Category Archives: Life Lessons

The Power of Your Network is Still the Most Valuable Thing You Own!

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If you’re even a casual reader of this blog you know I have three sons. Two of those sons are in college. Being that my life’s work has been in HR and Recruiting you better believe they understand the importance of good grades and internships!

Being the Dad I am I thought it would be a good idea to use my network to try and help my boys get an internship. Let’s be honest, this is how most recruiting still works today. It’s about who you are, combined with who you know. My kids know me and a few hundred friends and family, 99.9% of which are absolutely no help in finding them an internship.

They’re a lot like most kids, besides this one exception.

I know a ‘few’ more people than they do. I’ve been writing for about ten years now. I’ve spent a career building a network. So, I put a very simple message out on LinkedIn. Here it is:

You see the number, right!? 99,973 views of this post as of me writing this post!

I don’t care who you are, or what your network is on LinkedIn, 99K views is a lot! I know a bunch of marketing pros who would give me their left arm for 99K views of anything they put out!

The outcome is still undetermined. Both boys have had interviews, so I’m confident they’ll find something wonderful. I’ve had amazing friends, peers, and people I’ve never met, reach out to help. Some with actual positions. Some with other connections who might have something. Others with just words of encouragement.

I was overwhelmed with gratitude.

When you write a free blog for ten years you really don’t have any idea what the ultimate outcome will be. I don’t ask for much of my network. I really didn’t expect much from the post above. I sent it out into the world and magic came back. It’s very cool!

Some learnings I’m taking away from this experience:

– LinkedIn for how much we love to hate it sometimes can be very, very powerful tool for networking.

– When a post goes viral, you are never prepared! If I didn’t reply back to you I’m sorry, it was unintentional!

– The next time you decide to ‘ignore’ a LinkedIn connection request, think about how that person might help your network.

I had a friend point out that some folks might be upset over this. The reason my kids will get an internship is because of ‘who’ they know (me, there dad). They have the advantage of having a network that can deliver these opportunities. What about all those kids that don’t have that same ‘privilege’. It’s not fair.

I can’t change the fact that as a father I want to help my kids get every opportunity they can. I didn’t do their homework and take their tests, that’s all on them. I don’t sit in on the interview, that’s all on them. I help out people not related to me every day in the best way I can. I’m not going to apologize for helping my own kids find a job. That’s just silly.

FYI – still on the outlook for a summer Accounting internship for a Junior Accounting Major with a 3.85+ GPA, who is a student-athlete playing college baseball on scholarship. It turns out most Accounting internships are in the Winter and Spring during tax season. He can’t do that with his athletic commitment. So, if you know of anything, let me know!

What Happens When ‘Dad’ Doesn’t Like How His Daughter’s Boss is Managing Her?

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If you follow sports recently you can’t get away from Lavar Ball, the overbearing Dad of three really talented basketball-playing sons. His oldest, Lonzo, is a really talented rookie in the NBA with the Lakers, his middle son was at UCLA as a freshman, got suspended from the team for shoplifting, and his youngest was a top recruit in high school.

Lavar took the two youngest kids out of school and took them to Lithuania to play professional basketball.

Lavar was back in the news this week when he told ESPN that Luke Walton, the Lakers Head Coach, wasn’t doing his job and should be fired.  Luke Walton is considered by many to be one of the top young coaches in the NBA and is highly regarded by both players and other NBA coaches. The NBA coaches came to his defense in a big way.

One, in particular, was Steve Kerr, considered the top coach in the NBA, and Luke Walton’s mentor. Here’s what Kerr had to say:

“This is the world we live in now. I was thinking about ESPN and they laid off, I don’t know 100 people…many of whom were really talented journalists covering the NBA. So this is not an ESPN judgment, it’s a societal thing more than anything…I’ve talked to people in the media and said ‘Why do you guys have to cover that guy.’ They say ‘We don’t want to. Nobody wants to. But our bosses tell us we have to because of the ratings and the readership.’

So somewhere, I guess in Lithuania, LaVar Ball is laughing. People are eating out his hands for no apparent reason. Other than he’s become like the Kardashian of the NBA or something and that sells. That’s true in politics and entertainment and now sports. It doesn’t matter if there’s any substance involved with an issue. It’s just ‘Can we make it really interesting.’ For no apparent reason. There’s nothing interesting about that story. You know how many parents of my players have probably been at home thinking ‘Why isn’t he playing my kid.’ Yet we’re sticking a microphone in front of his face because apparently, it gets ratings. I don’t know who cares, but people must care or ESPN wouldn’t be spending whatever they’re spending to send reporters to Lithuania when they laid off people who were writing really substantial pieces…”

Don’t think this ends here.

We can already find examples and stories from corporate America of parents getting involved in their kids work-life. In the past, a couple of decades ago, you would have never heard of a parent saying anything about how their kids were getting managed.

Now we live in a world where everyone has a platform and the ‘threat’ of this happening to you, your organization, to one of your managers, is very real.

It’s easy to say that you wouldn’t engage. That you would only work through the ’employee’ in this manner. That’s what the majority will say. But, what do you do when that parent has a larger platform than your brand? When ‘that’ parent finds others willing to listen. How are you prepared to react?

I can foresee a time in the near future where HR leaders will be meeting with parents to discuss issues. It happens in what part of society, politics, entertainment, sports, etc. before it filters into other parts of normal, everyday society. You can ignore it, but those who do will probably be the least prepared to handle this when it hits them over the head.

I’m ready. Bring Big Momma into the office, let’s talk this out!

The fact of the matter is if I’m transparent about performance there will be nothing I haven’t said to your child that I won’t be willing to say to you. I’ll first ask the kid if they want Big Momma to come in, which I’m guessing they’ll say “no”, but if they do, let’s do this!

There’s one part of our society that is ready for this and it’s teachers!

Teachers have been dealing with overbearing parents who think little Jimmy walks on water for years. You know what teachers do? They do the exact same thing you and your managers do. You sit them down, all together, you give very specific examples of behavior and performance, and you shut up and wait for a reaction.

When I taught, I found most overbearing parents, when presented with facts, would actually support me and help me get better performance. In teaching, and in the real work world, I’ll take any help I can get to get better performance!

In Lavar Ball’s case, he’s just an idiot with a stage.

The Most Valuable Skill Set of the Future Will be…

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Common sense.

We’ve lost most of it already.

We can no longer see both sides of a situation. There is only right and wrong, as interpreted by each individual, not actual right or wrong. That’s not reality, but that’s how we are reacting to most things that happen in our life.

The world is coming unglued because we lack common sense. We only see the extreme edges of everything. We no longer work to see both sides, or any sides other than our own, of a situation. I am right. You are wrong. Go kill yourself.

The big problem is we no this is wrong. How do we know this? We tell every person who doesn’t agree with us! The hardest thing to do in your life is being able to see the side of others. It’s super easy to only believe in the stupid stuff you already believe in.

This won’t go away because 2017 is over. What we are feeling had nothing to do with which year it is. It has everything to do with our lack of basic common sense to understand there is no right or wrong at the edges, just extremes. The answer is in the middle when you come together to find that common ground.

I not really looking to hire a certain educational skill set any longer. I’m looking to hire people that still have a shred of common sense left in them. It’s getting harder and harder to find that skill.

Is Your Organization Using HR Tech for Good or Evil?

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Right before Christmas when things were crazy and no one was paying attention, something happened in the HR Tech world that didn’t get much press. This happens at certain times. It’s why corporations, governments, etc. release bad news on Fridays at 5 pm. It gets buried during the weekend.

The thing that happened was the announcement that many companies (Amazon, Verizon, UPS, and even Facebook themselves) were using Facebook Ads to exclude older people from applying for their jobs! That’s big news, right!?

If these same companies were using the exact same technology to exclude females or African Americans, don’t you think the world would have stopped, if only for a second until Trump tweeted again!? I think it would have, but it didn’t.

From the article:

A few weeks ago, Verizon placed an ad on Facebook to recruit applicants for a unit focused on financial planning and analysis. The ad showed a smiling, millennial-aged woman seated at a computer and promised that new hires could look forward to a rewarding career in which they would be “more than just a number.”

Some relevant numbers were not immediately evident. The promotion was set to run on the Facebook feeds of users 25 to 36 years old who lived in the nation’s capital, or had recently visited there, and had demonstrated an interest in finance. For a vast majority of the hundreds of millions of people who check Facebook every day, the ad did not exist.

Verizon is among dozens of the nation’s leading employers — including Amazon, Goldman Sachs, Target and Facebook itself — that placed recruitment ads limited to particular age groups, an investigation by ProPublica and The New York Times has found.

The ability of advertisers to deliver their message to the precise audience most likely to respond is the cornerstone of Facebook’s business model. But using the system to expose job opportunities only to certain age groups has raised concerns about fairness to older workers.

So, is this right? Well, Facebook seems to think so:

Facebook defended the practice. “Used responsibly, age-based targeting for employment purposes is an accepted industry practice and for good reason: it helps employers recruit and people of all ages find work,” said Rob Goldman, a Facebook vice president.

“Age-based targeting for employment purposes is an accepted industry standard”. Really!? Well, in one way it is. But only if you’re doing it for good, not evil! If you are out trying to specifically recruit older people because you lack an older population in your workforce, then “yes” that is accepted.

If you don’t want older people, because they don’t fit your culture, then “HELL NO” it’s not an accepted standard!

The holidays came and went and all of this is forgotten because we don’t care about older workers. That’s a fact. We treat older workers like garbage in America. Once you reach 50 years old in America, you become stupid and worthless to hiring managers, even when those hiring managers are over 50!

We would have killed Facebook if they said it was an “industry standard to run ads for only white dudes”. But they are running ads for only young people and that is now an industry standard.

It’s not. It’s prejudice. It’s wrong. It is not an industry standard. Segmenting recruitment marketing is tricky. We have to be responsible enough to know when you exclude a certain group, that better not be an underrepresented group in your workforce and not the majority of your workforce (Facebook!).

So, what do you think? Industry accepted standard or bad recruitment marketing practice? Hit me in the commnets and let me know!

The First Thing Every Leader Should Do To Start The New Year!

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Welcome back, kids!

How was your break?

I’m sure, like a lot of you, your time away was a mix of a lot of stuff. Some busy. Some fun. Some relaxation. Now, we’re all back to the grind!

Every new year, when I come back to the office I have a little nervous energy. Okay, it’s 2018, 2017 is in the rearview mirror, this year is going to be epic!

Now, what’s the first thing I should do!?!

What do you think? Fix something that’s broken? Build something that needs building?

I think the first thing you should do is go find the worst performer in your organization. Someone who’s been underperforming for a while. Someone, when gone, the organization will actually run better! Go find that person. I’ll wait…

Okay, now, fire that person.

Give them your last gift of the holiday season! The gift of starting their life over at a place where they want to work and can be successful, because it’s not at your place!

If you’re coming back into your organization after a long break and you instantly see an employee and think, “OMG, I was hoping Harry died at a New Years party, Ugh!” Do yourself and your organization a favor and start 2018 off without the dead weight. Just Do It!

Don’t wait for “The Process” to work. It didn’t work in 2017, and it’s not going to work in 2018! Call that person in and tell them to take their services to South Beach! It’s not easy. It’s never easy. But, 2018 is your year. It’s the year you’ll take control and stop the nonsense. To make that happen you need people around you that will help make that happen.

8 am on January 2nd, 2018. Call up that worst performer and let them know 2018 is going to be a great year, for you, maybe not them. You’ll thank yourself almost immediately. The organization will thank you almost immediately. The employee who got canned will probably thank you down the road, assuming they learn from this mistake.

Make 2018 Great! Go fire someone today!

7 Sure Ways to Fail as a HR Leader

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It’s tough being a Leader these days!  You have all these boomers retiring and taking their typewriters and knowledge with them, you have all theses X’ers who think they are now the second coming, the GenY’s and the Millennial’s who have been told they are the second coming, and now we have these Generation Zs who think they can work from where ever since they grew up with a smartphone and an iPad in their crib.

On top of all this, somehow in the last 10 years executives decided HR is no longer HR, but now we are these business partners, so on top of having to take care of all these people issues, we now have to be concerned with business issues, teach our leaders how to be leaders, continue to train our workforce to stay current, fight off talent sharks from our competition, make sure the corporate picnic still runs smoothly and oh by the way can you put a nice internal blog post together for the CEO and make it real “peopleish”.

I get it, it’s hard being a leader in HR, that’s why I’m going to help you out and give you some tips on things to stay away from:

1. Think of yourself or your company as “the” industry leader. As soon as you do, someone will knock you off.

2. Identify so strongly with the company that you no longer have a clear boundary between your personal interests and the corporation’s interests. Yes, you should be committed, but don’t be “committed” Too often leaders doing this fail to differentiate their personal agenda and the corporate agenda and start empire building.

3. Have all the answers.  This is tough because it’s common leadership training that we all know: use your people, surround yourself with people better than you, make group decisions, etc.  But until you put your butt in that seat you never realize how many things will come your way, where people want a decision and they are unwilling to make it. So they look to you for the answer. Don’t get sucked into this trap. Pushback and make them bring you solutions.

4. Hunt down and Kill those who don’t support you. Don’t think this happens?! Look at turnover numbers of departments when a new leader takes over. They are almost always higher than those of the organization as a whole.

5. Become obsessed with the company image.  Your company image is hugely important, but it is not the most important thing you have going on. Make sure your operations match the image you want to create, not the other way around.

6. Underestimate or take obstacles for granted.  As a leader you want to be confident during hard and challenging times, but don’t let yourself get fooled into believing your own confidence will get you through.  Having a clear understanding of the reality you are facing, and being able to communicate that without fear to your team, with a plan of action, is key.

7. Stubbornly rely on what you’ve always done.  “Well, when I was the leader at GE we did it this way…” Look, this isn’t the 80’s and this isn’t GE. Might it work? Sure. But be open to new ways of doing things, while being confident of what you know will work. Don’t put yourself or your organization in jeopardy, but be willing to try new things when time and circumstance allow.

Adapted from The Seven Habits of Spectacularly Unsuccessful Executives in Forbes by Mike Myatt

You’re Running Out of Time!

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I have three sons, two of which are in college.  They can do anything right now!  If they wanted, they could fill a backpack and walk the earth. No one is going to stop them, in fact, many will congratulate them for taking this leap while they’re young.

In just a few years, people won’t say that.  They’ll tell them it’s crazy and you’re going to hurt your career, etc.

I’m in my 40’s.  I have a feeling that I’m getting to an age where I no longer can make a change in my career path.

Before you start commenting with things like, “Tim, age is a state of mind”, or “You can do anything you want”, or “Follow your passion”.  Stop it. I’m a grown ass man.  I like to think I’m an adult, although my wife and kids question that frequently. I have adult obligations: mortgage, college tuition, kids to raise, health insurance. I can’t just go off and polish rocks.

We all get to certain points in our life where you can no longer just go do ‘it’. Whatever ‘it’ is for you. I feel like I’m at a point where I can’t change careers, not because I don’t think I could, but because society doesn’t look well upon middle-aged dudes looking to change careers. Something is now wrong with me if I wanted to change careers. BTW, I don’t want to change careers, I actually think what I do is pretty cool. Or hip. Or Hella. Or whatever the kids are saying.

If I decided to go back and become a nurse, right now, at my age, with all of my responsibilities, people would say something is wrong with me. You know what? I would think there was something wrong with me.

My question is more around what is ‘that’ time when if you’re going to do it, you better do it now?

For traveling the world: I think it’s 18-22 yrs old, or after 60.

For completely changing careers: I think you have to do it around 30-35 years old. Later, and you just look like your reaching. (I think most people won’t agree with this, but it comes from my recruiting background and how hiring managers look at older candidates who have made this move)

For having kids: this one has changed a bit, but before 40 seems safe. Otherwise, you’re just tempting science to give you problems. One caveat, if you’re adopting, I’ll push out this age because those kids just need someone who will love them.

For completely your high school or college education: I’m really open on this one. I would say anytime before death! I’m a huge advocate of lifelong learning!

For having grandkids: After 45 years old for sure. If you have grandkids prior to becoming 45, you did something wrong as a parent.

For getting your nose pierced: 17-28 years old. Yeah, I’m looking at you 37-year-old mom with the kid with a mohawk not wearing his seatbelt in the back of your Ford Mustang.

So, hit me in the comments with your age ranges on when you think it’s no longer socially acceptable to change careers!

The Definitive Recipe for Success 

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Early this week I was in the car listening to NPR on my way to a meeting. I can’t even remember which show and who was being interviewed but I remember what was said by the person being interviewed. The topic was about success.

The person being interviewed said that you reach success by having four components, which are:

– Talent

– Persistence

– Patience

– Luck

You don’t have to have all four at the same time to be successful, but you’ll probably have all four in some kind of combination if you are successful.

At first, I thought, well, yeah, duh, if you’re talented, if you’re the most talented, you’ll be successful. But that isn’t true. I can give you a hundred examples of the most talented people in any profession who are failures because they didn’t use their talents. They wasted what they had.

I love persistent people. The hustle. The grind. The never give up attitude. The scrapers in life. These are my people. I won’t take no for answer. I’ll keep doing it and doing it and doing it until I break through. So, of course, persistence is a key ingredient to success.

Patience is where I struggle. You see persistence and patience aren’t usually friends. They don’t like hanging out with each other. But, when I look at the most successful people in my life that I hang out, they all have great patience. Having patience doesn’t mean you’re willing to sit around and wait to be successful, but it’s knowing that sometimes the best path to success if putting in your time to get there. Ugh! I wish I knew this when I was 25!

Luck. Oh, boy, here we go. Successful people never want to admit luck is involved. I’m a self-made person. I did it on my own. I’m not lucky! Luck is a bad word to successful people, but it discounts the hard work, the effort and the time you put into becoming successful. But, again, each successful person I know can point to a time, or a person, or a meeting, or some chance circumstance that can only be categorized as luck. You can do every single thing right in your life, and not be successful, without that one lucky break.

I like the model.

It doesn’t let you off the hook. You still have to do it all. You can’t just say, ‘well, I didn’t get it because I wasn’t lucky enough”. That’s false, be patient. I didn’t get it because I wasn’t talented enough. No, keep at it. Luck finds those more rapidly who are talented, persistent, and patient.

I lucky enough to have a pretty good career. It only took me twenty-five years of grinding to find that luck…

Let’s face it, we love pretty people!

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So, you’ve probably heard by now that some companies in Silicon Valley decided to hire models to attend their annual holiday parties and act as friends of executives. The purpose was not to show the executives had pretty friends, but to add some ‘prettiness’ to the party:

Along with a seemingly endless string of harassment and discrimination scandals, Silicon Valley’s homogeneity has a more trivial side effect: boring holiday parties. A fete meant to retain all your talented engineers is almost certain to wind up with a rather same-y crowd, made up mostly of guys. At this year’s holiday parties, however, there’ll be a surprising influx of attractive women, and a few pretty men, mingling with the engineers. They’re being paid to.

Local modelling agencies, which work with Facebook- and Google-size companies as well as much smaller businesses and the occasional wealthy individual, say a record number of tech companies are quietly paying $50 to $200 an hour for each model hired solely to chat up attendees. For a typical party, scheduled for the weekend of Dec. 8, Cre8 Agency LLC is sending 25 women and 5 men, all good-looking, to hang out with “pretty much all men” who work for a large gaming company in San Francisco, says Cre8 President Farnaz Kermaani. The company, which she wouldn’t name, has handpicked the models based on photos, made them sign nondisclosure agreements, and given them names of employees to pretend they’re friends with, in case anyone asks why he’s never seen them around the foosball table.

So, my HR brothers and sisters lost their minds over this on the social webs!

There were many comments all going down the path of: “Gross”, “Pathetic”, “Trumps America”, etc.

I have a different take. This is Recruitment Marketing in the real world. Most of us don’t live in Disneyland, and the real world of hiring is a bit different for the majority.

Here’s the deal. Tech hires are mostly men. White men, brown men, black men, really, really pale white men, but mostly men.

If you have a holiday party at a Tech company and it’s all dudes, well, that’s not very exciting. In fact, it’s pretty sad for all the dudes standing around looking at each other. If you were part of that party, as a dude, you probably wouldn’t tell your friends to come work with you.

Now, if you go to a party and there’s a bunch of hot women, hey, this place is pretty great! I’ve got a chance. Now, if you knew all that ‘talent’ was paid for, now it becomes depressing again. But, if you thought, these are just ‘friends’ of some of the other employees who got invited and they just love to hang with techy dudes, now it feels a bit better, again.

These models aren’t hookers. They’re at your company party to make the ‘atmosphere’ better. Basically, these models, are like the free laundry service and ping pong table you provide. It makes the environment better. You like where you work more. You don’t tell your employees, “Hey, we offer dog walking services for free because it really has been shown to help retain you.” Everyone kind of gets that.

This is no different. Having good-looking people at your employee events, makes it seem like this place is cooler than it probably really is. By the way, these pretty people, are in on the game! They are making money using their god given assets. Just as the techy people are using their big brains.

We love to hate. The reality is, America is addicted to pretty. We made the Kardashians millionaires for absolutely no reason except for their looks. We want to be pretty. We want to hang with pretty. We are a nation that values pretty over almost everything else.

Is that right? No! Is that part of the game we are in right now? Yes.

Pro Tip: I get around hiring pretty models (male and female) at my holiday party by just hiring pretty employees to begin with! Stay thirsty my friends.

 

The Sackett Office Holiday Party Rules!

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Today is my annual office holiday party. The HRU Holiday Parties are pretty freaking fun! Probably like most recruiting shops and groups of elementary school teachers, we know how to let our hair down when the time is right!

You will see about 500 articles and blog posts how this season on Office Holiday Party Etiquette. Especially, with all the craziness going on with the very public sexual harassment allegations! The one thing we know about office parties is once you add alcohol stupid stuff happens.

To help everyone out, in my own Sackett kind of way, I decided we probably needed a few ‘rules’ around this year’s holiday office parties.

The Sackett 2017 Office Holiday Party Rules! 

#1 – Have a designated driver or offer up the paid Uber/Lift option right up front. It sucks trying to talk a drunk employee out of driving, they’re drunk and usually don’t want to listen. So, just make it easy and tell your employee if you’ll be drinking, just take an Uber to the party and back home, and the company will pay.

#2 – No one wants to see your junk. Okay, maybe someone wants to see your junk, but you better make sure they ask to see your junk before you start showing your junk. In fact, if I’m you, I might actually get that on video! “Hey, before I show you my junk, do you mind just looking into the camera and just saying, ‘Hi, this is ‘state your name’, I want to see your junk!”

#3 – Don’t complain about the party, the food, the drinks. You look like a douchebag when you do this. Look, someone, or some people, put this together trying their best to make everyone happy, knowing you can’t make everyone happy. If you hate the food, don’t eat and then get something you like afterward. Smile. Be thankful. Stay as long as you need to, to make your showing, then go on with your life not being an idiot. “Yeah, but there wasn’t enough chicken tenders!” Yeah, we get it Brad, here’s twenty dollars go someplace else and find some tenders.

#4 – Talk to executives before you get to your third drink. This is important because drunk talking to executives only plays well if they’re drunk too, and that probably won’t be the case. Also, don’t use the holiday party to launch your ‘big’ news about a project you want to start that is going to change the face of the company. No one wants that crap at a holiday party.

#5 – Don’t bring creepy or weird dates. This usually comes in a couple of flavors. Office dude brings a super slutty date. Great for the office dude for later, but you are the immediate joke of the party. Or super sweet office lady brings Dungeon and Dragons dude to the party who is trying to talk to everyone about the 5th dragon in world 9 that is impossible to kill without a Merlin magic mushroom, and well, yeah, that’s creepy.

#6 – Don’t say you’re coming then not come. If you don’t want to come, make that known up front. When you don’t come, after you said you were coming, and then come up with a lame excuse, it shows that you’re not fully engaged with the organization and it gets noticed. Find that excuse up front and make it known you won’t be coming, but you wish you could.

#7 – Talk to spouses! Spouses of co-workers hate coming to office holiday parties, mainly because they’re bored. Make an effort to engage them and get them joined into the conversation. One cool thing I love to do is talk to spouses and tell them really good things about their partner. Nothing feels better to your partner than to hear other people talk about how great you are!

#8 – If you start to feel tipsy, that is not a sign to start doing shots. I know this can be really confusing, right!? When you start to feel tipsy, this is your body trying to tell you that you’re about to make an ass of yourself in front of people who will share the story long after you have left this job.

#9 – No really, no one wants to see your junk!