Category Archives: Life Lessons

Maybe we got this Culture Fit thing all Wrong! #WorkHuman

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So, I’m sitting on a plane flying back from the WorkHuman conference and I’m going through my notes. Here’s one of the things I wrote down:

“Instead of culture fit, what if we focused on culture contribution…” 

I don’t even remember who said it that sparked me to write it down, but I loved it. I want to say it was Adam Grant, seemed like he was saying a bunch of stuff I liked during his session.

It struck me immediately when it was said. It’s one of those times when you go, “Holy crap, have we missed this all along and no one said anything!”

The problem is, hiring for culture fit is really hard. There are technologies and experts who will tell you they can do it, but it’s mostly smoke and mirrors. When you sit down and interview people, you mostly don’t get culture fit, you get ‘I’m comfortable with this person’ and that turns into you saying, “they’d be a great fit in our culture!”

Hiring for culture contribution actually is a bit easier and probably more effective! I can easily interview someone and ask for concrete examples of the cultural contributions they currently provide at their organization or have provided, and what they’ll provide when they come to my organization. Sure they could lie or exaggerate, but that happens already, so that’s nothing new.

What I like about culture contribution over cultural fit is I can measure cultural contribution! Don’t tell me you fit, show me you fit! There’s millions of ways employees can contribute to culture, so it’s not like we are limiting hires to only those who ‘want’ to be involved.

I don’t know. What do you think?

It was just a note on a scrap of paper, but man it seems really profound. Hit me in the comments if you’re doing anything with cultural contribution in your organization.

3 Reasons You’re Never Fully Staffed!

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For any HR/Talent Pro who lives with the concept of staffing levels – becoming ‘fully staffed’ is the nebulous goal that always seems to be just out of arms reach.  I’ve lived staffing levels in retail, restaurants, hospitals, etc.  I know your pain – to be chasing that magic number of ’37 Nurses’ and almost always seeming like you’re at 35 or 36, the day that #37 starts, one more drops off…

There are 3 main reasons you can’t get fully staffed:

1. Your numbers are built on a perfect world, which you don’t live in.

2. Your hiring managers refuse to over-hire.

3. Your organization actually likes to be understaffed.

Ok, let me explain.

The concept of being fully staffed is this perfect-case scenario – a theory really – in business that there is a ‘perfect’ amount of manpower you should have for the perfect amount of business that you have at any given moment.  That’s a lot of perfects to happen all at once!  Usually, your finance team comes up with the numbers based on budgeting metrics.  These numbers are drawn down to monthly, weekly, daily and hourly measures to try and give you a precise number of ‘bodies’ needed at any given time.  You already know all of this.  What you don’t know is why this type of forecasting is so broken when it comes to staffing.

These models are predictive of having a fully functioning staff to meet the perfect number needed.  Fully trained, fully productive, etc.  If the model says you need 25 Nurses to run a floor, in reality, you probably need much more than that.  Finance doesn’t like to hear this because they don’t want to pay 28 Nurses when the budget is for 25 Nurses.

You’re in HR, you know the reality of staffing 25 Nursing openings (or servers, or assembly workers, or software developers, etc.) takes more than 25 Nurses.  You have Nurses who are great and experienced and you have ones who are as green as grass -you have ones retiring in a few months, some taking leave, some leaving for other jobs, etc.  Because of this, you have a budget for overtime – why? – because you need coverage.  This why you need more than 25.  And the staffing levels argument goes around in circles with finance.

I’ve worked with some great finance partners that get the entire scenario explained above, and they would let me hire as many people as I felt I needed and it still didn’t work!?  Hiring managers struggle with one very real issue, “what if?” What if, Tim, we do get all 28 hired and now I only have needs for 25?  What will we do?!

Even when you explain the reality, they will subconsciously drag their feet not to hire just in case this might actually come true.  I’ve met with HR/Talent Pros from every industry and all of them share very similar stories.  They can’t get fully staffed because of what little stupid ‘perfect’ concept – “what if we actually get staffed!”  That’s it.

You can’t get staffed because you actually might get staffed!  If your fully staffed hiring managers are now held accountable to being leaders.  If you’re fully staffed, plus some extra, hiring managers have to manage performance and let weak performers go.  If you’re fully staffed being a hiring manager actually becomes harder.

When you’re understaffed everyone realizes why you keep a low performer, why you allow your people to work overtime they now count on as part of their compensation and can’t live without.  When you’re understaffed everyone has an excuse.

You’ll never become fully staffed because deep down in places you don’t talk about at staffing meetings you like to be understaffed, you need to be understaffed.

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.

‘Short-timer’s’ Guide to Getting Fired (Dead employee walking edition)

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You know what happens when someone is on the path to being fired?  They start doing all kinds of strange things.  They’re actually fairly easy to spot, and if you follow these rules and guidelines you will be able to pick them out or know if it’s you that is about to be terminated.

In the HR game, we call these people about to be fired or leave our organization, ‘Short-timers’ (they’ve only got a short time left!).  I also like to refer to them as ‘dead employee walking’, because so many hiring managers will know for months they want to terminate an employee, but they don’t.

Instead, they begin to treat them like they’re dead.  They ignore them, stop giving them work, ‘forget’ to invite them to meetings, etc.  Almost like they’re dead.

Regardless of what you want to call them, I think we owe it to give them some rules about what to do and not to do when they hit a period of their soon-to-be-over employment.

Short-timer’s Guide to Getting Fired:

  1. Don’t start working harder. You’ve already been shot, you just don’t know it yet.  You working harder to try and save yourself just looks sad and pathetic. You had a chance to save your job, now is not the time.
  1. Don’t start talking about how you’ve been wronged. You actually might be wronged, but no one wants to hear it, and me talking to you puts me in your camp, and I don’t want to be in dead employee walking camp.
  1. Do start lining up references from those who still like you. You’re going to need references from your last employer. Do that now. It’s hard to say no to your face. It’s easy to ignore your email and phone calls after you’ve left.
  1. Do start slowly take personal effects home, little by little, so not to be noticed. This way when the big announce happens you aren’t asking people to help you carry stuff out to our car.
  1. Do start looking for a job. It’s one million times easier (that’s an exact figure from my research) to find a job when you have a job than when you don’t have a job.
  1. Don’t profess your love to a co-worker on your way out. It’s really not a great romantic time to do something like this. “Hey, Tina! I’m out of here! But I’ve always wanted to hook up, call me!” Yeah, just what Tina needs, an out of work slacker to add into her life.
  1. Do clean out your computer files and delete all search histories. You know what we do when you leave? We look at your search history on your computer and laugh. Laugh loudly and often. We don’t know exactly why you were searching for an all-black toilet seat, but it’s funny not to know!
  1. Don’t start trying to take other people down with you. Here’s the deal; you’re about to get fired. You are trying to bring others down with you won’t work because you have no credibility.  In fact, it will probably just quicken your exit.
  1. Don’t burn bridges. It’s a small world when it comes to professions and employment. That boss you tell off today might be the same executive that stops you from being hired someplace else down the road.
  1. Do burn all of your corporate logo wear. Yeah, like you’re really going to wear your old companies gear when you got fired! No, you’re not.  Burn it.  Have a party and dance around the flames.  It’s cathartic, in a way, to rid yourself of these signs and symbols of a part of your life that is now over.
  2. Take a bunch of office supplies home. You know what you need in a job search, office supplies! Plus, now that you’re on the unemployment, you don’t really have extra money to spend on office supplies, so start hoarding while you can!

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?

How to get your first HR job!

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It’s graduation season which means I get a ton of messages from new HR grads asking for advice. I heard from someone at SHRM that there are currently 8,000 human resource’s university programs in the world currently.

Doesn’t that seem like a huge number? I’m not sure we actually need 8,000 HR post-high school programs but welcome to the business of higher education where we offer you what we can put together for the least cost that makes the most money, not what industry actually needs!

HR degrees are the new ‘education’ degree for people who hate kids, but think they’ll like adult employees who act like kids!

So, now you’ve got this bright and shiny new HR degree and you need a job. I hear Enterprise Rent A Car is hiring in their management training program! I’ve hired some great employees from Enterprise over the years. Also, every single hospital in the country needs nurses, almost every company on the planet needs technical talent. Oh, wait, yeah, HR jobs…

So, how do you get that first HR job?

Step 1: It starts the summer after your freshman year if you’re super aggressive and really want to be in HR and just didn’t fall into after your sophomore year and it seemed like the easiest way to get a degree. You need internships that allow you to do HR-type work.

Yeah, I know it’s next to impossible to get an HR internship, especially if you’re not in a top tier HR specific program. I love hiring grads from “B” schools, but “B” school and HR degree, without an internship, should be called a “B.A. in Selling Cell Phones out of a Mall Kiosk”.

Even if you’ve already graduated and struggling to get your first HR job, it’s still worth it to try and get an HR ‘internship’ at any level. What I recommend to new grads is you go do ‘volunteer’ HR work for a company or organization. Offer up yourself for 8-24 hours a week. Work a paying job nights and weekends, do whatever it takes to get “HR” on your resume.

Step 2: You’ve got to become a cray-stalker-networker. Link-In with every HR person you can find that graduated from your school. Link-In with every single HR pro in your area and ask for help getting experience and your first job. No! Actually, ask them for help! Most won’t, but some will.

Step 3: Make it super public you’re looking for your first HR Job. Tell your friends, neighbors, people at your church, your parent’s friends, the bartender when you order a drink. You need to be discovered and that only happens when you make yourself discoverable!

Step 4: Don’t worry about money in your first job. You need to get “HR” on your resume, even if it’s like going to a 5th year of college. So many HR grads I meet give up and work a job that will pay their bills. That first HR Administrator job might be a kick in the stomach to accept financially, but this is how you get to ‘the show’ and make a decent living in HR.

Step 5: Join the HR conversation online. Show up at HR meetups and local SHRM meetings. Most will let ‘students’ in for free. Use this to its fullest and then get involved and volunteer. Those people who volunteer with you will know about HR jobs before they go public and would love to plug you into it instead of posting and interviewing.

Step 6: If you can’t find any HR jobs. Apply to entry level agency recruiting jobs. Many large recruiting agencies are constantly hiring fresh meat. It’s a grind, but it’s a great resume builder, and you might fall in love with it. It’s not HR, it’s recruiting, but having this experience will get you in the door for corporate recruiting jobs and then you can eventually move into corporate HR jobs within that organization.

I love HR and Recruiting. It’s a great profession to get into, but it’s not easy to break in since the barrier to entry is fairly low. A ton of people in HR don’t have HR degrees, so most organizations don’t view your degree in HR as a necessity to work in HR.

I only offer the truth, I wish your college advisor did the same, but you can do, you can join the tribe, it might just take a little more work than you were expecting!

 

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!

 

 

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.