Category Archives: Inclusion

The 1 Reason You Can’t Find Talent Right Now

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There’s one big reason you can’t find talent right now.  Here it is:

Simple economics plays a huge role in your ability to hire well.  We all like to think we are super star rock star talent acquisition pros, but the reality is we are mostly just pawns in economic cycles.  Sure you can have a great employment brand, and have great recruiting tools, and even have the most talented recruiters money can buy.  But rarely can’t you beat simple supply and demand.

Want to know why you’re struggling to hire right now?  There aren’t enough candidates for the jobs you need to fill.  It’s really quite simple.

We have an extended recession where almost all employee development and employee growth programs got cut to the bone.  No apprenticeships. No internships.  Old people held onto their jobs because of  the recession, while younger people went and found other ways to make ends meet.  The stock market that was in the tank during the recession came back bigger than ever.  The old people now want to retire, and they are in bulk!

Now you want to hire because business is back!  You have new positions to add. You have old employees leaving you with all of that knowledge, and you haven’t seriously tried to grow an employee in a decade.

It took you 10 years to get to this point.  It’s going to take you more than increased job board ads and new ATS to get you out of this.  Here are few tips to get you through a Candidate Driven Marketplace:

1. Start growing your own now. No, it’s not a short term solution. But you must realize your problem is both short and long.

2. Get comfortable with stealing talent from your competitors and anyone else. Also, they’ll be stealing from you.  Welcome to the show.

3. Upgrade your recruiting staff, yesterday.  Yeah, I like Bonnie to, but she can’t really recruit.

4. You have to get your organization to understand your reality.  Like Hillary said, “It takes a village”.

5. Learn the concept “Total Talent” and get comfortable with it.  The rest of the world already has.  The U.S. is a decade behind.  Total talent is the concept that an organization has many avenues of talent: direct employees, consultants, contract employees, temporary employees, part time, job share, etc. No longer should you even want just ‘direct’ employees.  Smart talent acquisition strategy incorporates all levels of talent, not just one.  Unless your name is Bonnie.

HR Neutrality

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There has been a ton of press around Net Neutrality lately.  Net neutrality is the concept that Internet service providers and governments should treat all data on the Internet equally, not discriminating or charging differentially by user, content, site, platform, application, type of attached equipment, and modes of communication. Companies, like Comcast, stand to make a lot of money based on how federal regulators decide on how to treat net neutrality.  If regulators find in favor of ISPs they can start charging more for faster internet access, basically creating the haves and the have nots of the internet – or the ‘fast lane’ and the ‘slow lane’. 

It’s a basic concept.  Everyone should be treated equal. Big powerful companies and small powerless people.  Or should they?

First and foremost I’m a capitalist.  I like to pay more, and sit in better seats at sporting events.  I pay high taxes so I can live in a better neighborhood and police will actually come to my house when I call.  If I want my internet to come through a firehose instead of a garden hose, I’ll pay for it!

I get it though.  The American Dream is now a ‘dream’ more than ever for most people simply because they’ll never make it a reality.  We are a nation of haves, and have nots, but mostly of have nots.

The concept of neutrality is also something HR Pros take to heart.  We attempt to treat everyone equally.  In many ways this is good. Male/female, old/young, black/white, we have an obligation to treat our employees the same.  But we take it to far.

Net Neutrality doesn’t say some will get the internet, and some will not.  It says some will get the internet faster because they paid to have it faster.  Those who are upset over this issue are upset because they’ll be treated differently.  It’s the same reason HR Pros tend to try and treat all employees the same.  If I treat everyone the same, no one can complain they were treated differently.  Therein lies the problem, your best employees don’t want HR Neutrality!

Your best employees want to be treated differently.  They see Timmy slacking off and not pulling his weight, and they HATE you treat Timmy the same as you treat them.  They want to be treated differently than Timmy.  They want faster internet.  They feel they deserve it.  They feel they deserve to be treated better than you treat your average and below average employees.

So, this begs the question, why is HR Neutrality so prevalent in our industry?  Our leadership doesn’t like either.  Remember, your leaders are leaders because they were once your best employees.  They hate you treat everyone equally as well.  Our employees hate HR Neutrality.  Our leadership hates HR Neutrality.  Yet, we continue to profess HR Neutrality.   Is HR morally better than the rest of our organization?  Or, are we afraid that eliminating HR Neutrality will shine a bigger light upon our own shortcomings as a function?

Either way, I want the faster internet.

Naked and Afraid HR

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Have you guys seen the TV show Naked and Afraid?  It’s brilliant!  It’s basically a survivalist show where they take a man and woman and put them in some godforsaken place, with one tool each (knife, fire starter, etc.) and no clothes. That’s right, just like the day they were born, they only get to wear their birthday suit!  21 straight days naked with a person you have just met the first time, in horrible conditions you wouldn’t want to be in clothed, let alone naked.

Initially, you go, there is no way I’m sitting down in the mud and sticks and bugs and letting them crawl up my…well, you get the picture. You actually don’t get the picture, because they blur out the actual naked parts, accept butts, you see a lot of butts in Naked and Afraid.  I’m not completely sure why or who decided butts were fine to look at on normal cable TV but no pencils or vajayjays, but I guess we have to have limits.

Naked and Afraid is a HR dream TV show!

HR and organizations constantly put people together and force them to interact.  Naked and Afraid is almost the same thing, accept we make our people wear clothes per your dress code policy.  What you find in Naked and Afraid is usually very sexiest to begin with.  The guys want to take on this role of protecting the female (and they over act like seeing this woman naked is having no impact on them, I’m sure their blooper real is awesome!).  The females they get are usually bad-ass outdoorsy types, so they can usually take care of themselves.  After about ten days of hardly any food and water, usually one of the parties breaks down mentally.

This is the point my wife likes to point out, that it’s usually the man who loses it mentally.  For what ever reason, under nourished the men tend to break down faster than the females. While the guys do a lot of the heavy lifting of building shelters, rafts, etc.  It’s usually the women who can get them right in the head, and get them to finish line before tapping out and giving up.  Like I said, HR folks will love this show!

What this shows does is strip away everything between male and female and put them a completely level playing field.  They aren’t in competition, in fact, those that do best usually show the best team work, and really dig into each strengths to make it through the 21 days.  Just one man and one woman with only their skills to get them to survive.  I wonder how much better our own organizations would be if we could strip away all the B.S. we deal with and let people stand on their own merits!?

Naked and afraid shows you that each person, male and female, has their own strengths needed to survive. While one might possess enough of all these strengths to do it on their own, usually they don’t.  Our organizations have gender issues.  These issues are rooted in hundred’s of years of male domination, and the ingrained belief strong leaders are primarily male. This show demonstrates this is truly false when all things are equal.

Having a bias is the new black.  Like saying you know you have biases somehow exalts you of this weakness.  It doesn’t. In HR we allow our leadership to have a gender bias, and we help perpetuate it by not forcing change.  Naked and Afraid points this bias out in a not so subtle way and you get to see butts!

The Worst HR Advice I’ve Ever Given

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A few days ago this thought came to me: “What is the worst advice I’ve ever given anyone?’  Usually in a case like this the first thing you think of, is usually correct!  In my case, I came up with a number of things right away, none of which really seemed like the worst advice, and more of me making fun of what other people think is ‘good’ advice. Here’s a sample:

1. Don’t be afraid to fail.

2. Follow your passion!

3. Don’t play office politics.

4. Yeah, go get that Master’s in HR!

5. Just keep it to yourself, I’m sure no one will find out.

See what I’m talking about?!  All of the above statements have been shared as good advice, but I tend to think of them as terrible advice.

Then it came to me. The worst advice I have ever given to an employee in my HR career.  Here it is:

“Just wait and see what happens…”

This advice was given to an employee who really wanted a different position in the company, outside of their department.  It was going to come open because we all knew the person in the position was going to get promoted. I was early in my career, and believing our ‘process’ would help this person out.  Just wait, I thought, and once this person takes their new position, you can post for the their old position.  How naive I was.

The person who got promoted had a ‘plan’.  That plan had nothing to do with my process, or the employee who was wanting that position.  The plan did have the old employee putting one of his buddies into his old position, and seemingly everyone knew of this plan but me.  This was the day I learned that everyone has a plan, and in HR it’s really my job to know what those plans are, and manage expectations early.

The person I told to wait, now didn’t trust me, and truly believed I knew what was going to happen.  The reality was, I should have known, so I really couldn’t blame the person for being upset with me.  My own bad advice probably taught me more about HR than almost anything else I have ever learned in the profession.  As soon as you hear of possible moves, you better get involved.  Waiting to see what happens usually ends up with stuff happening, without you knowing!

The Search For The Smartest Employee

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Yo! I’m on vacation this week, don’t try and come rob my house, it’s a ‘staycation’!  I’m going to run some oldies but goodies so I can let my creative juices focus on Gin and Tonics. Here you go:

I couldn’t sleep the other night, probably because of the 14 Diet Dews I had throughout the day, but I had an Epiphany while staring at the ceiling in the dark.   I figured out a way for HR Pros to find the Smartest Employee in their Company!  It isn’t a complex algorithm or a set of cognitive assessment tests – it’s a simple matrix – but it’s very effective.  Now, you might be asking yourself:

 “Why do I need to find the smartest employee in our company?”

Which would be legitimate – unfortunately at 2 a.m. I didn’t ask myself that same question – I just thought I came up with some crazy Einstein type shit!  But, like most things I deal with, I can come up with a plausible argument to why it’s important to find the smartest people in your company.  My reasons:

1. Smart people have the potential to do smart things.  In an organization you want to make the right decisions – usually dumb people don’t.

2. Smart people usually know other smart people. In an organization you want to get rid of your dumb people, and hire more smart people.

3. Smart people know the fakers.  Organizations make people selection mistakes, it happens all the time, don’t be embarrassed, just don’t let one decision turn into another by keeping a mistake.  Smart people know your bad hiring mistakes, because they can read through the B.S.

Now for the Matrix!  Like I said it’s simple – which is also why it’s genious, because anyone can do it.  It goes a little something like this (hit it!) –

First Step: down one side of your matrix list your employees by level of responsibility. Most responsible at the top, down to the least responsible at the bottom.  Some of these you’ll just have to do the eyeball test on, and slot people as you see fit – don’t get to worked up over this – just get the most responsible up top, the least down low – the ones in the middle don’t matter anyway.

Second Step: Across the top of the matrix list total compensation of each person to the corresponding column.  For the most part you should end up with a sheet that shows the most responsible person in your organization, making the most money, and slowing but surely working your way down to the least responsible, least amount of money.

Third Step: The Smart Employee Search.  Here’s where the rubber hits the road!  Now, look at your matrix and find the highest paid employee, with the corresponding least amount of experience.  Boom! You just found your smartest employee.

I told you it was easy!  This person has figured out how to, relatively, make the most money by having virtually no responsibility.  Say what you want – but that is one smart person!  You need to pull that person in and find out how to get them more engaged into your daily operations.  Don’t take this as a joke – dumb people don’t figure this out – you just don’t fall into a highly paid, low or no responsibility job – you have to work to get there.  Don’t underestimate this person’s capabilities – because guess what – everyone else has!  That’s why your working your butt off until 6pm, and they’re out the door at 3pm going to their golf league – for about $4000 less than you make. They’re going home with no stress, while you’re on your 4th therapist – this year.   They love coming to work – you have a hard time pulling yourself out of bed.

I love these employees – I try to hang with them, learn from them – I feel like I’m an anthropologist learning about a forgotten species – they intrigue me so.  A word of caution though – don’t try and capture and change these employees – don’t try and be “smarter” than they are – and change their job or their scope or their pay.  Remember, they’re smarter than you – you’ll just frustrate yourself as they find another position – doing even less for more!

5 Steps To HR Success

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Yo! I’m on vacation this week, don’t try and come rob my house, it’s a ‘staycation’!  I’m going to run some oldies but goodies so I can let my creative juices focus on Gin and Tonics. Here you go:

I was reminded last night that success doesn’t just come to you, and it might not necessarily be about hard work and attitude – like your Dad would always say.  To often we (the collective lot of us!) want to believe success is like the lotto – at least to often we hope to get success that way – one day you don’t have success, then the next day success somehow miraculously finds you!

Sorry. Doesn’t usually work that way.

But one thing we over look is how important success is to finding success.  Here’s what I mean:

Directions for Being Successful –

Step 1: Find a little success

Step 2: Find another little success

Step 3: Find another little success

Step 4: Repeat steps 2 and 3 each day

Step 5: You are successful

I know, directions are hard to follow for some people, so let me give you an example.  You feel like a failure at everything – job is going well (or you don’t have one), relationships suck, you’re a little soft around the middle (i.e., fat) – basically you feel like a failure, nothing is going in the right direction.  Guess what? When you wake up tomorrow you won’t magically be successful – no matter how hard you wish it, pray it, want it.  You have to find some sort of success, no matter how small.  Maybe that success is eating one less Twinkie than you did the day before – yesterday I ate 8 Twinkies – today I only ate 7!  Don’t let someone tell you that’s not a success, because tomorrow I’m only going to eat 6 and before you know it I’m going to kick this Twinkie habit!

I works with everything.  Not recruiting enough candidates for your organization, can’t get anyone to pick up the phone and talk to you – today make one more call than you did yesterday – only 1 – that is a success, because tomorrow you’re going to do that again, 1 more than the day before – small success steps until you’re just one big giant bag full of success!

People who are successful and throw it in your face suck!  They suck because they act like they’ve always been successful, but they haven’t.  It came to them a little at a time, until they could no longer feel what failure felt like.  You see success is like a drug – you need a little to want another hit, it’s addictive.  That’s why you need to feed your mind a little everyday – we can all find those little successes each day – the key is to find them every single day – don’t miss.

How Zappos Ruined Job Posts!

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Zappos made a big splash last week announcing they were no longer going to post their jobs!  From this point forward, or as soon as they can get out of their legacy system, they’ll stop posting their open jobs.  Instead of the good ole post and pray strategy used by the majority of companies worldwide.  Zappos’s Talent Acquisition team will now only proactively search for candidates, build networks of possible candidates and always have a slate or ready candidates available for each hiring manager whenever they have a need arise.  Sounds like the same line we’ve been feeding all of our organizations for a long time, right!?!

The difference is, Zappos can actually do it, you can’t.  You see Zappos is a ‘one-percenter’.  They are one of the very few employment brands who don’t need to post their jobs to get candidates, they have more candidates than they can handle.  They have one of the most engaged employee bases known to man, who refer more great employees like themselves.  Zappos can kill job postings, because job postings, in their environment, actually make them less efficient!  Their Talent Acquisition team is smart and doing exactly what they should to kick their competition to the side – taking advantage of their greatest strengths!

I do wonder, though, isn’t Zappos very big public announcement of ‘killing job postings’ just one very, very big job post!  Ah, employment branding and marketing.  Silly rabbit.

Let’s be clear you are not Zappos.

While you’ll need to keep running your post and pray strategy, I do think there is something valuable to take away from Zappos’s new no job posts posting strategy.  Zappos has publicly shown all HR and Talent shops, you don’t really have to post your jobs!  “What!?! Yes, Tim!  Yes, we do!  You don’t have any idea what you’re talking about!”  Calm down, calm down.  There are a few shops around that will continue to be forced to run job postings do to government contracts, or other ‘contractual’ arrangements, I’ll give you that.  But there is nothing legal, for most employers, that forces you to run job postings.

Most employers can hire whomever they choose. It is a best practice to post jobs, internally and externally, to ensure you are pulling in a widely dispersed pool of candidates, and not opening yourself up to potential hiring biases, or even illegal hiring practices.  But most employers do not legally have to post a job.  And just because you post one job, doesn’t mean you have to post all of your jobs.  That is the big takeaway from what Zappos is doing.

Let’s face it.  Zappos’s operations is mainly a call center.  They sell shoes over the internet and on the phone.  They are customer service, and the best customer service job option known to man.  They are in Vegas which has thousands of crappy customer service jobs.  If you’re good at customer service in Vegas,  you’ll eventually want to work at Zappos.  They have no need in posting call center jobs!!!

You probably have similar issues.  When I worked at a large health system we had no need to post openings for cafeteria workers and lower level positions.  We had people contacting us daily wanting those jobs.  Yet, every time we had an opening, we would post the job and have to deal with hundreds of applicants.  Our ‘legal’ department made us do this.  It was do ‘reduce’ potential risk, of which, was almost zero to begin with!  It was stupid.  It made us do more work.  It wasn’t needed.

Zappos has put the entire Talent Acquisition industry on notice.  To stop doing stupid stuff, like posting jobs you don’t need to post.   If you think you can get away with not posting any of your jobs, well, good luck to that.  You’re not Zappos!

The micro-blog post, after the blog post:

You know what really pisses me off about this announcement from Zappos!?  For the next 3 years I’m going to have to go to conferences and listen to people like Stacy Zapar and Mike Bailen tell us how Zappos is changing the recruiting world! Ugh! More Zappos HR conference speakers…didn’t we already go through this with them?  Oh, yeah, I wrote about it, like three years ago and Zappos CEO, Tony Hsieh, actually commented on the blog post – that was really cool!  Check it out here!  How Zappos Ruined HR! 

P.S. Stacy and Mike if you guys ever want to speak together at a conference just let me know – I’m willing to ride that Zappos gravy train out with you for the next three years!

Is Gen Z Going To Be Worse Than Millenials?

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Is Generation Z (those born between the years 1995 – 2009, of which I own 3) going to be worse than the Millenials?  I guess to answer that question you first have to put this into some perspective.  First, you would have to think of the Millenials as a wasted, or under performing, generation.  Then, you would have to believe that Gen Z will probably follow down a similar path.

Short answer? Yes.

Gen Z will be worse than the Millenials.  Just as the Millenials were worse than Gen X, and Gen X and than the Baby Boomers.  That’s how this goes.  The youngest generation is always the worse!  By generation, you get better with age, or at least your view on generations get better.  It’s a simple concept.  When a generation is nothing more than whiny, snot nosed, rude kids, they’re all a train wreck.  Then they get older, more mature, actually do something with their lives, and amazingly become a generation of substance.

So, yes, Gen Z will be worse.  As will Gen Alpha, which comes after Gen Z and those kids are 3 and 4 years old and already a waste of space on this planet!

Does that make you feel better Millenials?  You’re no longer the worse generation to grace Earth.  Now, it’s Gen Z.  Congratulations, you can now start writing blog posts and books about how to communicate with these crazy Gen Z kids.  Know one understands them, it’s totes cray. With all their selfies and their hashtaggy things, they are going to way worse than those trophy sucker Millenials!

I’ve decided for the 2015 SHRM National Conference I’m going to submit a presentation on how to speak Gen Z.  HR Pros need this valuable information!  I need to come up with a title that completely says Gen Z, but also is very vanilla and safe, so not to scare off the HR ladies in Gen X and beyond.  I think I might go with “#GenZProbs(>_<)” — what do you think?  No, that will never fly with SHRM Gestapo.  It has to say boring, yet strategic.  Safe, yet cutesy.

I don’t know.  My brain doesn’t really work in those contexts!

Let’s crowd source this.  Give me your best Gen Z title for my 2015 SHRM National Preso.  I’ll reward the winner, which will include an inappropriate hug.

Profiling Diversity Hires

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Entelo, a recruiting technology company, recently launched a product called Entelo Diversity. To be honest, I had to look up what Entelo actually did.  I had heard the name, but I couldn’t have told you if they were an employee engagement company or an ATS – turns out they’re neither! They’re a recruiting play, inasmuch, you have needs that are hard to find, their product claims to help you find those needs (I’ve never used it, so I not telling you it works or doesn’t).  This new product, apparently, helps you find Black People! Or Women. Or Black Women. Or a half Black-Asain Women, who used to be a man. I’m not sure, for sure, I haven’t used it, I’m just going on their press release.

Here’s what I know, that most Talent and HR people lose their freaking minds over.  It’s not a bad thing to have a product or service that can specifically find you a certain kind of diversity.  I know. I know. That makes you really uncomfortable!

“TIM! People will use those products to discriminate!”

They might.  I can’t stop that at your organization.  I can stop that at my organization!

The products just find what you want.  If you need more female recruits for your hiring pool. Bam!  A product like this will help you.  If you need more shades of color within your organization. Bam! A product like this could help you build a rainbow in your organization.  If you have a hiring manager who only wants to hire young white guys in your organization. You need to address that!  But don’t blame a recruiting product.  You own that one!

I hear the same criticism every time I show a new group how to recruit on Facebook.  There are really cool options where you could search on females, 22 years old to 28 years old, who graduated with an engineering degree from Stanford. That’s is awesome, right!?   I need more young female engineers from Standford in my engineering department! But I can also search 31-45 year old white male engineers from Stanford as well.  Oh, well, that’s not so good, right?  Wrong.  What if your entire staff was black female engineers!  While highly unlikely, you would still need to add some diversity to that staff.

This isn’t about tools getting more powerful and precise to what you are looking for.  This is about those using those tools, usually Talent and HR Pros, ensuring that your organization is doing the right things to get the best hiring pools possible.  Too many Talent and HR Pros run away from using these tools, and it only shows their own ignorance for what true diversity and inclusion is.

Smart Talent and HR Pros know what their organizations are lacking, and they’ll work to fill those needs with the best available talent.  Sometimes that means you need to get very specific on the diversity side.  Sometimes it means you don’t.  Great Pros work to always have the correct balance for their organization, their demographic and their stakeholders.

(Editor’s Note: Ha! That’s funny, you all know I don’t have an editor.  Just so we are clear, Entelo did not compensate me for this post, but if they want to send me Diet Mt. Dew, I never turn that down.)

Reasons To Try Stuff

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Last week I got a chance to speak at the 5th annual Michigan HR Day on Social Recruiting.  The group was great, I had fun, we gave out some Coach Bags and I made some HR ladies uncomfortable.  I don’t actually intend to speak and make anyone uncomfortable, that isn’t a long term plan of speaker success.  But it usually happens to a small number of folks.

Here’s how it normally goes:

1. I talk about how to use a social networking site like Facebook to recruit great talent.  Show them how to do it.  Show them how they can get really specific in who they are searching for by skill, gender, location, company name, Likes, etc. All really good information, and the crowd eats it up! Things are going really well for me.

2. “Um, I have a question?”  Here it comes.  You probably noticed it yourself in the line above. He said ‘gender’ didn’t he? You can’t do that mister!  I’m an HR lady. You can’t do that. Then she pulls out her HR lady badge.

3. I say, “Yeah, you can do that”, and pull out my HR Guy badge.

4. She says, “No you can not!” Like my Mom, but scarier. “If you use a program like The Facebook to recruit, you’re going to have ‘disparate impact‘!”

5. I’m a pro, I’ve been here before. So I start asking questions, like, “Do your hiring managers ever see your candidates?” Yes.  “What the difference if they see them as a candidate or as an interviewee?” Well. “If you have a hiring manager willing to discriminate, that isn’t a Facebook issue, that’s a manager issue, isn’t it?” Yes. “Do you have any set of demographics you would like to have more of in your organization, like female engineers, let’s just day?” Yes. “What are you really worried about when recruiting on Facebook?”  Silence.

We don’t try stuff, because trying stuff could cause change.  When I speak about things people haven’t tried, a very small group, no matter where I am, will immediately try to come up with reasons on why they shouldn’t try it.  Not why they should. Our initial reaction to change is to find reasons to not change.

It really has nothing to do with recruiting on Facebook.  Facebook’s own demographics will show almost a 50/50 gender mix. LinkedIn, admittedly, is heavily male dominated.  Do you recruit on LinkedIn?  Do you see pictures of potential candidates on LinkedIn?  Aren’t you, the HR department, the ones pulling potential candidates, who have been trained not to discriminate when it comes to hiring?  So, what’s really the issue?  You see, it breaks down very quickly.

We aren’t really concerned about disparate impact or being discriminatory, we concerned about this guy asking me to do something I’m not comfortable with.  I just like playing Farmville and watching so funny kitty videos on The Facebook.  Do make me feel like I should have to do work on there as well!

The problem we tend to have in HR is that we don’t find reasons to try stuff.  We are pros at finding reasons not to try stuff.  Find some reasons today to try stuff, you’ll be a better HR Pro because of it.