Category Archives: Leadership

Cybersecurity is Teaching Organizations How To Fix Their Talent Shortages

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Cybersecurity jobs are the hottest thing on the planet. Hackers out to do bad are growing as fast as the need to combat them and at this moment the bad guys are winning!

Every single organization I speak with have needs for Cybersecurity talent, or they are in denial of their needs for Cybersecurity talent!

Here’s the main problem, there are basically very few formal programs teaching cybersecurity. You can’t go to your local state college and get a degree in Cybersecurity. Even if you’re lucky enough to have a program like that close, this is such a ‘new collar’ field that the supply can not even come close to keeping up with demand.

So, what are organizations to do?

Build your own! Old school is the new black! Remember when if you needed an Electrician, no you wouldn’t because it’s been decades, you wouldn’t go hire one, you would hire an ‘apprentice’ and basically teach someone how to be an Electrician, and for this training they would give you 35-40 years of great service and you would give them a Timex gold watch and a bad back!

Remember when if you needed an Electrician, no you wouldn’t because it’s been decades, you wouldn’t go hire one, you would hire an ‘apprentice’ and basically teach someone how to be an Electrician, and for this training they would give you 35-40 years of great service and you would give them a Timex gold watch and a bad back!

Cybersecurity is bringing back the modern day equivalent of solving a talent shortage by having organizations actually solve their own problem, and not wait for higher education to catch up and fix the problem.

The new modern day fix to labor shortages involve a number of things the personnel departments from the 1960s and 70s didn’t have, but in some ways are still trying to catch up with a modern equivalent of the old apprentice programs.

IBM is on the forefront of building their own Cybersecurity workforce and they’re basically giving you the blueprint to do this on your own.

Steps you should be taking to build your own talent:

Step 1 – Reexamine your workforce strategy. You better know what skills you need three to five years down the road, you’re too late for the skills you need right now. The only way to solve that current problem is through a big checkbook because you will have to pay your way out of that problem!

Step 2 – Get really close with your community. You’re going to need training help, so start investing in programs at the high school and community college level. Your money goes further in these places than at State U., and you’ll have more direct control. You need to build a recruiting base.

Step 3 – Own the local talent pool you need most. If there are local groups, you support them in every way they need. Bring in national level development opportunities for those skill sets and give it away for free. Build a complete talent ecosystem with you at the center. This isn’t to say you won’t let others in on your market, let’s face it, it’s simple supply/demand economics. If you’re all building this talent, the overall price will come down!

Step 4 – Build Apprentice 2.0 for your Company. This is heavy lifting and hard work, but it’s the only way you can fully build the talent you need. This means great training, mentoring, hiring manager and peer ownership, continual development and upskilling, etc. The difference between old school apprenticeships and new school is you can’t just grow them and forget about them, or they’ll just leave you and waste your investment.

Step 5 (but should probably be #1 but you wouldn’t have paid attention to it!) – Forget about 4-year degrees! Your unfounded need to have college graduates in every role is silly and now hurting your company. IBM has shown you don’t need to be this ‘traditional’ peg to fit in the round hole. You can actually redrill the hole in any shape you want if you find the right attitude and willingness to learn.

But, Tim, we don’t have the money for this!

You will either pay for this, or you’ll pay at least 40% more to lead the market in wages and steal talent. I tend to believe this is the cheaper and more effective outcome because if you grow your own talent from puppies, they tend to be really, really good at your business and your problems. Hired guns might have talent, but you still have the issue of getting them up to speed at a much higher cost.

Hyperlocal Hiring

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The BLS reports that 80% of hourly workers live within 5 miles of where they work. Snagajob’s 2017 State of the Hourly Workforce survey found that 70% of our hourly workers refuse to commute more than 30 minutes to work. When you take a look at your own total workforce, my guess is you’ll find the vast majority live very close to your place of employment.

Blue collar, white collar, it doesn’t matter. People would prefer, for the most part, to live fairly close to work so they don’t waste a ton of time commuting. Commuting hours are for the most part one of the biggest drags on balance. Sure you can be productive on your commute, but it’s not really what you would prefer to be doing!

I’m wondering what it would be like if an organization started “Hyperlocal Hiring”? What if you only hired people who were willing to live within 1 mile of your place of employment? Maybe 2 or 3 miles, but not more, the idea is you could walk or bike to work in a reasonable time.

I know of some local government services that already require this in certain positions. I knew a Fire Chief who worked for a city and one requirement of the job was he had to live within the city limits. This was a rather small town, so he was within that 3-mile distance for sure!

Play along with me for a second!

We already know that the millennial and GenZ workforce like to work for companies that have community involvement. If your employees work in the communities they live in, it makes it pretty easy for organizations to truly support their local community. High engagement equals longer tenure, increased productivity, etc.

The Advantages of Hyperlocal Hiring:

– Hyper-short commutes give employees better work-life balance

– Living close to co-workers build more natural, deeper relationships (if you have a best friend at work…)

– Working and living in the same community gives you a stronger tie to both, increasing tenure.

– It would seem the living/working in close proximity would drive a stronger culture as well.

Okay, I know you’re already poking holes in this theory, but just imagine this for a few minutes on the positive side. It could be extremely cool!

I’m sure an organization with 10,000 employees couldn’t pull this off as it would be super difficult and expensive to have housing for 10,000 employees in a mile or two radius of your place of employment. SMB organizations, on the other hand, could use this as a huge advantage in hiring and attracting that younger workforce. Of course, this also works better in urban settings, but I could imagine a billionaire building their own city!

Dan Gilbert, Quicken Loans founder, basically went up and bought much of downtown Detroit and then moved this headquarters there. 5,000+ employees, modern company, downtown Detroit! If you don’t know the area, you either live a mile or two from the headquarters, or you drive out 30 miles to the suburbs.

There’s nothing that stops you from making a proximity of where someone lives a condition of employment. As long as it’s contractually agreed to up front, you would be fine. You can’t go tell someone they’ll be fired unless they move closer to your office, but new hires coming in can have this condition.

I know most of us would say, well, you’ll limit your candidate pool, so you just can’t do this. That’s my point! I want to limit my candidate pool to others who share this vision with me. To work and build a community in a micro-community with all of us involved! Yeah, Hippies! Come join the commune, but in a very modern, free-will, capitalist sense of being!

What do you think? Would you ever want to be Hyperlocal employee?

People Who Are Always Late Are the Real Terrorists

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I have a confession to make. I’m anally retentive on time. I’m so on time, that if I’m ‘on time’ I think I’m late. For me, being on time means I’m ten minutes early to whatever it is I’m scheduled to do.

If I know I might be late, I get anxiety. My close friends, and my wife, know this about me and usually if they know I’m feeling frisky, they’ll push this button!

Look, I get it, I’m not proud of this. We all carry around our own demons…

My take on this is there could be worse things in the world I could have problems with! I could be a drug addict. I could kick puppies. I could be completely rude and annoying and show up late to stuff and put other people out and show how I don’t care about them by not respecting their time and making them believe I must be more important than them by showing up after the agreed upon time! Yeah, like those things!

So, one of these always late terrorists put together an article recently and basically said that people who are always late are “more successful and live longer, says Science”.

You can bet, I took offense to this! It goes against every fiber of my being not to be late!

So, here’s a bit from the article and the ‘science’ they claim to have to back this up:

In DeLonzor’s book ‘Never be late again’, she says: “Many late people tend to be both optimistic and unrealistic, she said, and this affects their perception of time. They really believe they can go for a run, pick up their clothes at the dry cleaners, buy groceries and drop off the kids at school in an hour…

In a study of salesmen carried out by Metropolitan Life, “consultants who scored in the top 10 percent for optimism sold 88 per cent more than those ranked in the most pessimistic 10 percent”. Their performance is better because their outlook is better…

People who are late, but genuinely don’t mean to be – the ones who want to be considerate, often live in the moment and find it hard to save for the future, says Alfie Kohn on Psychology Today. Some people “can’t summon the self-control to be on time” which would mean that person “probably has trouble getting his or her act together in other ways as well – say, around saving money or saying no to junk food.” Oops.

So, if you read the entire article the ‘science’ is basically this:

1. People who are late are optimistic.

2. Optimistic people in a sales role will sell more.

3. Selling more means you’re more successful.

4. Thus, People who are late are successful.

Apparently, people who are late also are bad at math and regression. Since you can not correlate being late to optimism to success to jump and put all those together!

Let’s face it, people who are late are awful people, and usually unsuccessful because they’re probably constantly trying to catch up from being late, and most likely fired often because they fail to keep commitments they made. Because they’re fired and constantly running behind, they’re most likely, also, stressed out more often than the fine, well-standing folks who show up on time, and that stress is a killer!

I have to assume the person who wrote the article was running late so they just made up some data and science to fit their lateness. I don’t condone it, but I understand. The habitually late need our help. It’s really more of a disease than a conscience decision. We might want to put in some legislation to give them extra protections. I want to be empathetic to their difficult plight of showing up to commitments on time! I’m not a monster.

Seriously, if you’re one of these terrorists, just know that everyone, deep down, hates you with a passion.

5 New Rules of Work

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I’m usually a big fan of Fast Company articles (in fact my friend Lars Schmidt is now a regular contributor to FC and his stuff is awesome!)but this one seemed like the biggest contrived piece of new-aged garbage, I just had to share!

The article has a great premise: These Are The New Rules of Work.  You know, one of those articles that will show us all how we use to do work and how we now do work. Well, maybe, but also how we hope we could do work like they talk about in magazines like Fast Company, but we really don’t because we live in the real world.

Here’s a taste:

Old Rule: You commute into an office every day.

NEW RULE: WORK CAN HAPPEN WHEREVER YOU ARE, ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD.

Cute, but I actually work at a job where we go to the office each day, like most people in the world. So, while it would great to work in the Cayman Islands, my job is in Flint, and if I don’t come in, I don’t get paid. Which makes trips to the Cayman more difficult.

You get the idea.  It was written by a professional writer, not by someone who actually works a real job. Writing isn’t a real, normal job. When you write freelance, you can actually work from anywhere, because you basically work for yourself!

Here are the others:

Old Rule: Work is “9-to-5”

NEW RULE: YOU’RE ON CALL 24-7.

Well, you’re not really on call 24-7, you choose to be ‘connected’ 24-7, there’s a difference.  I do believe that ‘leaving’ your job at the office was a concept that was overblown for the most part in our parent’s generation. They claimed to do this, but only because they didn’t have email and smartphones and laptops. Let’s face it, our parents would have been just as connected given the same technology.

Old Rule: You have a full-time job with benefits.

NEW RULE: YOU GO FROM GIG TO GIG, PROJECT TO PROJECT.

There’s no doubt there is a rise in the use of the contingent workforce, but this doesn’t mean it’s necessarily chosen by the worker.  True, thoughts have shifted that many people no longer want to work at one company for forty years, but much of that has been shaped by companies and economics. When you live through an entire decade of layoffs and downsizing, you begin to think of the work environment as more transient. The crazy part about this mindset is organizations still feel like candidates should want to stay at a company for forty years, even though they can’t, and won’t, guarantee that for you.

Old Rule: Work-life balance is about two distinct, separate spheres.

NEW RULE: FOR BETTER OR WORSE THE LINE BETWEEN WORK AND LIFE IS ALMOST ENTIRELY DISAPPEARING.

This is the one rule I actually agree with.  Again, from a day when you could actually separate yourself from your work and personal life. In today’s ultra-connected world, it becomes very difficult to do this. I think most people get tired of living two separate lives, and just want to live one. This is who I am, professionally and personally, take me a whole person, or not.

Old Rule: You work for money, to support yourself and your family.

NEW RULE: YOU WORK BECAUSE YOU’RE “PASSIONATE” ABOUT A “MOVEMENT” OR A “CAUSE”—YOU HAVE TO “LOVE WHAT YOU DO.”

This is actually the single worst piece of advice ever given to mankind! Bar none.  If this was actually the case, how do you think anything would actually get done on this planet? How would store shelves get stocked? Gas stations get to run. Your dinner gets cooked and the dishes washed at your favorite restaurant? Do you really feel there are folks “passionate” about washing dishes for you? That they want to wash dishes for your cause of having a chicken fried steak and gravy for dinner?

Get some freaking perspective.

I think it’s great if you can work at somewhere you’re passionate about, good for you. But it’s definitely not necessary for you to have a great life. Have a cause that is special in your life? Perfect, go for it. You know what really helps most causes? Money! If you have a job that makes great money, just imagine how you can truly help that cause.

So, what do you think about these ‘new’ rules of work?

The Number One Reason Employees Fail

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“Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”

Albert Einstein

It’s about that time when the HR conference season gets into full swing, so I’m beginning to prepare myself for the hundreds of conversations I’ll have with great HR Pros all over the world.  One thing that I will hear over and over and more than anything else is: “HR just doesn’t get…”  To be honest,  I think HR gets a whole bunch, but I think many of us lack the courage it takes, at the right time, to show how much we actually get.  So we sit there with our mouths closed, and others then have this perception we don’t get it.  But we do. We just weren’t able, or ready, to put our necks on the line, at that moment.

I do agree, though, that there are still certain things we struggle with in HR.  For me, the above quote from Albert sums up what we still struggle to appreciate in HR. We hire people for one set of skills than upon arrival, or at another point in their tenure, expect them to perform a different set of skills.  This behavior happens every day in our organizations. It’s a classic reason at why most people fail in your organization.

I bet if you went back and measured your last 100 terminations in your organizations, 60% of your terms would fall into this category: the person wasn’t performing, but the job they were asked to do was different from what they were hired to do originally.

So, what is it that we still don’t get in HR?

We don’t get the fact that we hire for a certain set of skills and the job changes, so we now need a new set of skills.  Training and Development are still living in this dream that they can drastically change adult learners by having a 44-hourtraining session and having each participant sign a sheet saying they received the training. Then, we all sit around a conference table analyzing our turnover and wondering what happened, and why all these people magically turned into bad performers.  It’s not them, it’s us!

So, what can we do about it?

The first step is realizing HR, and the organization, are part of the problem.  You can’t hire a bunch of fish because you need great swimming skills, then change the skill need to climbing and expect your fish to turn into monkeys.  It has never worked, and it will never work, even if you change your department’s title from Training to Organizational Development.

So, do you just fire everyone and start over?

Maybe, if the skill needed to change is that drastically different. More realistically, we need to have better expectations on the amount of time and effort it is going to take to get people back to “average” performance, not “great” performance.

Setting realistic expectations with your operations partners will give you a better insight to what route your organization is willing to suffer through.  Either way, there will be some suffering, so plan on it and prepare for it. Then go buy a bunch of bananas, because if want those fish learn how to climb, they’re going to need a lot of incentives!

The One Thing That Will Have The Most Positive Impact to your HR Career #TSLive17

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I just got back from attending the Halogen TalentSpace Live 2017 conference. Halogen is the industry leader in Performance Management. Great product, great tools for your hiring managers and organization. On the first day of the conference, it was announced they would be acquired by Saba.

Saba is the industry leader in Learning, so it makes a good marriage. Most large full suite HR enterprise software has both performance and learning, but it’s not even close to what these two systems have. Organizations that prioritize performance and/or learning use systems like Halogen and Saba, not large vanilla enterprise plays.

As you can imagine with any merger of this level some leadership positions are eliminated. You don’t need to CEOs! Halogen’s dynamic and beloved CEO Les Rechan is leaving the combined company immediately and said his goodbyes to the Halogen customer base. Saba’s CEO Pervez Qureshi is also a great leader and is handling the transition well and his closing address at TalentSpace Live left me feeling optimistic for the new company.

So, how does this have anything to do with making a positive impact on your leadership career? Harvard Grant and Glueck study followed two groups of men, one poor, one Harvard grads

Harvard’s Grant and Glueck study followed two groups of men, one poor, one Harvard grads for 75 years to track the physical and emotional well-being of these men. What they found over multiple generations was one thing, in particular, stood out for those men.

The study discovered that those men who had the best well-being had no real genetic similarities. Nothing to do with income or education. The geographic location made little difference. The single most compelling factor of a fulfilling life is if you have and surround yourself with good, positive relationships.

Fulfilling, healthy life = good relationships.

So, if you want to have a positive impact on your career you need to surround yourself with good positive relationships. People you care about, and people who care about you.

That’s what I saw from both Les and Pervez. To strong leaders who surrounded themselves with good relationships with people they truly care for and those people truly care for them. I’m not sure if this means the new Saba/Halogen combined company will be a smashing success, but I know the leadership understands this concept.

I was able to give Les a hug, and I told Pervez if he would have been in the same session he would have gotten one too! You see, I try and surround myself with good relationships. I want to see those in my life succeed and do well, and I always feel they want me to succeed as well.

I think most HR pros and leaders I meet sometimes struggle with this concept and keep too many bad relationships in their life. Relationships that leave them feeling unfilled and detract from them spending time on the right things for themselves and their organization.

So, today, make a deal with yourself. Tell yourself that you will eliminate one bad relationship from your life. You don’t need to do this publically. No big announcement on Facebook is needed. Just quietly walk away, disengage, and move on. It feels so uplifting, you can’t even imagine!

 

 

Stop Creating HR Metrics! You Already Have What You Need #TSLive17

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I was out at Halogen’s TalentSpace Live 2017 event this week speaking to great HR pros and leaders. Halogen is the king of performance management and they just announced their merger with the king of Learning, Saba. Together, they have a pretty great 1-2 punch for organizations to check out.

TalentSpace Live brought in Patty McCord one of the main builders of the famous Netflix Culture deck (if you haven’t read this, you need to take a few minutes and do it!):

Patty was an awesome speaker for an HR audience. Real, fresh, in your face with great energy. She’s the HR leader everyone wishes their organization had.

Patty made a statement that stuck with me:

“The metrics to running HR are already in the business, you don’t need to create new ones!” 

What she was talking about was HR shouldn’t be focused on HR metrics, HR should be focused on business metrics (Profit, Revenue, Net Income). She went on to say “Retention” isn’t a business metric. Senior leaders don’t care about retention.

They care about Profit, Revenue, Net Income, Margin, etc. As HR leaders we need to show them the impact to business metrics when we suck at HR. We need to talk about what we are doing in HR using business language, not HR language and words.

“We believe we can increase margins if we put this program in place to control the amount of money we are having to spend to replace workers when they leave us.” Not, “Our retention is worse than the industry average and we have a program to lower our turnover.”

Senior leaders hear two very different things when they hear those statements, even though they basically are pointing out the same problem and solution.

We don’t need more HR metrics. We need more HR leaders focusing on the metrics of our businesses that are already in place and show us whether we are successful or not. Patty also shared she thought every single employee should have P&L training.

If your employees know how the organization makes and loses money, there will be no question on what direction they need to take in their daily job duties to have a positive impact on that outcome. Too often we tell them what to do assuming it’s too complicated for them to understand.

If you teach your employees how you make money it’s always amazing to watch behaviors change in how they do every job in your company. I find the vast majority actually want the organization to be successful but didn’t know how to help until someone connected all those dots to their job.

I really enjoyed Patty! She spoke my language! If you get a chance check her out!

The Top 5 Predictors of Employee Turnover

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Quantum Workplace recently released a study they put together on the predictors of employee turnover. Employee turnover is becoming a huge issue as the unemployment rate falls, which is expected. As your employees have more options, they’re more likely to leave.

I’ve always been a fan of Quantum’s research but this one seemed a little light. Here are their five predictors:

  1. Lack of job satisfaction.
  2. Individual needs unmet (health, wellbeing, balance)
  3. Poor team dynamics (Basically they hate working with the people they work with, or the team hates them, either way, they’ll be leaving)
  4. Misalignment (this is a hiring fit issue – you hired the wrong person for the job. Could be culture, skill set, etc.)
  5. Unlikely to stay (when an employee indicates they want to leave, most likely they will leave. DUH! This was actually #5! How can this be a ‘real’ indicator of turnover?!)

Okay, I’ll give them the first four reasons. Of course, those are all real reasons someone will leave. Are they the top 4? Depends on your environment. Number five is just flat out silly! “Hey, when someone tells you they’re about to leave, that’s a predictor they’re going to leave your employment.”

Really!? When I tell someone I’m hungry, guess what? That’s a predictor I’m hungry! Probably could have come up with a better number five! But, check out the study, they also give some tips and insight on how control turnover.

What are the real Turnover Predictors?  Here are my Top 5:

#1 – My boss is an asshole.

#2 – I hate what I’m doing, so I’m unwilling to put up with any B.S.

#3 – I oversold myself and I will most likely fail, so I’m leaving for a new position before you fire me, so it will look like this was my position.

#4 – I’m a bit crazy (or a lot bit crazy) and my co-workers hate me, so I need to find new co-workers to creep out.

#5 – I’m telling you I’m leaving! (Ha! Just kidding!)

#5 – You’re underpaying me for what I’m doing and we both know you’re underpaying me.

Bad bosses and not paying market will kill your retention of great talent faster than anything! The crazy piece of this is I always find that organizations clearly know about both of these issues.

If you ask an organization who the worst managers are they almost always align with the highest turnover by department, location, etc. The same thing works with those being underpaid in your organization.

People will take off if the market is clearly paying more and your organization is just average. The worst part of this is most organizations will then overpay to get back average or less talent when their good talent leaves. The market always wins. Always.

 

 

 

 

Everything I Know About Recruiting I Learned from my 70 year old Mother!

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So, most of you know I’m the President of HRU Technical Resources. Most of you don’t know my Mom is the CEO!

She makes sure to point that out to me about once per month! Today is her 70th birthday. While it’s been a while since she’s been on the phone filling requisitions, to this day, she can not turn if off!

She started her technical recruiting company in 1980 when almost no women started their own businesses, and it’s been successful every year we’ve been in business. Through two major recessions, constant competitive pressure, and an every changing client environment.

She’s the only person I’ve ever met in business I would not want to compete against! How’s that for a role model growing up! She resisted, before resisting became in fashion!

So, I wanted to share some of what I learned about recruiting that she taught me:

– The recruiter with the most activity will almost always have the most placements. 99.9% of the time.

– Our clients are important, but if they ask you to work for free, you won’t be able to help them for too long. Only work with companies that value the work you give them.

– Talent is the lifeblood of our business. It’s the only thing that will differentiate you from the competition. Never forget that when you’re talking to a potential candidate.

– Following the process is important until it isn’t. Don’t allow it to get in the way of making placements.

– People don’t know what they can accomplish until they get pushed. It’s your job as a leader to push them to their limits so they can see how great they can be. (Sounds like Bobby Knight, right!)

– Balance is never really the issue. If you’re successful you have all the balance you want. If you’re not successful balance shouldn’t be your biggest concern.

– Candidates always tell you why their great, or why they suck. You just have to keep them talking and ask the right questions.

– If you ever feel that a candidate has a red flag, ask the question. The embarrassment is not them having to answer the question, it’s you explaining to the hiring manager why you didn’t ask the question!

– The best thing you can do is turn down a client’s requisition when they’re completely unrealistic about what they want. It’s a waste of your time, and they think you suck for not filling it. Most recruiters won’t turn them down, when you do, they’ll want to know why. That’s the conversation you really want.

I could go on all day like this! The learning never stops. Running a business your mother started is tough. I’ll never run like her, and it’s taken us both a long time to understand that’s okay, as long as the core of what she’s taught me never changes.

Happy Birthday, Mom! Yeah, yeah, I’ll get back on the phone!

 

 

I Can’t Make You Recruit!

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My mind is still racing after coming back from SHRM Talent this week! So many great conversations I had with TA leaders and pros. I actually think the level of conversation at functional specific conferences is higher because everyone is feeling the same pain!

It’s not to say a conference like SHRM National can’t be great, but you’re surrounded by HR and Talent pros with dozens of specialties and focus. At SHRM Talent you basically had the majority of the attendees focused on how do we attract and hire better talent for our organizations! That leads to great open dialogue and connection. I came back to the office super energized!

I have to share one specific conversation I had. Great, passionate TA leader approached me with a problem she was having. She was feeling a little beat up, not as successful as she wanted her function and team to be, probably didn’t have the respect and influence she deserved for the challenges they’re facing. Her question was this:

“How do I get my recruiters to recruit?” 

It was simple and honest.  The easy answer is a performance management discussion but I knew what she was really asking. It’s a dilemma most TA leaders face right now. Our organizations are pushing us for more talent, and yet I don’t really have team and technology to provide what they want!

My answer to her was also simple and honest.

“You can’t.” 

Okay, I expanded my answer because you know I love to give advice! I explained that most likely I’m guessing you have some really lovely, caring, company people working on your team that love working for you and love what they do. She said, “that’s right!” I’m  also assuming these people are administering a recruiting process, but they’re not actually recruiting. “Right again! That’s my problem!”, she said.

Here’s what I know after twenty years in talent acquisition. If someone doesn’t want to change, nothing I do will get them to change. Making someone recruit who doesn’t want to recruit, won’t work. Never has, never will. You have to want to recruit, really recruit, to recruit. No, not what you think recruiting is, what actual recruiting is!

So, I said, here’s what I would do and laid out a plan of how I would change process and activities and hold them accountable. I also said more than likely most won’t do this and they’ll quit or fight you until you fire them. If you’re lucky you might get one or two of your “Farmers” to turn into a “Hunters”. But, my experience has been most will refuse to change, while telling you they’re desire to change!

I don’t have the time or capacity to get someone to change. Either they truly care enough to change, or they don’t. There’s no middle ground because I need to change what we’re doing, and I only need people on the team that can now do the new requirements of what I’m asking.

What I find is most TA leaders die trying to change their non-recruiters into recruiters. And by die trying, I mean they eventually quit or get fired, all the while their team keeps doing what they want to do. You can change the people, or you can ‘change’ the people.

I can’t make ‘you’ recruit, but I can find people who want to recruit.