Category Archives: Learning

HR and Recruiting are not Rocket Science!

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I hear one thing over and over from people who read my stuff or see my presentations:

“It’s not rocket science.”

It happened just last week. Some HR guy sent me a message and said, “I don’t get it?” Meaning, he didn’t get what I was trying to say like there was some deeper meaning to my straightforward point. Nope, I was just pointing out some common sense, which seems rather in short supply these days.

I take that as a compliment.  I’m not trying to ‘wow’ anyone with a couple of college credits and my top-notch brain.  I’ve never been known for being the big brain type.  I’m the common sense, straight forward type.  HR and Recruiting, to me, shouldn’t be hard and complex.  It should be simple and easy to understand.

That’s the problem.

Too many HR and Talent Pros want to make it seem like ‘our’ jobs are very complex and difficult.  This is very natural, every profession does this.  If HR is easy, you won’t be valued highly by leadership.  So, let’s make it hard.  The last thing anyone wants to do is come out and say, “Hey! A monkey can do my job, but keep paying me $80K!”   It’s very difficult culturally to come clean and say, “You know what?  This stuff isn’t hard.  It’s work.  We have a lot to do.  But, if we do what we know we have to do, we’ll solve this!”

But that’s HR and Talent Acquisition. It’s work.  Many times it’s a lot of work!  But we aren’t trying to solve the human genome!  We are trying to administer some processes, get our employees better, find ways to keep them engaged and happy and find more folks who want to become a part of what we are doing.  Not overly hard.  It’s not rocket science.

I think the complexity in HR and Recruiting comes into play with ‘us’ not being aligned with what our leadership truly wants.  Many times we flat out guess what we think they want out of HR. Sometimes we assume what they want, and try and do that. Very rarely do we actually find out exactly what they expect, and just deliver that.

There are a number of reasons for this.  First, we might not agree with what our leadership wants or expects from HR.  So, we give them what we want and expect from HR.  This never works well, but is tried often!  Second, our leadership changes what they want and expect, as they see better ways to do HR and Recruiting.  Change is a bitch.  It’s more of a bitch when it’s happening to you.  Third, we might not have the experience to deliver what is wanted or needed.  So, you get what we can give you.

This seems to be why delivering great HR and Talent Acquisition becomes rocket science.  Simply, we can’t have basic communication with our leadership and some self-insight on our capabilities of what we can actually deliver.   Couple this with most people’s unwillingness to ask for help, because they fear others will look down on them for not knowing, and you’ve hit the HR rocket science grand slam!

HR isn’t hard. Recruiting isn’t hard.  Dealing with expectations, and our own insecurities, that’s hard!

The Most Important Question You’ll Ever Ask a Hiring Manager

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How are those hiring manager “intake” meetings going?

You know, those meetings you have with a hiring manager every single time they have an opening.  You sit down with your hiring manager, face to face, and ask them a page full of questions.  Why is this position open? What would make a candidate most successful in this role?  What color of skin would you like this candidate to have? Boobs or no boobs? Whoops! Scratch those last ones, we would never ask those…

The reality is Talent Pros really only have one question they need to ask hiring managers. That question is this:

“Do you trust that I can find the talent you need?”

Ultimately, this is all that really matters for your success.  If they trust you, they’ll give you all the information you need to be successful.  If they don’t trust you can find the talent they need, they tend to hold stuff back.

Yes, I know that doesn’t make sense, but that’s real world talent acquisition stuff! Welcome to corporate America, a lot of stuff doesn’t make sense!

Most hiring managers have no faith you’ll find them great talent.  They have this belief because of so many bad Talent Pros before you failed them.  So many before you didn’t really go out and find the best talent, they just delivered whatever warm body came into the ATS.

I just come out and ask the question.  The first answer you’ll get from 99% of hiring managers is a weird, “Well, sure, I do.” If you really dig into this answer, you’ll get the true answer which 90% of the time is, “Hell no! Why would I?  Your department has really never gotten this right!”

Thank you! That’s what I really needed.  I needed to get that out in the open, so now we can really build trust, and make great things happen.  They’re mostly right. Talent Acquisition fails many of our hiring managers for a number of reasons. Right now, your hiring manager doesn’t need to hear those reasons, they need to hear why this time will be different.

Then, you have to live up to ‘different’! You have to be better.  You have to get it right. Getting it right earns trust.

Once they trust you, great things will happen. Earn that trust.

7 Things HR Pros Should Be Doing to Deliver a World-Class Employee Experience

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Webinar Alert! Tomorrow at Noon EST – it’s me and the 7 Things every HR Pro in the World should be doing to Deliver a World-Class Employee Experience.

Want to join me? You’ll get SHRM and HRCI credit!

Plus, you’ll get to have lunch with me. Well, only if you sit at your desk and eat lunch, and you’re in the east coast time zone, or you can have your fifth cup of coffee with me if your in the west coast time zone, or maybe you’re just central and you get up early and like to eat an early lunch. Look, I’m

Look, I’m fairly intelligent, but I’m sorry I don’t know your eating habits, so just log in and you do you, and I’ll do me, and we’ll all learn something about creating great employee experiences!

Here are the details:

“Our employees are our most important asset,” said every CEO … ever! But what if we truly treated our employees like our most important assets? Would you do things differently than you are right now?

HR expert and world-renowned HR blogger Tim Sackett and Ryan Higginson-Scott, an HR leader at Optimizely, will bring their fun and engaging style to the hottest topic on the planet — building an employee experience everyone wants to be a part of. The program will introduce you to the concept of employee experience, why it matters and, more importantly, dig into what you can do right now to begin designing and developing a world-class employee experience in your own organization. You’ll walk away from this session with at least seven great ideas that can move your employee experience from average to great.

Learning objectives:

  • Learn how best practice organizations are designing a strategy to improve the employee experience.
  • Develop a launch strategy and plan for your organization’s employee experience.
  • Understand the metrics and KPIs around world-class employee experience.

Sounds sexy, right!?

REGISTER HERE! 

The Key Trait of Every Great Employee #SHRM17

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For twenty years I’ve been hiring and firing people.  I’ve been lucky enough to have some really great performers, a bunch of good performers and also a few really crappy performers.  It seems like every time I turn, someone has an answer for me on how to hire better.  For years I have given the advice, if all else fails, hire smart people.  It’s not a bad strategy. For the most part, if you hire the smartest ones of the bunch, you’ll have more good performers, than bad performers.  I’m talking pure intelligence, not necessarily book smarts.

But, just hiring smart people still isn’t perfect.  I want to hire good, or great, people every single time.  How do you do that?  That’s the million dollar question.

To me, there is one trait we don’t focus enough on, across all industries.  Optimism.

Your ability to look at a situation and come up with positive ways to handle it.  Think about your best employees, almost always there is a level of optimism they have that your lower performers don’t.

I can’t think of one great employee I’ve ever worked with that didn’t have a level of optimism that was at least greater than the norm. They might be optimistic about their future, about the companies future, about life in general.  The key was they had optimism.

Optimistic people find ways to succeed because they truly believe they will succeed. Pessimistic people find ways to fail since they believe they are bound to fail.  This hiring thing can be really difficult.  Don’t make it more difficult by hiring people who are not optimistic about your company and the opportunity you have for them.

Ask questions in the interview that get to their core belief around optimism:

– Tell me about something in life you’re are truly optimistic about? (Pessimistic people have a hard time answering this. Optimistic people will answer quickly and with passion.)

– Tell me about a time something you were responsible for went really bad. How did you deal with it?

– The company has you working on a very important project and then decides to cancel it. How would you respond?

Surrounding yourself with optimistic people drives a better culture, better teams, it’s uplifting to your own leadership style.  I want smart people, but I truly want smart people who are optimistic about life.  Those people change the world for the better, and I think they’ll do the same for my business.

How Big Is Your Hotel Room? Measuring your HR Influence! #SHRM17

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Just got off the spring HR conference season, although it seems like the HR/TA conference season is now never ending. It used to be the conference season for HR and TA conferences were spring and fall, with the one outlier being SHRM National at the end of June. Now, you can go to a conference in any month of the year!

As one of the many people in our industry that writes, speaks, etc. Some folks would consider me a person who has some influence in the space. I certainly don’t have the most influence, but I do okay. My wife likes to call me a ‘micro-celebrity’, meaning I have about 23-ish HR pros around the world who know who I am, and might want a hug when they see me!

When you go on the HR/TA conference circuit, as an influencer, you get humbled very quickly, as you run into conferences where your influence is minimal, and come conferences where you’re the rock star. I just came back from a conference where I was humbled, so I wanted to share how you can tell your value at a conference as an influencer!

It’s the size of the hotel room they give you!

Let me break down the ratings of Influence “5” being the highest influence, “1” being the lowest influence in the HR space:

Level 5 HR/TA Influencer:  You’re in the suite life! Gerry Crispin is a level 5 influencer! I was at a conference with him recently and his “room” was actually 4 rooms with a breakfast nook, two fireplaces, and a hot tub! That’s influence! We won’t talk about my room as compared to his! Level 5 Influencers also are picked up at the airport by someone holding a sign with their name on it. Probably have a gift basket in their room that includes something cool like a pair of Beats by Dre or Oakley sunglasses or something. Most level 5 influencers do not attend conferences for free, many of these gigs are paid gigs. (I’m not saying Gerry was paid, just that those at level 5 can get paid if they desire)

Gerry is a level 5 influencer because TA buyers listen to what he has to say. If Gerry says buy “X” software/product, people will buy. If he says “Y” software/product is crap, people won’t buy. Don’t tell me you’re a level 5 influencer without being able to move the market!

Level 5 HR/TA Influencer upgrade moment – Kyle Lagunas had a giant suite on top of the Bellagio in Vegas this year. I got invited. It was HR nerds acting like rappers, and it was awesome!

Level 4 HR/TA Influencer: You get to stay at the same hotel as a Level 5 influencer but you don’t get the same room! You probably don’t get the private ride to your hotel from the airport, but they’ll send you a note on what shuttle to take, you might even get the gift basket, but you will never get the breakfast nook! Level 4 and 5 influencers also are personally invited to these conferences, they never have to ask to attend. You’ve reached a certain level when you’re no longer begging to come to an event and work for free!

Once you reach level 4 you start getting invited to private dinners with vendors. Really nice meals at restaurants you would never go to unless someone else was paying and ordering drinks you wouldn’t if you were paying the tab.

Level 3 HR/TA Influencer: Welcome to the Hampton Inn, are you a Hilton Honors member? If so, we can get you a free bottle of water and move you to the top floor! Level 3 Influencers have made it to the land of not having to pay their own way to a conference, congratulations, that’s actually a huge step! The expectations though for this honor will be you’ll be writing, tweeting, IG’ing, Facebook live’ing, Snapping your life away for two straight days. It’s a big step to reach level 3, but that step comes with a lot of work conference organizers expect from you. At level 3 you’re probably booking your own hotel, flight and sharing an Uber to the event. But, you can turn those expenses in and get reimbursed.

Most likely at level 3 you probably had to ‘apply’ to attend the conference. Someone took a look at your name and others who applied and determined you carried enough influence to make the ‘list’. No one was contacting you asking you to come, but to be in the game, you must play the game! Level 3 influence comes with VIP access to the big HR parties, which usually means you don’t have to stand in line!

Level 2 HR/TA Influencer: You’re paying your own travel, but enough level 3-5’s didn’t want to come to our event, so we’ll give you a free pass to get in! With this free pass, we’ll make you dance like a monkey and do anything else we ask. Where a t-shirt with your logo? Sure! Many level two’s will bunk up in a two queen room. I once asked Kris Dunn if he wanted to share a room and he wouldn’t talk to me for a month! He was definitely not at level 2!

Level 1 HR/TA Influencer: At level 1 you’re paying your own way for everything. Travel, conference admission, etc. You’re probably sharing an Airbnb with other level 1’s and 2’s to help offset the cost, but you’ve got a dream, the Gerry Crispin 4-room suite dream! Plus, you can probably make at least a meal or two from snacks and candy given out at expo booths, and some giant HR vendor will have a huge party you can attend with the rest of the heard!

Some vendors completely screw themselves when they don’t understand the levels! If you’re a level 5 and a vendor treats you like a level 3, you can best believe you’ll never go back to that event! But, if you treat a level three, like a level 4 or 5, you just created an influencer friend for life! It works both ways!

The key for vendors is to try and get the most value for the level. It’s Moneyball! I want an up and coming level 3, who will probably be a 4 or 5 soon, to be at my event! I can get level 4 or 5 influence, on a level three budget. The hard part for all vendors is understanding who actually has real influence and who’s just pretending. Since I wrote the HR/TA Influence levels, I’m putting myself down as having some influence! 😉

The Perfect Change Model for HR #VueDD17

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I’m out in Park City, UT this week at Hirevue’s Digital Disruption conference. The conference is designed for TA pros and leaders looking to ‘disrupt’ their current TA shop and the agenda is packed with great content and speakers.

Rusty Rueff kicked off the conference with a great keynote on disruption and change. (Side editor’s note: Rusty joined a growing trend of keynotes bringing their notes on stage with them and referring to them often to ensure nothing was missed. Many ‘professional’ keynoters would consider this taboo, but I find it refreshing and more authentic)

Rusty offered up this change model:

#1 – Compelling Vision: The only way you get change started is to have a great compelling vision of what this change will be.

#2 – What’s In It For Me (WIIFM) – If you need your employees to drive change you quickly have to define what’s in it for them, and it you better make it compelling. “You get to keep your job” – is not a compelling WIIFM for most people in 2017!

#3 – Lead the Way – Servant leadership is they key. Are you doing what you say needs to be done, and are you helping in every way to get everyone on board with you?

#4 – Change the work – If you want to change the way you work, you need to change the work. What!?! So many times we want to make big changes but we are unwilling to change how we do things. That’s a problem. If you can’t attract talent, you need to stop what you’re doing, and do something new!

#5 – Make it stick – Big change is hard and it’s super easy to go back and do what you’ve always done when the initial change seems to be worse or not having the results you wanted. You must be courageous to see your vision through to completion. You might fail, but if you don’t make it stick, you’ll never know for sure.

Rusty focused on big change to big things. In the end, this is what matters.

If you focus on making small changes, or even big changes, to small things, it really has little impact. Focus on making big changes to those things that are most important to your organization that isn’t working. Swing for the fences.

This is super hard for us in HR and TA. We never want to break anything, even when it’s not really working. We’re scared of screwing something up more than it’s already screwed up. I can’t tell you how many executives I speak with that fire HR and Talent leaders simply for this reason alone. The fired leader was unwilling to take the chances needed to fix what was broken.

Are you ready to make big changes to big things?

The American Dream Tax

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Hasan Minhaj is an American comedian who just released his new comedy special on Netflix, Homecoming King, and it might be one of the best comedy specials I’ve seen in years! He’s funny, yes. But, he also introduces a new kind of comedy on stage that is very ‘millennial’ in nature in that it’s multi-media. It’s part TEDx, part standup, part one-man show-ish, and it’s all brilliant!

You might remember Hasan from the Daily Show or as the comedian who roasted President Trump at the White House Correspondents dinner:

He introduces a concept in the special he calls the “American Dream Tax” that his father, who was originally from India, basically was his inspiration for.  Hasan’s father believes immigrants to the U.S. need to put up with a certain level of discrimination as a ‘tax’ of living the American Dream.

He makes jokes about this, as any comedian with brown skin would, it’s a great segment if you have a chance to check it out. Hasan’s father’s point is this, we came from a country where we had a super low quality of living. We came to America and have the possibility of a much better life, for that you should be willing to put up with some crap. (I wonder how many immigrants in U.S. feel a little this way?)

We talk constantly about diversity and inclusion in our organizations. Yet, most of us truly have no idea what most immigrants go through and are willing to go through, without ever complaining. We talk about a broken H1B policy and the need for reform, but most of those on an H1B would probably even accept lower wages for the opportunity. Is this right? Of course not, but we tend to forget ourselves how great we all have it in the U.S.

You see, we don’t pay the American Dream Tax because we hold a birth certificate that says we were born here. We got lucky enough to be on American soil when we were born, and for that, we get off ‘tax’ free. Well, many of us. That’s Hasan’s issue, he’s fully American, and yet, his father still believes he should be fine with paying the ‘tax’.

If you get the chance check out Hasan’s Netflix special it’s really incredible and gives you some great insight to your American born – immigrant workers and a little of bias they go through every day, and it’s pretty freaking funny!

Do you really want to get better?

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I’ve been writing about HR, Talent, and Leadership every day going on seven years. If you go around telling people you know something about something, guess what? They’re going to ask you to tell them about something, specifically as it relates to their circumstance.  So, I get asked my advice quite a bit about talent and HR issues people are facing.

There is a bucket of questions I get asked that fall into the same type of category.  These questions all have to do with how do we ‘fix’ something that isn’t working well in their HR and/or Talent shops.  How do we get more applicants? How do we get managers to develop their people? How do we fix our crazy CEO? Etc.

I used to go right into how I would solve that problem if I was in their shoes.  Five minute solutions! I don’t know anything about you, or your situation, but let me drop five minutes of genius on you for asking! It’s consulting at its worst! But it’s fun and engaging for someone who came to see me talk about hugging and my dog for an hour.

I’ve began to change my approach, though, because I knew, like they knew, they weren’t going back to their shops and doing what I said.  The problem with my five minutes of genius, was it was ‘my’ five minutes, not theirs.  It was something I could do, but probably not something they could do.

Now, I ask this one question: Do you really want to get better? or Do you really want to change?

Right away people will quickly say, “Yes!”  Then, there is a pause, and an explanation, and sometimes from this we get to a place where they aren’t really sure they really want to get better or change.

That’s powerful!

We all believe that ‘getting better’ is the only answer, but it’s not.  Sometimes, the ROI isn’t enough to want to get better. Staying the same is actually alright.

We believe we have to fix something and we focus on it, when in reality if it stays the same we’ll be just fine.  We’ll go on living and doing great HR work.  It just seemed like the next thing to fix, but maybe it actually is fine for now, and let’s focus on something else.

Many times HR and Talent pros will find that those around them really don’t want to get better, thus they were about to launch into a failing proposition, and a rather huge frustrating experience. Better to probably wait, until everyone really wants to get better.

So, before you go out to fix the world, your world, ask yourself one very important question: Do you, they, we really want to get better?  I hope you can get a ‘yes’ answer! But if not, the world will still go on, and so will you.

The Sackett Commencement Speech!

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(I’m on vacation today at my nephew’s graduation! So, I thought to re-run this post made sense! Enjoy!) 

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 need 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 are 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 somehow 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 in a moments notice!

How Will You Kill Your Company? #WorkHuman

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At the WorkHuman conference, Adam Grant, author of “Originals: How Non-Conformists Rule the World” gave an informing and entertaining keynote, but one question he asked really stood out for me over everything else.

It was the concept of asking the leaders in your company this one question:

“How will you kill this company?”

Actually, go through the exercise of determining every way you could possibly kill your company. List them out, talk about them, brainstorm, etc. The reality is, it’s easier to do this exercise than it is when you ask, “How will you save this company?”

It’s super powerful, right!?

When we tell people we need you to come up with ways to save, or better, our company, you get massive groupthink and really very little ever comes from all of that work and effort. When you ask them how they could kill it, you’ll be amazed at the ideas and creative ways they can kill your company!

Our reality is if we can think of ways to kill our companies, we now know many of our true competitive pressures that we face. It’s a fascinating leadership exercise that has real value.

You’ll find employees and leaders who never have anything to share all of sudden become very involved in how they personally could kill the company! These are things they fear, but never come out and say, since we would probably view them as doomsayers and such. Now, you set them free to share how they think the company will go bad!

What this exercise does is allow organizations to open up the conversation around getting creative when it comes to how we’ll actually save the company. These ideas need to be just as creative, just as outlandish. Those are the things that save companies, not just continuing down a path of destruction and now wanting to hurt a leader’s feelings that their plan might be crap!

It’s funny, and I bet like me when you read the question you can instantly think of ways you could kill your company. What is way harder is asking yourself the second question and thinking how will I save this company? For some reason, those ideas don’t come as quickly and passionately.

We have to train ourselves and those around us to think differently when it comes to how we’ll save ourselves. It’s easy to kill, it’s really hard to save, or so we think! We fall into the trap of believing our ideas about saving the company will be taken seriously, and our ideas about killing the company are just a joke.

They’re both very serious. Your company can die, just as easy as it can grow and prosper if your leadership team is willing to listen freely without judgment to each other and to your staff. We tend to get sucked into one idea will save the company and all focus and energy only go to that. We put all of our eggs into one basket.

So, how will you kill your company?