Category Archives: Inclusion

You Wouldn’t Even Hire Your Own Mom

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I had a conversation recently with a friend about how hard it is to work and be a Mom.  Just to be a clear, I’m not a Mom.  I hire Moms. In fact I love hiring Moms, they work their asses off.

I know this because I was raised by a single mother.

I remember my Mom having to pick where we would go buy our groceries based on how long it had been since she bounced a check at that store. I remember her handing me items off the belt to return because they wouldn’t take her check and we only had enough cash for a few items. I remember pouring water into my bowl of generic Fruit Loops because we didn’t have enough money to buy milk that week.

My Mom started her own business, paid her own mortgage and raised two kids. It wasn’t perfect, but we made it. Those experiences shape a kid for life. It makes you appreciate what you have, when you know you can live with much less.  My Mom got hugely successful after I got out of college and my kids only know her as the grandma that has so much.  I can’t even describe to them the struggle, they have no concept.

I have zero tolerance for hiring managers who don’t want to hire moms because they might have to stay home with a sick kid, or they might want to take an early lunch to catch fifteen minutes of fourth grade play at school during the day.  Both men and women, hiring managers, have told me they don’t like to hire moms.  This doesn’t sit well with me.

The Moms I hire are some of the strongest employees I have.  They come to work, which for many is a refuge of quiet and clean, and do work that is usually less hard than the other jobs they still have to perform that day and night.  They rarely complain, and usually are much better to put issues into perspective and not freak out.

When I look at my own ‘tough’ days I try and remember that most of my day is done, while theres won’t be until their head hits the pillow. Old people and Moms are the most disrespected of the working class.  They are the most underutilized workers of our generation.  A woman takes a few years off to raise a kid and somehow she’s now worthless and has no skills.

I don’t even want to write this post because I feel like I’m giving away a recipe to a secret sauce.  All these national recruiting companies are hiring the youngest, prettiest college grads they can find to work for them, and they mostly fail in the recruiting industry. Moms find this industry rather easy as comparable to what they are use to doing.

The recruiting secret sauce, main ingredient = moms.

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.

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.

The Best Recruit No One Is Talking About

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I’m sure my #8ManRotation partners have read this story, but you might not have.  Bleacher Report had an article this week about a stud high school quarterback, Easton Bruere, out of New Mexico, who threw for 4500 yards, 49 touchdowns and only 6 interceptions this year alone and won the state title for his team.  He’s 6’3″, 200 lbs, strong athletic kid.  3.75 GPA and no legal trouble. He has zero college scholarship offers at the D1 level.

Let me give you a personal angle on this story.  Easton’s Dad and Aunt, both attended the University of Wyoming, when I did.  Both his Dad and Aunt were D1 athletes, Dad, Carl, in Football, Aunt, Ginger, in Volleyball and his sister plays college volleyball.  So, this kid also has a D1 pedigree. He comes from a very athletic family.  My wife and Ginger played together at UW for years.

There is great learning from this for all of my recruiting brother and sisters out there!  I can think of two things specifically:

1. As soon as you believe there are no more ‘recruits’, talent, people, left to hire, you’re dead wrong. This kid is in the middle of New Mexico.  Very few D1 football players come out of New Mexico, so most schools just fly over it on their way to Texas or California.  It’s forgotten about, in terms of football talent.

We do this all the time in recruiting talent for our organizations. “We tried that before, didn’t work.” Have you heard that? Okay, try it again. It didn’t work one time, doesn’t mean it’s never going to work.  “We went to that school three years ago and didn’t recruit anyone, so we didn’t go back.” “I tried calling into that company once, but couldn’t get through.”

 2. On the flip side, college coaches will go to the end of earth to find talent.  Was this kid missed? Or, is there something else we just aren’t getting from this article?  You see what we do.  We assume.  We assume if no one wants the kid, there must be something wrong with him. So, we just take it as fact and don’t do our own evaluation.

This is a problem with corporate recruiting as well.  How many resumes have you passed on because the person was unemployed for six months? “Well, if there weren’t hired by someone, there must be something wrong with them.”  Or, maybe you should bring them in and make that determination for yourself. But, you don’t.  You assume.

In recruiting, more than almost any other field, we give ourselves self-fulling prophecies.

I don’t know if this kid deserves a shot. Sure seems like it from the data I see. Because I know the family, I’m rooting for him.  His dad and aunt were highly competitive.  He has the skills, the experience and the genetics.

Remember this story the next time you go to pass on a candidate without a real reason.  Remember this story the next time you decide to pass on a source because previously it was a bust.  We’re all in the talent game. The funny thing about talent is, it can come from anywhere.

Check out Easton’s recruitment on twitter at #EastonBruere.

Will 2015 be the year of the Quotas?

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We still haven’t really made a dent in this diversity/inclusion thing have we?  The numbers don’t lie.  81% of healthcare workers are female, less than 18% of leadership positions in healthcare are filled by females.  The same is true in the service industry, the restaurant industry, etc.  Similar numbers can be said about African Americans and Hispanics in almost every industry.

The world is changing and we keep doing the same thing.

HR shops are trying to change our behaviors and how we think, but they are working against thousands of years of ingrained behaviors.  A few training courses aren’t going to change this level of programming.

People hate quotas in hiring.  They view the word ‘quota’ in the same vane as they view other words that lead to hate speech.

No one wants quotas.

That’s the problem. Quotas work.  Quotas are a measure that organizations can see and do something about.  Oh, we need five more females. We better go hire them. It’s straightforward. It’s simple to understand.

I get what’s wrong with them, we talk about that all the time.  Rarely, do we ever talk about what’s right with quotas.  When I was in HR at Applebee’s I had a ‘diversity quota’ on my leadership staffing.  It was measured as a percent of the overall staff and our diversity in leadership was measured as females, African American, Asian, Hispanic, etc. Basically, the only thing that didn’t count was white guys.

It was frustrating to me because I had very high diversity within my leadership team, but to continue to get high ratings I had to keep hiring diversity, even if it meant that one day I would have 100% diverse leadership. This rating was important to me because I got bonused on this rating. Having a diverse leadership team was very important to Applebees.

What Applebee’s leadership knew was that I was never going to get to 100% diversity.  It wasn’t their goal.  But, they knew to move the needle on diversity we needed to start measuring the color and kinds of faces we were hiring.  Quotas.

It worked.  It showed those working for our organization that we were serious about hiring diversity, so much so, that we were going to ensure this number moved.

Quotas are bad when they are used for bad purposes and good people get hurt by this.  I wasn’t passing over better white guys when hiring leadership at Applebees.  I was searching for better diverse candidates overall and hiring them.  Our leadership makeup needs to reflect our employee makeup. That is better hiring.

Don’t discount quotas in 2015.  If you truly want to move the needle in your organization, measure it.

The Key Trait of Great Hires

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For twenty years, I’ve been hiring and firing people. I’ve been lucky enough to have some great performers, a bunch of good performers and an also a few crappy performers. It seems like every time I turn; someone has an answer for me on how to hire better. For years I have given the advice if all else fails, hire smart people. It’s not a bad strategy. For the most part, if you hire the smartest ones of the bunch, you’ll have more good performers, than bad performers. I’m talking pure intelligence, not necessarily book smarts.

But, just hiring smart people still isn’t perfect. I want to hire good, or great, people every single time. How do you do that? That’s the million dollar question.

To me there is one trait we don’t focus enough on, across all industries. Optimism.

Your ability to look at the situation and come up with positive ways to handle it. Think about your best employees, almost always there is a level of optimism they have that your lower performers don’t.

I can’t think of one great employee I’ve ever worked with that didn’t have a level of optimism that was at least greater than the norm. They might be optimistic about their future, about the companies future, about life in general. The key was they had optimism.

Optimistic people find ways to succeed because they truly believe they will succeed. Pessimistic people find ways to fail, since they believe they are bound to fail. This hiring thing can be difficult. Don’t make it more difficult by hiring people who are not optimistic about your company and the opportunity you have for them. Ask questions in the interview that get to their core belief around optimism:

– Tell me about something you’re truly optimistic about in life? (Pessimistic people have a hard time answering this. Optimistic people will answer quickly and with passion.)

– Tell me about a time something you were responsible for went really bad. How did you deal with it?

– The company has you working on a very important project and then decides to cancel it. How would you respond?

Surrounding yourself with optimistic people drives a better culture, better teams, it’s uplifting to your leadership style. I want smart people, but I truly want smart people who are optimistic about life. Those people change the world for the better, and I think they’ll do the same for my business.

11 Rules for Hugging at Work + 2 more

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It’s the holidays, so I’m running some “Best of” posts from the past. This is my all-time most read post. Enjoy. I had 2 more rules just for you!

Hello. My name is Tim Sackett, and I’m a hugger.   Being a hugger can make for some awkward moments – what if the other person isn’t expecting a, or doesn’t want to, hug and you’re coming in arms-wide-open!?

Fast Company has an article recently titled: To Hug Or Not To Hug At Work? by Drake Baer, that delved into this subject.  Here’s a piece from the article:

“the uncomfortable feeling you get when you realize that your concept of your relationship with someone else doesn’t match their concept. The intensity of awkwardness roughly corresponds to the magnitude of difference in relationship concepts.”

I consider myself to have a number of roles: Husband, Dad, Coach, Boss, Friend, Coworker, etc.  In each of those roles I’ve hugged and will continue to hug.  Sometimes, though rarely, I’ll find someone who isn’t a hugger.  The first time I ever met Kris Dunn face-to-face, we’ve had known each other and talked frequently by phone for a year, at the HR Tech Conference – he was coming out of a session, I recognized him, he recognized me, and I went full ‘bro-hug’ (sideways handshake, other arm hug-back slap combo) on him, and I’m pretty sure he was caught off guard – but played along.  Kris is a closet hugger.  I find Southern folks are huggers, more than Northern.  Western more than Eastern.  Canadians more than Americans.  Men feel much more comfortable hugging women than other men. Women will hug anything.

I thought it was about time we had some hugging rules for the office, so here goes:

The Hugging Rules

1. Don’t Hug those you supervise. (The caveats: You can hug a subordinate if: it’s being supportive in a non-creepy way (major family or personal loss – sideways, kind of arm around the shoulder, you care about them hug);  it’s at a wedding and you are congratulating them; it’s a hug for a professional win (promotion, giant sale, big project completion, etc.) and it’s with a group, not alone in your office with the lights off; you would feel comfortable with your spouse standing next you and watching that specific hug.)

2. Hug your external customers or clients when they initiate hugging sequence.  (The caveats: Don’t hug if: it is required to get business – that’s not hugging, that harassment. Don’t let hug last more than a second or two, or it gets creepy; Don’t mention the hug afterwards, that makes you seem creepy!)

3. Don’t Hug the office person you’re having an affair with in the office.  (no explanation needed)

4. Hug peers, not just every day. (It’s alright to hug, but you don’t need to do it everyday for people you see everyday. Save some up and make it special!)

5. When you Hug, hug for real. (Nothing worse than the ‘fake hug’!  A fake hug is worse than a non-Hug.)

6. Don’t whisper – ‘You smell good’ – when hugging someone professionally. (That’s creepy – in fact don’t whisper anything while hugging!)

7. Don’t close your eyes while hugging professionally.  (That’s weird and a bit stalkerish)

8.  It is alright to announce a Hug is coming. (Some people will appreciate a – ‘Hey! Come here I’m giving you a hug – it’s been a long time!’)

9. It’s never alright to Hug from behind.  (Creepier!)

10.  Never Hug in the restroom. (Make for awkward moment when other employees walk in and see that.)

11.  If you’re questioning yourself whether it will be alright to Hug someone professionally – that is your cue that it probably isn’t.

The New Rules:

12. Don’t pat my back when you Hug me.  It makes me feel like you’re trying to burp me. I know this somehow makes you feel like people will view this as a non-affectionate hug, but it makes me feel like you feel it’s a non-affectionate hug. Just hug, or don’t hug.

13. Don’t assume you can Hug a co-workers kids (or any kid for that manner!), but if the kid tries to Hug you, you better Hug back.  My team has their kids come in all the time. I love kids. I’ll Hug their kids. But I’ll wait for the kid or the parent to give me that cue. I usually start with a ‘Hi-Five’ and some kids will just come in for the real thing! Parents are super protective of their kids. If you just start hugging on them, that can get real creepy, real fast!

 Do you have any hugging rules for the office?

Sometimes You Paint Fish in Vaginas

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Pablo Picasso is one of the greatest and most influential artists of the 20th century. He has some of the greatest works ever made.  He also made this. It’s called The Mackerel.

The Mackerel
Yep. One of the greatest artist ever made this. You see, to make great works, you have to make a lot of works. Great artist don’t just make great works. Sometimes they make fish in vaginas.  Sometimes what they think is a good idea fails. That’s how they perfect their craft. Every once in a while, greatness is the result.

I write a lot. At least every business day I have a post going up. Many times I have posts going up on other sites, as well.  Ideas come to me, such as my frustration with sourcing and talent acquisition, and I write about them.
I feel, far too often, talent acquisition blindly follows the pack without determining what is right for their environment, their culture, and their needs. Does this mean every day I’m frustrated with HR, recruiting and sourcing?  No. I’m going to write some stuff that I’ll look back on and wonder, “Why did I write that!?”

That’s part of the process.

We are at a place in our society where you can’t have one idea one day, and have another idea the next, if it contradicts one idea you’ve ever had in your whole entire life. What I believe in now, 20 years into my career, isn’t even close to what I believed in starting out in my career. And we lose our minds and judge people in this industry if someone has a different opinion than ours.

At this point in my career, I don’t read a lot of stuff in the HR and Talent space, primarily because I agree with a lot of it.  It’s like the pastor preaching to the choir. It’s not needed because they’ve already bought in!  Now I like reading stuff that I totally disagree with because it challenges my assertions and makes me rethink my positions.

It’s not my goal to write about stuff that is controversial. I’m not that guy. I get far more traffic on my positive posts than on my controversial posts. And it’s easier to write about hugs and babies and show videos that make you cry and appreciate your life.

But I will write about stuff that matters. Some of it will be great. Some of it won’t stick. I hope that people in our industry will see the art for what it is and avoid personal attacks. I know some of the most vocal people in our space. I admire them for their skills. I want to give everybody the space to develop new and deeper ideas, even if those ideas contradict earlier blog posts. And I don’t want to start calling them out when they write their fish-in-vaginas sourcing and talent manifestos.

***Shoutout to my friend Laurie Ruettimann for some editing help with this post***

 

 

5 Things HR Pros Secretly Have to Deal With

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I really don’t give a hoot if you’re extroverted or introverted, the fact of the matter is I’m sick of you focusing on yourself and how others can pander to your every whim.  You want to know what real HR Pros have to secretly deal with every single day?  Idiots like you!

Yeah, I said it.  I don’t care that you’re a millennial, or that you’re a baby boomer, or that you’re gay, or straight, or both.  I don’t care that you need to leave every other Tuesday for some religious reason, or that you sneak out every Friday to meet someone who is not your spouse.

I’m an HR Pro and I’ve got to deal with crap that you can’t possibly fathom.  What I care about is that you actually show up to work, ready to work, excited about work, and do work.  I know, life is hard, and coming to work every single day is hard. But, I’m paying you, so just work and get over all of your hangups.

You know want to know why I feel this way? Because I’ve got to deal secret stuff, secret HR stuff, like this:

1. Figuring out how to keep it quiet that we actually do know that our females are getting paid less than our males, but we don’t actually have the money to make it right, and don’t want to get sued.  All the time hating our executives who force us to continue this idiotic practice, knowing it’s wrong.

2. Carrying around, sometimes for months, those names of our coworkers and peers who we’ll be laying off.  It sucks.  We carry around baggage that we know will ruin the lives of people we care about.  Hello, alcohol abuse.

3. Knowing which executives are sleeping with employees who are reporting to them, but knowing turning them in will be career suicide.

4. Understanding which employees are actually ‘gaming’ the system, increasing our healthcare costs, ruining it for everyone else, and wanting to scream at the top of your lungs what’s going on.  But not. Letting the ‘system’ play itself out.  I hate you employees who ‘game’ the system.

5. That hiring decisions are sometimes made based on religion, race, sex, marital status, maternity status, sexual preference status, etc., and that actually might be the best thing for the organization’s success, and the employees who rely on that success.  That many times the ‘best’ person isn’t hired for the job, but 100% of the time we say that they are.

See?  Listening to someone tell you their secrets sucks.  Your coworkers and peers don’t really want to hear your secrets.  They want you to shut up, so they can tell you stuff about themselves.  That’s the real secret.

We all have issues. There’s no way you are going to be able to understand how to deal with everyone.  The secret is to stay off the fringes professionally.  Track down the middle, be consistent and don’t break stuff, just to break it.

 

I’m Not White Enough

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The world of sports tends to bring up societal issues constantly, and the NFL didn’t disappoint last week when Seattle Seahawk’s quarterback Russell Wilson was accused, anonymously by teammates, as “not being ‘black’ enough”.  It’s an issue as HR Pros we face in our own workplace.  More on the statements about Wilson from Charles Barkley in the Bleacher Report:

“Unfortunately, as I tell my white friends, we as black people, we’re never going to be successful not because of you white people but because of other black people,” Barkley said. “When you’re black, you have to deal with so much crap in your life from other black people. It’s a dirty, dark secret; I’m glad it’s coming out.”

The controversy began with an item from Bleacher Report’s Mike Freeman, who said some of Wilson’s Seahawks teammates don’t care for him because “they think he’s too close to the front office,” he “doesn’t always take the blame with teammates for mistakes he makes,” and “some of the black players think Wilson isn’t black enough.”

“There is … an element of race that needs to be discussed,” Freeman said of Wilson’s relationship with his teammates. “My feeling on this — and it’s backed up by several interviews with Seahawks players — is that some of the black players think Wilson isn’t black enough. This is an issue that extends outside of football, into African-American society, though it’s gotten better recently. Well-spoken blacks are seen by some other blacks as not completely black. Some of this is at play.”

I want to say that I understand, but I don’t.  Never in my entire life have I had someone tell me I ‘wasn’t white enough’.  But I have known people who have used the phrase, “Oh, you just wish you were black!”  I gotten this because there are so many things I love about African American culture (music, clothing, food, language) and I grew up in an urban area.  To be honest, I never wished I was black.  I have wished I was taller (I wish I was a baller…), thinner, more athletic, had a better singing voice, etc. I have always figured no one would ever mistake me for anything but white.

To Wilson’s credit, even he responded with: “I don’t even know what that means”, when he was told people didn’t see him as black enough.  According to Wilson’s background he’s mostly African American and Native American. He self-identifies as “mixed-race”.  This has rubbed some of his African American teammates wrong.  They want him to only identify with his African heritage.

In HR we talk ‘inclusion’ all the time.  The ability to ‘include’ all. Black, white, old, young, rich, poor, Democrat, Republican, Christian, Jewish.  All. But the reality is, there are larger forces at play within many of the demographics we are trying to include, and most we’ll never fully understand.

In the end, we just can’t take for granted that one group of people are going to do what’s best for another group, just because they identify with that group.  Culture and engagement are complex, living things.  You do things because you ‘think’ they will work, but they do the opposite.  What are you supposed to do?  Try to rise above it, when you can.  Deal with it directly, when you have to.  Know your own biases and assumptions.