schedules the most weekly and monthly meetings. No one will want to be #1 on that list!

This is just a cure for a symptom, I know.

In reality, we have an issue with measuring productivity and the success of each role for those who work. We need to establish clear measures of success, in every role, and then find out where people can be most successful. This is not about remote, or hybrid, or in-office. This is about being more productive and successful in our roles.

Collaboration is key for so many organizations and functions to succeed. When people went out to work in various environments, we defaulted to meetings to continue collaboration. We still need to collaborate. But it shouldn’t always be on video. Pick up a phone and talk to someone. Find a time when you can meet in person over a coffee. Are these still meetings? Maybe. However, a little more one-on-one time in different mediums can replace a lot of video team meetings that waste too much time.

Okay, you clicked on the post because you thought I was going to bash remote work, and you just can’t have that happen! It’s not about remote. It’s about our ability to develop measures of success and then trust those measures and our people to do their work. Having more meetings is not making us more successful.

My First Time!

Posted on by
1

It’s Re-Run Friday again – this post originally ran in April 2019!

Do you remember your first time!?

I was twenty-six years old.  At the time, I was living in Michigan and working in my first job right out of college.  I had been doing pretty well for myself and began moving up in the company.

I had just been put into a position where I had a couple of people reporting to me, and I had to hire a new person to report to me as well.  I hired this smart, young person right out of college. Their passion and energy immediately attracted me to them.

Oh, wait, you think I’m talking about…

Okay, let me start again.  This post isn’t about sex! This post is about my first termination!

Can you remember yours?

In my career, having to terminate individuals are some of my most memorable experiences.  I think if you have half a heart, you’re probably the same.  When I talk to upcoming HR graduates, I always try and forewarn them about this part of our job.

Terminating employees leads HR pros to heavy drinking or other forms of stress relief. That is a fact.

From time to time I hear HR pros talk boastful about firing someone, and it makes me sick to my stomach.  While I’ve had to terminate individuals who clearly deserved it, I never took pleasure in doing it.  It’s the one thing that really sucks about having a career in HR.  We get to see people at their weakest moments.

Most of us pray that no one ever has to see this side of ourselves.  Let alone, be in a position, where you frequently get to see this side of humanity.

When you terminate someone, there is a good chance you’re going to see this person’s biggest fears.  I have enough of my own fears. I don’t need to carry around the fears of others!

My first time?

I had to fire the young kid I hired with all the passion and energy, hoping they were going to change the world, fresh out of college.  This person just couldn’t come up to speed as a recruiter. It happens. I worked with this person, encouraged them, but eventually this person was ‘dead-employee’ walking.

Their body kept showing up for work, but their mind and heart had given up.  No matter how hard they physically worked, it wasn’t going to happen for them.  So, I pulled them into the conference room and told them it was time.

No real emotion to make this termination more memorable than any other. The person was upset, and you could see this was not something they had written on their bucket list.  They stood up, walked out, and my life went on.

Nine years later, I’m working at Applebee’s in HR.  I was responsible for seventy restaurants, and I happened to stroll into one of the locations and there was my first termination working behind the bar!  I saw him before he saw me, but once he saw me he froze.

I went over to say ‘hi’, and catch up.  It was awkward and clunky, but I’m an HR pro, I was trained to do this.  After I let him go, he bounced around for a few years, and finally decided to go back to school, and had taken the bartender job at Applebee’s to make ends meet.

I saw this person a number of times after, and on one visit, he asked to talk.  He said that the day I walked into the Applebee’s, and he learned who I was, in my new position, he assumed I was going to fire him again.  I said, “For what?!” He said, “I don’t know, just because.”

It hit me hard.  This wasn’t about terminating a poor performer and moving on.  This person carried that termination around like a backpack for nine years, and as soon as they saw me, all that fear and feelings of failure flooded back to him.

Welcome to the show kids. Sometimes working in HR sucks.

I Want You To Want Me

Posted on by
Reply

We make talent acquisition much harder than it needs to be. We talk about employment branding, candidate experience, and recruitment analytics—all important, but sometimes we overlook the basics of attracting great talent.

At its core, the most powerful talent attractor is simple: it’s about being wanted.

I want you to want me.

Imagine getting a call from a recruiter who wants you to join their team. Doesn’t that make you feel good? It’s like a validation of your skills and worth. We all love to feel wanted—it’s a basic, natural emotion.

The key to successful talent acquisition is helping your team and organization understand this. Imagine if recruitment felt more like trying to impress someone you like, rather than assuming candidates should naturally be drawn to us.

Unfortunately, that’s often not the case. We tend to act as though candidates should be eager to join us, rather than recognizing our own desire to have them on board.

Now, flip the scenario. Imagine that same call from a recruiter, but this time they’re not interested in you personally; instead, they’re seeking referrals. How would that make you feel? Dismissed and unimportant, right?

We want to be wanted. We want to be desired.

If you can shift your recruiters’ mindset to embrace this concept, you’ll notice a remarkable change in how you approach candidate interactions. Understanding that candidates are just like us—yearning to feel wanted—makes recruiting feel effortless.

“So, I shouldn’t act like I’m doing them a favor by talking to them?”

Exactly! Treat every interaction like you’re hoping they’ll agree to a date—with enthusiasm and genuine interest, but without the direct proposal. Consider your communication with candidates as a reflection of how you’d want to be approached yourself.

So, you want to lead?

Posted on by
1

I’ve been talking with a lot of C-suite leaders lately who are worried because they don’t see next-gen leaders on their teams. It’s not that they lack team members, but they don’t see these individuals as future leaders, or they feel they’re not close to being ready for leadership roles.

The current team members mean well. They want to be leaders and often talk the talk, but just wanting to be a leader isn’t enough. This is a common sentiment among C-suite executives.

Real leadership isn’t about making promises—it’s about taking action and producing results.

Give me someone who can achieve goals, and I believe I can help them become a leader. Too often, we look for leadership qualities like we look for friends. Is this someone I’d want to hang out with? Can I trust them? Are they pleasant? Do they smell nice? Do I get along with them, and do others as well? Would I follow them? If they jumped off a bridge, would I jump off a bridge?

I don’t need my leaders to be my buddies; I need them to accomplish tasks. Can you get things done without upsetting everyone around you? Finding this balance is important. Sometimes, we focus too much on one side of the equation, and it’s not the side of getting things done!

So, you want to lead?

Great! The key is to deliver results. The approach is simple, but many fall short:

Clearly explain what needs to be done. Identify and address obstacles. Set deadlines and agree on how tasks will be completed. Remove roadblocks and excuses. Follow up consistently. Emphasize accountability. Get things done.

In my experience, the most effective leaders don’t make promises; they deliver results. Every day. Every project. Leaders who rely on promises often fade away over time. Turns out most organizations value actions over words—they need tasks to be accomplished.

Oops, I Did It Again: The Big Regret

Posted on by
1

Welcome back to Re-Run Friday – this post originally ran in April 2022!

The Big Regret! How’s that new job treating you?

When 4-5 million people per month change jobs, mostly for more money, there are going to be some consequences! Turns out, the grass isn’t always greener when you get more green!

A Muse survey, reported in the WSJ, recently found out that nearly 75% of workers who’ve changed jobs recently have regretted it, and 50% of those would try and get their old job back! That’s a lot! But it’s not surprising.

The biggest stressors we have in life are having kids, buying a house, and changing jobs. We tend to make bad decisions when stressed, and when you have 4-5 million people per month making that decision, well, that’s a lot of bad decisions!

What will we learn from the Big Regret?!

1. Money isn’t everything, but once you get more of it, it’s hard to go back to the old money level.

2. The old job and the old boss didn’t really suck, and the stuff we thought sucked at the old job, suck at the new job as well. It’s called “work” for a reason.

3. The power of someone paying attention to us and making us feel pretty is the most powerful force on the planet. Never underestimate it.

4. You can go back to your old job, but it will be different. It’s like going back to your ex. You are both a bit smarter and a bit more cautious now. There are some scars. Same people, same company, same job, but it’s not the same. Doesn’t make it bad, but you can’t expect it to be the same.

5. You can’t really judge a job until a couple of things happen: 1. You actually know how to do the job fully; 2. Co-workers stop seeing you as the newbie. In every case, that timeline is different. Be patient and do the job before you judge it.

6. If you find that you have an asshole boss at every job you work, the asshole might be you, not the boss.

7. In the future, when we have more jobs than available workers, let’s not act surprised when people start changing jobs. It’s happened in every similar economic cycle in the modern world. It’s called opportunity. Don’t confuse that with the world has changed.

What should you do if you hate your new Great Resignation Job?

  • Take some time to really determine what you hate. Was that different from the old job? Was it the same? Will it be that way at the next job? Too many folks don’t know what they hate and they just keep selecting the same jobs they hate time and time again, but with a new pay rate and new address.
  • Some of us immediately want to return back to our old job. That might work, it might not. A psychological thing happens to so many managers once you leave them. It’s like you broke up with them and now you want to run back to that comfort. You’ll find many have no interest, and it has nothing to do with your value and performance, and everything to do with them feeling like you’ll hurt them again.
  • Try and find something you like to do, but call it “work”. This is different than the B.S. you’re told about work doing something you love and you’ll never work another day in your life! I’m no life coach, but that crap doesn’t work. You call it “work” even if you love it, because one day you’ll show up to do what you thought you loved and find out its work, and you’ll be depressed and broken. You don’t love work. You love your family and your God and puppies. You work to put yourself in a position to be able to do what you love. If you’re super lucky, every once in a while those two things will overlap.

What is a Passive Candidate anyway?

Posted on by
1

Every hiring manager wants passive candidates – to stumble on those hidden talents just waiting to be discovered. But what exactly defines a passive candidate today? Let’s break it down without the frilly stuff.

Traditionally, passive candidates were those who were not actively seeking jobs. But what does “actively searching” really mean? It used to include only the unemployed, those in irrelevant jobs, or on the verge of being fired. But that’s too narrow in today’s reality.

Recruiters often boast about finding “passive” candidates like they’ve hit the jackpot. But let’s be real. Take Timmy, for example. He seems passive, but he’s quietly applying for jobs while stuck in a dead-end job. Anyone with an online profile is fair game – they may not hunt for jobs daily, but they’re definitely open to offers.

So, here’s an updated definition:

“A Passive Candidate is someone found through various channels, not actively seeking your job.”

A passive candidate isn’t someone you found who hasn’t happened to think about applying to your job, yet. They actually might be the most active candidate on the planet, who you just happen to run into. Think of candidates buried in your database or referrals from employees.

We know a truly passive candidate when we speak to one. They’re a bit nervous. A bit surprised. A bit flattered. You can tell they’re not used to talking to recruiters and feel guilty talking to you. This is the person you’re hiring managers are asking for when they say they want a passive candidate.

This isn’t to say passive candidates are better. That’s an entire other post, but let’s not act like we are providing passive candidates when we aren’t.

Lessons from Past Jobs I’ve Had

Posted on by
Reply

When I started college, HR wasn’t even on my radar. Was it on yours?

Here’s how it unfolded for me:

I got a degree in elementary education with dreams of shaping young minds. Teaching seemed like a fulfilling path, with the perks of summers off and being one of the few guys among a sea of female teachers. I was sold.

After a bit in education, I transitioned into sales and recruiting. I liked to talk – so these worked well for me. But, luckily, from here I stumbled into HR through a client who mentored me into it.

Here are five skills from those earlier jobs that helped me in HR:

  1. Confidence: Teaching taught me the importance of confidence. Kids are like sharks (kinda) – they can sense fear. Similarly, in HR, confidence is crucial when dealing with constant questioning and crazy situations.
  2. Positive Attitude: Positivity was my mantra in sales, and it serves me well in HR too. No one likes a negative Nancy. HR is often associated with negativity and maintaining a sunny outlook can make all the difference.
  3. Proactivity: Instead of waiting for problems to arise, I learned the value of being proactive. This way of thinking has been really helpful in HR. It’s all about being proactive and getting ahead of problems before they become big issues.
  4. Humility: Balancing confidence with humility is a fine line. In teaching, not keeping promises hurts your credibility. With the kids, with peers, everyone. Similarly, in HR, being humble builds trust and reliability, which are important for good relationships in the organization.
  5. Persuasion: Whether convincing students or candidates, persuasion is a skill I honed in previous roles. In HR, the ability to sell ideas and projects is paramount, whether it’s advocating for a new initiative or garnering support for organizational change.

These skills have not only helped me excel in HR but have also empowered me to effectively advocate for the tools and technology necessary to drive organizational success.

That’s my journey. What about yours? Which skills from your past experiences have proven indispensable in your HR career?

Soft Feedback Isn’t Cutting It

Posted on by
Reply

Today, it’s rare to get honest feedback. Most people just want praise instead of hearing what they need to improve on.

The thing is, folks struggle with criticism unless they’re expecting it. And not many have the guts to handle it well. So, instead of giving real feedback, we often sugarcoat things to avoid hurting feelings.

Here’s an example:

Soft Feedback: “You’re doing well, but it’d be nice if you could push that project forward.”

Honest Feedback: “You’re good at what you’re told to do, but I need someone who can take charge of projects without constant supervision. I’m here to help you grow, but I need more initiative from you. Can you step up?”

Both say the same thing, but the honest one gives clearer direction. Sadly, we rarely give this kind of feedback because we’re scared of upsetting people.

So, how do we fix this?

It starts with hiring. Candidates need to know we value honest communication and expect them to take feedback well. Those who handle it during interviews are more likely to thrive in a culture that values growth over ego.

For existing employees, leaders need to lead by example. They should show they’re open to feedback themselves and train others to give it constructively.

Coaching and mentorship programs can also help. They give employees support and examples to help them embrace feedback for personal growth.

Sure, it takes time and effort. But companies that prioritize honest feedback build a culture of trust and growth. Employees see the value in open communication, making the company stand out as a place where people can truly grow.