Category Archives: Job Seeker Advice

The Honest Performance Feedback

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Channeling my inner Seth Godin today…

It really is a choice.

Either you can decide to perform the job you have, or you can decide to work someplace else.

Either you believe this is the right company for you, or you can decide it’s another company.

Either you treat you coworkers as partners, or you don’t treat someone else’s employees like crap.

Either you follow our rules, or you follow someone else’s rules.

Either you make a positive contribution to the organization, or you make me make a choice about your future.

Earning the right to work here isn’t hard, it’s just a simple choice that you control. Losing that choice is up to me, though.

That New Job Smell!

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Was on the phone with a friend of mine last week talking about their new job.  He had all that passion you hear from folks who just start a job!  Everything is new, it’s cool, it’s fun, it’s engaging.  He said it’s like ‘that new car smell’, you want to be able to keep it as long as possible.

He’s right.  He’s a pro, he gets it.  He’s experienced enough to know the new job smell, like your car, doesn’t last forever. In fact, you probably have a one to two year window of enjoying that smell, until it becomes the grind.  That’s the challenge, right?  How do you keep that New Job Smell as long as possible?

It got me to thinking about how to extend the new job smell.  I to have been victim of a job losing the great new car smell.  Here are some ideas for extending the great feeling of a new job:

1. Connect with people, frequently, from outside your company.  Why?  Because the grass isn’t greener, but you wouldn’t know that because you never talk with people who are on that grass!   When you’re out with people from other companies, what you realize quickly is it’s basically all the same.  We are all grinding.  It makes your job smell a little better when you return.

2. Connect to your industry.  I took a job once and immediately knew it was a wrong decision.  The culture suffocated me!  But, I had payments, I had kids, I had a career to protect, so I grinded it out.  How?  I threw myself into HR.  I started writing. I started volunteering in my profession. I connected more.  I got engaged more than ever, in a job I knew wasn’t the best fit.  I brought my new car smell can of air freshener with me to work each day!

3. Get involved with the business.  HR job started losing it’s new smell?  Go out and get involved in the actual business of what you do.  If you make widgets, find out how those are made. Work with your operators.  When I worked for Applebees, 90% of what I did was HR related. The other 10%?  I washed dishes during lunch rush hours, I made Pico De Gallo, I learned how to mix drinks (okay, I already knew how to do that but it was fun!), I learned how to do training, I helped develop sales and marketing campaigns, etc. Operations has many pain points.  Uncover those and help fix them.

It doesn’t happen with every job, but most jobs come with that new job smell.  It’s completely natural for all of us to have an internal clock of when that job begins to smell old.  For some people it’s two years, some five, heck, for some it’s twenty-five!  The key is understanding that’s what it is.  It’s not the job, it’s you.  No, you don’t smell, it’s you believing the job now sucks, when it’s probably just the same as the first day you stepped into your now junked up office.

Figure it out.  Clean it up.  Another new job isn’t going to solve this problem.

Would You Pay A Candidate To Interview?

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Last week I got my ass handed to me for daring to consider that those who interview with a company, should pay for interview feedback.  Not just normal interview feedback, like thanks, but no thanks, but something really good and developmental.  Most people think that idea is bad.  Interview feedback should be free.  It’s not that I really want to charge people who interview a fee to get feedback, it’s just I think we could do so much better in terms of candidate experience, but we have to get out of our current mindset to shake things up a bit.

This all leads me to the next idea (hat tip to Orrin Konheim @okonhOwp) what if companies paid interviewees for their time?

Cool, right!?

We’ve built this entire industry on shared value.  Organizations have jobs, candidates want jobs, let’s all do this for free.  What happens when the equation isn’t equal?  What if candidates didn’t want your jobs?  Could you get more people to come out an interview if you paid them?  How much would it be worth?  It’s a really cool concept to play around with, if we can get out of our box for a bit.

Let’s say you’re having a really, really hard time getting Software Developer candidates to even consider your jobs and your organization.  It’s a super tough market, and you just don’t have a sexy brand.  You also don’t have the time to build a sexy brand, you need the talent now!  How much would it take to entice great candidates to give you an hour?  $100? $500? $1,000?  What if I told you I could have your CIO interviewing 5 top Software Developers tomorrow for 5 hours for $5,000?  Would you do it?

I hear the backlash of questions and concerns already forming in your head!

– People would just take the money, but not really want the job!

– How would you know these people were serious?

– Why would you pay to have someone interview when others will for free?

– Did you get hit on your head as a child?

– This might be the dumbest idea since your idea last week.

When we think about really having a great candidate experience, shouldn’t compensation be a apart of the conversation.  For most interviews you’re asking someone to take time off work, losing salary, time off, putting themselves at risk of their employer finding out, etc.  At the very least, you would think that we might offer up some kind of compensation for their time.  I’m not talking about interview expenses, but real cold hard cash, we appreciate your time and value it!

If you started paying candidates to interview, do you think you would get and have better or worse interviews?

When you put value to something, i.e., an interview, people tend to treat it as such.  Now that interview that they might go, might not go, becomes something they have to prepare for, because, well, someone is paying me to do this.  To interview.  I’m guessing if you paid your candidates to interview, you would get a higher level of candidate, and have a higher level of success in hiring.  It’s just a theory, wish I had the recruiting budget to test it out!

The Tim Sackett Commencement Speech

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It’s that time of year when universities and high schools go through graduation ceremonies and we celebrate educational achievements.  It’s also that time of year when you get bombarded with every great commencement speech ever given.  There is clearly a recipe for giving a great commencement speech.  Here are the ingredients:

1. Make the graduates feel like they are about to accomplish something really great, and not just become part of the machine.

2. Make graduates believe like somehow they will be difference makers.

3. Make graduates think they have endless possibilities and opportunities.

4. Make graduates think the world really wants and needs them and can’t wait to work with them.

5. Wear sunscreen.

I think that about sums up every great commencement speech ever given.  Let’s face it, the key to any great speech is not telling people what they need to hear, but telling them what they want to hear!

I would like to give a commencement speech.  I think it would be fun.  I like to inspire people.  Here’s the main topics I would hit if I were to give a commencement speech:

1.  Work sucks, but being poor sucks more. Don’t ever think work should make you happy.  Find happiness in yourself, not what you do.

2.  You owe a lot of people, a lot of stuff.  Shut your mouth and give back to them. Stop looking for the world to keep giving you stuff.

3.  No one cares about you. Well, maybe your Mom, if you had a good Mom.  They care about what you can do for them.  Basically, you can’t do much, you’re a new grad.

4.  Don’t think you’re going to be special. 99.9% of people are just normal people, so will you.  The sooner you come to grips with this, the sooner you’ll be happy.

5.  Don’t listen to your bitter parents.  Almost always, the person who works the hardest has better outcomes in anything in life.  Once in a while, a person who doesn’t work hard, but has supremely better talent or connections than you, will kick your ass.  That’s life. Buy a helmet.

6.  Don’t listen to advice from famous people.  Their view of the world is warped through their grandiose belief some how they made it through hard work and effort. It’s usually just good timing.

7. Find out who you care about in life, and make them a priority.  In this world you have very few people you truly care about, and who care about you in return.  Don’t fuck that up.

8.  Make your mistakes when you’re young.  Failure is difficult, it’s profoundly more difficult when you have a mortgage and 2 kids to take care of.

9.  It’s alright that sometimes you have to kiss ass.  It doesn’t make you less of a person.

10.  Wear sunscreen.  Cancer sucks.

So, do you feel inspired now!?  Any high schools or colleges feel free to email me, I’m completely wide open on my commencement speech calendar and willing to give this speech on a moments notice!

 

Would You Be Willing To Pay For Interview Feedback? (Take 2)

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“I believe you have to be willing to be misunderstood if you’re going to innovate.”

– Howard Marks

Recently I wrote an article over at Fistful of Talent, and subsequently posted on LinkedIn, that caused some people to lose their minds.  I asked what I thought was a simple question: Would you be willing to pay for interview feedback?  Not just normal, thanks, but no thanks, interview feedback, but really in depth career development type of feedback from the organization that interviewed you.  You can read the comments here – they range from threats to outright hilarity! Needless to say, there is a lot of passion on this topic.

Here’s what I know:

– Most companies do a terrible job at delivery any type of feedback after interviews. Terrible.

– Most candidates only want two things from an interview.

1.  To Be Hired

2. If not hired, to know a little about why they didn’t get hired

Simple, right?  But, this still almost never happens!  Most large companies, now, automate the entire process with email form letters.  Even those lucky enough to get a live call, still get a watered-down, vanilla version of anything close to something that we would consider helpful.

When I asked if someone was willing to pay for interview feedback, it wasn’t for the normal lame crap that 99% of companies give.  It was for something new. Something better. Something of value.  It would also be something completely voluntary.  You could not pay and still get little to no feedback that you get now — Dear John, Thanks, but no thanks. The majority of the commentators felt like receiving feedback after an interview was a ‘right’ – legal and/or G*d given.  The reality is, it’s neither.

The paid interview feedback would be more in-depth, have more substance and would focus on you and how to help you get better at interviewing.  It would also get into why you didn’t get the job.  The LinkedIn commentators said this was rife with legal issues.  Organizations would not be allowed to do this by their legal staff because they would get sued by interviewees over the reasons.  This is a typical HR response.  If you say ‘legal’ people stop talking about an idea.  They teach that in HR school so we don’t have to change or be challenged by new ideas!

The reality is, as an HR Pro, I’m never going give someone ammunition to sue my organization.  If I didn’t hire someone for an illegal reason, let’s say because they were a woman, no person in their right mind would come out and say that.  Okay, first, I would never do that. Second, if I did, I would focus the feedback on other opportunity areas the candidate had that would help them in their next interview or career. No one would ever come out and say to an interviewee, “Yeah, you didn’t get the job because you’re a chick!”

This is not a legal or risk issue.  It’s about finally finding a way to deliver great interview feedback to candidates.  It’s about delivering a truly great candidate experience.  So many HR Pros and organizations espouse this desire to deliver a great candidate experience, but still don’t do the one thing that candidates really want.  Just give me feedback!

So, do you think I’m still crazy for wanting to charge interviewees for feedback?

 

 

3 Highly Effective Habits of Annoying Candidates

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I’ve noticed a run on ‘Highly Effective’ list posts lately!  It seems like everyone has the inside scoop on how to be highly effective at everything! Highly Effective Leaders. Highly Effective Managers. Highly Effective Productive People. Highly Effective Teacher.  If you want a post worth clicking on, just add an odd number, the words ‘highly effective’ and a title.  It goes a little something like this (hit it!):

– The 5 Highly Effective Habits of Crackheads!

– The 7 Highly Effective Traits of Lazy Employees!

– The 13 Highly Effective Ways To Hug It Out at Work!

Blog post writing 101.  The highly effective way to write a blog post people will click on and spend 57 seconds reading.

I figured I might as well jump on board with some career/job seeker advice with the 3 Highly Effective Habits of Annoying Candidates!

1. They don’t pick up on normal social cues.  This means you don’t know when to shut up or start talking.   Most annoying candidates actually struggle with the when to stop talking piece.  Yes, we want to hear about your job history. No, we don’t care about your boss Marvin who managed you at the Dairy Dip when you were 15.

2. They live in the past. Usually, annoying candidates are annoying because they were annoying employees and like to share annoying stories about how great it was in the past, when they weren’t thought of as annoying.  I guess you can’t blame them. If there was ever a possibility they weren’t annoying, I’d probably try and relive those moments as much as possible.

3. They lack a shred of self-insight.  That’s really the core, right?  If you had any self-insight, you would understand you’re just a little annoying and you would work to control that, but you don’t.  “Maybe some would say spending a solid ten minutes talking about my coin collection in an interview wouldn’t be good, but I think it shows I’m passionate!” No, it doesn’t.

You can see how these highly effective habits start to build on each other.  You don’t stop rambling on about something totally unrelated to the interview because you don’t notice Mary stopped taking notes ten minutes ago and started doodling on her interview notes, but you plow on because you told yourself during interview prep to make sure you got out all of your bad manager stories.

Highly effective annoying candidates are like a Tsunami of a lack of emotional intelligence.  Even if I was completely unqualified for a job I think the feedback afterwards from the interviewers would be: “we really liked him, too bad he doesn’t have any the skills we need.”   Highly effective annoying candidates have the opposite feedback: “if this person was the last person on earth with the skills to save our company, I would rather we go out of business!”

What annoying candidate habits have you witnessed?

HR’s Dirty Little Secret #26

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If you clicked over to read Dirty Little Secret #26 and you’re looking for numbers 1 – 25, hold tight, I haven’t written those yet.  I just like picking random numbers for posts because they work, and I believe HR has at least 26 Dirty Little Secrets.  This is just one.  I’m not really ranking them.  Number 26 could be as bad or worse than number 1.  I’ll let you decide when they’re all done.

So, what is HR’s Dirty Little Secret #26?

“We check secondary references, without you knowing, all the time!”

First let me give you the line 100% of all HR Pros will give to you and all employees, all the time.  “We do not give references.  We will only give you employment verification, which includes dates of employment. Thank you.”

You’ve heard that, right?

One of HR’s most dirty little secrets is that we give out references all the time!!!  Especially, if you’re a terrible employee!  We just don’t do it publicly.  The Chairman of JetBlue Airlines, Joel Peterson, wrote a blog post on LinkedIn (first, I doubt highly he wrote it, but his PR team did a nice job with the series) titled “Top 10 Hiring Mistakes, #5 Lazy Reference Checking”, where he gives advice about checking secondary references.  Secondary references are those references that a candidate didn’t give you, but you have through your own connections. His advice was awful, but he’s a public figure, he had to give it.  He said you should always let the candidate know you’ll be checking secondary references so they can reach out and let those people know.

First, thanks for the tip Joel, but that never happens. Never.  Plus, why would I want to give away the one unfiltered piece of the selection process I can get!? You don’t!

Here’s reality.  If you interview for a position, you should assume that someone in the organization is checking secondary references behind your back.  It’s easy to do.  I call up a buddy who works at your current, or old organization,  we talk, catch up on our favorite teams, crazy employees we both know, etc. Then, she let’s me know if you’re a train wreck or not.  Of course, she also first says, “Tim, you know we can’t give references.” Then she says, “Off the record, your candidate is a psycho path!”  End of secondary reference.

You think I’m joking.  It happens just like that, and it happens every. single. day.

Don’t get me wrong, most of the time, the secondary reference actually comes back positive.  You get more of an unfiltered references than you get by checking the ‘given references’ a candidate provides to you as part of your process.  Given References are completely worthless.  I don’t even waste my time checking given references.  If someone can’t find three people who think they walk on water, they’ve got bigger problems.

If you’re going to do ‘given references’ because you can’t talk the old white guys in your leadership out of it, because it makes them feel all warm, fuzzy and comfortable, at least talk them into automating this process.  Chequed is a company that does it better than anyone, and it will totally take this worthless activity off your back. Plus, Chequed has shown that people who fill out an automated reference check, even a given reference, will be more honest about a person’s actual strengths and weaknesses.  I’m a fan of their science. (FYI – they didn’t pay to say that, although, they should!)

I won’t ask what HR Pros think about this, because they’ll mostly lie and say they don’t do this.  That’s why it’s my HR’s Dirty Little Secret #26.

Breaking Down The 6 Seconds Of Your Resume

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The Ladders released some research in the past couple of weeks that focused on how a recruiter reads your resume.  It was really good stuff for job seekers to pay attention to, but it was mostly sent to HR and Recruiter types who shrugged their shoulders and thought ‘Yeah, so.” Basically, what the study showed was that a recruiter really only spends about 6 seconds initially viewing your resume (that first screen)!  For years the industry has used ten seconds as a staple, regardless, we knew it was a very short time.

The study also shows where a recruiter’s eyes focus while looking at your resume for six seconds.  This is even more brilliant! I’ve first saw this technology used with the design of Facebook’s UI.  They were able to see how people stared at their Facebook page to determine the best place for their ads.  And you thought they just put them on the side to get them out of the way!  It’s very scientific, and researchers use technology that will show a heat-map like image that indicates where you gaze the longest. On a Facebook page, on a resume, etc. It can used in a number of fashions to show where an individual focuses their attention.

So, in the six seconds a recruiter is looking at your resume, where do they look?  Here are the main areas by emphasis:

1. First job listed – Current Position.  That one you list, hopefully, right under your opening “Objective” header.  A recruiter will immediately scan to that section as they quickly scan by your objective, and spend a little more time looking at the Job Title, Dates and opening sentence (so make it a good one!).  They spend very little time on all those paragraphs and bullet points you put below that.

2. Next job listed – Previous Position. Okay, she is working here, and she use to work here.  It’s that quick.  They don’t care that you ‘totally re-processed’ the supply cabinet, and led the company in quarterly metrics, blah, blah, blah contests, are you still reading this, no one reads this far into your resume!

2. Education.  From your first job listed (let’s be clear, it’s not your actual first job ever worked, but the first job you have listed on your resume) the recruiter will quickly move to Education.  Why?  Basically, they’ve determined you’re working, or have worked, in the right kind of job for what they are looking for, so now they want to know what kind of education you have.

That’s it. Your six seconds is over.

I just saved you $1000 on getting your resume professionally done. It’s not needed, unless you have my grammar skills, than you might want to invest. The reality of today’s recruiter, and even hiring managers, is that your resume will won’t get read until you get to the next level.  This is actually an advantage to you if you know how to design your resume, using the data from the study!

All you really need is a USA Today style resume.  Do you know why the USA Today is such a popular national newspaper?  Because almost all of us are really stupid and lazy.  We like big pictures, colors and bullet pointed lists.  That is all the USA Today delivers in terms of news.  No details, just the headlines and the sexy stuff.  That is what your resume should be.  At least on that initial first page.

Candidates with Hickeys

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(I’m on vacation – I originally posted this in Feb. 2010 over at Fistful of Talent. Also going on 16,123 days of never having a Hickey!)

Kris Dunn, our the HR Capitalist, had a blog post “How To Destroy a Lifetime of Trust as an HR Pro in a Single Day…” where he explained how a direct report broke the cardinal rule in HR and shared confidential information, or more specifically tried to use confidential information for personal gain. It wasn’t something illegal, it had nothing to do with their individual functional performance as a Director of HR, but what this person did was destroy the trust they had with their leader (although I could argue that if a HR Pro can’t keep confidential information confidential – you probably do have a performance issue). Good post – go over and read it, if you haven’t.

The post got me thinking though about how a person recovers from this type of transgression. (Also take a look at this WSJ article “How a Black Mark Can Derail a Job Search“.  As a leader, Kris was pained for sure, because this person had “High-Potential” and was an “A” player.  But when certain things happen, professionally, you have to cut ties and move on.  So now, this Hi-Po has a huge Hickey.  Interestingly though, this Hickey can’t be seen when you look at their resume or interview them in person, but it’s a Hickey they can’t get rid of.  So, barring a life-turtleneck how does one cover this puppy up?

It’s interesting because I think that probably the best of us have a hickey or two that we would rather not have our current or future employer know about.  Sometimes they’re big-giant-in-the-back-of-a-Chevy-17-year-old-I-will-love-you-forever hickeys and sometimes they’re just oops-I-lingered-a-little-too-long type of hickeys. Either way, I would rather not expose my hickeys and have to worry about how this will impact the rest of my professional life. And here’s where most people drive themselves crazy.

As HR Pros I think it’s important for us to be able to help our organizations determine the relative value of individuals.  This person was a rock star at ABC company – did something wrong, couldn’t maintain that position any longer with ABC because of said incident, and lost their job – now we have a chance to pick up a Rock Star (and probably for a discount).  The question you have to ask is not could we live with this person if they did the same thing here?  Because that really isn’t the question – you already have that answer – No.  The question is: do we feel this person learned from said wrong doing and is there any risk of them doing it again?  You might come to the conclusion – yes, they’ve learned, and yes, there is potential they might do it again (let’s face it, if they did it once, they’ve shown they can do it, so there’s always a risk) – but it’s a risk we are willing to take.

So how does someone come back from a transgression at work? The answer is that they have some help.  Eventually, someone is going to ask the question, “why aren’t you with ABC Company anymore?”  They’ll give you the canned answer they’ve been developing since the moment they lost their job. If you’re a good interviewer, you won’t buy the first answer:  “I mean really?!  So, you decided it was better off not to have a job. Is what you’re telling me?!”,  and you will dig to see the hickey.  Hickeys are funny in that you really can’t take your eyes off of them, but for those who can get by the hickeys, you might just find a great talent who is grateful for the second chance.

But, you also might find someone who just likes being in the back of that Chevy and getting Hickeys. You’re the HR Pro, though, and that’s really why your company pays your salary, to mitigate risk versus the quality of talent your organization needs to succeed.  So, you have to ask yourself, can you live with a Hickey or not?

7 Things I Wouldn’t Do To Get A Job

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(I’m on vacation, I originally posted this in 2009 – except for #7, that’s new, not the feeling but to this post!)

A Wall Street Journal article, by Joann S. Lublin, raised the question: “What won’t you do for a Job?”  Which got me thinking about what are those things I wouldn’t do for a job.  First, I had to set some parameters around the question:

1. Not just any job (I can get any job) but a really good job.  You know the one: your career Camelot – great pay, benefits, work, boss, co-workers – plus you’re out by 4pm everyday!  Or whatever it is that is your perfect combination of factors for the perfect job.

2. Also, I can’t go to prison for what I would do – I’m short and soft – meaning, I’m fairly certain I would end up someone’s wife in prison.

With the parameters set, the question really set me free to think about what I wouldn’t do for the “perfect” career opportunity.  So, I’ll give you the short list:

 1. I won’t kill anyone in my immediate family (wife and 3 sons), everyone else is open season. (probably goes back to the prison thing – I’m soft, plus my grandma would hate it if I got sent to prison and I really love her.).

2.  I won’t eat bugs or cauliflower (yes, I consider them the same food group).

3.  I won’t work for free.  Everyone has a price and mine is above “Free”!  Plus, I work for free enough in my current job as Headhunter!

4. I  won’t stay past 5pm (or any other arbitrary time), just because my boss stays past 5pm because he doesn’t have a life and thinks everyone should stay past 5, or they’re not dedicated or hard working.

5.  I won’t allow my opinions to be squelched by the man! (oh wait, yes I will, but it will cost them!)

6.  I won’t allow myself to be chased around my desk and sexually harassed by my attractive, much  younger, opposite sex, boss (ok, I might, but only if my benefits pay for divorce and I get a big raise!).

7. I won’t become a University of Michigan fan.  I actually told my sons if they got a scholarship to go to UofM I would root for ‘them’, not the school, but them personally.

So, what won’t you do for the ‘perfect’ job?   Hit me in the comments and let me know…