Category Archives: influence

Tim Sackett, Best Life Coach Ever!

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I believe the concept of ‘Life Coach’ is the biggest con anyone has been able to pull off in the history of mankind.  That being said I personally know some folks who love having a life coach (#WhitePeopleProbs).  I do like the concept of ‘Business Coaches’ or ‘Leadership Coaches’, I see those things a bit differently based on what I see in organizations.  Two unique things happen in organizations that make the concept of Business Coach more viable:

1. We promote our best workers to managers.

2. Leaders are put on an island with no one to confide in.

Both ideas above are systematically flawed.  Just because you’re the ‘best’ worker doesn’t make you a good manager.  You might be, but you also might be a colossal failure.  Being in a senior leader’s role, and giving you no one to really be able to be honest, also has bad consequences.   A business coach can help both sides succeed, where normal organizational training fails.

You can give new managers all kinds of training, but there comes a time when one-on-one, let’s walk through a specific scenario you are having, just works better for learning and development of that person.   Also, a leader needs to get ideas out of their head to someone they trust will give them good and honest feedback about how freaking crazy they are!   Subordinates won’t do this, and peers might use it against them to position themselves for the next move.

I’m a big fan of Business Coaches.  I think organizations underutilize this approach because it seems expensive.  The reality is, it’s usually a billable hour or two per month, to ensure you have well functioning leadership.  That total cost might be $5000 per year.  I’m really hoping any manager or leader you have brings in exponentially much more profit than $5000 per year!

Which leads me to Tim Sackett, Life Coach.

I could be a life coach.  I have a feeling it would go a little like this:

Mark, Life Coachee: “Hey, Tim great to talk to you, just wanted to dive right into a problem I’m having, is that okay?”

Tim Sackett, Life Coach: “No, it’s not okay. That your problem Mark, you’re always thinking about you!  What about me and my freaking problems!”

Mark: “Uh, sorry. But I thought I’m paying you to help me on my stuff.”

Tim: “No, you’re paying me because I’m smart and have my shit together, and you can’t figure out how to manage your own daily simple life.”

Mark: “I don’t think this is what I expected.”

Tim: “Yes it is. That’s your problem Mark, you think too much.  You’re now paying me to do your thinking.”

Mark: “Okay, I’ll play along and see where this is going.”

Tim: “Mark here’s what ‘we’ are going to do. First, you’re getting your butt up each day and you’re going to work. Second, you’re going to stop whining about your life. Third, you’re going to go home and be an active part of your family life, and stop acting like you should be able to have a family and still act like you’re in college, you’re not.”

Mark: “But you don’t understand, I work in a stressful job!”

Tim: “Shut up, you’re an accountant. Stress is not knowing where you’re sleeping tonight because you don’t have a place to live.  You don’t have stress, you have normal.”

I have a strong feeling my ‘Life Coaching’ sessions would only go one session, and everyone would be fixed, so I’m going to have to figure out that pricing model.  If you want to set up an appointment, just hit me in the comments and we can get that set up immediately, I take PayPal!

 

Where Does Retention Start?

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The biggest thing in HR and TA in 2016 will be retaining your employees. Not just top talent, but that middle of the road, shows up every day, glue type talent.  Retention is a concept that most HR and TA pros haven’t had to worry about this for a long time, but it’s quickly the hottest issue facing most organizations.

My question is, where does retention start?

My friend Laurie Ruettimann and Dawn Burke talked about this on Dawn’s FOT Videocast ‘No Scrubs‘ earlier this month. Laurie’s opinion is that retention starts at the Orientation. Solid theory for sure. You want to catch them day one and start retaining them from the start.

What Laurie knows, is that most organizations don’t start retaining employees until it’s too late. You know, when you find out that the person is out interviewing with your competition! Or when you find their resume on CareerBuilder, or see that they recently updated their LI profile, or when they turn in their two weeks notice!

I tend to believe that retention, at its core, starts with selection.  Hire people who actually want to work for your company, and crazy as it sounds, they tend to stay around longer!  Most turnover happens because of poor organizational, or positional, fit. Hire people who have a strong desire to work for your company, specifically, and retention tends to take care of itself.

So, if retention starts so early, regardless if Laurie or I are correct, why do organizations still wait so long to address it?

I think organizations are still under the belief that employees leave organizations because they hate their boss.  We’ve allowed this thought to percolate for a decade and its now become fact.  This is one small aspect of turnover, but I tend to believe now that most employees expect and deal with bad bosses fairly well.

The problem with focusing retention efforts so late in the process is that it’s, well, too little, too late!

Another piece to this retention dilemma is that HR doesn’t really believe they own it, and I tend to agree with this theory. The reality is the direct supervisor should have a better handle on retention. It should be a measure that all first-line leaders are held accountable to. Therein lies the real problem. We all take some responsibility for retention, but no ownership!

It’s the classic house on fire analogy. One person sees a house on fire and they do all they can to help. Ten people see a house on fire, and they all watch, believing someone else will do something about it. Your organizational retention is a house fire. To stop it, one person, one group needs to own it, measure it, make it public, ensure everyone sees the fire burning.

I’m not sure, exactly, when retention starts, but I always know how it will end.  With you posting a job and refilling a position, you already had filled…

Millennials Are Buying Your B.S. Employment Branding

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I’m a huge fan of Malcolm Gladwell and he recently said some things to say at a data analytics conference in Seattle. He had a number of points but one that interested me most was him discussing the trust levels between younger people today, versus older people in the baby boomer range. Here are his comments:

“Data can tell us about the immediate environment of people’s attitudes, but not much about the environment in which they were formed,” he said. “So which is right? Do people not trust others, as the polls say … or are they lying to the surveys?”

The context helps, Gladwell said.

That context is a massive shift in American society over the past few decades: a huge reduction in violent crime. For example, New York City had over 2,000 murders in 1990. Last year it was 300. In the same time frame, the overall violent crime index has gone down from 2,500 per 100,000 people to 500.

“That means that there is an entire generation of people growing up today not just with Internet and mobile phones … but also growing up who have never known on a personal, visceral level what crime is,” Gladwell said.

Baby boomers, who had very personal experiences of crime, were given powerful evidence that they should not trust. The following generations are reverting to what psychologists call “default truth.” In other words, they assume that when someone says something, it’s true … until they see evidence to the contrary.

“I think millennials are very trusting,” Gladwell said. “And when they say they’re not … they’re bullshitting.”

Why should you care about this?

Employment branding is marketing.  In HR we get so concerned about making sure what we say is the honest to G*d truth and nothing but the truth. We can’t tell a candidate we ‘rock’ when we really don’t ‘rock’. Guess what?  You can. Guess what else?  They’ll believe it.

Why?  Because the younger people today are a trusting lot.  They’re already a bit naive based on their age and lack of experiences. Add this to what Malcolm says above and they are ripe to be picked off.  Is that fair? No, probably not.  But, hey, as my good friend Kris Dunn loves to quote from Jerry Maguire, “this is show friends, this is show business”.

Tell the story you want. People will listen.  And skip the comments, I know this strategy is fraught with issues.  The truth is, it doesn’t matter. The difference between great employers and average employers just isn’t that great in candidates eyes.

Unreasonable Expectations Killed Talent Acquisition

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The worst thing that ever happened in the history of Talent Acquisition was the phrase, “We only hire the best talent”.

In the 1980s, I suspect, or somewhere in the past, some lame CEO said this phrase.  Talent Acquisition has forever since been cursed to live up to this expectation.  You never will, for a number of reasons.

First, what the hell is “best talent”, really? You don’t truly know. No one does.  Do we mean the actual number one rated best talent? Or, do we mean just the best talent at the time we hire? Or, do we mean the best talent that will actually accept a job at our crappy company?!  I think the CEO believes it’s the actual number rated best talent, which means she is an idiot that has no concept of what she is talking about.

Second, do you even know who your own ‘best talent’ is in your organization?  Because to hire ‘best talent’ it will mean you need to hire people better than what you already have, which means you better know who the best is in your own barn!  Most of us struggle with this one as well, because we measure ‘best’ on a number of factors, which usually don’t align to what our executives feel is best.

Third, are you sure you even want ‘best talent’ in the first place?  Best talent can be a major pain in the ass! I’m willing to put up some of that best talent ass pain, but I don’t want an organization full of it.  I want to build a fantasy team at my organization. Folks who are great at certain roles, surrounded by other who are great at other roles, all knowing how their skills support each other, to make the whole better!  The last thing I need is a team with five Michael Jordans. There aren’t enough shots to keep that team happy!

We only hire the best talent is the single biggest line of B.S. that is said by executives of organizations and by TA leaders.  What they usually mean to say is:

“We only hire the best available talent at the time we have an opening, of those who actually applied to the job, and who are willing to accept the at market pay and benefits we offer!”

But, that message doesn’t look good on a career site!

If you’re in Talent Acquisition and you feel like you never measure up to your executive teams expectations, I would bet your executives probably think you only hire the best talent!  Don’t get down, the tide is turning.  Sharp TA leaders are already changing this narrative to bring some reality back to the conversation.

 

 

The Starting Point of a Great Recruiting Practice

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I love to taking a look back at great things and trying to determine that one point in time where the path to greatness was started.  It happens all the time in sports with teams. It’s usually a great hire of a visionary coach or a draft pick of some player who ends up being an all-time great. You almost always point to an exact time and place when the path to becoming great started.

You can do this with organizations as well. When did Apple make that turn from just being that educational Apple II computer company selling to schools, to the company they are today? The rehire of Steve Jobs? The launch of a certain product.

It’s more difficult when it comes to individual departments within an organization. When I hear about a great recruiting practice, I always wonder how did they become great, but also what started them on the path to greatness.  I always ask the person who is probably most responsible. Rarely does this person ever really have an answer.

The starting point of a great recruiting practice is always going to be different for each organization, but they all have one thing in common. Great recruiting practices all started with one person deciding they were going to make a change.  They didn’t even start out believing they were going to be great, but they knew something had to change to start making it better.

The starting point of a great recruiting practice is making the decision that the status quo will no longer be something that is acceptable. A great recruiting practice comes from the interactions of people who seek to make a change.

10 Solutions to Your Worst HR and TA Headaches!

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CareerBuilder did a funny thing at their booth at the HR Tech Conference this year and had people vote on their worst HR and TA headaches. CB then had a running total scoreboard on which headaches were the worst.  Kris Dunn and I loved the idea and we are putting on a webinar next Tuesday, sponsored by our friends at CareerBuilder, called, “Why Can’t All My Recruiting Tools Get Along?!” – which is one of our biggest TA headaches!

In this webinar, you’ll get our Top 10 HR and TA Headaches, but also the solutions to those headaches!  Basically, KD and I will give you are secret headache solutions!  Here are some the headaches we’ll be discussing:

  • “My hiring managers won’t give me feedback on candidates!” 
  • “I can’t get 100% of my employees to complete our mandatory training!?”
  • “We just had another candidate no call – no show! Our we allowed to shoot them?!” 
  • “Hey, Recruiter Tim, I ‘really’ like the candidate you sent me, but can I see just a few more?!” 
  • “I know I told you I would accept $75K for the job, but I really meant to say $90K!” 
  • And many, many more!

Do you need an aspirin? I do.

But, don’t fret, Kris and I will give you our guaranteed migraine knockout solutions, and none of which include you having to hire a hitman to ‘take care’ of business for you!  This webinar will be fun and lively, but like everything we do, also give you some real practical ideas and advice on helping you solve your worst HR and TA headaches!

WHEN:  Tuesday, November 3rd

TIME:  1 pm EST

WHERE: CLICK HERE! 

Does Buying Sex Go Too Far In Getting The Best Talent?

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Louisville’s basketball program is under fire because of recent allegations by former recruits and players who claim that Louisville paid for strippers to entertain them on recruiting visits, that included paid sex.  From ESPN:

“Five former University of Louisville basketball players and recruits told Outside the Lines that they attended parties at a campus dorm from 2010 to 2014 that included strippers paid for by the team’s former graduate assistant coach, Andre McGee.

One of the former players said he had sex with a dancer after McGee paid her. Each of the players and recruits attended different parties at Billy Minardi Hall, where dancers, many of whom stripped naked, were present. Three of the five players said they attended parties as recruits and also when they played for Louisville.

Said one of the recruits, who ultimately signed to play elsewhere: “I knew they weren’t college girls. It was crazy. It was like I was in a strip club.”

Before you come down on Louisville, the reality is, this is probably happening at many institutions. Jalen Rose, former NBA player, University of Michigan Fab 5 and ESPN Commentator, also said his recruiting visits to UofM, MSU, Syracuse and UNLV were like bachelor parties and all included having sex and alcohol.

I think most of us would completely agree that taking seventeen and eighteen-year-old boys onto a college campus for this type of activity is wrong.

My question is where does recruiting cross the line when it comes to adults and working for your company?

I can’t imagine ever ‘paying for sex’ for a recruit, since it’s mostly illegal, unless you’re in certain counties in Nevada.  I also can’t imagine providing drugs to potential recruits for any company I might work for, but then you see what’s going on in Colorado and Oregon.

I think you cross the line in how you recruit when you cross the line of your moral makeup of the majority of your employees and stakeholders. Some companies are very comfortable taking recruits out to bars and getting drunk. Many companies can’t even fathom that kind of behavior!

But, doesn’t wining and dining have a place in professional recruitment?  If you could get a great software developer, one that might cost you a $25K headhunting fee, doesn’t it make sense to drop a few hundred dollars on a potential candidate?   It certainly does, if you know who your best candidates are!

That’s the problem, right?  Many of us don’t know ‘better’ talent when we see it.  So, giving out hundreds of dollars in recruiting swag doesn’t work when you give it out to everyone!  It only works when you give it to the best.  Then, it also doesn’t work every time. It’s like the famous line from Anchorman, “60% of the time, it works every time!”

Louisville didn’t get every recruit who they paid hookers to have sex with them, but they landed some of those recruits.

Buying Beats headphones with your logo and sending them to software developers won’t land everyone you send them to, but it will attract some to take that next step.  Those cost $199.  Is hiring great talent worth $199?  Oh, hell, yes it is!  But, no one is sending Beats to software developers.

I’ve always said that college athletics is always on the forefront of what true recruiting is.  Highly sought after talent. Hard to attract to your organization. They find ways to make the best candidates feel extremely special. This is way beyond candidate experience. This is closing.

Paying for sex goes beyond what I’m willing to do, to get the best talent to come and work for me.  But, I’m willing to do alot of other stuff to attract the best talent! What about you?

New for 2016 – Organizational Micro-Cultures

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It’s actually not new, it’s been around since Culture, we just kind of ignored it.

It’s similar in concept to Micro and Macro Economics.  Big and Little.  In terms of culture, it’s the main reason changing your overall company culture is so hard. You don’t just have one company culture, you actually have tens, hundreds, thousands of cultures, that make up your big over culture.

The problem we are having advancing our company culture is we keep doing it top-down. Get the guy with gray hair, or the lady with the navy blue pant suit, to tell us his/her vision and we’ll shove that culture down everyone’s’ throat and tell them what our culture is now.

Obviously, this doesn’t work, but we don’t know of another way, so let’s keep trying, it will work eventually, right?

Take all these functions, divisions, departments, regions, subsidiaries, locations, mergers and acquisitions, etc. and let’s tell them what their culture will be now. Until we have new leadership, than we’ll just do this all over again.

The reality is you don’t have ‘a’ culture. You have many cultures. HR has a different culture than IT. Albuquerque has a different culture than New York. Manufacturing has a different culture than Sales.

These microcultures added up, make your company culture.  It’s not top-down, it’s bottom-up.

So, what can we do?

You need to get down to the lowest level of leadership that you can. The frontline leaders of your organization are the ones creating your organization’s microcultures.  These are the people ultimately responsible for your overall organization’s culture. Your CEO is a puppet to this process.

To influence these microcultures you need to start planting seeds at the frontline leader level. Don’t worry about even driving this down from the top. Skip the C-suite, skip the SVPs, skip the VPs, skip the Directors, skip the managers, go right to the supervisors. You know the folks, the ones doing the work. The ones who have 8-15 direct reports they see everyday, talk with everyday, work side by side, everyday.

The builders of culture in your organization are not executives and they are not HR.  Executives and HR are framers. The builders are your frontline leaders. 90% of your time and resources spent on building culture need to be spent at this frontline level.

It’s not easy. When you get down at that level, you’ll see what your organization is really about. Most of your executives will disagree with what they see, and not believe this is your actual culture.  That is very typical of most organizations. Executives and HR are the worse at creating and judging culture, because they’ve drink the koolaid.

Influence culture from the bottom, not the top.

Your CEO is a Better Recruiter Than You

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Lou Adler, a great thought leader in the recruiting industry (I love to refer to him as “Uncle Lou” – endearingly), has one of the best recruiting articles of the year up on Inc. titled, “An Open Email from a CEO to All Outstanding Candidates“.   The concept of the email was getting your CEO to send out an email directly to candidates you are trying to source.

Just that idea alone is a brilliant strategy, because 99.9% of organizations will never do it!  That means, you’ll standout from the crowd. That’s good recruiting practices.

The article goes on to give you how you should actually write the email and what you should say:

1. No silly, classic job descriptions.  Instead tell them about what they’ll actually be doing.

2. Describe why the job could be a career move to the candidate.  They’ll believe this from coming from the CEO.

3. Don’t tell them to apply. That can actually be the last step. Get them interested first. Applications scream we have no idea what we are doing.

4. Provide an open invitation and a direct way to have a real conversation with someone with direct knowledge of the opening.

5. Let them know what the process would look like and next steps, if they are actually interested in moving forward.

6. Make sure the candidates have access to your hiring managers as well.  I’m assuming if your CEO is this involved, your hiring managers will be onboard as well!

Great stuff, right?!

It probably doesn’t work for high volume hiring when you have a lot of candidates. This isn’t meant for that, it’s meant for hard to find, critical to the business type positions.

I absolutely love this technique!

Here’s what I know. Most companies, and most CEOs, will never do this. Those who do, will have great success in getting candidates to respond. Put yourself into your candidates shoes. You’re sitting there some idle Friday and an email pops up from a name you don’t recognize. You open it and find out it’s coming from the CEO of a pretty good company in town. You better believe you’ll read it.

You will also ‘trust’ what is in that email, over if the exact same thing is sent by a recruiter. Why?  You believe that a CEO would never put themselves in a position to lie.  Right or wrong, you believe this. Plus, you’re flattered that a CEO sent you a personal email, not some marketing email, from their ‘real’ work email address, with their contact information in it.

None of your friends have gotten an email from a CEO telling them they are wanted! This is cool. This feels good. This feels different.

This is a winning strategy.

Thanks Uncle Lou!

5 Tips for Creating a More Human Workplace #WorkHuman

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Better Than Robots: Why Your Employees Deserve a More Human Workplace

This is a Free Webinar sponsored by Globoforce – Register Here – Wednesday, October 14th at 2 p.m. ET | 11 a.m. PT | 1 p.m. CT | 6 p.m. GMT

This is going to be fun! We won’t be coming to live from my Camry, but we will be Live! Just two HR guys sharing the tips and tricks on making your workplace and environment more human!

Admit it. Life would be a lot easier if our employees were robots. They’d be more predictable, and a heck of a lot more manageable. As we seek to gain more and more big data in HCM it seems like that’s exactly what we’re trying to do. Measure and manage our cultures into a robot paradise. But that way lies danger. It is the humanity in our employees that provides the creativity, the innovation and the heart that makes our businesses really succeed.

We’re in the ‘real’ people business, and our employees need a real human workplace and culture to thrive and prosper. This webinar will give you the insight to what works and what doesn’t, and help you reimagine the concept of work-life balance.

You will learn:

  • 5 tips for creating a more human workplacGloboforce
  • A case study of how one company built a better culture
  • HR “best practices” that actually hurt workplace culture

 

What else will you get? 

Kris Dunn is coming on to talk about how he and his team are building a more human workplace at his company Kinetix.  Get some great insight and tips from Kris on how you can begin building this in your own workplace as well! The Kinetix team has one of the best cultures around, and you’ll want to hear how they’ve built from the ground up.

This isn’t your normal webinar. This is real advice, brought to you by real practitioners, letting you know what works and what doesn’t!

Register Today!