Can we blow up Demos already? #HRERecruitTalent

Posted on February 22, 2019 by Tim Sackett

Sat in on a great opening session at the Recruiting Trends & Talent Tech Conference yesterday that was called Ideas and Innovations. Quick five-minute talks. Disrupt-style, where you have five minutes and some slides moving on their own.

Looking at the TA pros and leaders around me you could easily see the engagement and interest. People like being told about cool stuff in a very quick and efficient manner. Some of the stuff might spark them to want more, some stuff might spark them to know it’s not for them. Either way, they didn’t have to invest much to get there.

I constantly hear from recruiting tech companies that they want to do more demos, because they know demos lead to organizations buying their stuff. The problem is we all feel we don’t have the time to do demos, and we don’t want high pressured sales pitch. So, we disengage all together.

It’s a problem on both sides, the vendor and the buyer. Buyers actually need to do more demos and should be looking at more options then they do, and vendors need to get in front of more buyers. I’m not sure why conferences don’t do this, but I would love to see a session that is just 6, ten minute demos of technology I might want to take a deeper dive into.

Hundreds of people in the room, watching quick demos and deciding is this something I want to go and find out more about. Seems like it makes total sense for both sides! Yet, it doesn’t happen. Why?

I think there’s two issues (both of which are basically false):

Vendors don’t feel comfortable doing a demo in front of potential competition, because they feel somehow they’re giving away their secret sauce.
Conference providers believe attendees don’t want to view this type of content.

The truth is, there is no secret sauce with your demo. I’ve done a thousand demos and while some are better than others, that’s mostly do to the person doing the demo, not the actual demo.

Attendees want to learn stuff they don’t know and want to be able to take back knowledge to their organizations that makes them seem smart. No, they don’t want to hear for an hour how ACME Inc. implemented Oracle. But, they would be interested in seeing what the hell this new Oracle Recruit product is, especially if I’m not being sold to.

I think the modern demo should be really broken into two parts. One of those is just show me who you are and what you do in 5-10 minutes. The second one is your dog and pony show.

I think vendors are afraid to do the short-range demo because they don’t feel buyers will truly see who they are. The reality is if you can’t tell your buyer in 5-10 minutes who you are and what you can do for them, you shouldn’t be in the space.

Recruiting Trends and Trends and Trends… #HRERecruitTalent

Posted on February 21, 2019 by Tim Sackett

I’m out this week at the Recruiting Trends and Talent Tech Conference and guess what I’m speaking on!?!?! Recruiting Trends!

It’s pretty insane when you look at the recruiting landscape. When I was doing research on what trends I should talk about at the conference my initial list had over 50!

That becomes the big question – what’s really a trend and what’s mostly B.S.?

We think we can spot the B.S., but it turns out we are all pretty dumb when it comes to spotting bad trends. Remember QR codes in Recruiting!? How many of you had, or still have, one of those on your recruiting materials!?

Video Interviews! That’s a fad, no one will do a video interview! Until it becomes fairly normal. You should be texting candidates! No, you don’t understand Tim, “OUR” candidates wouldn’t respond to text.

Um, yeah, how’s that working out for you!? Everyone responds to text! I can’t call my parents anymore, who are in their 70’s, but they’ll respond in seconds to a text! Hourly workers, executives, nurses, truck drivers, everyone responds to text.

So, it would seem like the big one is A.I., Machine Learning, chatbots, etc. All of ‘that’ stuff. That automation, the machines can do your job better and faster than you technology stuff. Yeah, that’s a current trend for sure, but in one way it’s not.

We’ve been automating in Recruiting since we have had recruiting. So a major part of the A.I. trend is just next generation, evolution of automating the recruiting process. It’s definitely something to be embraced and understood, the reality is most of the technology you are using probably is already leveraging it in some form.

When I take a look at the landscape from the point of view of someone who follows this stuff way too closely I think the biggest trend is confusion. The in the weeds TA team and leaders are overwhelmed by options, by decisions.

The vendor community is so focused on selling you their ‘one’ product, solution, that they miss helping their clients on the bigger picture of how it should all fit together. The ‘buyer’ of our trends, hasn’t changed. They need to fill jobs, faster, with better talent.

Most will already have some semblance of a tech stack they are being forced to use, and they aren’t sure how you fit in and make it all work better. At the very least they probably have a core ATS who is telling them they can do it all, when in reality they probably do 25% of what’s needed to be competitive.

The winners in the recruiting technology space will be those who can make it idiot-proof. If you’re a TA pro/leader don’t take that as a put down. The reality is every leader or practitioner just wants tech that works, without thinking about it.

I have a job I need to fill.

I turn on your switch and the tech makes it easy for me to fill this position.

We aren’t launching the Space Shuttle, we are filling roles. Ultimately, the TA Leader in me doesn’t give a hoot about your trends! Trends are for early adopters. Work through your issues. Find what works and what does’t. Then let’s talk.

Unfortunately, we don’t live in a world where the trend is selling stuff that just works…

Your Weekly Dose of HR Tech: Pocket Recruiter (@pkrecruiter)

Posted on February 19, 2019 by Tim Sackett

Today on The Weekly Dose I review the recruiting technology, Pocket Recruiter. Pocket Recruiter drastically reduces the time it takes to screen, source and evaluate candidates, helping recruiters achieve a higher interview to placement ratio.

Pocket Recruiter is one of these new recruiting technologies built around the concepts of Machine Learning and A.I. Basically, it integrates with your ATS and will automatically scrap every new job (or you can manually put in jobs as well) and then it will go out and source candidates for each job you have from both your internal database and external data as well.

Where Pocket Recruiter stands out is it’s ability to match candidates to your job, and it’s ability to learn and get better. The recruiter gets a list of matching candidates that are scored out and ranked based on, pattern recognition, the internal algorithm, etc.

Your recruiter gets a shortlist within minutes to go out and start connecting. Organizations are seeing savings of up to 60% in time to source and screen, because most of the heavily lifting of sourcing is done, and the matches are of higher quality, so you’ll need less screens. They are also seeing improvements of 90% from resume submitted to the hiring manager to request for interview. So, the quality is definitely improving.

What do I like about Pocket Recruiter:

Your recruiters can override the algorithm within Pocket Recruiter to bring back different results almost immediately, if something isn’t coming through like it should. This might seem small, but it’s huge as we that recruit usually quite a bit more than the algorithm in terms of what we are looking for.
You can add your internal employees into the mix, making Pocket Recruiter a great tool for internal mobility.
The Performance Metrics might be one of the best I’ve seen in any recruiting tool, as it basically replicates your recruiting funnel for you on each individual recruiter. So, not only are you finding talent faster, but you also now have this great performance management tool for your team. I also loved the ROI tool built into Pocket Recruiter.

For me, technologies like Pocket Recruiter are the future of recruitment and how I see A.I. having the biggest early impact to how recruiting evolves in the near future. Pocket Recruiter ensures you are utilizing all of your candidates to the fullest, and it speeds up the entire process to get to hires quicker. Well worth a demo!

The Weekly Dose – is a weekly series here at The Project to educate and inform everyone who stops by on a daily/weekly basis on some great recruiting and sourcing technologies that are on the market. None of the companies who I highlight are paying me for this promotion. There are so many really cool things going on in the tech space and I wanted to educate myself and share what I find. If you want to be on The Weekly Dose – just send me a note – timsackett@comcast.net

Want help with your HR & TA Tech company – send me a message about my HR Tech Advisory Board experience.

What Does Tim Sackett Actually Do?

Posted on February 11, 2019 by Tim Sackett

So, besides my beautiful wife asking this question, frequently, I get asked this question all the time! During the spring and fall conference season, I’m out and about all over the world speaking. At almost every stop I’ll have at least one person come up to me and ask,

“So, what do you actually do?”

Ugh! It’s the single biggest failure of my life!

I probably should start each conversation like an AA meeting:

“Hi, my name is Tim Sackett, and I run a technical staffing company!”

That’s the real job. That’s the money maker. I run a recruiting shop! Like most of you, I have to go out and buy a recruiting tech stack that works. I need to decide if I spend money on Indeed, or LinkedIn, or ZipRecruiter. I need to hire and train recruiters. At the end of the day, I’m in the weeds finding talent.

Unlike most Staffing Firm executives, I can’t really hide. I’ve been blogging and speaking for ten years in our industry. When I meet with new clients who want to use my team, I try and tell them, “I think we’re better than most, but the one thing I can guarantee is I won’t lie to you, or take advantage of you! I’m too public! You could kill my brand overnight if I was one of those cheesy staffing guys selling you a load of bullshit!”

The name of my company is HRU Technical Resources. We are a 100% certified female-owned technical staffing company. Most people believe I’m the owner, but in reality, my Mom started the company in 1980.(Check out her profile pic from the 1st day! She looks like Farrah Fawcett!) She’s the original OG Recruiter! In her 70’s, she still could out recruit probably 99% of Recruiters in the world! Old school and proud of it!

Want to work with me? I want to work with you!

Here’s what we do:

Contract staffing – helping organizations for 38 years build that part of their company that they want to maintain as contingent to add flexibility to their workforce.
Sourcing Projects – we will your funnel with talent and let you do the recruiting
Project RPO – we bundle some critical hiring for you and do the entire thing end-to-end
Traditional Direct-hire staffing

I also do a bunch of Talent Acquisition consulting with clients as well, helping them build out their own recruiting tech stack and just flat out execute better when it comes to their own direct hiring and figuring out what’s the best way to get the most out of your recruiting team.

So, yeah, I write a lot. I speak quite a bit. I do webcasts, etc. But that’s not the full-time gig. I wrote a post a few years ago titled “What would it take to get you to work 80 hours per week?” I don’t work 80 hours per week, but I probably work 60-ish. A lot of nights and weekends to make both my full-time and my side gig work.

The reality is, if I don’t work my full-time gig, my bills don’t get paid. That’s real life. So, let’s work together! I would love to get to know more of you and work with a bunch of you. Send me a note and let’s connect – sackett.tim@hru-tech.com.

Doing Time in Recruiting

Posted on February 8, 2019 by Tim Sackett

Have you done any time? I asked the unsuspecting young lady sitting next to me. She just stared at me not sure if I was joking or serious, and really not wanting to engage either way.

Old recruiters tend to be a bit forward. Their time has worn away the niceties and cultural norms society places upon us when you go through the system.

Mine have been gone for a while now.

“Have you done time?”, Is me asking you, if you have ever worked in staffing? Corporate TA isn’t time! Corporate TA is an all expenses paid trip to Disneyland, with the Disney Princess breakfast included.

How long was your sentence?

It seems like most recruiters do a cup of coffee and get out for parole within a year. A fucking year! I’ve got searches on my desk longer then a fucking year!

What can you learn in staffing in a year? That you suck at Recruiting is really the only thing I can think of. You don’t even learn the language of what you’re searching for in a year!

I think everyone in talent acquisition should do some time in staffing. It produces calluses, it thickens the skin. Staffing doesn’t come close to giving you all you need for a corporate TA job, but it gives you one thing that is desparately lacking. It teaches you how to fill positions.

I’ve worked in both staffing and corporate TA and I loved both. Both a very different and I loved them for different reasons, but I’ve always been extremely grateful that I had experience in staffing before I went into corporate. Both sides have lifers, and it makes sense. Some people know that one side is just for them and the other isn’t.

So, on this day, hit me in the comments and let me know how long your sentence was, or has been, and let us celebrate our time served!

Budgeting Yourself to Below Average Recruiting

Posted on February 7, 2019 by Tim Sackett

I was with a great group of TA leaders this week at the ATAP annual board meeting. One of my colleagues made a comment during a break:

“You can’t budget yourself to great TA”
A Great TA Leader Once Said

Meaning, if you keep cutting your TA budget year after year, eventually your tech is going to be so dated, or behind the times, that you won’t be able to ever pull yourself out of the hole you budgeted yourself into. While you’ll save some money in the short term, ultimately these ‘cuts’ to the budget will cost you more overall when it comes to filling positions.

Ideally, you work for a c-suite that actually understands this and they aren’t coming to you asking for you to cut your TA budget and produce more quality hires, faster! That doesn’t really work, unless you’ve gone a run of ten straight years of padding your TA budget year after year with extra and this budget cycle is about getting back to a midpoint.

I’m not saying you need a ton of budget to have solid TA tools and processes. Too often we overspend on technology that has a lot of promise, but little actual, proven ROI. Also, we hang on to bad budget investments. Most TA leaders I speak to don’t have a real clear picture of what their best sources are and how much they are paying for each source.

When they run this analysis and really dig in, they always uncover a bucket of money that is being thrown away, but it’s a ‘legacy’ tool that at one point they relied on, but now it’s not producing like it once did, but they hope it’s going to come back, so they keep throwing money at it. It’s really scary to cut a tool that is actually producing hires, even when that tool is expensive, because we believe if we cut that over-priced tool we won’t get those hires from somewhere else.

Let me give you a Pro TA Tip! You will! Cut that $50K tool, take $25k of that money and give it to your most productive source in some way and you’ll most likely actually get more hires from that investment then you got on your weaker performing over-priced tool.

I don’t like to go backwards on my TA budget unless we know we’re going to have less hires for that budget year, or we are doing something to increase retention that will impact our capacity in a positive way. Every single time I’ve been asked to cut TA budget, but still produce, we didn’t get better, we fought like crazy to stay the same, or we got worse.

Be careful my TA friends when that budget director, CFO-type comes to you looking for cuts, but also wants you to produce the same or more. If you get trapped into this scenario make sure they give you some concessions on what they are willing to give up when it comes to your team’s services and make sure to continually remind them of your budget cut each time they complain that recruiting isn’t getting the job done!

@SHRM Making a Stand for Hiring Candidates with Criminal Record!

Posted on February 4, 2019 by Tim Sackett

When it comes to hiring bias in America we HATE hiring 3 types of candidates:

Old People
Fat People
People with a Criminal Record

SHRM decided to try and make an impact and help those with past criminal records get hired with their new initiative called: Getting Talent Back to Work.

GTBW is an initiative launched by SHRM to get employers to join in and take a pledge that their organizations will work to put people with criminal records back into their hiring pools. Koch Industries, a multi-billion dollar corporations with over 120,000 employees was SHRM’s launch partner, which drew some eyre from some of the HR blogging community.

When I first heard of the program, and HR blogging blow back, the first thing came to mind was the quote:

“Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows” by William Shakespeare from the Tempest

There are millions of American workers right now who are miserable because they have a record and we will not allow them to pay their debt to society.

This was the same language used by Torin Ellis and Julie Sowash on their entertaining podcast Crazy and The King. Where Julie was really upset by the Koch relationship because of their conservative political stance, and Torin saw it a little less so, which I thought brought great balance to this discussion. Not blind at all to what is going on, but also hopeful and realistic to how difficult this issue really is to change.

So, what do I think about all this?

Making change is messy business. Getting people with criminal records real jobs isn’t something we’ve done really well in our society. 1/3 of Americans have some sort of criminal record and we can’t just throw all of these people away. We have to start truly believing that a debt paid, is actually paid.

Johnny Taylor has a giant association to lead. Some of those SHRM members are ultra liberal. Some are ultra conservative. Some are socialist. Some are religious zealots. Some are atheist. While some HR bloggers hate him for allowing Koch Industries to be apart of this program, I find this view to be exclusive and not inclusive of all.

Odds are there are as many people who love that SHRM has Koch Industry as a partner, as there are people who hate that SHRM has Koch Industries as a partner (with 300,000+ members the stats will play out like America in general). By the way, SHRM also has over 500 other organizations that have stepped up and taken the Pledge! Which is what this is really all about!

Like the ex-criminals we are trying to help get them back to work, why is it we believe that Koch Industries can’t help in this situation? We all have things in our life, in our past, that some wouldn’t agree with, and things that people would love, no matter our political persuasion.

Our reality is almost every organization is or has probably done some crap we all can’t agree on, but they probably are smaller, or keep a lower profile, or believe in what you believe in, so we give them a pass.

I have many friends who lean very heavily liberal. Also, some ultra-conservative. Also, some socialist, and Libetarian, and who knows what else! I don’t agree with their politics and they don’t agree with my moderate politics, yet we can work together to help others and solve problems. It’s not all or nothing. That’s not how our country works. If my neighbor views the world differently than I, I don’t watch his home burn down with him in it, I run in and save him.

We are intelligent beasts that have the ability to separate one ideology from another, and while we won’t always agree it doesn’t mean we can’t find value in one another. We are HR! We own D&I. We need to stop making Inclusion, exclusive to one belief and not all beliefs.

So, kudos for SHRM in launching this initiative in getting organizations to really dig into this issue of hiring people with previous criminal records who have paid their debt to society. Kudos to each and every company that has taken the pledge to help these people who desperately need it.

I encourage you to go take a look at the site and decide if taking this pledge is right for your organization!

Career Confessions of Gen Z – The Holy Grail of Benefits

Posted on January 30, 2019 by Tim Sackett

Welcome to the reboot of Career Confessions of Gen Z! I started this in 2018 with my Gen Z son, Cameron, and the response was off the charts. So, in 2019 I found 8 great Gen Z HR, TA, and Marketing pros to continue the Gen Z content. Enjoy!

The early members of Generation Z have entered the workforce and the rest of the 61 million Gen Z’s are on their way. A big question that employers have been asking regarding this generation is, “What do we offer to attract them to our company?”.

To attract and retain this generation, many companies have been altering their benefits and internal culture to be more appealing. More and more companies are now offering things like a flexible work-life balance schedule, remote work days, casual dress codes, a 401k match, advancement and rotational opportunities, and etc.

While those benefits are appealing, only 4% of companies are offering the most attractive benefit that will not only attract Gen Z candidates, but will generate major employee loyalty. That benefit is Loan Forgiveness Assistance.

CNBC reported that eight in 10 workers with student loans say they would value in working for a firm that provides extra dollars for student debt repayment. I find it hard to believe that number isn’t 10 out of 10!

In the U.S, people collectively owe $1.5 trillion in student debt. Most of that student debt belongs to Millennials and early Gen Z’s. An additional $1.27 trillion in new federal student loans is estimated to be added between now and 2028 by Gen Z. This generation is going to find themselves in the same debt situation as Millennials as tuition rates continue to rise.

Student debt is a real, growing problem that employers can help reduce and that we want them to help us reduce.

Not only is contributing toward student loan debt a major perk for employees, but it also ensures employee loyalty and retention. By offering this benefit, employers are giving their employees an awesome reason to never leave their company and to want to work their asses off for them.

I have a few Gen Z friends that are in companies that have some sort of student loan repayment assistance in place and I can tell you that they never plan on leaving those companies. The fact that the companies make contributions towards their student loans was also one of the major reasons they chose to work at their companies. They scored the holy grail of benefits when they accepted their jobs!

There are a few different ways in which employers can offer loan forgiveness assistance. To learn more about what other companies are doing and how student loan repayment assistance programs have been mutually beneficial for employers and employees, consider reading the following links:

A 401(k) Twist on Student-Loan Aid

Student Loan Repayment Is The Hottest Employee Benefit Of 2018

How Student Loan Debt Impacts Your Employees

Student Loan Repayment: The Job Perk Of The Future

Hallie Priest is a digital marketer for HRU Technical Resources, a leading engineering, and IT staffing firm based in Lansing, MI, using her skills to create content to serve all involved in the job seeking/hiring process. When she is not strategizing campaigns, going over analytics, or talking about her dog you can find her at the nearest coffee shop fueling her creativity. Connect with her on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/halliepriest

Your Weekly Dose of HR Tech: @EmployUsApp – Referral Automation

Posted on January 29, 2019 by Tim Sackett

Today on The Weekly Dose I take a look at the candidate referral automation platform EmployUs. I actually first told you about EmployUs about four years ago when they just launched, but since then they’ve improved their tech and added a bunch of stuff, so I wanted to give you a second look!

You guys already know I’m in love with candidate referral automation. In my experience of looking at every kind of HR and TA Technology I believe it has the single highest ROI of any tech on the market, and let still relatively few organizations actually use it as part of their TA Tech stack.

EmployUS took candidate referral technology one more step and actually allows you to use it both internally and externally with your organization. Clearly we love using this tech with our employees to get more of their referrals, but what if we could also use it outside our organization to gain more referrals as well? EmployUs allows you to do that, if you choose.

What I like about EmployUs:

They jumped into the chatbot/AI world to help those referring candidates make it much easier and faster, and through the use of SMS they’ve actually made is super simple for hourly workers to now refer candidates in seconds! Always a draw back to traditional referral software.
The automation aspect truly helps make the referral process simple for your internal employees who might not be thinking of this all day, every day, but once they do decide, you need it to self-sufficient and fast.
Tailored email and texting campaigns so you can target parts of your organization for specific referrals.
A dashboard that tracks and automates payouts based on the rules you build, that also gives you the gamification aspect of internal scoreboards to keep your referral program top of mind all the time.

Here’s what we know. Most of our top hires come from referrals. Our most inexpensive hires come from referrals. Almost all of us would say we need more referrals in our hiring process.

Then we watch our old, tired, analog referral program deliver the exact same results year in and year out, and we do nothing to change it. Go demo EmployUs and take a look at what your candidate referral program should look like.