Category Archives: Leadership

You’re Banned From Changing My Mind…at Work!

Posted on by
3

Did you see Facebook’s internal announcement to their employees about banning an employee’s ability to change the mind of a co-worker about Politics and Religion? I think I need to use these for my family get togethers!

An internal memo was leaked (God Bless internal memo links) from Facebook’s Chief Technology Officer on some new workplace rules that Facebook is putting into effect immediately on all communication channels, and they are:

  1. Don’t insult, bully, or antagonize others
  2. Don’t try to change someone’s politics or religion
  3. Don’t break our rules about harassing speech and expression

Sorry workplace trolls at Facebook, your Employee Experience just took a major blow! (BTW “Workplace Trolls” is a great podcast name)

As you can imagine I have a few thoughts on this!

My actual first reaction to this had nothing to do with “the rules”, but had everything to do with who was communicating this message! Why is this coming from the CTO and not the CEO or CHRO? Definitely different than most organizations.

This tells me one of two things: 1. The CTO made these up on his own; and/or 2. Facebook’s leadership team wanted to make this seem like it wasn’t that big of a deal, so let’s not have it come from the CEO or CHRO, which normally would handle formal employee communications like this.

This is a bit of an employee experience course correction that I think we’ll start seeing in many organizations over the next couple of years with a softer economy. In an ultra-low unemployment economy the inmates run the asylum.

As we back to a bit of normal unemployment environment, employers will focus less on becoming a playground you get paid to attend, and more of a ‘back to work’ mentality. You shouldn’t have time to berate Billy all day because he worships Pokemon. Get your a$$ back to work!

Over the past couple of years with #MeToo and Trump, our workplaces have become littered with landmines of employee strife. We want and value inclusion, and at the same time this increases the communication issues and the need for rules like Facebook are instituting.

So, what do you think? Does your workplace need to adopt rules like this?

No pay! Do you come to work?

Posted on by
3

I’ve seen some messages on social media by folks being negative about the TSA workers they’ve run into during the government shutdown. I’m always perplexed by this because here are people who are forced to come to work, and not getting paid.

I would bet that these folks who have negative comments would almost all not even show up to their job if their boss told them, “Hey, yeah, well guess what? I need you to come to work tomorrow, but I can’t pay you.” Yeah, thanks, but no thanks, buddy!

I think there are some folks who would for a while. Healthcare workers I could see many of those folks working for free for a bit and understanding the importance. Most first responders would do this based on their oaths. But, that’s probably about it.

I traveled this past week and I went out of my way to thank every TSA employee I ran into. It completely sucks to be forced to work and not get paid, and while I can’t pay them, I can let them know that I appreciate what they are doing to help keep my life safe.

By the way, I also saw many, many people who were complete jerks to the TSA agents because the wait was too long, or they had to take their hat off, or all kinds of stupid stuff. Turns out, some people are just jerks. Look, jerks, these people are working for free, have some compassion!

Our government, all of them, fail these people in such a colossal way it makes me sick to my stomach. Employees, government, public, private, etc. are not pawns in a game. These are real people and our elected officials could care less.

What I think is most people wouldn’t come to work if they weren’t getting paid. Many of these federal government employees have been told you come to work or you get fired and you won’t be hired back. These are good jobs, hard to come by jobs, so most come to work without pay.

The question is for how long? Like, yeah, I want this job because it has good pay and benefits, but once that stops happening, I no longer want this job!

So, what do you think? How long would you come to work knowing you will not be paid?

The Talent Fix Book Club Starts this Week!#RecruiterDevelopment

Posted on by
2

If you are a regular reader of this blog than you clearly know I wrote a book, The Talent Fix, that was launched in April 2018. I have been overwhelmed by the awesome response and I would like to give back to the community that has given me so much. 

Beginning January 23, 2019, I’ll hold a monthly book club webinar, for free, where I’ll be going over each chapter of the book in detail, from a discussion point of view. Each webinar is scheduled for one hour, it might be a bit less or a bit more depending on discussion and questions. 

Each month, I’ll pull out some of the highlights and strategies, discuss them in more detail, open up the discussion to Q&A from the book club attendees, and probably bring on some micro-celebrity Recruiting guests as well to talk shop and continue to challenge the way we think about Talent Acquisition! 

We’ll go one chapter at a time, and while they might be too slow for some, most people don’t even read one book a year, so we’ll go slow and make sure we have truly dynamic discussions each week! 

The schedule will breakdown like so: 

  • January 23, 2019 – Introduction to the Book Club, we’ll breakdown Kris Dunn’s Foreword and I’ll tell you the “KD” story, plus a bonus topic of what recruiting tools you need to look at in 2019! 
  • February – Chapter 1 – Highlights, discussion, and live Q&A
  • March – Chapter 2 – Highlights, discussion, and live Q&A
  • April – Chapter 3 – Highlights, discussion, and live Q&A
  • May – Chapter 4 – Highlights, discussion, and live Q&A
  • June – Chapter 5 – Highlights, discussion, and live Q&A
  • July – Chapter 6 – Highlights, discussion, and live Q&A
  • August – Chapter 7 – Highlights, discussion, and live Q&A
  • September – Chapter 8 – Highlights, discussion, and live Q&A
  • October – Chapter 9 – Highlights, discussion, and live Q&A
  • November – A look forward to preparing for 2020, looking at our next book club read, and a mini-demo of the hottest recruiting tool on the market I found in 2019! 

Also, remember, I’ll bring in several surprise guests that are genius level TA leaders, sourcers, and tech experts as well! 

Register for the free Talent Fix Monthly Book Club! 

This will be the easiest Team Development you’ll do all year! I’ve already had multiple teams contact me about signing up! One TA leader went out and bought each member of his team the book so they could get started and be ready for January 23rd! 

Buy The Talent Fix on Amazon or SHRM Members can buy it directly from the SHRM bookstore at a discount with your SHRM membership! 

I can’t wait to talk to everyone on January 23rd! If you have any questions, just send me an email at sackett.tim@hru-tech.com! 

Questions I’m asking myself in 2019!

Posted on by
5

I’m constantly being asked about what are the “trends of 2019”.

Honestly, year to year trends are usually fairly unnoticeable to most people working a real job in HR and TA.

Google for Jobs was a giant trend in 2018 and yet most TA leaders still have no idea what it is and haven’t felt a real impact of it. Yet, it was a huge trend.

I can give you some great guesses about what the trends will be in 2019, but it’s fairly worthless. Me telling you that machine learning assisted automation will change how you find talent in 2019 isn’t going to really change a single thing you do.

Instead, I have all of these questions I would love to get answers to in 2019. Some of those answers will come from the industry, some will come through testing, and some will be left unanswered.

Here are some of these questions:

  • What are the common talent acquisition metrics we all should be using to measure the success and failure of our efforts? How do we get all TA shops to use these, or better, how do we get ATSs and TA suites to build these ‘common’ measures into their technology? (If you tell me Days to Fill/Hire I will punch you in the face!)
  • Can we automate most of the sourcing function across the talent acquisition supply chain? (I know it can’t all be automated, but it would seem with the current technology in the market 90% of sourcing could be automated. The last 10% are those Super Sourcers, like the folks that attend SourceCon.)
  • Can selection and assessment science make better hiring decisions than hiring managers? If so, how do we gain buy-in from hiring managers to move this science forward?
  • Is “Job Brand” more important than “Employment Brand”? Do candidates care more about your job or your company? (This is clearly predicated on the idea that the majority of candidates aren’t searching for companies, they are searching for jobs, yet we spend just a fraction of time on our jobs versus our employment brands.)
  • How can I tell if a person (either experienced in recruiting or entry level) from outside my environment will be a great recruiter inside my environment?

Let’s not kid ourselves, a softening of the economy in 2019 and 2020 won’t make our jobs significantly easier. A 4.0% unemployment versus a 5.5% unemployment isn’t really going to change most of our jobs. Talent will still be difficult to find.

While the TA industry has grown so much over the past decade, we still lag many other functions when it comes to some basic building blocks that will really move us forward. The idea we don’t have common measures of success across industries in recruiting is shameful for a function that wants to call itself a profession.

I’m super interested in what questions you are trying to answer in 2019! Hit me in the comments.

What’s the most luxurious benefit you can offer an employee in 2019?

Posted on by
2

I read a bunch of article about what’s the next greatest benefit to offer employees. I read one the other day that tried to make it seem like now offering food at work is normal, like everyone is giving away breakfast and lunches, like you give away health insurance.

It’s the one thing I hate about reading mainstream media HR articles. Apparently, the only employers in America are located in the 50 square miles around Silicon Valley. Do you really think I believe that the majority of companies in America are giving away free food to their employees?

Come on, that’s not happening!

If you are lucky enough to work for a place that feeds you, great you won the job lottery, enjoy it! If they offer you Kombucha as well, then I’m just sorry for you, because that means they hate you.

What’s the #1 luxury benefit to offer in 2019?

It’s Time.

Time is the one thing every single one of us needs more of. For many it doesn’t even have to be paid time off! Just allow me some time to do some of the stuff that impacting my life, so I can better focus on work when I’m at work.

But of course Paid Time is always appreciated.

I know some employers have gone to unlimited paid time off and studies have shown that when organizations go to this their overall use of paid time off actually goes down. This is a sad commentary on our society.

I know a lot of HR friends of mine argue this can’t be the case because it seems so contrarian to what you would think would happen. “If I had unlimited time off I would never come in and just be on vacation every day!” Okay, Betty, and you would be fired!

The reality is unlimited time off is the answer, because psychology it doesn’t work. Some have the self control enough to use it appropriately, but most people fear that taking time off will somehow impact their performance, so even when they do take their unlimited time off, they still are connected, working in some way.

I know of a few organizations that completely shutdown for a week or two completely. Notice out to clients – “hey, it’s our annual refresh the batteries, 100% of us will be off and not connected, we can’t wait to come back fully recharged to rock your world”. I like the idea but get it probably impractical for so many organizations.

I think the best thing we can do as leaders is to ensure our people are actually taking their paid time off and when they do they know that it’s okay to completely disconnect. That we’ll have their back and to enjoy themselves.

I wonder how many of your leaders pull quarterly or annual reports of PTO to see if their team is taking time for themselves?

Don’t Kill The Dog!

Posted on by
1

I was listening to the Bill Simmons podcast yesterday and he was interviewing Adam McKay, the director of Anchorman, and the new movie Vice (editor’s note – Vice is wickedly funny, and very disturbing all at the same time).

Adam was talking about how they knew that the movie was super funny and when they did their first test, it came back a 50 out of 100, when a good movie should be 60’s to 70’s out of 100, on the rating system they used.

Adam and the star of the movie Will Ferrell, didn’t understand, the test audience of industry insiders immediate told them they loved the movie and it was the funniest thing they ever saw. That’s when one of the studio executives came up to them and said, “you killed the dog! you can’t kill the dog!”

In the movie, Will throws a burrito out his window while driving and it hits a guy on a motorcycle, played by Jack Black. Will stops to make sure he’s okay, and he is, the motorcycle is ruined and an angry Jack Black kicks Will dog off the bridge. It leads to a very funny scene with Will screaming in a telephone booth, “I’m trapped in a glass case of emotion…”

In the original cut, the dog is dead and never comes back. Rating is 50/100. In the movie that gets released, Baxter, the dog comes back at the end to save Will. That cut of the movie got 75/100. It was the only change made and the movie went from 50 to 75. A 75 movie is super successful. 50 is dud.

Why does this matter?

We constantly “kill the dog” in leadership and don’t even realize it!

We do things that people don’t outwardly think are a problem, and in fact, they might even say they really think you are a strong leader, but then you get rated a 6 or 7 out of 10, versus an 8, or 9, or 10 out of 10!

It’s hard for someone rating you to say specifically why they didn’t rate you higher, there’s just something about you that doesn’t make you a 9.

You kill the dog.

Maybe it’s the way to treat someone publicly that others are seeing. Or something you are doing that others see and don’t approve of, even though it wouldn’t be something that you would catch yourself doing. Think of coming into work late, when at the same time you hammer your team for being late.

You get upset when someone doesn’t follow up with you, but you’re awful at returning the same effort in kind. You expect perfection, but constantly make errors. You want complete transparency of your team, but don’t return that transparency.

Stop killing the dog.

What Dog Walkers Can Teach us About Managing Up!

Posted on by
2

You might not have noticed but Americans treat their dogs and cats much better than we treat most people. I’m not sure exactly what that says about our society.

I like to believe that it’s an evolved behavior. A society that treats animals well probably on average treats all things better, but the cynical part of me says it’s more likely we treat animals well because we all craze unconditional love and aren’t finding it other areas of our live.

Either way, my Scout thinks I’m the best and is always excited to see me!

Because we love our animals so much, we spend a ton on them and want them to be taken care of well. This has created a new profession of animal caretakers, and specifically, for Dog Walkers! 

The Washington Post had a great piece on this recently and what struck me from the article was how the most successful Dog Walkers have figured out that managing up to the animal’s owners is the key to their success! 

In a nation where people lead ever more busy lives and increasingly view their dogs as family members, professional dog walking is flourishing. And along with it is what might be viewed as the unusual art of dog walker communication. Many of today’s walkers do not simply stroll — not if they want to be rehired, anyway. Over text and email, they craft fine-grained, delightful narratives tracing the journey from arrival at the residence to drop-off. They report the number of bathroom stops. They take artistic photos, and lots of them.

“For an hour-long walk, I send six or eight, depending,” said Griffin, 44, who holds a treat in her hand when shooting to ensure her charge is looking at the camera. “Then I give a full report that includes not only peeing and pooping but also kind of general well-being, and if the dog socialized with other dogs.”

Turns out that leaders want from you, exactly what we want from our Dog Walkers! More details about what’s going on when we can’t see it or hear it!

Managing up is simply the skill or task of telling someone what the heck is going on with the ‘proper’ amount of detail. “Proper” being the key the element! Too much and you’re kissing up and being annoying, too little and you’re forcing more communication to take place because you didn’t give enough detail.

The reality is, we all want to know what’s going on with enough detail that doesn’t require us to go back and ask additional questions. The perfect response to a great Managing Up message is “Thanks for this! Keep me updated.”

Where Managing Up goes wrong is when you tell yourself you’re just ‘managing up’ but when in reality you’re managing up to get feedback about yourself, your team, your project, etc. That’s not managing up, that’s you trying to train a leader to give feedback and that usually goes wrong for you!

It’s key to know the difference. Someone who is truly managing up, doesn’t want a ton of feedback or additional questions from their managing up note. A simple thanks is perfect and it’s truly all you want. It’s like when two partners share some details about their day the other should know, “Hey, that package from Amazon came with the parts we needed for the whatever…” No further comment or explanation needed, just an FYI, a common courtesy.

The Dog Walkers have this down. I’m going to give you the details, send some pics, and say great things about your animal that you love more than any other thing in your life. While you’re at work, that’s all you want to hear!

Starting 2019 off with a Recruiting Bang!

Posted on by
Reply

If you’re like me you took some time over the holidays to reflect and to think about how you could make your next year on this earth the best one yet!

One of my “areas of opportunity” (HR speak for “stuff I suck at”) is I’m rarely satisfied with my outcomes. So, of course I want to do more in 2019!

I’m an advocate of doing the hard stuff first. The stuff we don’t want to do. The stuff we put off way too easily. So, as we all get back into the groove, let’s get the stuff done we don’t want to do!

Here are some things you might want to put on the list:

  • Discover and establish the measures that have the actual most impact to your recruiting success. I’m going to tell you right now, those probably aren’t “Time to Fill” and “Quality of Hire”. Those actually have little impact to you recruiting talent to your organization and filling jobs.
  • Start measuring recruiter activity metrics and establish a baseline of activity, then work to increase those outputs. Every year the recruiter in my environment who sends out the most screened candidates to hiring managers makes the most placements. This is not by accident.
  • Fire the person on your team that needs to be fired. Well, I had a talk with Timmy and he assured me he’s going to try harder in 2019. No, he isn’t. Do yourself and your team a favor and give Timmy a gift of finding a job and place where he actually wants to give great effort.
  • Sit down with the hiring manager of your most difficult to fill position and have them tell you what they will be doing over the next 30 days to fill that position. Not what you will do, what they will do! One suggestion to help them – bring in their entire team and take thirty minutes to source their networks live all together in the same room.
  • Figure out which part of your technology that your team is not using and call that vendor and tell them you need the entire team retrained on how to get the most out of that tool or you won’t be signing a contract with them to continue in 2019.

I start with measurements because that will have the fastest impact on your recruiting success. If you don’t measure now, or have weak measures, understand when you put in strong measures your team will revolt. So, it might get worse before it gets better, but it will get exponentially better!

Hit me in the comments and tell me what’s number 1 on your list for 2019. I’m told that putting stuff in writing and making it public gives you a much higher chance of actually making it happen! Let’s do this!

My top 5 most read posts of 2018!

Posted on by
Reply

I love lists! I love lists when I’m on them. I love lists when I make them. Lists are great!

I had an incredible year. I had the most traffic ever in my decade of blogging. I launched my book, The Talent Fix, in April and the traffic to the blog has been exceptional! I’ve got some great stuff planned for 2019, so please keep coming back and enjoying the content.

Here are my most read blog posts of 2018:

#1 – My New Favorite Interview Question!

This one post was read by over 70,000 people, and I didn’t expect it to actually do this well. Interview question posts always do well. For some reason people Google “Interview questions” a ton, both on the candidate side and the hiring manager/HR side. Want some easy clicks? Write a post on interview questions!

#2 – I’m in Indeed Jail, Help me! #FreeTimSackett

Yeah, my co-dependent relationship with Indeed got me into trouble in 2018, and it all started with this post. I wrote another post later in the year – Indeed takes away free traffic from Staffing firms! Which also got a ton of traffic, and I thought was pretty ‘fair and balanced’ from the Indeed side.

#3 – The Reason You’re Being Ghosted After an Interview

Like I said above, interview content tends to be popular! In 2018 we saw a ton of ghosting happening on both sides of the fence. Companies are ghosting candidates and candidates are ghosting companies, and apparently we have all lost our minds! I mean come on, treat others like you want to be treated!

#4 – The Top 100 Applicant Tracking Systems in 2018!

Hat tip to my buddy Rob Kelly, this was actually mostly based on his content, which I sited and love! Turns out most of us have issues with our ATS systems and we love seeing what everyone else is using, because it must be better than what we are using! BTW- we started using Loxo in 2018 and LOVE it!

#5 – Lifesaving Advice I Gave My Son When Someone Starts Shooting Up his School!

This one breaks my heart. This post was directly from my heart, shouting out to the world, as a father, for help. A lot of people agreed with it, and yet, here we are basically in the exact same place.

How to get promoted to the job you want!

Posted on by
Reply

I read an article recently where a “former” Google HR executive shared his wisdom. (editor side note – are all Google HR executives “Former”? Have you ever heard from a “current” Google HR executive? Why does Google have a hard time keeping HR execs?)

The dude’s name is Justin Angsuwat and he’s the current VP of People at Thumbtack, which not ironically does not make thumbtacks but it would awesome if they did. And he give his inside Google advice to Business Insider on how to get promoted. Are you ready?

Why is this promotion important to you?

Justin Angsuwat

Um, what?!

Seriously, that’s your advice Justin?

Okay, I’m sure Justin is brilliant, he’s Australian and worked for PwC and Google, and let’s face it, American’s will hire any idiot with an Australian accent, but I’m sure Justin is not an idiot, but I hate the “I’m going to answer your question with a question” because that’s how ‘real’ leaders do it.

What Justin is saying is most people have no idea why someone wants to be promoted. We just get this idea in our head that’s what we are supposed to do, so as leaders we need to figure out why, because most don’t really care if they get promoted, they just want you to pay attention to them!

Okay, Justin, I’ll agree with that. Now tell me why there are so many former Google HR executives!?

What do you really need to do if you want to get promoted?

  • Tell you current boss you want to get promoted and why.
  • Tell the boss that you’ll be under when you get promoted that you want to get promoted and why. This is a must-do if your current boss is a tool and won’t raise you up to the organization.
  • Get a specific development plan around what the organization needs to see from you to get promoted. If you can, try to get some realistic timing around the plan. Understand, 90 days, is not realistic. 3 years, might be. I find most people who want to get promoted believe they have already put in the work, but those above them don’t see it that way.
  • Do the work and be patient.
  • Be a positive advocate for your boss and for the company. Yes, you might even cheerlead a little. Don’t ever underestimate the power of positivity on your ability to get promoted. Executives hate promoting assholes. Right, Justin?

I teasing Justin, but I actually really like his question. Way too many people chase titles, but don’t really know why they’re chasing it. They get there and it feels unsatisfying because the reality is it’s not what they expect it to be.

Getting promoted because you want more money, probably isn’t the reason you really want. It’s legitimate, but you won’t be happy. Wanting to lead teams or functions is better, wanting to help others reach their goals is even better, wanting to help the company reach its mission and you’re all in on the company is probably the best.

Most of us don’t even think about those things, though.