Category Archives: Hiring

Married with Children Campus Recruiting

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I wonder what would happen if we recruited married with children types, like we recruit kids on college campuses?

It’s a bit upside down, don’t you think?

We have separate recruiting teams, and strategies and little uniforms our recruiting teams wear at the booth on campus. We throw pizza and beer parties at the local campus watering holes to try and entice students to want to come to our companies.

Never once, after college, have I been asked to come have free pizza and beer by a company.  I mean, I don’t know if I would take that, but I would definitely take a free babysitter and free movie with my wife.  Even if it meant I would have to listen to some recruiter tell me how great ABC, Inc. was to work for and their great childcare benefits. Throw in popcorn and drinks, and I might just sign up on the spot!

But that doesn’t happen.

You see, experienced professionals don’t want or need that kind of pampering. Only college age kids want that. Why would over tired, over worked adults want something for free?

We go to campus to find kids who have extremely hard to find skills, and pay for their last two or three years of college in exchange for them coming to work for you for the same length of time.  Would you ever offer to pay for a candidates kid’s college education if they came to work for you, in the same skill capacity?

This isn’t a college recruiting vs. experienced recruiting issue.  This is a and-and issue. We need both college recruiting and we need better recruiting of experienced professionals.  Unfortunately, while college recruiting as evolved over time, how we recruit our experienced candidates has virtually stayed the same.  We post jobs. We ask for referrals. We hold job fairs, that no person currently working in their right mind would attend. We bang on resume databases.

I wonder how your recruiting, of experienced workers, would change if you spent the amount you spend on campus, on recruiting at the neighborhoods around the locations you recruit for now? Some of you will claim that you spend more money recruiting experienced workers, but most of those costs are wrapped in headhunting costs to agencies.

Imagine showing up and putting your booth outside the big Friday Night Lights local football game.  I know in my community we get 5-7,000 people coming out to those games. That’s a heck of a lot more than you will see coming through a career fair. How about outside the college football stadium!? Ten times the that amount will be milling around.

Married with Children recruiting events could work.  The campus isn’t as defined, but standing out front the Home Depot on a Saturday, next to girls selling cookies, might just work.

Privacy is the New Candidate Red Flag

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Have you interviewed anyone recently, and haven’t been able to find anything about them online?

No LinkedIn profile. No Facebook. No Twitter. No Instagram. Google even seem to turn up nothing. It was like the person didn’t exist, yet there she was right in front of you, with a resume, work history, and educational transcripts. A living, breathing, walking ghost.

A social ghost, to be sure.

I had this happen a couple of weeks ago. It was disconcerting to say the least.  Of course, I knew this when I asked the person to come in to interview. It was one of the main reasons I asked her to come in.  It was like I found this mythical creature, this interview unicorn. There was no way I was passing this up.

Besides the resume with verified job history, valid driver’s license, address, educational records and a credit history, it was as if this person never existed.

I think the kids call this a “Catfish”, or at least thats what I expected to have come interview with me. This ‘Susan’ would come in and really be a ‘Samuel’! I’ve been in the game a long time, ‘Susan’ wasn’t going to pull one over on me.

I once had a friend who told me he gave up TV.  I didn’t really believe him, either.  Let’s be real, no one gives up TV.  And, as usual, I was right.  He gave away his TV, but he didn’t give away his laptop, his tablet and his smartphone. He was still watching, trying to act like he saved the fucking world by giving away his TV device. Like we don’t know you have twenty other devices in your house to watch shows on.

But, I digress, back to my social ghost, Susan. (of course, Susan isn’t her real name I changed that, I’m a pro, her real name is Jennifer)

I asked Susan the question we would all want to ask in this circumstance: “Susan can you tell me why you hate America?”

She seemed perplexed by this, almost like she didn’t comprehend what I was asking her, but I knew better.  She knew exactly where I was going with my line of questioning.  Why would a person choose to lead a life of anonymity, when a fully functioning narcissistic life is easily within her reach?

I showed her how if you Googled “Tim Sackett” I, soley, was the first 127 pages of the search results, working towards 130. I explained how I ‘socially’ erased another “Tim Sackett”, the Truck Driver Chaplin, almost from existence. Almost like he never stopped at a truck stop along I80 attempting to save lives in the name of Jesus.  It was a life’s work. My life’s work. I could tell she was impressed.

At the point where I had just about cracked her, she softly spoke one word, “privacy”, spilled from her lips like a small newborn logging onto Instagram video for the first time.

Privacy.  I knew there was something about her I didn’t like.

The interview ended.  So, did her chances of ever getting hired by me.

No One Is Waiting To Discover You

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I’m a recruiter.  I search for talent every day.  Basically, I’m never not on the outlook for talent.  Of course I’m doing this at work, but I also do it while shopping, while eating, while I’m at the movies, while I’m on vacation, etc.

You see, I never know when I’m going to discover a talented person and have the exact right opportunity, with the exact right company and it all fits together.

But, if you’re waiting for me, to discover you, you’ll be waiting forever.

I don’t discover anyone who isn’t working to be discovered.   I’m not knocking on closed doors where it looks like no one is home.  It’s like trick or treating, I’m only going to the houses with the lights on.

I hear from a lot of people who are willing to change jobs, or are open to new opportunities.  Unfortunately, almost all of these people are waiting to be discovered.  They aren’t actively doing anything to show me who they are and why I should be looking for them.

Their argument is they don’t want their current employer to know they’re looking.  My argument back is that isn’t the best way to be discovered anyway!  Hiring managers love passive candidates, people who aren’t looking.  You can be a passively-active candidate without floating your resume all over God’s green earth and changing your LinkedIn headline to “Now Open to New Opportunities!”

Get active in your industry.  Get active in the city and community you want to live.  Let your personal network know you would be open to something great, and by-the-way this is what I think something great would look like.

We are coming into a decade where there will be more jobs than qualified people.  You can have some great options if people are aware of who you are.  Just don’t think there is some magical fairy that will discover you sitting at your desk doing your normal job in the third row, second cube, fifth floor on the seventh building in the office park, the world doesn’t work that way. This isn’t Hollywood, this is main street.

 

Labor Unions are Dinosaurs

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You already know I’m not a fan of labor unions.  I just don’t see the point to them in today’s society.  They were needed once in our history. They are no longer needed.

Employers, for the most part, in today’s information is everywhere world, can’t afford to treat employees bad.  It doesn’t mean that we can’t find stories of this happening, it does, but employers face major ramifications for going off the rails.

Regardless, the data is even showing us how ineffective labor unions really are. From BusinessInsider:

“The Bureau of Labor Statistics recently released its annual figures on the number of employee strikes and employer lockouts for 2014. Only 11 work stoppages, including both strikes and lockouts, involving at least 1,000 workers began in 2014, tied with 2010 for the second lowest number on record.”

labor unions

Employers and employees no longer have an appetite for strikes.  Employers can’t afford them, and employees can’t afford them.  At no other point in the history of the world have employers and employees worked so well together. Both, have too much to lose.

When you reach this point in an economic relationship, labor unions cease to have relevance.

Labor unions, now, seem to be more of a burden on employees, the people they represent, than they are to the actual employers.  In the past couple of decades you actually see more employers inviting unions into their shops, not because they love unions, but because they see unions as a way to control employees more effectively.

Contracts work both ways.  When unions are strong, like they were fifty years ago, contracts work to the favor of the employees. When unions are weak, like they are now, contracts work to the benefit of the employer.

Are unions completely dead?  No.  Could they be?  Yes.  The existence of unions, while hugely important to American labor history, no longer have a useful existence in a 21st century employment market. If anything, they are now holding employees back.

 

Kate (Plus 8) Gosselin Can Help You Fix Your Employee Turnover!

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Remember, Jon and Kate Plus 8, the reality TV show with the lady that had sextuplets, on top of already having twins?  Kate Gosselin was back in the media eye again recently as a participant on Trump’s Celebrity Apprentice.  She made the news because no one recognized her! In a good way. From the story on Xfinity:

If you tuned into Celebrity Apprentice this past season and didn’t immediately recognize Kate Gosselin, you weren’t alone.

But the reality-TV star, who first burst into our collective consciousness when Jon & Kate Plus 8 premiered in 2007, has a perfectly reasonable explanation as to why she somehow looks younger now, at 39, than she did when her TLC run was just beginning.

“I think when the world met me I was three days post having sextuplets, so the only place you can get from that point is younger,” she told E! News on the live  Celebrity Apprentice finale red carpet last night when asked about her seeming physical transformation.

“So It was really just eye-trickery, I think,” Gosselin continued. “You guys saw me at my worst first, and then I just kind of reversed in front of your eyes. It was nothing amazing, it was just, when you met me, who was that person?”

What does this have to do with your turnover?

You don’t allow candidates to ever see you at your worse, ever.  Then, you’re shocked when they leave because they couldn’t handle your worse.

Now, I’m not telling you to completely go crazy and show all your dirty laundry to every potential candidate.  Certain companies can really learn something from this. It’s the companies that have absolutely awful turnover, especially compared to your industry norm, and can’t seem to figure out how to fix it.

It’s, also, those companies that seem to try and hide their dirty laundry the most when they’re interviewing potential hires!  I get it.  You have unstoppable turnover, you need more bodies, you have a bad reputation in the market, and you want to show everyone you’re trying to change it.  The problem is, people then have a false hope as compared to the reality you make them step into.

Show them the ugly Kate, and eventually the beautiful Kate might come through, and they’ll love you even more. (see how I brought that full circle?! I’m a pro.)

The only way to fix really bad turnover is to hire people who don’t mind your worst side.  Those people will stay around and actually appreciate your growth to a better environment.  If you try and talk a candidate out of the job because they can’t handle it, and you show them how bad it actually is, and they keep coming back and wanting in, you probably need to give them a shot!

We try and do the opposite. “Let’s hire people who worked at great companies, with great environments, and they’ll help us get to that!”  No they won’t.  They’ll fail.  People who come from great companies, buckle when presented with horrible environments.  You need to find people who like your worst. Those people will make it.

The way to stop turnover is to get fully staffed. Sounds like an oxymoron, but it’s not. Get staffed with people who will stick around. Then work on upgrading, little by little. Quality doesn’t help awful turnover. People willing to get dirty, help awful turnover.

 

Covering Up a Career Hickey

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I had a person work for me at past job in HR.  She performed the HR cardinal sin of sins, she shared personal, confidential information with an employee outside of HR.  My problem was, this person was a high performer, an outstanding employee, she had a frustrating, weak moment, and did something you just can’t do in a HR position.  This is what we call a Career Hickey. Sometimes you can survive these hickeys and cover them up, and continue to work as normal.  Many time you can’t.

So now, this Hi-Po has a huge Hickey.  Interestingly though, this Hickey can’t be seen when you look at their resume or interview them in person, but it’s a Hickey they can’t get rid of.  So, barring a life-turtleneck how does one cover this puppy up?

It’s interesting because I think that probably the best of us have a hickey or two that we would rather not have our current or future employer know about.  Sometimes they’re big-giant-in-the-back-of-a-Chevy-17-year-old-I-will-love-you-forever hickeys and sometimes they’re just oops-I-lingered-a-little-too-long type of hickeys. Either way, I would rather not expose my hickeys and have to worry about how this will impact the rest of my professional life. And here’s where most people drive themselves crazy.

As HR Pros I think it’s important for us to be able to help our organizations determine the relative value of individuals.  This person was a rock star at ABC company, did something wrong, and couldn’t maintain that position any longer with ABC because of said incident, and lost their job. Now we have a chance to pick up a Rock Star (and probably for a discount).

The question you have to ask is not could we live with this person if they did the same thing here?  Because that really isn’t the question, you already have that answer is “No.”  The question is: do we feel this person learned from said wrong doing and is there any risk of them doing it again?  You might come to the conclusion, “yes, they’ve learned, and yes, there is potential they might do it again” (let’s face it, if they did it once, they’ve shown they can do it, so there’s always a risk), but it’s a risk we are willing to take.

So how does someone come back from a transgression at work? The answer is that they have some help.  Eventually, someone is going to ask the question: “why aren’t you with ABC Company anymore?”  They’ll give you the canned answer they’ve been developing since the moment they lost their job. If you’re a good interviewer, you won’t buy the first answer (I mean really – so you decided it was better off not to have a job – is what you’re telling me?!) and you will dig to see the hickey.  Hickeys are funny in that you really can’t take your eyes off of them, but for those who can get by the hickeys, you might just find a great talent who is grateful for the second chance.

But, you also might find someone who just likes being in the back of that Chevy and getting Hickeys. You’re the HR Pro though and that’s really why your company pays your salary – to mitigate risk vs. the quality of talent your organization needs to succeed. So, you have to ask yourself, can you live with a Hickey?

How To Get a Great Job in 2015

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Last week I got a call from an old work friend. He wanted to have lunch.  He just left a position and was in transition.  Not a bad or negative job loss, just parted ways.  When you get to a certain executive point in your career, it’s rare that bad terminations take place. It’s usually, “hey, we like you, but we really want to go another direction, and we know you don’t want to go that direction, so let’s just shake hands and call it a day, here’s a big fat check.”

Executives get this.  For the most part there isn’t hard feelings, like when you were young and lost a job. I usually find that the organization the person is leaving from are super complementary, and usually takes the blame for the change.  Executives in corporate America are like NFL coaches. You get hired with the understanding that one day you’ll be fired.  It’s not that you know less, or aren’t going to be successful in your career, it’s just that the organization needs change, and you’re part of that change.

Welcome to the show, kid.

My friend decided that he was going to find his next position not through posting for positions online, or trolling corporate career pages, he was going to have lunches.  About two per week, with past work friends. Let’s connect, no pressure, we already know each other and I want to catch up.

You see, in 2015 you don’t find great jobs by filling out applications in ATSs and uploading resumes. You get great jobs because of the relationships and personal capital you’ve built up over your career.  Having lunch and reconnecting turn on a relationship machine. I believe that people, innately, want to help other people. When a friend comes to you with a situation, and you have something to offer or help, you will do that.

The problem is most people who are looking for great jobs don’t do this. They lock themselves in their home office and apply to a thousand jobs online and get upset when nothing happens. Great jobs aren’t filled by ATSs and corporate recruiters.  Great jobs are fill through relationships. Every single one of them.

Want to find a great job in 2015?

Go out to lunch.

6 Ways to Make Your Recruiting/Talent Metrics More Strategic

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Let’s face it—the recruiting metrics you use at your company are either non-existent or stale.  Sure, you tried to roll out the basics—time to hire, cost per hire—but all that did was put the focus on your HR/Recruiting function, not the people who actually make the final hiring decision.  Flash forward 12 months since the launch of those basic recruiting metrics, and you’re bored… heck, everyone’s bored.

Never fear! The FOT webinar makes it’s 2015 debut with Six Ways to Make Your Recruiting/Talent Metrics More Strategic – And Make Managers Own Their New Hires.

Join us for this webinar (sponsored by Chequed.com) on Thursday, February 26th at 2pm EST (11am Pacific) and we’ll hit you the following goodies:

– A review of the traditional talent selection/recruiting metrics.  We’ll give you a rundown of those metrics like Time To Fill and Cost Per Hire, what the standard benchmarks are for each and then explain why only using these traditional metrics is a lost cause/suckers play.

– An explanation of the Holy Grail of reporting Recruiting Effectiveness and why it changes the conversation from “Did we fill the position?” to “Did we make the right hire and what happened once we filled the position?“. We call this metric Hiring Manager Batting Average (HMBA for those of you that need an acronym), and it’s the cleanest, most all-encompassing metric you can have to make your internal recruiting conversation strategic—not transactional—and actually make it tie in to your overall talent strategy, not just Talent Acquisition.

– How to change the dialog of organizational turnover from being an HR problem to being everyone’s problem. Admit it, you report on turnover all the time. We’ll show you how to link turnover to your selection process in a way that spreads the wealth related to turnover responsibility—and actually sets you up to be more consultative and less reactive related to employee churn.

– We’ll give you 5 additional metrics to show how your recruiting/staffing process actually reduces risk of bad hires and prepares for future searches.  You need to get out of the trap of only reporting cost and time.  We’ve got the metrics to show you how to do that.

Things that are hard:  Riding a bike on a freeway. Getting your kids to eat peas. Getting managers to own the bad hires they make and be interested in getting better at selection.  Join us for Six Ways to Make Your Recruiting/Talent Metrics More Strategic – And Make Managers Own Their New Hires on Thursday, February 26th at 2pm EST, and we’ll show you how to create recruiting/talent metrics that get the attention of your organization.  You’re on your own with the other two.

Rejection Letter Dos and Don’ts

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A number of years ago I got rejected for a job.  I know, I know, you are probably as surprised as I was.  The funny part is, I got the hard copy, snail mail rejection letter 18 months after I had apparently applied.  I went back into my email to try and figure out what really happened.

You see, as a Recruiting Pro, I wouldn’t actually apply through an ATS, especially for an executive position, which this was.  My email confirmed the fact; I had sent the CHRO of a large organization my resume directly.  This rejection letter was from that contact.

18 months. Send a resume. No communication for 18 months. Rejection letter. That’s the time line. How’s that for a solid candidate experience!?

Ever since this experience I’ve always had strong beliefs of what you should do and not do when it comes to sending out rejection letters.  Here’s the deal about Rejection Letters:

Do –

  • Send personally signed letters to all people you have had personal contact with (i.e., over the phone, in person, referred by someone internally – you get the idea).
  • Draft a letter(s) that builds your brand.
  • Once a candidate is a “no”? Send the letter. If they’re a “maybe”? Keep them in the process.
  • If they never had any personal contact, send them the ATS mass email.

Don’t –

  • Send a letter to everyone who applies.  Within your recruitment/sourcing process should be a communication when someone applies.  In that communication, let them know that only those chosen for interviews will be considered part of the recruitment process – meaning we will communicate with those individuals directly moving forward – all others thanks, please apply for other positions that come up that fit your experience and background.
  • Tell people you chose someone with better qualifications or someone who is more qualified – you really don’t know that – who you chose was a person who best fit your organization at this time.
  • Tell people you’ll keep them on file for future consideration. You and I both know that you don’t. Tell them the truth – if you ever want to work here, apply again and possibly make some internal connections to help move your resume to the top.

In the end, you want your rejection letters to make people feel like I’m glad I applied, and I would apply again and I would continue or will start using this organization, buy their product or service.  It’s not easy, but it can be done.

If you really want to know what people think of your rejection process, pick up the phone and call a few that have made it to different levels of the hiring process, and just ask. People who get rejected are more than happy to give you feedback!

First Ever Michigan Corporate Recruiters Conference!

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I’m super excited to announce I am co-organizing the first ever Michigan Recruiters Conference to be held on March 13th in Lansing, MI starting at 9am!

Jim D’Amico, Director of Talent Acquisition at Spectrum Health, and I have been talking about doing this for over a year and late in 2014 we finally just said, “Screw it! Let’s pick a date and force ourselves to get his puppy off the ground!”  And we did it!  With a lot of help from Jim’s team at Spectrum, my team at HRU, our techy guy Matt Wagmann and our friends at the Accident Fund corporation!

Register at www.MichiganRecruits.com

Our Goal for the Michigan Recruiters Conference:

We want an event similar to an ERE, but local. Great recruiting and talent acquisition content, without having to pay thousands of dollars to attend.  Our fee is $49! We want to raise the level of recruiting in the state of Michigan.  We want to offer this in an environment where the corporate Talent Acquisition folks don’t feel like it’s a meat market (i.e., no staffing agencies).

We want to bring in national speakers, corporate talent acquisition best practices and next-gen practices that aren’t even being used by the masses. We want to network and share our successes, and find ways that corporate talent acquisition pros can better leverage each other and their knowledge. We plan on having two Michigan Recruiters Conferences per year, one in the Spring and one in the Fall.

We are not doing this for profit. The sponsors (CareerBuilder is our first, but we would love more!) and fees are only to cover costs of running a great conference like this. Sounds like we want to be a bunch of Hippies!  I hope so, this is going to be great!

The format of the Conference: 

Unlike normal HR conferences we aren’t looking to do 1 hour and 15 minute sessions. Who the hell even came up with that length of time!? It’s way too long, and just encourages rambling. We are Recruiters, we don’t have time to ramble!  Our sessions will be 30 minutes, 45 minutes and 1 hour, depending on the content and presenter.  A professional national speaker can easily hold the stage for an hour.  Your local sourcing pro who has some great ideas to share, might only need thirty minutes!

We will strive to have you leave each conference with great ideas you can use immediately, ideas that will challenge what you do long term, and increase your network and tribe of other talent acquisition pros you can lean on.

It won’t be a full day.  6 hours or so. Get in, get out, go make placements.

We’ll attempt to always hold these at host corporations who are willing to have this progressive knowledge come into their walls.  Thank you Accident Fund Corporate, and Darcy Kerr, for hosting this first conference in Lansing, MI!

Why no staffing agencies? 

I’ve already gotten a ton of crap on this. “Tim, aren’t you a staffing agency?” “Tim don’t you rail against being treated as a second class citizen by LinkedIn?” “Tim this is hypocritical!”

Here’s the deal.  I speak about a dozen times a year, nationally, to HR and Talent Acquisition pros, and never once have I been accused of trying to sell my services. I’m not worried about me, but I know my industry.  I’ve already had agency folks try and sneak their way into the conference like a Catfish!  To make the Michigan Recruiters Conference a success we need corporate talent acquisition pros and leaders to see the value of a conference like this. If their first experience is some cheese-ball from RecruitTech coming on to them in the first fifteen minutes, that experience is ruined.   So, Jim and I decided, no agencies, yet.

We do see a time down the road, once the conference is established, where we will be able to invite in our agency brethren.  Minnesota started in a similar way.  Even at that point, we’ll have hard rules around selling at this conference.  It’s designed to be developmental. That’s the conference we want.

Sometimes to make something great, you rub a few folks the wrong way.  Agency folks are resilient, to say the least, I know they’ll bounce back. I look forward to the day I can invite them as well.