Category Archives: Interview

You Wish You Had Marissa Mayer As Your CEO!

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You know what I’ve learned in 20 years of being in HR?  It’s really hard to find a CEO that is worth a damn! Really hard!

To find a CEO who is willing to make tough calls, difficult changes and push an organization outside it’s comfort zone without caving to the pressure of the previous culture.  A CEO who is unrelenting in their beliefs of what it is going to take to make a difference for the organization they work for.  A CEO that demands better.

All you Yahoo haters – or should I say Marissa Mayer haters – can suck it!

Mayer was criticized publicly by almost everyone for wanting to hire better – from The Star:

Yahoo Inc. chief executive Marissa Mayer was asked at an all-staff meeting several weeks ago whether her rigorous hiring practices had caused the company to miss out on top engineering talent in Silicon Valley’s hyper-competitive job market.

Mayer dismissed the complaint that she had refused good candidates because they did not have degrees from prestigious universities, and instead she challenged her staff to get better at recruiting, according to an employee who was at the meeting.

“Why can’t we just be good at hiring?” Mayer said

Mayer didn’t say – “I only want engineering talent if they come from prestigious universities”, what she said was “I only want great engineering talent AND I want them from prestigious universities”.  She is raising the bar at Yahoo in terms of hires.  Which will raise the bar in performance at Yahoo.

Look, I hear you haters that believe you can find great talent at ‘B’ level schools and even great talent that didn’t even go to college!  I get it – I don’t disagree with you.  But when you’re trying to build a world class organization and culture – you need to draw some lines in the sand.  You need a vision.  You need, at some point, to be ‘exclusive’ – not ‘inclusive’.  To turn around an organizations culture, you need clear marching orders.  This is exactly what Mayer has done.  Which is very similar to other great leaders of our time.  I’m not saying Mayer is a great leader – but she is following a pattern of behavior which follows many great leaders of our generation. Great talent, with a clear vision, will help you get better.

I find it comical that anyone would ever criticize a CEO for sharing a vision of wanting to hire and attract world class talent from some of the best universities in the world. Who truly believes that is a bad plan? While it might not the plan you’ve chosen for your organization – I love the fact that Mayer is willing to come out and publicly state what Yahoo’s recruitment direction will be – it puts the entire organization on notice.  Kudos.

What say you Mayer haters?  Let me have it in the comments.

 

 

Why Hasn’t Paying Employees To Leave Caught On?

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Remember a few years back when Zappos, the darling of the HR world, announced it was offering new employees $1000 on their 90 day anniversary to Leave the company?  At the time that’s all HR people talked about – it was revolutionary – pretty soon every company would be paying their employees to leave.  What happened to that?  Zappos is still offering to pay employees to leave.  Is your company? Why not?

It hasn’t caught on because your leadership is afraid your good hires would actually take you up on your offer!

Of all the HR gimmicks Zappos does, offering employees at bonus at 90 days is the best one – because it puts everything on the table.  It’s the one thing they did that other companies are too afraid to steal!   When you go to an employee and say we need you to be all in – so – if you can’t be all in, here’s $1000 bill, all you have to do is leave.  That’s having true faith in your organization, your culture.  We only want people to work here – that really want to be here.  Many of say it, but 99.9% aren’t willing to back it up with an offer.

It hasn’t caught on, because your HR team is too weak!

Think about the HR person who takes that idea to the executive conference room.  They’re either really good at what they do, or crazy.  Because most leadership teams are not going to buy in on the initial idea.  To get an idea like that approved, you have to have executive buy in, in a major way.  You have to be able to sell it.  That person is not your average HR person. That’s an HR person willing to do thing different, willing to put their beliefs on the line.  Those kind of HR folks are the ones who get the corporate logo tattooed on their ass – and don’t even tell you about it.

It hasn’t caught on because the recession put people 2nd and business 1st. (Remember when your employees were 1st!)

In a down economy the importance of your workforce has taken a back seat.  It has.  Leadership and management training was almost non-existent, retention programs disappeared and work-life balance turned into get-your-ass-back-to-work balance.  That’s simple economics.  When your pool of labor far outreaches your needs, the employer holds more of the power.  This makes the exercise of giving people money to leave, seem a little silly.  First, people aren’t leaving because they have no where else to go. Second, if someone sucks, I’m getting rid of them because I have 100 others waiting to take their spot.

HR Pros discount this policy.  They say it’s meaningless. It wouldn’t make a difference in their environment.  They have a performance management process that gets rid of ‘those’ kinds of employees. The fact is, we are scared.  We are scared to go and do this because we know the truth.  That it would cause turnover, that would cause our systems and processes to be taxed.  We don’t have the resources to handle it.  We don’t have the leadership to handle it.  We don’t have the guts to try it.

It’s the single most brilliant thing that Zappos has done in the HR space, and you’re not doing it.

 

Better Performance Through Hanging Out with Ugly Coworkers

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Girls and guys both do this at the bar.  Want to look prettier?  Hang out with your ugly friends! Believe me, being a 5’7″ ginger, I’ve had my share of invitation from my better looking friends to hang out, knowing I was just a prop in their little scheme to look great.   Don’t feel bad for me, gingers are resilient, being the ugly prop has a ton of advantages – you can negotiate free drinks with your good looking friend, maybe even free dinner.  This is why I was so excited this week when Science finally validated what I’ve always known – The better looking you are, the better performance people will perceive you to have!

Check this out from the Time article, Guppies Use Ugly Friends to Seem More Attractive:

“An article published Wednesday by Britain’s Royal Society says that male guppies prefer to associate with their drab-colored counterparts when females are around.  Males actively choose the social context that maximizes their relative attractiveness,” the article said. Or, as lead author Clelia Gasparini put it, “If you are surrounded by ugly friends, you look better.”

Gasparini and her colleagues at Italy’s University of Padua built their theory on a kind of guppy dating game. An aquarium was set up with one female in partition on either end. Guppy bachelorette No. 1 had two attractive, brightly-colored males placed on either side of her. Guppy bachelorette No. 2 was stuck with uglier, drab-colored fish.

When a male guppy was put in the middle of the tank, and given the choice of which female to sidle up to, Bachelorette No. 2 was the more popular pick, with male guppies spending about 62 percent of their time hanging around her side of the aquarium.”

Science!
I know that no one who reads this blog would ever mistakenly give higher performance feedback versus that of their uglier peers!  My readers are Pros! They’re above this.  This begs the question, though, why is it executives, male and female, on average, are better looking and taller than their workforce on average?
Answer: We’re all stupid.  We like pretty things.  It’s why makeup is a multi-billion dollar industry.  It’s why we all want to date the prom queen. It’s how the fashion industry gets you to believe you need that new outfit.  We’re all lemmings.
We, deep down in our subconscious, believe that how someone looks, outwardly, speaks positively about how they perform (or will perform if we’re talking about selection).  We’ve heard it since we were kids from our parents and grandparents – “Oh, I like him, he’s ‘sharp'” or “Look the part”. Physical attractiveness =’s Better Performance, is one the hardest stereotypes you’ll ever face as an HR Pro – because it seems like a victimless crime.  What’s wrong with have a sharp looking, smart team!?  Nothing. But you’re selling yourself fools gold.  Physical attractiveness and High Performance do not correlate at all – Zero.
I will tell you, though, if you’re struggling with your performance, you’re probably hanging with a coworker peer group that is substantially better looking than you. Stop that.  Go find a whole bunch of ugly coworkers and start hanging with them.  It’s the cure for bad performance, guaranteed!

Are You Great At Faking It?

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In our zest to have high employee engagement, HR has once again outsmarted itself.  Follow the logic:

1. High Employee Engagement is a desired measure.

2. HR creates programs to drive Employee Engagement upwards.

3. Employee Engagement thresholds are reached with said programs.

4. HR needs more.

5. If we ensure every new hire comes in ‘loving’ their job/company/industry – we will ‘pre-buy’ some of the engagement measure.

6. Only hire people who ‘love’ our job/company/industry.

7. Candidates have brains.  “Oh, you only hire people who ‘love’ your job/company/industry”

8. Candidates now become really good at ‘faking’ their ‘love’ for your job/company/industry.

9.  Employees are smart to – “Oh, you mean if our ‘engagement’ score comes back higher, you’ll stop making us do these stupid team building exercises?”

10. Employees become really good at ‘faking’ it.

Being male, I was never good at faking it.  I’m Popeye – “I am, what I am, and that’s all I am”.   Fast Company had a solid post on why “Faking Enthusiasm” has become the latest job requirement. From the post:

“Timothy Noah wrote in The New Republic about how Pret A Manger requires its employees to master “Pret behaviors,” such as “has presence,” “creates a sense of fun,” and “is happy to be themself.” Yes–in order to sell you a bacon sandwich, employees must be fully self-actualized. And the amount that they touch fellow-employees is considered to be a positive indicator of sales, not a red flag for sexual-harassment lawsuits.”

It’s such a slippery slope.  Every action we take in leadership has consequences – some of which we know, some we don’t know until they happen.  The best leaders thoroughly try to anticipate these consequences their actions will create.   Requiring employees/candidates have high levels of enthusiasm might seem like a really great idea – but you better have authentic ways of measuring, or you’re just setting yourself up to fooled by those who ‘get’ the game.

Ultimately time and pressure always win out.  Given enough time and/or enough pressure an individuals true colors will show.  This is why it’s important to job requirements that are actually needed.  Authentic enthusiasm is not needed for high performers in most jobs.  Trying to hire for it can create some negative hiring scenarios when time and pressure take their tolls.  Is it great to have enthusiastic employees? Yep – it sure is.  I love being around those employees.  Do I set out to hire that ‘skill’ as a requirement – no – I have great even keel employees as well.  While I might not stop and interact with them as often – they are just as good as the enthusiastic ones.

Here’s what I know. If you’re hiring for a skill that can be faked – candidates will attempt to fake it, if they really want to work for your company.  How do you combat this – eliminate as much subjective stuff as you can from your selection process.  One other thing, if you do decide you need that high-energy personality, understand that personality just doesn’t come when you want it – it’s a person’s core – you get it all the time – there’s no light switch when you decide you’ve had enough.  I see hiring managers all the time that want a ‘certain personality’ – so we find it for them – only to have that same hiring manager come back 6 months later complaining it’s too much!

The Importance of ‘Dear John’ Letters

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Check out this great letter from Coach K to Michael Jordan, after Jordan told Coach K he was going to North Carolina:

Jordan letter

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Coach K gets it.  Yeah, Jordan went to North Carolina, won a national championship and became the greatest basketball player of all time.  But Coach K gets it!

Coach K understands what over half of HR and Talent Pros don’t get – in recruiting top talent – you never burn a bridge.  I’m sure he was upset about losing MJ to UNC – but he never let on that he was.  He sent a very cordial letter, complimenting him and wishing him well.  How many of you do that when a candidate turns you down?  My guess is – not many.  Better yet, how many actually have these letters coming from the hiring manager that interviewed the person, hand signed?  BETTER YET, how many of you have these letters coming from the CEO of your company, hand signed?

The world is a small place and you’re going to be on for a long time.  MJ respects Coach K, because Coach K treated him with respect and always left the door open.

People make mistakes all the time.  Candidates take jobs thinking its going to be great, and some times it turns out to awful.  Many of those folks believe, since they turned you down, and her nothing after – you were pissed.  So, they’ll never reach back out to you and say – “Hey, give me a second chance – this current place sucks!”  Takes about 33 seconds to send this letter out – could have years worth of payback.

 

 

To Be Honest, We Hate Analytics

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Don’t kid yourself – you hate analytics.  It wouldn’t be politically correct to say that you hate analytics, so you won’t.  That’s why I’m here.

You hate analytics because using them in your organization increases accountability.

Increased accountability = Increased stress.

Increased stress = Increased job dissatisfaction.

Increased job dissatisfaction = Increased Turnover.

You see the cycle, right?

So, who likes Analytics?  Bosses. Why?  Because they like having increased accountability on you.  It makes them feel all strategic and shit.   When analytics are used against you like a weapon – they suck.  Too many organizations are analytics as a weapon to judge your performance.  Leadership justifies this because ultimately they are held accountable to the ultimate analytic – the bottom line.  So, they feel you should be held accountable to.  We would like analytics better if they weren’t used to bash us over the head.  If they were used to help make us better, to help us improve, to help us understand.

Harvard Business Review had a great post on this subject: The Real Reason Organizations Resist Analytics by Michael Schrage

The evolving marriage of big data to analytics increasingly leads to a phenomenon I’d describe as “accountability creep” — the technocratic counterpart to military “mission creep.” The more data organizations gather from more sources and algorithmically analyze, the more individuals, managers and executives become accountable for any unpleasant surprises and/or inefficiencies that emerge.

For example, an Asia-based supply chain manager can discover that the remarkably inexpensive subassembly he’s successfully procured typically leads to the most complex, time-consuming and expensive in-field repairs. Of course, engineering design and test should be held accountable, but more sophisticated data-driven analytics makes the cost-driven, compliance-oriented supply chain employee culpable, as well.

This helps explain why, when working with organizations implementing big data initiatives and/or analytics, I’ve observed the most serious obstacles tend to have less to do with real quantitative or technical competence than perceived professional vulnerability. The more managements learn about what analytics might mean, the more they fear that the business benefits may be overshadowed by the risk of weakness, dysfunction and incompetence exposed.

I recall a very technical business acronym I was taught in my Master’s program called: CYA.  Be very careful with your big data initiatives because many turn into CYA projects.  If I can show these analytics – it will show why this major issue doesn’t have anything to do with my department, but everything to do with another department.  Days To Fill reports are filled with CYA.  “It’s the hiring managers not getting back to us in a timely matter to set up interviews – this is why are Days to Fill is so high.”

Accountability sucks – when it is happening to you.  It’s great when you’re holding someone to it. Big Data might be the biggest weapon you have in your tool box – be very careful who you point it at.

 

HR – It’s You or it’s Me

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I love ‘end of days’ type posts and articles.  The end of Job Boards!  The end of HR!  Here’s another one great one over at ERE by Dr. John Sullivan called: The End of Sourcing Is Near…, which talks about how eventually (in John’s opinion) most sourcing information will be readily available to almost everyone.  This makes really the only thing left to do in recruiting is to sell the candidate on your job and your organization.  Sullivan explains the importance of this very critical step in recruiting – the sell:

“Recruiting leaders should begin focusing on these selling aspects because, as previously stated, “finding” is becoming so easy, and there is little push for change in candidate assessment because most recruiters and hiring managers are comfortable with the existing process of assessing candidates through interviews.

Once you realize that the selling aspect of recruiting is almost universally under researched, underfunded, and it is almost always executed in an unscripted manner, you’ll see that it’s ripe for significant improvement and change. If you review the recruiting literature you will find very little written about the science of selling and the importance of using data-driven selling approaches within the recruiting function. The pressure is increasing on recruiting leaders to make a decision to shift resources away from sourcing by recruiters and toward the remaining big challenge: selling.”

Like most ‘end of days’ type posts, Sullivan’s end of sourcing post is probably a little over the top, but he makes a great point.  HR Pros don’t recruit well for one simple fact – HR Pros didn’t get into HR to sell – they got into HR to do HRy things like: build processes, improve processes, administer people practices within an organization, training, problem solving, etc.   They didn’t go – “Oh boy! I can’t wait to get into the Fortune 500 HR shop so I can sell our company like a a life insurance salesman trying to make quota!”

That’s where I come in.  I don’t hire HR pros to work in recruiting.  I don’t sell the recruiting position as an HR position.  I don’t go over to Michigan State’s HR program and speak to students about ‘getting their start’ in HR by coming to work for me.  99% of those folks, while great people, would fail in my environment.  They want to be in HR – Recruiting is not HR.  There in lies the problem for most HR shops.   Most HR folks – probably 70-80% – have to do some ‘recruiting’ in their organizations.  They don’t have a recruiting department or a sourcing group to do all the heavy lifting.  Most HR Managers, if they’re lucky, have a full time recruiter, but this still means, when it’s busy, they still have to recruit.

That’s why so many HR pros engage recruiting agencies.  We offer a skill set they don’t, necessarily, have on their staff.  We sell.  We sell the crap out of a position and your company.  We can make an average company look like the Best Place to Work and a really bad company look like the next big opportunity.  No power steering – No problem – manual steering builds up great arm muscles!  Want tinted windows?  Yeah, we can get those installed.  Recruiting is selling.  In fact, Recruiting is double selling.  You sell the candidate on the position, then you sell the hiring manager on the candidate.  Good recruiters can work in any industry – because selling skills are transferable to any product or service.

So – do you want your HR Pros to sell, or do you want me to sell?  By the way – I don’t hire HR Pros, I hire closers.

Let my company do some selling for you – let’s connect: sackett.tim@HRU-Tech.com; 517-908-3156 or @TimSackett.

 

How Does HR Think?

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I’m not sure how HR thinks.  I know how I think, and from what people tell me, I don’t think like a ‘normal’ HR person.  One thing I really like, though, is to see how other pros think.  I learn a lot from how maybe an engineer addresses an issue versus say how a Designer would address the same issue.  I like to take aspects of how other professionals think and incorporate those thought processes into how I think about HR.  I think this helps me solve HR issues in ways that the business can grasp onto better.

I found a cool article recently on how Designers think.  Here are some of the ways Designers think:

– “Design is not about solving problems.  It’s about making people happy. And there are always so many personalities and ideas to consider. So you’re trying to simplify it to its fundamental structure.” 

– “You have to understand when the timing is right for dialogue, and when its time to move the limits. Designers arrive at a company to move its limits.”

– “Try to pare things down. Very few moves do a lot.”

– “Unoriginal, ugly and cheap. Revolutionary, gorgeous and luxurious. These do not have to be contradictions.”

– “The idea of innovation as a structured process has been taken to the extreme, where it is no longer a really useful or robust concept. You’ve got to go about letting people take sensible risks.”

– “…Pain is temporary. Suck is forever.”

In HR, I tend to believe that most HR pros don’t believe they work in a creative function.  In reality what you create in HR speaks volumes about the culture you’re shaping in your work environment.  If HR lacks creativity – your work environment is going to lack creativity.  The rule setters need to show the organization that from time to time, we need to break the rules to get us to the next level.  Sensibly, but rule breaking nonetheless.  Breaking the rules is like ‘kryptonite’ to HR Pros.  It goes against our very being.  Most HR Pros pride themselves on being ‘the one’ part of the organization that actually follows the rules. “If we don’t do it, Tim, who will?”

I don’t know.  What I know is I like how designers think.  It seems like a thought process that opens my mind and gets me thinking about how I can make things better.  It’s a thought process that challenges me to rethink what I’m doing and why.  That seems like a good thing. I don’t want to suck.  I hear suck is forever.

 

 

Job Description Killers

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You know what position I would love to apply for!?  Jr. Human Resource Manager – said no one ever!

I hate spending 3 seconds on Job Descriptions – because JD’s just scream “Personnel Department” but I have to just take a few minutes to help out some of my HR brothers and sisters.  Recently, I came across a classic JD mistake when someone had posted an opening and then broadcasted it out to the world for a “Jr. Industrial Engineer”.  I almost cried.

Really!  No, Really!  “Jr.”  You actually took time, typed out the actual title and then thought to yourself – “Oh yeah! There’s an Industrial Engineer out there just waiting to become a ‘Jr. Industrial Engineer’!”  Don’t tell me you didn’t – because that’s exactly what it says.  “But Tim, you don’t understand – we’ve always called our less experienced Industrial Engineers, Junior, so we can differentiate them from our ‘Industrial Engineers’ and our ‘Sr. Industrial Engineers’.  What do you want us to to do, call them: Industrial Engineer I, Industrial Engineer II and Industrial Engineer III?”

No – I don’t want you to do that either.

Here’s what I want you to do.  I want you to title this position as “Lesser Paid Industrial Engineer” – you’ll get the same quality of responses!

You know how to solve this – but why you won’t – just have one pay band for “Industrial Engineer” – from $38K to $100K.  Pay the individuals within that band appropriately for their years of experience and education.  This is why you won’t do it.  Your ‘Sr.’ Compensation Manager knows you aren’t capable of handling this level of responsibility and within 24 months your entire Industrial Engineering staff would all be making $100K – Jr’s, Middles and Sr’s!

And please don’t make me explain how idiotic it looks when you list out your little number system on your post as well (Accountant I, Accountant II, etc.). Because you know there just might be an Accountant out there going – “Some day I just might be an Accountant II!” If SHRM actually did anything, I wish they would just go around to HR Pros who do this crap and visit their work place and personally cut up their PHR or SPHR certificates in front of them – like a maxed out credit card that gets flagged in the check out line.  That would be awesome!

All this does is make it look like you took a time machine in from a 1970 Personnel Department.

But, seriously, if you know of any Sr. Associate HR Manager III positions please let me know.

3 Ways Contract Staffing Fails

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Contract technical staffing is what I do for a living – so I know exactly where it falls down.  I spend every day trying to talk people into why they should use contract staffing and why it makes sense.  In 13 years of being in this business, I’ve never had anyone ask me why it doesn’t work.  That might be kind of odd.  Don’t get me wrong, I’ve talked to hundreds of corporate HR and Recruiting Pros who HATE contract staffing – but 99% don’t know why they hate it.  Most believe they hate contract staffing because it’s taking their job away.  Nothing makes me smile more than to hear a really good HR Pro say “if I hire your company ‘they’ll’ have no reason to keep me around”.  It makes me smile because I know they have no idea about what we do – and I can probably convince them to use our services!

To be honest, though, there are some reasons when contract staffing fails.  If you deal with contract staffing firms, you might find that shocking to hear, because we are trained from birth not to ever say anything negative about our service.  ‘Everyone’ can use us for any recruiting need you might have!  Well, no not really.  Let me give you 3 Ways Contract Staffing Fails:

1. To Attract your competitions talent when you are equal or trailing in market compensation.  I always like to say there is no one I can’t recruit.  Given enough time and money – I could get President Obama to quit the Presidency.  But if you think a contract staffing firm is going to get your competitions best developer to leave their direct job for a contract job, for the same money or less – you’re crazy.

2. When you fall in love with the talent.  Every once in a while I a client who gets upset.  They bring on a high priced contractor, that person does great work, and the client falls in love and wants to hire them.  The problem is many contractors are contractors because they like moving from project to project.  They like you, they just don’t like-like you.  Contract staffing works really well when it’s a win-win. We have a project, you nail project – we both got what we wanted.  It fails when one party falls in love, and the other doesn’t feel the same!

3. When You Think I’m Magical. Recruiting is recruiting.  I don’t have a magical stable of candidates waiting to come to work for you. Well, I might have one or two, but not a stable. When you tell me you need something – I, usually, have to go out and find the right talent, fit, etc.  Just like you would, if you were looking to hire a direct position.  I’m not magic, I’m just good at finding technical talent.  There’s a difference.

I get why some new clients get put off by contract staffing.  I call you, tell you how amazing we are and how good we are at what we do and then you expect I’m going to have 5 perfectly screened ready to work Controls Engineers in your inbox the next morning – when you’ve been searching for 6 months and don’t have one.  Expectations are a huge issue we all face in recruiting – no matter what kind of recruiting we do.  I have to manage my clients expectations, just like you have to manage your hiring managers expectations.  Contract staffing works really well when you find a partner that makes sure your expectations and their deliverables all line up.

Want to discuss?  Contact me: sackett.tim@HRU-TECH.com, 517-908-3156 or send me a tweet @TimSackett.   I promise to under promise and over deliver.