Category Archives: Leadership

Maybe Facebook Taking on LinkedIn is the end of Facebook!

Posted on by
4

I’ve always been a huge proponent that Facebook could end LinkedIn at any point they decided. Facebook has more active users, more data, it’s a platform everyone is comfortable with, and companies love it as well.

So, when Facebook opened up a company’s ability to now create a job posting on your company Facebook page recently, and have candidates can apply right on that page, stuff just got real for LinkedIn!

It seems like the logical conclusion that Facebook can do what LinkedIn is doing better. But, should it be the logical conclusion?

It seems like all of these social media companies constantly stumble over themselves, primarily because they are constantly breaking new ground with each turn. You try stuff, it doesn’t work, you try more stuff, eventually, you find the secret sauce.

LinkedIn has gone through this pain, multiple times. They had one of the greatest things going ever when they were flat out a professional network and professionals flocked to LI to network, share ideas, etc. It was a modern day equivalent to the old school Rolodex. LinkedIn made professional networking popular.

Then they broke it. Let’s be fair, they broke it because eventually, we all need to get paid, LI was no different. But opening up LI to recruiting nation killed the desire for people to want to be on LinkedIn and get constantly pimped. But, at the same time they actually created a pretty cool job board 2.0, when everyone thought those were going to die.

So, now Facebook wants to come into the playground, push LinkedIn down and take their milk money.

The problem is, Facebook hasn’t really ever broken their platform before and had to recreate it into something new. The Facebook I use today is virtually the same Facebook I started using nine years ago. LinkedIn today, is not LinkedIn of five to seven years ago, it’s very different. Some people will say worse, some people will pay $26.2 billion for it!

I’m wondering if Facebook goes all full blown LinkedIn with their platform, what happens to Facebook?  Is it still a place where you’ll want to hang out four or five times a day? Do you want to share cookie recipes with your Nana and talk financial strategy with coworkers all in the same place?

It’s arrogant to think you can just come in do something better than someone who has lived the pain of creating something. LinkedIn’s history of development gives them an advantage. Can Facebook come in and do it better? Maybe, but I don’t think you’ll see it happen overnight.

I’m a huge advocate for ‘one-life’. I don’t want to live multiple lives. I don’t want to be one person on Facebook, and another person on LinkedIn, but I’m in the vast minority when it comes to that view. Most people do not want to mix their personal and professional lives. They want to be freaks in the sheets and a lady on the streets, err, LinkedIn.

Should be interesting to watch these two powerhouses fight it out. What do you think TA pros and leaders? Are you ready to do all of your recruiting on Facebook?

How focused Are Your Leaders In Making Your Organization Successful?

Posted on by
Reply

We all like to think we have a leader or two that is freaking dialed in at a level far superior to everyone else. They’re freaks. In early, usually, one of the first ones, out late, if not last. They seem to know what’s going on in every part of the organization before you do.

Our top leaders are ultra-focused on making their organizations great. Nothing seems to distract them and throw them off their game. So much so they probably have very questionable work-life balance, if they have any at all.

Want a real-life example of one of these freaks!? Let’s take a look at Alabama head football coach, Nick Saban:

Nick Saban said he wasn’t aware that millions of Americans went to the polls on Tuesday to vote for the next president of the United States.

“It was so important to me that I didn’t even know it was happening,” Alabama‘s head football coach told reporters in Tuscaloosa on Wednesday evening. “We’re focused on other things here.”

To be fair, news media isn’t part of Saban’s routine.

The 65-year-old coach typically wakes up every morning, has a Little Debbie Oatmeal Creme Pie and a cup of coffee and watches about 10 minutes of The Weather Channel, which promised no political coverage on Election Day…

Nick Saban wasn’t aware there was a Presidential election going on! Brother! That’s focus!

I’m not sure I buy into the fact he had no idea. Most leaders, especially leaders of 18-22-year-old young men, would have made a very specific point to encourage those men to be a part of the American process. To show their leadership within the community by voting. But, Nick is a freak!

Nick Saban is not like most leaders, he’s an outlier in every definition of the term, which makes him extremely good and extremely successful at what he does.

Do you think you have a leader in your organization that is so focused on making you successful that they didn’t even realize there was a Presidential election going on?  I doubt most of us have one of these folks in our organizations, but if you do, you need to pay attention to that person! I’m not saying it’s healthy, all I’m saying is success is hard, and sometimes you have to have unhealthy habits to get it and maintain it. We all face that balance

We all face that balance. Don’t judge Saban for his choices, they’re his to make. He’s addicted to success, even if it means not knowing what’s going on in the world around him.

Vets, We Love You, but We Still Aren’t Hiring You!

Posted on by
1

One of the most politically correct lies that employers spout off constantly is how desperate they are to hire Veterans! There’s a reason for this. In America, we love to honor our Vets! There’s nothing better than propping your brand up against that American flag with a soldier standing right next to it.

The reality is, most Vets are still struggling to find solid careers. Sure, everyone wants to offer them a $15/hr bust-your-ass-job, but Vets are looking for salaried positions with great benefits, in jobs they can work the rest of their career, that won’t destroy their body. Not many employers are offering Vets those jobs!

I’ve been writing about this problem for the past five years and I get a healthy stream of Vets who write me behind the scenes and share their stories and struggles to find solid career level positions. I just recently had an individual who came out of his service with a degree in HR, service of constant promotion, supervised upwards of one hundred soldiers at a time. In that role, he had constant performance management, training, process improvement, etc.

He was applying for an entry-level HR Generalist role. He got turned down because he didn’t have enough experience!

So, why are companies still struggling when it comes to hiring Vets into higher level roles? Here’s what they don’t tell you:

  1. Less than 1% of Americans have ever served in any branch of the military. We fear what we don’t know, and we definitely don’t hire what we don’t know! We only see pictures of Vets holding guns and in combat, but that’s a small part of their every day activities.
  2. Movies have given us a warped sense of what professionals in the military actually do. Today’s modern military is rarely portrayed as it actually is in the movies because it wouldn’t be very exciting. It’s the same reason you don’t see movies about the day to day happenings of a large company. It’s mostly boring! What most military pros do on a daily basis, away from battle zones, is mostly the same stuff you do on a daily basis. It’s HR, logistics, accounting, administration, training, development, etc.
  3. We overvalue work experience within an industry. If someone worked at your competitor for 3 months, you would value that more highly than a military professional doing the same job for 3 years. We so overvalue industry experience it’s not even funny! I’ve worked in four different industries and each time had people tell me, “Oh, Tim, this is the craziest industry you’ll ever be in”, ever time! Guess what? It wasn’t. It’s all the same! Get over yourself!

I recently hired a Vet into my own company. We mostly hire new recruiters and train them up, but it’s definitely a career job. Great recruiters can find work anywhere for the rest of their life, in every industry. It’s mostly a desk job. Recruiting companies love to hire former college athletes. What I’ve found is Vets come with the same motivations and skills, but their work ethic might be a bit stronger!

I constantly have CEOs tell me they just want people who want to work. Yet, when it gets down to their hiring managers, there’s a mental block happening. If these military folks were minority or women we would call this discrimination, but for some reason, we don’t say that with Vets. But, that’s mostly what’s happening.

We love to hide behind the fact we found someone with more ‘industry’ experience, or someone who has done the same job, etc. It’s all excuses. You don’t hire Vets because you don’t think they can handle your jobs. The fact is, they can, they just need you to give them a shot!

Do yourself a favor this Veteran’s Day. Take a chance and hire a Vet into a job you’ve never tried before. Sure, they’ll need some training, but they’ll bring the rest, and you might just find your organizations next great talent pool!

Notes to HR Tech Vendors #8 – If You Buy Today!

Posted on by
Reply

I’ve done a few presentations titled something like, “HR Tech Buyers Guide”, “How to Buy HR Tech”, etc. The presentation is designed for HR and TA practitioners to help them become better buyers of HR Tech. To understand the crap that HR and TA Tech vendors do and say to get you to buy stuff you might not need, want, or will use.

The interesting thing about these presentations is that half the audience turns out to be the actual vendors themselves wanting to hear what it is I’m telling the real HR and TA leaders! It’s smart for the vendors. It helps make the better sellers as well. Well, at least some that actually listen!

Based on these interactions I decided to build a series of what has come out of interactions with the vendors themselves, aptly named “Notes to HR Tech Vendors”. Look I don’t alway have to be creative! Enjoy!

Notes to HR Tech Vendors #8 – If You Buy Today! 

“If you buy today we can ensure you’ll be a part of the beta product for free, but if you wait, we’re going to be charging future buyers for that product.” 

“If you buy today, we can wave the implementation fees.” 

“If you buy today, I can give you the rest of this quarter for free. That’s two free months!” 

“If you buy today, it’s $79 per user. I can only give you that today, next week it’ll be $99 per user.”

Look, Sparky. If I don’t buy today, and I buy next Wednesday I better still get the beta, and the two months, and the stupid t-shirt and any other crap you’re waving around to try and close me!

If you sell HR Tech like this, you suck! And not the cute, “Come on guys, you suck! #Winkyface”. It’s the “You Suck!” and hopefully bad things happen to you and everyone you know because you’re an awful person, suck!

I actually had this happen to me recently. Very good product and I definitely wanted to give it a try. The salesperson knows she has me very close to signing the deal, and then it happened. “Well, Tim, if you sign today, I’ll give you the last two weeks of the month for free!”

I said, “Thank you. I’ll let you know”, and hung up. She’s been trying to reach me almost daily since not understanding why I won’t return her messages, we were so close! Except then you did the worse sales pitch known to man, and now I hate you.

HR tech vendors stop doing this. If you’re willing to give a buyer two weeks for free, just tell them you’ll give them two weeks for free. If they buy tomorrow, or if they buy next Tuesday or next month! Also, we get your prices change, but if you are currently talking to me about $79 per user, that price better be good for a reasonable amount of time, like a minimum of 30 days at least.

HR tech buyers, if you feel like you’re being ‘forced’ to buy today! End the call. End the relationship. The company you’re dealing with is not a good company because good companies don’t sell this way. They don’t treat you like an idiot. They respect you and understand that you usually aren’t in a position to “Buy today”.

No one in HR Tech needs to be hard closing HR Pros. People’s careers are on the line for these buying decisions. It’s not something to hard sell them into. If they make a bad choice for their organization it could cost them their job. Ease up Boiler Room.

 

Okay, Your Candidate Won, Don’t Be An Asshole!

Posted on by
3

I’m writing this before the election, because either way it turns out, I would feel the same way!

Congratulations! Your candidate won! It’s like when OJ was acquitted of murdering his wife and Ron Goldman. A bunch of people ran around so freaking ecstatic that he ‘won’. Chris Rock famously said,”We won, we wonnnnn!” “What the fuck did we win? Every day i look in the mail for my OJ prize and it ain’t there.”

I’m waking up today, knowing 100% I won’t be getting a Hillary check or a Trump check! In fact, regardless of who won, there’s a great chance I’ll be getting an invoice!

When Michigan State plays the University of Michigan and MSU wins. I’m going to be an asshole to a lot of UofM fans. Why? Because mostly their douchebags and that’s kind of how fandom works in college athletics. If you beat your rival, you can be an asshole until they beat you, then you know it’s your turn to take it for a year, or whenever you beat them the next time.

Politics are not college athletics.

Voting for President isn’t about winning or losing. We’re all on the same team! The team is called America.

That’s the hard part. America has turned into this giant multi-national organization. Within that organization you have mergers that have taken place, we’ve tried some spinoffs, we’re constantly trying to launch startups, we have our main product line that is a cash cow but every new hire thinks it sucks, etc.

America just got a new CEO. Regardless of who that CEO is, some employees aren’t going to like it. A few will actually leave the company, but it’s mostly employees blowing smoke. Leaving takes real work, most people say they’ll leave and then have selective amnesia when the topic comes up after the fact.

So, I’m in HR. It’s now my job to get as many people as possible to follow the new CEO. That’s how a company stays successful and/or turns itself around. Develop a vision, get behind it and see how good we can make it. Americans for the most part, have always been fairly decent employees. We’ll voice our opinion, but when stuff gets real, we support each other.

So, today, when you walk by that co-worker who voted for the other person and lost, don’t be an asshole. Be sympathetic. They want, what you want, to be the best country we can be for those here now and for those who will be here in the future.

 

 

HR’s Unwritten Rules!

Posted on by
4

For those NFL/Professional Sports Fans out there I give you one of the dumbest unwritten sports rules that are out there:

You can’t lose your starting spot due to injury.

Dallas Cowboy’s, Tony Romo was injured at the beginning of this season and potentially could have come back this past week, but his ‘backup’ Dax Prescott has done such a good job this season, that the coach and GM now have a really difficult decision to make! This has sports news, radio and fans talking about ‘the rule’ – if you’re the starter and you get injured, once you are better, you automatically get your starting job back.  But, why?  Where does this come from?

This has sports news, radio and fans talking about ‘the rule’ – if you’re the starter and you get injured, once you are better, you automatically get your starting job back.  But, why?  Where does this come from?

I can think of a couple of reasons why an organization might want to have this type of rule, in sports:

1. You don’t want players playing injured and not wanting to tell the coaches for fear if they get pulled, they’ll lose their job.  Thus putting the team in a worse spot of playing injured instead of allowing a healthy player to come in. Also, you don’t want the player furthering injuring themselves worse.

2. If the person has proven themselves to be the best, then they get injured, why wouldn’t you go back with the proven commodity?

I can think of more ways this unwritten rule makes no sense at all:

1. No matter the reason, shouldn’t the person with the best performance get the job?  No matter the reason the person was given to have his or her shot – if they perform better than the previous person, they should keep the job.

2. If you want a performance-based culture, you go with the hot hand.

3. Injuries are a part of the game, just as leave of absences are a part of our work environments, the organizations that are best prepared for this will win in the end – that means having capable succession in place that should be able to perform at a similar level, and if you’re lucky – at a better level.

It’s different for us in HR, right?  We have laws we have to follow, FMLA for example, or your own leave policies.  But is it really that different?  In my experience, I see companies constantly make moves when someone has to take a personal or medical leave and go a different direction with a certain person or position.

Let’s face it, the truth is our companies can’t just be put on hold while someone takes weeks or months off to take care of whatever it is they need to do.  That doesn’t mean we eliminate them, and legally we can’t, but we do get very creative in how we bring them back and positions that get created to ensure they still have something, but at the same time the company can continue to move forward in their absence.

I wonder if ‘our’ thinking about the NFL’s unwritten rule of losing your position comes from our own HR rules and laws we have in place in our organizations.  It would seem, like the NFL, most HR shops figure out ways around their own rules as well!

Notes to HR Tech Vendors – #10 – Your Real Competition

Posted on by
1

I’ve done a few presentations titled something like, “HR Tech Buyers Guide”, “How to Buy HR Tech”, etc. The presentation is designed for HR and TA practitioners to help them become better buyers of HR Tech. To understand the crap that HR and TA Tech vendors do and say to get you to buy stuff you might not need, want, or will use.

The interesting thing about these presentations is that half the audience turns out to be the actual vendors themselves wanting to hear what it is I’m telling the real HR and TA leaders! It’s smart for the vendors. It helps make the better sellers as well. Well, at least some that actually listen!

Based on these interactions I decided to build a series of what has come out of interactions to the vendors themselves, aptly named “Notes to HR Tech Vendors”. Look I don’t alway have to be creative! Enjoy!

#10 – Your Real Competition

Unless you’re buying some giant watered-down enterprise level HRIS or ATS/Talent Suite you almost never have competition!

Yes, you read that correctly. 90% of HR Tech vendors have “NO” competition! But, you believe the opposite.

Here’s the deal. HR and TA Tech buyers are fairly naive to the industry. It’s not our full-time job to track every new ATS that is being launched. We’re just trying to get people hired and stop people from quitting. Takes up about 99.9% of our job! So, when it’s time to buy new Tech we usually buy the first thing we’re sold!

The competition you face is not your real competitors. The competition you face is a “no sale”.

Almost all HR Tech buyers will buy your product, or they won’t buy anything. Primarily because they don’t even know you have competition. Well, they didn’t until you actually told them! “Hey, we’re the #1 CRM on the market, so much better than #2, #3 and #4.” What? There is more than one CRM!?

If you’re Smashfly (a CRM Tech) almost every single sale is going to be a “Yes” or a “No, we’ve decided we don’t need this right now”. It’s almost never “hey, we’ve decided to buy Clinch, or Avature, or Ascendify, or Talemetry, or Beamery, or”…you get the picture!

Almost never!

Your real competition is you. It’s your ability to sell your solution to a buyer that has some sort of pain around HR or TA. It’s shocking at how often this fails. I mean what can go wrong when you throw a 15-year-old on the phone with a twenty year HR vet on the other end, telling them how to fix her shop!?

And you think I exaggerate on the age! Almost every single HR and TA Tech sales person I speak is under the age of 30 and most have never worked a day in HR or TA. This leads to a ton of “no sales”.  If you can’t tell me how your solution is going to solve my pain, in my language, I’m probably not buying.

HR and TA Tech vendors, your competition isn’t the problem. Your technology isn’t the problem (it’s usually really awesome). Your sales strategy is killing you. The cute, little, naive babies selling your products is the problem. They don’t know me. They don’t know my pain. They don’t speak my language.

Your real competition is you.

Is Mobile more Trump or more Hillary?

Posted on by
Reply

If you’re into broad political strokes, let’s play a game. Let’s say for the sake of this game, what would be considered traditional Democratic supporters tend to have less resources at their disposal than traditional Republican supporters. Most of us in HR would then believe that Trump probably should have a larger mobile strategy than Hillary, given the assumption that Republicans tend to have higher incomes and therefore more access to mobile devices.

 

We tend to act this way in HR. We believe that if you want to attract high-tech talent you must have a mobile job strategy. Our young, educated tech-savvy workforces want to do everything via mobile. Payroll, benefits options, retirement, transfers, etc.

 

The reality is, we have this totally backward!

 

The Pew Research Center found that low-educated, low-income wage earners – your hourly employees – are more likely…

 

Check out the rest of my article over at Paychex’s Worx Blog! Along with the 4 things you need to launch mobile-enabled software to your employees! 

 

Falling In Love With Your Job

Posted on by
2

Do you know what it felt like the last time you fell in love?

I mean real love?

The kind of love where you talk 42 times per day, in between text and facebook messages and feel physical pain from being apart? Ok, maybe for some it’s been a while and you didn’t have the texts or Facebook!  But, you remember those times when you really didn’t think about anything else or even imagine not seeing the other person the next day, hell, the next hour. Falling “in” love is one of the best parts of love, it doesn’t last that long and you never get it back.

I hear people all the time say “I love my job” and I never use to pay much attention, in fact, I’ve said it myself.  The reality is, I don’t love my job. I mean I like it a whole lot, but I love my wife, I love my kids, I love Diet Mt. Dew at 7am on a Monday morning. The important things in life!  But my job?  I’m not sure about that one.  As an HR Pro, I’m supposed to work to get my employees to “love” their jobs.  Love.

Let me go all Dr. Phil on you for a second. Do you know why most relationships fail? No, it’s not the cheating. No, it’s not the drugs and/or alcohol. No, it’s not money. No, it’s not that he stop caring. No, it’s not your parents. Ok, stop it. I’ll just tell you!

Relationships fail because expectations aren’t met.  Which seems logical knowing what we know about how people fall in love, and lose their minds.  Once that calms down – the real work begins.  So, if you expect love to be the love of the first 4-6 months of a relationship you’re going to be disappointed a whole bunch over and over.

Jobs aren’t much different.

You get a new job and it’s usually really good!  People listen to your opinion. You seem smarter. Hell, you seem better looking (primarily because people are sick of looking at their older co-workers). Everything seems better in a new job.  Then you have your 1 year anniversary and you come to find out you’re just like the other idiots you’re working with.

This is when falling in love with your job really begins. When you know about all the stuff the company hid in the closet. The past employees they think are better and smarter than you, the good old days when they made more money, etc.  Now, is when you have to put some work into making it work.

I see people all the time moving around to different employers and never seeming to be satisfied.  They’re searching. Not for a better job, or a better company. They’re searching for that feeling that will last.  But it never will, not without them working for it.

The best love has to be worked for. Passion is easy and fleeting. Love is hard to sustain and has to be worked, but can last forever.

Your Recruitment Strategy Needs Focus!

Posted on by
1

I’ve been in Chicago a couple of times this fall. The restaurant scene in Chicago is off the charts, just like it is right now in New York, LA, etc. It’s a great time to be a person who loves food!

If you like going to new restaurants you’ll find out quickly that the restaurants of today are not like the ones we grew up with. In Michigan, and my wife still makes fun of this, any non-chain restaurant serving “American” food basically has the same menu where they serve burgers, seafood, Italian dishes, Mexican dishes, breakfast, hell they would serve Ethiopian if people would order it!

Basically, they serve a little of everything, but nothing especially noteworthy!

The new restaurant scene has changed this completely and now you’re lucky to have 8 main dishes that are served on a menu, BUT every single thing kills! The entire menu is one side of page and seems like almost no options but each dish is better than the next. Chefs of these new restaurants found out the way to make money is to focus your menu and make fabulous dishes.

You have lower food costs because of less wasted ingredients, you’re more efficient in cooking fewer items, less complaints because you know each dish is awesome and you create signature asked-for dishes. Focus = success.

When I speak with most TA Leaders they are trying to serve a menu that caters to everyone with their TA strategy.

When you ask what they are focusing on you get an answer that sounds like this, “Well, candidate experience for sure, and branding, that’s really important to us, our tech stack is a disaster we need to figure that out, big project right now with onboarding, looking at some CRM products, new career site in the works, definitely analytics is a priority and working to really get our arms around the employee experience as well.”

What!? Sound familiar?

Their “focus” is to focus on everything! It’s the I can’t see the trees through the forest mentality of focus. It’s also a huge strategic recipe for failing in talent acquisition.

What should your focus be?  Well, that depends on what’s important you to and your organization, but it surely isn’t everything. What I find is that great TA shops have one main focus and one or two minor things they’re working on.  The main focus might be analytics and to help with that they’re also implementing some new technology and building out what impact those results will have. Those results will then become the next focus, and so on.

Do a few things really, really well, then move on to develop something else that will be world-class.