Category Archives: IT Staffing

Are You Reliable or Flashy?

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I’m going to put this into a car analogy.  Reliable is a Honda Accord or a Toyota Camry.  Flashy is a Chevy Camaro or a Dodge Charger.  You really can’t be both. In the auto world the closest thing to being both is a Tesla, and most people can’t afford one of those!

You either lean one way or the other.  If you want flashy, you are comfortable with the fact you might not get to work every day, because those cars tend to break down more often.  If you want reliability, you probably aren’t turning any heads, but when you turn your key that engine is starting every time.

I find most people select people like they select cars.  You are biased one way or the other, and find most people biased towards ‘flash’.  They like the good looking people and the smooth talkers.  Damn the results.  That person made me turn my head! They must be ‘good’.  Therein lies one of the major problem we have.  Looking good has absolutely nothing to do with being good.

People look at that new Audi A8 and believe because it looks awesome, it must be awesome.  Do a little research and it becomes a bust of a buy, because it constantly breaks down and has problems.  They look at a Subaru Forester and think ‘boring’! Until they realize that thing will still be running well after you retire.

So, what I’m saying is people are basically cars, minus the extended warranty!

I tend to lean reliable.  It’s not that I don’t like pretty people who speak well.  I really do.  But I really love people who come to work every day and bust ass.  You can be both, you can be a Tesla, but let’s face it, most of us can’t afford that talent!   We make offers to Camrys.  No one pins up photos of Camrys in their bedrooms as a kid.

It’s just so easy to get sucked into flashy.  They’re all bright and shiny, and smell good, and you feel better about them representing your brand, that is until they completely screw something up.   Then you’re out there trying to explain why you hired them to begin with, knowing you can’t say the truth. “Well, have you looked at him!?  He’s gorgeous! How could we not hire him.”

So, the question to you HR and Talent Pros – are you a Toyota Camry buyer or a Chrysler 200/Dodge Avenger buyer? Same exact price point, one is a considerably better buy than the other.

 

I’m Hiring! Are you sure you want to work for me?

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Okay, I’m adding a Recruiter to my team.  At hru-tech.com, we do mostly engineering and IT contract recruiting, some direct placement recruiting and some project RPO work for clients around the country.

I would put my team up against anyone.  They’re that good, and most are homegrown!  That’s right, the majority of our staff came in entry level and we smacked off that new car smell like an old bag of Taco Bell that’s been sitting in your back seat for three weeks in the summer.

I started looking around and getting the word out a couple days ago.  You would think it would be easy.  I don’t really ask for a lot, but I sure know it when I ‘hear’ it!   Recruiting is a pretty good gig.  It’s transferable. I’ve worked in 5 different states, 4 different industries and my recruiting skills I can take with me anywhere.  It’s the one thing I can guarantee you if you come work for me. You’ll always be able to find a job and make money.  Every economy needs good recruiters.

The pay is way better than your normal crappy sales jobs selling cell phones or renting cars to people that bring in their phone bill and a report card. The hours are pretty good. No weekends. A few nights here and there.  You get to interact with a great group of people. The latest and greatest recruiting tools.

What’s crazy to me is how hard it is to find people who want to do this job, and that can be good at it!  I like for people to have a four-year degree.  The actual degree isn’t as important, as the process of gaining that degree.  I find those who worked their way through college, tend to be better recruiters.  Bartenders might be the best previous job if I was forced to pick one. Any kind of job that had you on the phone talking to people would be second.

There’s also a need for people who don’t freak out when they are held accountable for results.  That eliminates most people who want to work in government or big companies.  My recruiters don’t sit around and wait to get paid.  So, self-motivation is important, as long as it’s targeted in the right direction.

Work-life balance is really important to me.  Hold on, let me define work-life balance.  Work-life balance is when you do enough work that I pay you so you can have things and do things you want to do.  It’s not you doing whatever you want at any time you feel.  That’s not balance.  Balance means equal both ways, work and life.

We aren’t saving the world.  For some people that’s really important.  We do find people some really, really good jobs.  Some people find that cool and rewarding.

I care about you as a person, and I want to see you be wildly successful.  I’ll treat you like family. The family that you actually like, not the ones you try to forget about.

The position is in Lansing, MI. No, you can’t work remote or virtual or on a boat, unless the boat is in the parking lot of our building, then you can work on a boat.

So, if you’re interested send me a note – sackett.tim@hru-tech.com.  

If you are interested, and I don’t think you’re a fit, I will actually tell you why I don’t think you’re fit.  Some people like that. Some people think they’ll like that.  Some people don’t like that at all!

Recruiters! Conferences Don’t Care About You!

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I’m down at ERE’s Fall Conference in Chicago this week.  It’s a conference designed for Talent Acquistion leaders (FYI – they don’t like to be called ‘Recruiters’).  It’s really cool the folks at ERE do a great job putting together great content and work to push the role of Talent Acquisition forward in organizations around the world.

HR Tech also does a great job for HR folks looking for HR Tech.  So does Sourcecon, for people wanting to be better sourcers.  So does TLNT’s Transform for HR leaders. Heck, even SHRM National has some great content.

Besides ERE, though, where does a TA leader or Recruiter go to keep up on their industry. To get better. To challenge and measure themselves and their organizations to get better?  No where, that’s where.

ERE does a fall and spring national conference.  If you don’t have the budget for a national conference, usually $1-2,000 to attend, plus travel which usually doubles the cost, you’re screwed when it comes to getting really good recruiting content.

SHRM has both local and state opportunities for HR Pros to get further development and expand their knowledge base.  Do you have a local recruiting organization or a state recruiting organization that will offer this to you?  Most likely No, unless you live in D.C. (RecruitDC) or Minnesota (Hello Paul!).

It’s crazy when you really stop and think about it.  Almost no where are we really leveraging the minds and the dollars to bring these people together at a state or local level.

I’m in Michigan.  I know right now I could put two days of content together, leverage some awesome Recruiting talent from around the world to come in and speak, and get 250-500 Recruiting/Talent Acquisition Pros from Michigan to attend at $400-500 each.  That’s anywhere from $100-250K just in conference fees, not including probably another $100-200K in sponsors. So, some company isn’t interested in $400-500K!?

Southeast Michigan is begging for technical talent. Organizations would spend the money to spend their TA teams to something like this.  All across the country many areas are hurting for talent and willing to invest (a little) to get their recruiting teams better.  But, most are not willing to have those same teams travel across the country at the price tag of $3,000 each for the same content.

Build it and they will come…just don’t build it too far away!

I see this work on the HR front.  Monthly local SHRM meetings will get 50-100 participants at $50 per meeting for lunch and one hour of content! State conferences give you a day and half of content for $500-750, and most of that is vendors trying to sell you crap.

It just seems insane to me that someone who actually does conference planning for living can’t figure out how to leverage the largest 25 metro areas and put together a calendar of ‘local’ level recruiting conferences.

Like I said, ERE does a good job nationally, their just leaving about 90% of the money that is available out there locally on the table.

Job Descriptions are Just Commercials for Jobs

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Only Employment Lawyers and HR Pros from 1990 believe that Job Descriptions are important legal-type documents that are still needed in 2014.   Most companies have given up on job descriptions (JDs).  At best you’ll find them, today, using ones from back in 1990 when people thought writing JDs was an important part of human resources.  You’ll still find a few HR Tech vendors around trying to make you believe this is an important skill to have.

Our reality, though, is that JDs are really just a marketing tool to get you interested in a position and company. Nothing more, nothing less.

If this is true, 99% of companies are failing at JDs in a major way!

The other 1% are using titles like “Ninja Developer” and think they’ve gotten it solved.  The problem we all share is that we haven’t let marketing just take this part of our business over. It’s a legacy thing.  Somehow we believe only people in HR can write job descriptions.  It’s that ‘legal’ thing again.  We need to make sure we put “EOE” on the bottom, and you know you can’t trust marketing to do that!

Last week a Facebook group I’m in shared the following employment branding commercial:

I know, this isn’t a job description, but do you really think the JDs at Kixeye look like your JDs?  No, they don’t!

I know. I know. Your company can’t do something like this.  You’re probably right.  But you can do something that is more like you. More authentic.  More real. More, well, you.

That’s the problem with your JDs.  They aren’t you.  In fact, I would argue they aren’t anyone!

Your JDs, most JDs, are just a boring list of job requirements, that may not actually be required, and skills needed to do the job, that may not actually be needed to do the job.  Job descriptions have turned into those things most companies are embarrassed to even show you.  Weekly, I have conversations with companies that will either say they don’t have a job description, or the job description is old and updated, or just flat out ask me to help right them a new one!

It’s time HR gave up the job description business and handed it over to marketing where it belongs.

 

Is Your Recruiting Department Racist?

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At one point in my career, over a decade ago, I was working with a company where we hired a high percentage of foreign born applicants based on the technical skill set they had.  Many of the names of these applicants were extremely hard to enunciate.  Most of the hiring managers I worked with would spell the names out or say “the guy that worked at…” A few would try and say the names and butcher them badly.

Internally, in our recruiting department, we would ‘joke’ about asking these candidates to change their name to something it was easier for the managers to say, ‘Joe’ or ‘Charlie’ for instance.  Deep down we knew we had some managers who would be more willing to interview if the name came across as ‘Joe Vishay’ or ‘Charie Xjang’.  The manager would assume that because the candidate ‘choose’ an American name they must have better English skills.

It’s racism at a strange level.  You want to hire the person, but you feel because you can’t say their name, they must not be worthy.

Check out this video –

This Man Changed His Name From Jose To Joe And… by buzzfeedvideo

I know if I asked 100 HR and Talent Pros if they were ‘racist’, 100 would say they were not.  But, at a certain level we are.  We won’t interview Jose, but we’ll interview Joe. You won’t interview Marcus, but you’ll interview Mark.  My hiring manager wouldn’t interview “Arjun” but he would interview “Al”.

How do you stop this?

Hire Jose and Marcus and Arjun to do the hiring. That’s a start, at least.  Call out those hiring managers who continue to not want to interview qualified candidates because they can’t pronounce the name of the candidate.  You know who they are.

Also, educate your hiring managers, and give them the phonetic spelling of the candidates name.  Let your hiring managers know the pride they feel about their own surnames is shared by cultures all over the world.  I’m proud to be a “Sackett”. I get asked almost monthly by someone if I’m related to the Louis L’amour ‘Sackett’s’, and rarely do I point out those were fictional books!

Take the names off all your resumes you send to managers, as a ‘test’, and replace the name with a code number.  Did it make a difference in who they chose to interview? It’s a great inclusion exercise to have with your leadership team.

No one ever wants to admit they are racist.  The truth sometimes is very sobering.  This isn’t about blame, this is about fixing what’s wrong. Great leadership teams will understand this.

Would You Sell Your Backup Candidates?

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Here’s the staffing game has taught me over the past 20 years.

1. Great candidates get hired.

2. The difference between a great candidate and a very good candidate is one hiring managers gut feeling (usually).

3. The very good candidate that didn’t get hired, is someone elses great candidate.

This means that many of you are just sitting on another organizations great candidate!  This means you’re sitting on something very valuable to someone else.  Something that others would probably pay for.

Question:

Would you be willing to pay to have access to Google’s ATS?

Yes.  Yes you would.  More than you pay for LinkedIn Recruiter, I’d gamble!

This begs the question: would you be willing to sell your backup candidates?  The ones you didn’t hire, but would have if your first choice didn’t accept.

So, what if your organization, your talent acquisition department, decided to start calling up other organizations that you know of who had similar needs and say, “Hey, we got what you want!”   Do you think you could turn your corporate in-house talent acquisition department into a money maker?  Yes. Yes, you could.  Will you?  No.

It really wouldn’t take much.  Within your staffing process you add a little disclaimer, you know the ones nobody reads, which gives you freedom to ‘sell’ the contact information to those submitting for your jobs to other companies who are also looking for similar talent.  From there you establish some relationships with other companies.  Negotiate a price.  Sign some simple agreements. When communicating with your backups about not getting the position, you pass along some good news. While they didn’t get the job they applied for, you have another position, with another company they might have interest in.

Bam!  You’re printing money.

Very little extra effort, and almost no extra resources needed.  Your talent acquisition department just turned into a profit center.

No organization would do this because they believe it will ‘hurt’ or ‘damage’ their employment brand.  “Tim! If candidates knew we were going to sell their information to other companies, they wouldn’t apply to our jobs!”  Or, maybe they would because they actually want to work for you!  If that’s your process, what option do they have? Plus, all your doing is potentially giving them more options.  How many people do you know that don’t want more options?

While no one is doing this publicly, I’ll tell you it is happening privately.  I’ve been approached by corporate talent acquisition pros who are willing to ‘sell’ me access to their database for a fee.  I pay them.  They deliver to me candidates who applied to their positions that they never wanted to begin with, or couldn’t use.  I haven’t ever did this for the simple fact that each time I was approached, the person was doing this behind the organizations back, with them wanting the check made out directly to them, personally.  That’s shady.

But, if a company was willing to do it all above board as a paid service…I can’t tell you I would be in!

Why I can Recruit and You can’t

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TaxFoundation.org recently released a map that shows how much $100 is worth for each state.  The concept being where you live has a huge impact to what you can afford to buy with that same $100 bill. Here’s the map:

It begs the question, why would anyone live in D.C.? Or New York? Or California? Or New Jersey?

I’m not a coast guy.  I live in 4 bedroom, 3 bath house in Michigan that costs under $350K.  It’s new. It’s in a great neighborhood. I don’t have a highway running through my backyard. I’m close to a university, shopping, good restaurants, etc.  I’m getting the most out of my $100!

Don’t get me wrong. I love to visit big cities. Chicago and Detroit are both close, so those are easy. New York  and D.C. are great. California and Texas are lovely. I’m always thankful to come home.  No traffic. Little crime. Kids still seem to be kids.  Basically, I’m Ward Cleaver.

Michigan, and the Auto Industry, is going through a big growth bubble right now.  It’s a combination of the Auto industry coming back. No one bought cars during the recession, so pent up demand.  Aging auto workforce that stayed on through the recession and now wants out.  There are thousands of jobs in Detroit for technical workers.

Recently, I had a company contact us about helping them find automotive engineering talent to go to California for a start up.  They want to build an entire car start up in Silicon Valley.  My first question was, why?  They don’t really have a good answer to the why.  Besides the fact, well, this is where we are now.  Okay. I can recruit auto engineers for you, from Detroit to Silicon Valley. But understand, Detroit talent is going to have sticker shock!  Major sticker shock!

They are use to getting more that $100, for their $100, and now I’m going to tell them I’ll give you $85 for your $100.  This is really like a decrease of 25% to go and do the same job.  Well, they said, we’ll pay more.  25% more?  Even so, my $350K house is $1.3M in Silicon Valley for less house.  But you’re close to the beach!  For $1.3 I better be on the beach! Is the mindset of an engineer from Michigan!

Recruiting is a mindset.  You can see why I can recruit folks to the Midwest!  I know the hot buttons to push.  Everyone has a certain value they want for their $100.  For some the ocean and the beach and sunny weather is price they will pay for.  For others, they want less traffic, quiet, clean air.  It’s your job as a recruiter to be able to find that value, and not let your own perceptions of that value get in the way.

It’s Too Long

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Wait for it…

“That’s what she said!”

I saved you the trouble.

Being too long is a major problem in the world today.  People aren’t willing to wait, primarily because they don’t have to.  Baseball can’t attract a young audience because the kids don’t want to sit around for three hours, at a minimum, to find out the outcome of the game.  Soccer is exploding in the U.S. because it’s 90 minutes and they don’t even stop the clock when someone is injured!  No commercial breaks, except for a short halftime period.

People won’t read a 700 page book, they want 300.  No one wants to watch a three hour movie, make it two.  Why do we have to have an hour meeting, make it thirty minutes.

Being too long is not a weakness you want to have in todays world.  Being too long is now a sign that you probably don’t really know what you’re doing.  If you can’t be short and concise, you’re looked at as ‘old fashion’.

That’s what your candidates are thinking of your selection process.  You try and tell yourself, and your leadership, that we ‘take our time’ because we want to ‘make the right decision’. But your competition is making those same decisions in half the time.  You’re old fashion. You’re broken.  You’re taking too long.

Moving fast used to be considered reckless.  Older generations would tell us to ‘slow down’.  Measure twice, cut once.  But, what if I made a process where measuring once was all that was needed, and I could eliminate the second measure?  Wouldn’t that be better?

The legacy of the recession in Talent Acquisition is this, you had less to do, so you filled that time trying to add value.  There is a tipping point to adding value.  You extending the length of your selection process at a point no longer adds value.  You’re taking too long to make hiring decisions.  I know this because I’m constantly hearing stories of candidates you want, accepting offers from other companies before you’re ready to make an offer.

You’re taking too long.

 

Can Corporate Recruiters Poach?

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Before we get right in and answer this question, let’s all get on the same page.  What is Poaching?  Wiki defines it as:

“Poaching has traditionally been defined as the illegal hunting, killing or capturing of wild animals, usually associated with land use rights.”

It can also be a cooking term, like Poached Eggs or Poached Salmon, but that’s not what we’re talking about.

The fact of the matter is that I don’t like the term ‘Poaching’ when it is used regarding talent acquisition.  Business Insider loves to use this in titles when they are talking about normal recruiting activity (Here, Here, and Here to share just a few).  There’s nothing illegal about ‘recruiting’ someone from another firm. Nothing!

Google has a talented group of Software Developers. Facebook needs Software Developers. Facebook recruits Google developers to come work for them.  That’s Recruiting at its most basic.  Nothing illegal about that.  That’s actually the basis of our capitalist society.  Free market economy.

So, why is it that we use the word “Poach” when describing something that is just basic business?

It’s because when an employee leaves you for your competition it pisses you off!  You feel robbed.  You feel like it should be illegal.  “Wait!  I spent so much time and effort to get you hear and now you’re just leaving me, for her!!!”

But, it’s not illegal.  It’s not ‘poaching’.  It’s business.  You either do it well, or you use words like ‘poach’.

Can Corporate Recruiters ‘poach’?

Let me put it to you this way.  If I was running your corporate talent acquisition department, and we had a recruiter who felt like they shouldn’t ‘poach’ from the competition, I would ask that recruiter to go work for the competition! At that point, that’s basically what they are doing anyway!

I feel so strongly about this, I truly believe a really good corporate recruiting function can cripple your competition. Truly!  If your corporate recruiters take the best talent from your competition and bring them to your team, your competition isn’t long for this world.  “Oh, yeah, but that’s poaching, Tim.” No, that’s Capitalism. That’s free market. It’s what our country is built on.

So, what I’m trying to say is this, if you don’t poach your competition’s talent you’re not American!

 

The Candidate Fade Away

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There’s this thing that happens with dating nowadays, called the Fade Away.  I know this because I have teenage sons.  The Fade Away is when you’re dating someone and you know it’s not for you long term, but instead of just telling that person you start the Fade Away process.

You stop talking, and start texting.  The texting slowly becomes less frequent, spread out and shorter in length, to eventually stopping altogether.  No finalization.  No uncomfortable exchange of items. Just fading away into a life without that other person being in it.

You see, back in my dating days, well, we didn’t have texting.  You had phone calls that you could duck for a while, but let’s face it your parents were not going to cover for you, so eventually, you had to face the other person.  Those conversations were awful, I so wish I had the fade away!

Because of how we treat our personal relationships today, candidates are now using the Fade Away on companies.   Recruiters talk to a candidate, they seem excited, they call you back every time you call them.  They give you their cell phone number and you begin to text. All is right in the recruiting world.  At some point the candidate decides that the position, or the company, or you just isn’t right for them and they stop returning calls and texts.  It’s not all at once, it just gets less, until it fades away completely.  Just like we were dating.

Here’s some ways to stop the Candidate Fade Away:

1. Be the understanding Girlfriend.  You know the type: “No! No! Really!  I get it! At any point you aren’t cool with this, I’m totally cool with this, let’s just make sure we are straight with each other and tell each other!”  Then you tell her and she loses her effing mind! Okay, ladies, I know, it works both ways!  As a recruiter start out the candidate relationship like this, be a pro. “Tim let me tell you how I work up front.  There is going to come a time when you might feel I presenting you something that you just don’t want for some reason. I’m completely cool with that, I’m presenting you.  I’m your Jerry Maguire. Let me know right away, and I’ll make sure we both look good when speaking to the company and hiring manager.  But I need to know up front what’s going on.”

2. It’s about you, not me.  Find out how the candidate prefers to communicated to and have them set the terms.  This usually works out well, because they become invested.  You told me this is how you wanted to be communicated to, and I’m following what you wanted.  Experienced recruiters usually hate this route because they’ve been trained to ‘control’ the candidate.  Used in the right manner it can be very effective.

3. Call out the Fade Away!  Making fun of what is going on won’t connect with everyone, but it will definitely connect with some.  Many folks will get defensive if you call them out on the Fade Away, but if you have fun with it, you’ll get some to come back around and laugh it off. “Timmy! Are you trying to break up with me!?  Come on, let’s talk this out, we could be so good for each other, at least talk to me before you break up with me!”  You’ll get a response to this, trust me!