Category Archives: Employment Brand

Vets, We Love You, but We Still Aren’t Hiring You!

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One of the most politically correct lies that employers spout off constantly is how desperate they are to hire Veterans! There’s a reason for this. In America, we love to honor our Vets! There’s nothing better than propping your brand up against that American flag with a soldier standing right next to it.

The reality is, most Vets are still struggling to find solid careers. Sure, everyone wants to offer them a $15/hr bust-your-ass-job, but Vets are looking for salaried positions with great benefits, in jobs they can work the rest of their career, that won’t destroy their body. Not many employers are offering Vets those jobs!

I’ve been writing about this problem for the past five years and I get a healthy stream of Vets who write me behind the scenes and share their stories and struggles to find solid career level positions. I just recently had an individual who came out of his service with a degree in HR, service of constant promotion, supervised upwards of one hundred soldiers at a time. In that role, he had constant performance management, training, process improvement, etc.

He was applying for an entry-level HR Generalist role. He got turned down because he didn’t have enough experience!

So, why are companies still struggling when it comes to hiring Vets into higher level roles? Here’s what they don’t tell you:

  1. Less than 1% of Americans have ever served in any branch of the military. We fear what we don’t know, and we definitely don’t hire what we don’t know! We only see pictures of Vets holding guns and in combat, but that’s a small part of their every day activities.
  2. Movies have given us a warped sense of what professionals in the military actually do. Today’s modern military is rarely portrayed as it actually is in the movies because it wouldn’t be very exciting. It’s the same reason you don’t see movies about the day to day happenings of a large company. It’s mostly boring! What most military pros do on a daily basis, away from battle zones, is mostly the same stuff you do on a daily basis. It’s HR, logistics, accounting, administration, training, development, etc.
  3. We overvalue work experience within an industry. If someone worked at your competitor for 3 months, you would value that more highly than a military professional doing the same job for 3 years. We so overvalue industry experience it’s not even funny! I’ve worked in four different industries and each time had people tell me, “Oh, Tim, this is the craziest industry you’ll ever be in”, ever time! Guess what? It wasn’t. It’s all the same! Get over yourself!

I recently hired a Vet into my own company. We mostly hire new recruiters and train them up, but it’s definitely a career job. Great recruiters can find work anywhere for the rest of their life, in every industry. It’s mostly a desk job. Recruiting companies love to hire former college athletes. What I’ve found is Vets come with the same motivations and skills, but their work ethic might be a bit stronger!

I constantly have CEOs tell me they just want people who want to work. Yet, when it gets down to their hiring managers, there’s a mental block happening. If these military folks were minority or women we would call this discrimination, but for some reason, we don’t say that with Vets. But, that’s mostly what’s happening.

We love to hide behind the fact we found someone with more ‘industry’ experience, or someone who has done the same job, etc. It’s all excuses. You don’t hire Vets because you don’t think they can handle your jobs. The fact is, they can, they just need you to give them a shot!

Do yourself a favor this Veteran’s Day. Take a chance and hire a Vet into a job you’ve never tried before. Sure, they’ll need some training, but they’ll bring the rest, and you might just find your organizations next great talent pool!

Too Many Recruiting Tools Are Killing Your Recruiting Efforts

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You’ve heard of this concept of the Inverted-U Curve, right? It’s fairly straightforward. In the beginning, you have nothing or very little. As you increase the resources you begin to become more effective. Eventually, as you add more resources you’ll actually reach maximum potential.

In the attempt to go even higher, you keep adding more resources, but you don’t see an increase in effectiveness or output, you actually see a decrease. This is the basic concept of the chart above.

This happens in recruiting too many organizations.

We start out with a bunch of recruiters and some phones. That’s not enough we need to add some other stuff, these recruiters need tools! So, we give them email and an ATS. Then comes the job boards, postings, InMails, etc. Might as well automate background checks and references. We really need to fill the pipeline, here comes sourcing tech!

Wish we had a way to get our messages out to candidates more effectively! CRM, branding technology, data analytics, SMS messaging, etc. Just keep adding more tools! That’ll a fix it!

Except it doesn’t!

What happens to your recruiting team as you add more tools?

  • The complexity of the process increases.
  • Core recruiting skills diminish, or at the very least don’t increase. (Laziness factor)
  • Increased points of failure in communication with each piece of new tech.

What we know is technology doesn’t make you better at recruiting. Technology makes you faster at recruiting, but if you suck at recruiting, technology will only make you suck faster!

Great recruiting starts with your people. Your recruiters. That’s your foundation, not your technology. Technology can help cover up some hickeys of bad recruiters temporary, but eventually, we will all see the real hickeys!

So, before you sign that next contract for some new technology, first take a look at your team. Do you have the right people on your recruiting bus? Do they have the core skills they need? How will I get them the skills they need?

The continued increase in technology will only take you so far. You can either solve this problem on the front side, or eventually, you’ll face it on the back side, but either way, it’s coming. In my experience, it’s easier to solve up front then wait for it to come up when twelve technologies deep into your TA stack!

Great Culture in Born from Great Leadership!

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You know what doesn’t work but we keep hoping it might? Grassroots culture!

The kind of culture where you want your employees to establish. The kind of culture that vendors keep telling you that you must have to be sustainable. The reality is a grassroots culture is mostly chaotic and differs wildly between managers, locations, etc.

The greatest work cultures that we can point to all come from a great leader deciding what culture they want, then living it! Completely living it! You can’t have this cool, flip flops, ping pong, and free beer culture, then your leader walks around all day in a suit and tie, sipping an $12 bottle of water. It will fail.

Case in point. T-Mobile was the #4 cell phone carrier in the U.S. It’s a super-competitive marketplace. In 2012 when the new CEO John Legere was hired, he looked and acted like every single big time CEO you see on Wall Street. Suit and tie, said all the right things, always under control.

The problem was, that was not going to get T-Mobile and their #4 culture to move up. So, he decided to make a change:

This would require T-Mobile to behave like a startup disrupting the industry run by giants AT&T and Verizon, who Legere dubbed “dumb and dumber.” He may have already been in his mid-50s, but he needed to look the part. He began experimenting with different combination of loud clothing options, eventually settling with long hair, a bright magenta T-Mobile T-shirt and accessories, and usually a black jacket of some kind.

Accompanying this came the penchant for dropping f-bombs and hurling no-holds-barred insults at the competition (which occasionally got out of hand as he pushed the boundaries).

“On my very first day at T-Mobile, I demanded that every time I spoke publicly to the company, all employees across the country would be invited to watch,” he said. Legere also initiated a stock program with employees, and made sure to not omit any performance details from his speeches to employees. He said he tells them, “Listen, if some of this doesn’t make sense to you, what should make sense is the reason I’m telling you — I respect you as an owner and as a partner and I’m going to tell you this all the time. Feel free to tune out.”

Legere also has a section in his calendar book that contains a color-coded list of how many times he’s visited each of T-Mobile US’s 18 major call centers. When we spoke, he was about to finish his fifth round of trips to each of them.

“It’s not that complicated,” he said. “I go in, they meet me outside, we take selfies as I stand like a piece of furniture, I tell them about how things are going — but most importantly, I say thank you and help them see that their behavior and their work has driven the culture of the company that’s changed the industry and the whole world. It’s a bit of a love affair.”

I know so many culture consultants will say it’s not about long hair and crazy clothing. I disagree. If a leader truly wants to change their culture, to whatever that vision is they have, they must live that vision 100%. They can’t fake it! You’re either all-in, or your culture continues to be flat and goes nowhere.

So many executives try and live two lives as leaders. The leader they believe the board and the public want to see, and the visionary leader they believe their employees want to see. Most of these folks fail. The ones who succeed are the ones who live one life as a leader. They’re the same person to their board and investors that they are to their employees.

It doesn’t take ping pong and snacks to make a great culture. It takes a great leader will to be 100% invested in a vision, and allow those around them to follow that vision with the same passion.

Michigan Recruiter’s Conference 2016 Takeaways

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Last week the 3rd annual Michigan Recruiter’s Conference took place in Grand Rapids, MI onsite at our corporate host Amway World Headquarters. 150 Corporate Talent Acquisition Leaders and Pros participated and heard from an outstanding lineup of speakers including Gerry Crispin, Laurie Ruettimann, Chris Bailey, Kerri Mills and Katie Born.

I leave each time amazed at the talent we are able to bring into Michigan! Some of the brightest minds and ideas in the talent acquisition industry, but also the passion the TA pros in Michigan show in coming in and engaging with each other on a peer level.

My Takeaways from MRC 2016: 

– It takes a very confident HR and/or TA Leader to want to bring in another 150 corporate TA pros into their own shop. We’ve been extremely lucky with Accident Fund, Spectrum Health and now Katie at Amway over the past three years. I think it demonstrates how important TA is to the organizations that host and how important developing their team is to that leader.

– Gerry Crispin comes in and looks like he’s been in TA for 40 years. Wait, he has! But, for those who haven’t seen him, they believe, “oh, here comes some old dude to tell us how he recruited people back in WWII!” Gerry always blows them away!!! He is so on top of how the best, most innovative TA shops are doing it on the planet, he leaves with jaws dropped. I always chuckle at the young bucks who had no idea they are about to get completely schooled by an old dude!

– You know you have a great speaker when people can’t write down the ideas fast enough! Kerri Mills had pens burning up at MRC. I had a feeling she would kill after seeing her presentation at SourceCon and she did awesome. Side note: when you work at Indeed, people expect you to know everything about Indeed!

– People who can tell a good story, are great speakers. Laurie Ruettimann and Chris Bailey both killed with great stories! They had great content as well, but you could tell me how to make Mac and Cheese and if it’s wrapped in a great story I’ll be entertained for an hour! Also, if you have a British accent you’re automatically considered brilliant, funny and adorable by an American audience. (Note to self: work on British accent)

– In classic HROS.co fashion, Amway’s TA Leader Katie Born figuratively opened her Kimono and shared what she and her team were working on to the entire talent market in their area. The good and the bad. What’s working and what they still need to get better at? What tech we’re using and what tech we’re looking at? It was a great example of what we should all strive for as TA Leaders.  Bravo!

I had one trainwreck moment. The idea was to speed network. I hate when people go to a conference and either sit alone or sit with the only people they know, so my idea was to get them to meet 4-5 new people and make some connections. Great idea! But 150 people trying to find smaller groups of three in a room was comical and loud! In the end, people did meet new people!

Our goal for MRC 2017 is to be in the Detroit Metro Area! To bring Detroit its first ever corporate talent acquisition conference specifically for Michigan TA Pros and Leaders! Want to be a part of it?  We are currently looking for a corporate host! What does that mean? We need a big room that can hold 150 or so people, with tables and some AV equipment!

We’ll bring the food, the talent, and the TA Pros!  We just need to use your space for the day. Let me know if you’re interested (timsackett@comcast.net).

 

It’s Super Hard to Write a Cool Job Posting!

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Almost every solid TA pro and leader I know wants to have cool, hip, on fleek, whatever new saying the kids on Snap are saying, type job postings. What most organizations end up with is still the old written job description, KSAs, boring I just feel asleep same posting as they always have had.

The main problem is you usually have some over-conservative lady in a cat sweater cardigan who a tiny ounce of power and believes you adding the word “crazy” to your job posting will get you put in prison. True Fact: I’ve been in the HR/TA game for twenty years and still to this day I have never seen anyone go to prison for getting ‘crazy’ with job postings!

I even, yes this is true, saw one company not put “EOE” on their job posting! Yep, no prison! Not even a fine! No grounding. Nothing!

Still, most of us struggle to do something about our crappy job postings and job descriptions. Well, Apple tried to do something! They got creative, kudos for that, but sometimes being creative and HR don’t mix well. Apple’s attempt was to create “Apple’s Orchard” (see what happens when HR and Creative get together! Lame city!) to attempt to recruit entry-level marketing professionals to Apple.

Because you know what’s really hard to do!? Get entry level marketing grads to want to come to work for Apple! Here’s how it sounded:

“The moment is now. Throw everything you know out the window. All in. Head first. Join the Orchard. If you’re lucky enough to make the cut, expect to surround yourself with like-minded souls who are as terrified and excited as you are. Be part of a hand-picked team with a plethora of talent. Kick ass together. Panic together. Grow together. Work alongside the brains of all the iconic work you love from Apple. Watch and learn. Trust your gut. Challenge our ways. Have an impact on everything you touch. Be prepared to stumble and fumble and embarrass yourself. It will be messy, and it won’t be pretty at times, but if you stick together as a team, you’ll build a special bond and something truly great will come out of it all. Take it from us. It’s the only way. Does this whole proposal sound crazy to you? Good. We like crazy.”

“We live crazy!” Like certifiably crazy? No, wait, I’m asking for a friend, who’s locked up..

Apple was forced to take down the land sight almost immediately after complaints started raining down on them like dollar bills at a strip club where you took the new entry level marketing recruits to show them how cool you were.

It’s kind of creepy and overzealous, right? I’ll give them credit for trying to be creative. Apple found out what most of us find out. Writing really good, creative, engaging, funny, endearing, job postings are really freaking hard! 99.9% of TA and HR pros will never be able to do this. My advice is to go out and hire real creative types to do this work, don’t kill yourself trying to do it yourself.

 

 

The Worst Hire You Can Ever Make

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A crazy thing happens almost every day in professional sports, and it’s the one thing that separates great teams from the pack. Talent selection will make or break a team’s success and in professional sports, it’s about getting the right talent for the right price.

The problem with most professional sports team, regardless of the sport, is they continually try to improve their roster incrementally. “Oh, let’s pick up Pitcher A because he’s a little better than Pitcher B”.  Great Pitcher A is better than Pitcher B, but did Pitcher A truly solve the issue you have?

Great Pitcher A is better than Pitcher B, but did Pitcher A truly solve the issue you have?

That’s the real issue!

The worst hire you can ever make is one that doesn’t solve your problem but just make it a little better. “We suck at sales, let’s hire Tim, he’s not great, but he’s better than Bob.” Wonderful, now you only slightly suck less at sales!

Never make a hire that doesn’t solve your problem completely that you are having in that specific position. Upgrading doesn’t always fix problems, and many times it actually continues your main problem longer instead of fixing it completely. We have this belief

We have this belief  that all we need to do is continue to get a little better each day, each week, each month, until we eventually have fixed it. The problem is that this isn’t how most problems are actually solved, by getting a little bit better over time. Most problems are fixed by implementing one solution that solves the problem.

It’s basically this crappy failure paradox we continue to get sold by seemingly everyone with a platform. “Just keep failing and eventually you’ll find success!” Which is complete and utter bullshit, but we LOVE hearing this!

In hiring, you can’t keep failing and find success. You will actually find failure even faster and be out of business. In hiring, it’s critical you find success and hire the right people who will solve your problem the first time, not just make you a little better.

Another great example of this is in the NFL. It’s critical in the NFL that you have a great quarterback, but they’re extremely hard to find. So, if you don’t have an elite quarterback, most teams will continue to try and upgrade with average quarterbacks.

The better advice is work with what you have and make it the best you can, until you get the opportunity to hire, or draft, that one great quarterback that can truly change your franchise. Constant change and churn, just to get a little better, is slowly killing your organization.

Make great hires. Organizational change hires. Individuals who have the ability to make things right. Too often, and we’ve all been there, we make hires that feel safe, knowing they won’t hurt us, but they probably won’t help us much either. Those are the worst hires you can make.

 

 

What Do The World’s Great Employees Have In Common?

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If you haven’t seen this yet, you will! American Airlines has a new promotional campaign called “World’s Greatest Flyers” where they basically tell the world to stop bitching and act like adults while flying! Okay, to their credit, they do a much more professional job of telling flyers to stop whining and bitching while flying! Check it out:

Yeah, all you need to do is love babies and buy a $299 pair of Boese noise cancelling headphones. And, know your crappy mode is the reason this flight is two hours delayed, not because we understaffed our pilots and now we have no one at your gate to fly this smelling, outdated death trap we’re about to throw you into!

I kid! But, can you imagine if some short-sighted company tried to do this with an employment branding campaign?! Here’s what I imagine it would sound like:

The World’s Greatest Employees – 

  • Show up to work every single day, on time.
  • Always talk nicely about their coworkers, even those who don’t shower enough.
  • Never ask for a raise, because that’s rude and uncomfortable for their really smart supervisors.
  • Tell all of their friends and family that they work for the best company ever.
  • Wait to be told what to do next and never question what they’re told to do.
  • Are willing to break into the competition and steal trade secrets!

The World’s Greatest Employees work here…and never leave…never.

It’s super creepy, right!?

I’m not sure how the hell that made it through the pipeline at American Airlines. Let me get this straight, we’re a company that our only service is to fly people around the country and they have a bunch of other companies they can choose to fly and you think it’s a great idea that we tell them how to be a better customer!?

Different. I’ll give them that.

How the Largest Company in the World does Employment Branding!

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Everyone loves to dump on Walmart. They’ve done enough in their past to make it easy, but I love to tell people working in HR or TA at Walmart is probably the toughest HR or TA gig on the planet! Why? Because of the challenges they face with their brand!

That’s why this recent Employment Branding video done by their CEO is freaking BRILLIANT! Check it out:

It’s clearly a take off on Jerry Seinfeld’s web series “Comedian’s In Cars Getting Coffee” (which is awesome).

I mean really! Can you imagine going to your CEO and saying, “Hey, Doug, we’ve got an idea? We’re going to have you drive around with Ted in his used Toyota Camry. We’ll video it as he asks you random questions and tries to make you act like a fool. Sound good?” How do you think your CEO would react? Would you even get into the CEO’s office to ask!?

It’s really hard for a CEO of the world’s largest company to come across like a normal person! But, Doug McMillon does it perfectly! Is it me or is McMillon, way too close to “McMillion”!?  Maybe just a coincidence…unfortunate last name for a CEO of the world’s largest company! (FYI – Doug made $19 “million” last year)

So, what did we learn about Walmart and Doug?

– Doug takes a nap on Saturday afternoon after returning from work. (Man of the people – we all want to take a nap on Saturday afternoon!)

– Great Chewbacca impression. (Willing to make fun of himself – not your normal CEO)

– Walmart overuses phrases like every other corporate, and Doug will make fun of it. (Willing to make fun of Walmart in a respectful way.)

– Walmart doesn’t need to ‘remake’ itself, it needs to remember who it is. (Founder’s culture – Sam Walton knew what the hell he was doing, let’s remember that.)

Basically, Walmart just gave you a perfect guide on how to brand yourself to your possible talent pool! If your leader can come across this way, the hope is those under him will follow the lead. It’s not easy. They have a ton of work in front of them, but this is a great first step!

Toughest job on the planet – HR and TA at Walmart. You think you’ve got problems? Try managing an organization that has 2.1 Million employees, runs on razor thin margins and has to be customer-first focused.

Kudos to Doug and the EB Team at Walmart on the video!

 

T3- @WeVue – Where Culture Comes to Life

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This week on T3 I review the employment branding/culture mobile app WeVue. WeVue is a mobile app that enhances the experience of being on a team by bringing company culture to life through the power of photo and video sharing. It’s a mobile platform that turns your entire employee base into one big social network of sharing and communication.

It has a little Snapchat/Instagram Stories feel to it, but with a lot more functionality to communicate amongst teams. An employee gets started on WeVue by downloading the app and using their work email address as their way into company side of WeVue. From there the first thing they are taught to do is a step-by-step process of making a video of themselves for everyone in the organization to view, share and comment (think great first-day orientation exercises!).

WeVue allows your employees to share their stories and experiences with your organization simply and effectively. The platform also allows the team, or an individual, to celebrate accomplishments, start events, give positive feedback, etc. They can push these notifications to individuals, teams or the entire organization.

5 Things I really like about WeVue: 

1. WeVue is a mobile platform that has a very familiar UI/UX for most employees who are familiar with using social apps on mobile. This makes it user adoption much easier because almost everyone will download and immediately be able to begin using the app and setting up their profile.

2. I love that WeVue starts out by having each employee making an introduction video. This has so many applications to begin great orientations and make people feel instantly welcome in your environment. The profile can also be easily changed and added to as an employee sees fit.

3.  Ask questions/Get Feedback. WeVue’s platform allows users to ask questions and gather feedback quickly and easily. App admins at your organization can control access and whether you want this to be anonymous or open, also who can ask questions can also be controlled by company admins.

4. Culture Feed. WeVue has a timeline type function where most of your employees will spend time on the app, this is your ‘Cultural Feed’. As people share items, give shout-outs to each other, etc., all will be seen by the entire company here (similar to a FB timeline). Also, you can Broadcast announcements on the app, one-way communication by leadership, HR, marketing, etc.

5. Social share to a custom landing page. The app allows users to share information and you can have it go to a custom landing page, like maybe your career site!  This easily allows you to share your culture with perspective candidates and drive additional traffic to where you want it.

WeVue is an organizational culture app.  Designed for organizations who want to share and drive a strong sense of what and who they are as an organization. As companies grow quickly this is one of the first things that gets lost, and once it’s gone, it’s almost impossible to get back. This helps companies stay small, as they get big, and let’s big companies seem a bit smaller. WeVue is like having your own private social media site for your employees.

Check out WeVue. Easy quick demo. Fairly inexpensive for what you get and can build in terms of culture. I’m a huge believer in letting your employees be your brand advocates through sharing their stories at work, and WeVue makes this very easy.

How WeVue changed Logan’s career? from NiceGuy with a HeadFull of Ideas on Vimeo.

T3 – Talent Tech Tuesday – is a weekly series here at The Project to educate and inform everyone who stops by on a daily/weekly basis on some great HR, recruiting, and sourcing technologies that are on the market.  None of the companies who I highlight are paying me for this promotion.  There are so many really cool things going on in the tech space and I wanted to educate myself and share what I find.  If you want to be on T3 – send me a note.

T3 – @Ratedly

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This week on T3 I review the anonymous employee review monitoring mobile app Ratedly. Ratedly is the brainchild of the godfather of recruiting thought leadership, Joel Cheesman.  When I entered this game eight years ago there were like four people in the world that talked about the Recruiting Industry and Joel was one of those folks, so he knows the industry very well.

Ratedly was built for HR leaders to be able to monitor employee review sites. When we hear that, most of us will only think of Glassdoor, but there are literally dozens of sites with employee reviews and new ones popping up weekly. Indeed now rivals Glassdoor with the number of reviews they have, and niche sites like InHerSight, AARP, and other local sites are collecting millions of employer reviews. Heck, it even monitors Twitter for notifications about your organization.

The problem will all of this is it becomes too time-consuming to monitor all of these sites and respond in a fashion that is representative of your employment brand. On top of being able to monitor, these sites run 24/7/365, and most of our HR and TA teams don’t! Yet, our executives want these reviews, especially the negative ones, responded to immediately!

Ratedly was built on a native mobile platform, meaning it’s built to be used on smartphones and tablets. It was done this way because of the expectation that whomever in your organization was responsible for this, more than likely, they would want 24/7 access to these reviews the moment they came in, with the ability to share with others in the organization, and be able to respond in real-time.

5 Things I like about Ratedly:

1. The UX is designed to be similar to a news feed you’ll find on many other apps, so the feel is very familiar and easy to use. Ratedly allows you to scroll through your employer reviews all in one spot, at the same time.

2. Bookmarking. On the Ratedly app you can easily bookmark reviews to go back to later and find them quickly. On each review, you will also have access to read the full review, see job title, location, star rating, etc.

3. Share feature. Ratedly easily allows you to share reviews from the app with hiring managers, executives, etc. Some organizations have the leader responsible respond, some have one department like TA respond, regardless of your process, Ratedly allows you to share with whoever you want, immediately.

4. Ratedly puts the monitoring of all of these review sites in one simple easy to use app. No longer does your employment branding team need to check into all of these sites on a daily basis. Or, like most organizations, you’re lucky to check in once or twice per month, and see some bad review that’s been sitting there for weeks!

5. It’s really inexpensive for the service that it offers! $149 per month, is peanuts for when it comes to protecting your employment brand. Most organizations have so much invested in their brand, and Ratedly becomes an inexpensive way to ensure that investment doesn’t blow up overnight!

Ratedly seems to be a technology that larger to enterprise level organizations would definitely have an interest in. If I was running employment branding for a multi-national I would definitely have it in my tool chest. The price point, though, really allows SMBs to come and play as well, especially those smaller startups who are in highly competitive environments and their brand is everything to getting talent. Well worth taking a look!

T3 – Talent Tech Tuesday – is a weekly series here at The Project to educate and inform everyone who stops by on a daily/weekly basis on some great recruiting and sourcing technologies that are on the market.  None of the companies who I highlight are paying me for this promotion.  There are so many really cool things going on in the tech space and I wanted to educate myself and share what I find.  If you want to be on T3 – send me a note.