Category Archives: Selection

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

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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!

Your EEOC Job Posting Statements are Hurting Your Diversity Hiring!

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Employers discriminate in hiring. This is a fact. It’s been a fact for generations. It’s the main reason anti-discrimination statements show up on job postings. That and it’s the law for Public employers and Government contractors who are required to have these statements. Many private employers use these as well to show they don’t discriminate in hiring.

For fifty years we’ve seen these statements on job descriptions and job advertisements. Recently, two Economists from the University of Chicago did a study looking at the impact of candidate behavior when these statements are added to a job posting and their findings were shocking!

In their study, the two economists posted advertisements for an administrative assistant job in ten large American cities. Of the 2,300 applicants who expressed interest, half were given a standard job description and the other half were given a description with an equal-opportunity statement promising that “all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to sex, colour, age or any other protected characteristics”.

 

For racial minorities, those who received the pro-diversity statement were 30% less likely to apply for the job—and the effect appeared to be worse in cities with white majorities (see chart). In a follow-up survey, the prospective applicants said the statement prompted worries that they would be token diversity hires.

30% Less Likely To Apply!!! 

What the what?!?!

This isn’t a study that was done decades ago. This was done in the past twelve months!

So, what should we do? 

One thing the study found that had a positive impact on increasing diversity application is to show your senior executives, including your CEO, talk in a ‘real’ transparent way on the impact that diversity has on your organization.

No, not some overly-produced puff piece about how we are all part of the same rainbow. Include video on your career site with your CEO telling stories about how D&I isn’t just a marketing tactic, but how it’s really impacted the organization in a positive way.

Have diverse employees ask the CEO question that gets to the heart of where D&I is in your organization. Don’t be afraid about keeping this conversation open and maybe a bit uncomfortable. The more real, the more candidates will understand that you’re really trying to make a difference.

If you really want to make sure you’re not missing great minority applicants who are skipping even applying to you, embed these videos right into your job postings!

Don’t think that when you put an “EEOC” statement at the end of your job posting is letting a diverse candidate pool know you’re a great place for them to work. They don’t buy it! You have to be better than that!

“Overqualified” is Just another word for Age Discrimination

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Had a really talented lady reach out to me the other day. 49 years old, college grad, great portfolio of work. She has been interviewing and is being told she is “Overqualified”.

There is some truth about her being called this. She does have more qualifications than the position requires, but she fully understands what the job is and she wants to do that job, with no notion of wanting to do more than that job, unless her performance shows she’s capable of moving up and the company needs her to move up.

“Overqualified” is just another way to say “Hey, I think you’re too old to work for me!”

Tell me I’m wrong! Give me all the reasons someone is “Overqualified” for a job they want to work at and understand what the job specs are?

I’m a Heart Surgeon but it’s a stressful job, so I decided to take a step back and just do some Cardiac Rehab work. Still get to work with heart patients, but it’s a less stressful workload and pays a heck of lot less, you need less education to do that job.

Am I overqualified to do Cardiac Rehab if I have experience as a heart surgeon? Only if you tell me I am! It’s a job I want, and I have the skills and desire to do that job, so I would say I’m quite qualified to do that job, not overqualified.

TA pros and hiring managers say someone is overqualified when they’re too stupid to come up with another reason about why they don’t want to hire someone who has great experience and more years of experience.

“Oh, Tammy, yeah, she’s overqualified to work in that job. I mean she wouldn’t be happy long-term reporting to me, and I mean she has more experience than I have!” Oh, she told you that? “Um, no.”

I constantly run into retired people who aren’t ready to retire and want to keep doing valuable work. They have great skills and knowledge, but 32-year-old Steve won’t hire them because Steve believes they won’t take his direction. That’s a Steve-issue, not the candidate’s issue!

By the way, this isn’t a young-to-middle-aged guy problem, women are just as bad! Turns out we all love to discriminate against old people, equally!

Tech companies are the worse. Creative companies are the second worse.

Tech companies believe only young people know technology. Creative companies think the only people who buy products and services are 26-year-olds on Instagram and Snap.

“Tim, you just don’t get it. I don’t want to hire someone who is going to retire in 5 years!” What’s your average tenure at your company? “4.2 years” Yeah, having someone for 5 years would really suck for you!

I had a hiring manager tell me this once when he interviewed a person who was 52! “I need someone who is going to stay long term!” Um, 13-15 years isn’t long term?! You’re an idiot!

I find telling hiring managers “You’re an idiot!” is super effective in getting through to them, and cutting straight through to their bias. It has worked 100% of the time in my career. It really works across all biases.

So, now tell me, why don’t you hire someone who is ‘overqualified”?

Influencers or Analysts – Who has the most impact to your brand?

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The worlds of Influencers and Analysts have never collied more than they are right now in the HR industry. Most of this has to do with the popularity of Influencer Marketing that has taken off in the past decade, and like most things in HR, we are now just catching up with the marketing trend.

Traditionally, in the HR space, companies selling products, technology, and services only really cared about two things: 1. What do our clients think of us, and 2. What do the “Analysts” think of us?

What’s an Analyst? 

Every industry has them. These are basically individuals who work for organizations like Deloitte, Gartner, Forrester Research, IDC, and hundreds of boutique firms specializing in specific parts of the HR ecosystem. The individuals spend a great deal of time understanding the landscape of a specific function in HR, the technology, the processes, what works and what doesn’t, etc. Then your organization pays their organization a great deal of money for this expert knowledge.

The hope is, using this expert Analyst knowledge will ultimately help you save time, money, and missteps because you’ve hired a firm of experts to help you make the right decisions. Many of these experts have never actually worked a day in HR, but hold MBAs and such. Some of these people are some of the smartest people I’ve ever met, and if you listened to them, they could truly help you. Some are idiots working for a big firm.

Examples of Analyst I admire: William Tincup, Madeline Laurano, Trish McFarlane, George LaRocque, Ben Eubanks, Kyle Lagunas, John Sumser, Holger Mueller, Jason Cerrato, Josh Bersin, etc.

This will then beg the question of well, then, what’s an Influencer? 

Influencer marketing has been around for a hundred years, but Kim Kardashian is the queen of modern day influencers. I’m famous! You see me talking about or using this product. You buy this product. That’s really the backbone of influencer marketing. I mean Kimmy D would never steer you wrong, would she?

An Influencer is anyone in an industry that a measurable amount of people are listening to, that will the influence their buying behavior. I write a blog post on some product that I’m using in my own shop. It’s super awesome! You go out, look at it, and decide to buy it and use it with your team. You’ve been influenced.

Most of the influencers in the HR industry are current or former practitioners, they’ve lived your life. Some are super smart and have the resume to back it up. Some are complete idiots. Any idiot can have a blog (I’m a great example!). Most influencers, like an analyst, have a specialty, something they’re better at than other stuff. Some influence full time, but most hold down ‘real’ jobs to pay the bills. So, they probably don’t have the time to deep dive into the industry, as you’ll see with analysts.

Examples of Influencers I admire: Kris Dunn, Dawn Burke, Carmen Hudson, Robin Schooling, Jason Lauritsen, Laurie Ruettimann, Jennifer McClure, Sharlyn Lauby, Steve Browne, Sabrina Baker, Joey Price, Mary Flaukner, Jessica Merrell, Janine Truitt, etc. (there’s really too many to name!)

Many of these people are HR Famous! They have worked hard to create an audience who for the most part listens to what they have to say.

You also have people that fall into this strange middle ground of Influencer-Analysts types that have no name. Maybe they started out as an influencer, then became an Analyst, or maybe they were an Analyst who became popular and started influencing. Examples in this camp are folks like: Josh Bersin, Jason Averbook, Sarah Brennen, Trish McFarlane, Ben Eubanks, etc.

(BTW – All of these people you should connect to! )

So, who has the most impact on your Brand? Influencers or Analysts? 

This is not an easy question to answer because like almost anything it depends on a lot! We all know of a certain product we love and regardless of the influence or what some expert is telling us, we will just buy it because we love it!

We also have an untold number of products and services we buy because someone we trust told us about it, and because we trust them, we go buy it.

If you’re a large enterprise level product or service, basically selling to companies that have more than 5,000 employees, you better make nice with the Analyst community! They tend to have the ear of more enterprise buyers then you’ll typically see from influencers. I doubt very highly the CHRO of Google is reading this blog! (but I know the CPO of GM is!)

What I see is companies selling to enterprise usually work with both Analyst and Influencers. They want to ensure their message is heard across the buying community, so they don’t miss out on a potential buyer, and they have the money to do both.

Companies selling to under 5,000 employees and it starts to get a little harder to determine the impact of Analysts. I mean how many HR and Talent shops in Small to Medium sized businesses have the money to pay for Analysts Research? Not many! If you run an HR shop of a 1500 person company, you do not have $50,000 to hear what the best ATS is! The ATS you buy won’t even cost $50K!

Behind the scenes, most analysts understand their biggest impact in on the enterprise buyer, and because that’s where the money is, that’s exactly where they want to be! If you have buyers across small, medium, large, and enterprise markets, it then becomes a more difficult decision on how you use Influencer marketing.

The real answer to the question above is you engage with the analyst and influencers that have the most positive impact to selling your product. Unfortunately, most organizations have little or no idea if either side is having an impact to selling their stuff.

Who has the juice? 

I call someone who has ‘real’ influence as having the “juice”. If you have the ‘juice’ you have the ability to influence real buying decisions on a regular basis. Laurie Ruettimann tells you to go out and buy this new great HR product, and that organization will see a measurable sales increase directly tied to the links in her posts. She’s got juice!

I wrote about an HR Tech company a few months ago after a demo and a month later they sent me a bottle of gin because they landed a six-figure deal directly from my mentioning them in a post. That’s gin and juice! 😉

Most people who call themselves influencers in the HR space have little or no juice. Usually, because they just don’t have a large enough, sustained audience who is listening. They might be 100% correct in their recommendations and insight, but not enough people are listening to move the buying needle.

I love what the folks are doing over at HRMarketer because they are actually showing organizations who have the juice and who doesn’t. I can tell you I have the juice and say I’m the #1 Influencer in the HR marketplace, but the reality is, anyone can say that! HRMarketer is actually giving data behind those words to let people know where the real juice is.

The truth around all of the analyst vs. influencer chatter is that you’ll find people in both groups who can help you, and people in both groups who are complete idiots and have no value. The best thing to do is build a relationship with both, find out who moves your needle and aligns with the messaging you’re trying to get out, and then measure. Eventually, you’ll find the right mix that will work for your organization.

Fortnite, not athletics, is Our Saving Grace for Team Building at Work!

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Remember when it was super cool to go out and hire ex-college athletes into various roles in your company? Enterprise Rent-A-Car basically made their entire brand out of it! Pretty much every mortgage banking firm, sales office, etc. followed with the shared understanding that college athletes make great hires.

Why? It’s tough to go to school and fit in athletics. Athletes are normally self-motivated individuals who care about winning. Most are coachable. They actually like working in a ‘team’ environment.

Then came along gaming, and currently, Fortnite is the vain of every parent’s existence!

Don’t know what Fortnite is? Have you been living under a rock for the past year? Basically, Fortnite is a shooter game that has over 50 million active users. Originally it was designed where 100 people get dropped into a small online world all at the same time and you play until you’re the last one to survive. The world gets smaller and smaller every so many minutes, so that the games don’t take forever. The game forces you to move and fight. It’s super addicting. Just ask any parent with teens.

Fortnite found that the kids playing these games actually liked playing with friends so you could invite people you know to join you and try to kill each other. Then, it was duals and teams, where you get your friends together and play against other teams, or pairs. All the while the kids are all talking to each other on headsets, sometimes states and countries apart from each other.

Okay, if you don’t game, I get how all of this sounds ridiculous. The thing you’re missing is the interactions and strategy that takes place in the game.

If you stop for a few minutes and listen to these kids play, after you get through the language being used, you see real strategy and communication taking place. You see kids talking to each other, helping each other, sacrificing themselves for the good of the team, working through extreme time-sensitive decisions in the attempt to win.

Some of this stuff would make military generals super proud! But it would also make executives pretty impressed as well. Fortnite is getting kids to communicate who would previously never talk to anyone! Getting them to work together. Getting them to make tough decisions. Getting them to play 24 hours straight!

Find something you love to do and you’ll never work a day in your life. I’m not saying that Fortnite and shooter games are what you should love. I think it’s way beyond the ‘game’. The kids actually really like the communication, the strategy, and decision making that has ‘real’ implications in their current world.

We spend so many resources in our current work world to get our adults to learn how to interact well in teams. We have an entire generation entering the workforce in Gen Z, that are already demonstrating they have some pretty good skills in this area, and they didn’t even have to know how to throw a ball to show this skill set!

Want to make more money? Be an extrovert!

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New research out of the University of Copenhagen finally puts to rest the age-old argument around what’s better: being an extrovert or being an introvert? I have friends who are on both sides and super successful in their careers, but it’s still one of those things where if you are one or the other, you usually believe what you are is the best.

Well, in terms of lifelong earnings the data is pretty clear you want to be an extrovert! From the study:

One striking result is how much the trait of conscientiousness matters. Men who measure as one standard deviation higher on conscientiousness earn on average an extra $567,000 over their lifetimes, or 16.7 percent of average lifetime earnings. Measuring as extroverted, again by one standard deviation higher than average, is worth almost as much, $490,100. These returns tend to rise the most for the most highly educated of the men.

For women, the magnitude of these effects is smaller (for one thing, women earned less because of restricted opportunities). Furthermore, extroversion is more strongly correlated with higher earnings than is conscientiousness, unlike for the men.

Yeah, that’s a half of million dollars! That’s life changing money for most people!

Here is something else that came out of the study that I thought was fascinating, people who are ‘agreeable’ by nature, actually make less money!

It may surprise you to learn that more “agreeable” men earn significantly less. Being one standard deviation higher on agreeableness reduces lifetime earnings by about 8 percent, or $267,600. In this context, you can think of agreeableness as meaning a person is less antagonistic and more likely to consider the interests of others. You might have thought agreeableness would be correlated with higher earnings but alas not.

So, here we are as HR pros telling all of our employees who want to be leaders they should be more ‘agreeable’, put the interests of others above your own, etc. What we are really telling them is “hey, here’s how to ensure you’ll make less money in your career!”

I think we see this in our world today. We tend to want to believe we all want ‘servant leaders’ when it comes to someone leading us individually, or leading our companies. But, for the most part, most of our great leaders we can point to, male and female, are still overwhelmingly extroverted and mostly directive in their style of leadership.

One last thing that came out of the study is that being smart and being extroverted is not correlated. Why does this matter? Well, being smart does correlate to higher income as well. So, when we go try and select great employees we tend to just look at intelligence. Which is necessarily bad. If you are going to try to increase your talent, starting with smart people is never a bad idea, but in the long run, it’s more than just IQ:

Another interesting result from the data is that IQ and conscientiousness are not very well correlated. That implies that finding ideal workers isn’t so easy. The quality of openness, however, is moderately positively correlated with IQ, so you might expect that the smarter workers are more willing to experiment and try new things.

So, do you have to be extroverted to make more money? No, but it’s easier and more likely if you are. If you’re introverted, by nature, it wouldn’t hurt to work on your outwardly extroverted self. We all have the ability to be extroverted and introverted in certain situations. The key for earning more income is being extroverted in a professional setting.

Okay, my introverted friends! Tell me why this research is complete B.S.!

How Can You Become a Great HR/Talent Professional?

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I met an aspiring HR college student recently. The question was asked, “Tim, how can I be great at HR?” I told them to buy my book and read my blog and that’s really all there is to it! Just kidding, I said something after that as well! 😉

It’s a great question that ultimately has very little to do with HR or Talent Acquisition. To be great at HR, or anything, rarely do you have to be great at that certain skill set. For some things, it’s important: doctor, lawyer, accountant, etc. But most professions you can learn the skills, so it’s about these other things that I told this young Padawan:

– Go deep on a few things. The world needs experts, not a generalist. Don’t kid yourself to think being a generalist is really what your organization wants. People say this when they are an expert in nothing. Be an expert in something and a generalist in a bunch of stuff.

– Don’t be super concerned with what you’re going deep on, just make sure it interests you. While it might not seem valuable now, at some point it probably will be. I’m not in love with employee benefits, but someone is and when I need help with that I’m searching for that person.

– Consume content inside and outside of your industry. Those with a never-ending appetite to learn are always more successful.

– Connect with people in your field outside of your company. We are in a time in the world where your network can be Pitbull Worldwide! Use that to your advantage. There is someone smarter than you a thousand miles away just waiting to help you.

– Just because someone older and more experienced than you might think something is unimportant, don’t give up on it. We all get used to what we are used to. Older people think Snapchat is stupid and it might be, but it also might unlock something awesome in our employment brand. Experience and age are super valuable until they aren’t.

– Constantly make stuff and test it. Some it will fail, most of it will be average, some of it will be awesome. Give yourself more chances for awesome! Don’t let someone tell you, “we tried that three years ago and it didn’t work”. Cool, let’s do it again, but this time change the name!

– Take a big chance early in your career. Find a company that you absolutely love and just find a way to work there in any position, then be awesome for a couple of years and see what happens. Working for a brand you love is beyond the best career feeling you’ll have.

– Don’t expect to be “HR famous” overnight, but the work you do right now will make you HR famous ten years from now. Do the work, fall in love with it, the fame will come down the road. “I want to blog and speak just like you, Tim!” Awesome, I started doing this a decade ago. Let’s get started right now!

– Don’t discount social skills in the real world. You can be the smartest most skilled person in the room, but the one with a personality is the one people will pay attention to. This is a skill that can be learned and constantly improved upon if you work at it.

– Spend time with Great HR and Talen pros. No one is really hiding their secret sauce, you just aren’t asking them questions. The key in spending time with others is not asking them to invest more in helping you than you’re willing to invest in making it happen. I get asked weekly for time from people who rarely are willing to help me in return.

Okay, as internships are concluding for the summer let’s help these aspiring professionals out! Give me your best advice in the comments!

The “Real” Man Talent Crisis in America!

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I have to admit, I’m not much of a  “real man”. I don’t know many ‘man’ things. I don’t fix cars. I’m horrible fixing almost anything. I have a lot of tools, but the reality is I usually cost myself more money by trying to fix something myself than just paying to have a ‘real’ man fix it.

That’s hard to admit. I want to be a real man. I want to have something go wrong in my house and instantly know what to do and how to correct it. I usually just go to YouTube and watch a real man show me how to fix it, then I call a real man to come over and fix it.

It seems like there is a huge need for real men right now in the world. It’s a shrinking talent pool for sure!

My mother is at a point in life where she finds herself without a man, real or fake, but she needs the skills of a real man to help her keep up her house. We found her someone and all I can think is I really need this guy for myself, not her! I need her real man for me!

I have three sons and none of them are real men, and unfortunately, I don’t see them becoming real men. I’m teaching them to pay for a real man. It’s cheaper and less frustrating in the long run. I don’t really have a desire to learn to plumb, do electrical work, appliance repair, engine repair, carpentry, etc. I mean I wish I had those skills, but that’s a lot of life experience and it’s almost too late for me to pick those up and be any good at them.

I have some great qualities that most ‘real’ men probably don’t. I’m awesome at gardening. I love to shop. Go to the movies. I love to go to the theater. I can cook up a storm. I do some basic sewing. I’m awesome with children. Just don’t ask me to ‘fix’ the front door when it won’t close properly.

While you might think this is a ‘me’ problem, it’s not. This is an “us” problem. I can foresee a time when ‘real’ men are so scarce we won’t be able to find anyone to fix our stuff! We have a real man talent crisis on our hands and I don’t think people really understand how bad it is, and how bad it’s going to get.

I don’t need someone to show me how to play Fortnite! That is a skill I can live without. But I can’t have the deck falling off my house and just let it dangerously hang there! I don’t need someone to show me how to watch the entire series of The Office on Netflix, but I do need someone to help me fix my garage door when it won’t go up or down!

I’m sure there is a correlation between skilled trades leaving public education and downfall of “real” man skills in the U.S. I’m also sure that there is a correlation between white collar jobs and blue collar jobs and real man skill level. You could probably add in a number of other factors around higher education, income level, etc. But, it’s all really meaningless, I still need have a need for real man skills no matter the reason I lack them!

So, I’m wondering. Is this just me or are others feeling the real man skill pinch as well? Hit me in the comments with how you lack real man skills, or how you got your real man skills, even if you’re a lady with ‘real man’ skills!

SHRM CEO says All Employers Should “Require” HR Certification!

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Did you see this last week by new SHRM CEO Johnny Taylor?

“Require certification,” Taylor said. “SHRM certification is a validation that the professional doing the job has the competency to do it. Treat HR like a profession. Don’t just prefer—require!”  

So, there will be a reaction from the HR community on this for sure! My guess is it will be mostly negative by those who aren’t certified, and mostly positive by the small percentage, overall, of HR professionals who do have a certification.

Here’s my take – I 100% agree with Johnny!

In fact, I love Johnny even more as the selection of SHRM CEO!

We (HR) want to be put on the same level as our peers in accounting, legal, etc. They are required to complete an examination to reach their CPA or pass the bar exam. Why should HR be any different?

I think it would be awesome to begin seeing HR positions at all levels have “HR Certification Required to Apply to this Position!” on job descriptions and job postings. I think it’s a sign that organizations are saying we want to ensure that our HR professionals meet some basic understanding and competency of the profession, at a minimum.

I think the one pushback would be there is a cost of obtaining the certification. That’s a real barrier and being a professional that embraces and espouses to inclusion, we want to eliminate barriers. Thankfully, SHRM also was prepared for this and announced last week:

“We’ve adapted our recertification process to provide additional flexibility to match your learning needs.

Going forward, SHRM will no longer have a maximum limit on self-paced activities, in the ‘Advance Your Education’ category.”

What this means is an HR professional can go out and take all 60 recertification credits for free through various webcasts or other self-paced free HR learning opportunities.

There still the cost to recertifying ($100 for members, $150 for non-members) and a cost to take the initial exam ($300 or $400, respectively). The reality is we all have investments we need to make to maintain and grow ourselves in our profession. This is a rather small amount for such a great profession.

I’ve been a long time vocal critic of SHRM in many ways but I love this push from Johnny to the profession. Sure it’s a bit self-serving since SHRM is the one selling the SHRM-CP and SCP certification (along with HRCI who sells the PHR, SPHR, and GPHR separately), but I don’t care. It’s the right thing to do.

I’ve been an HR professional who has held a certification since 2001. Gaining that certification took work, study, and practice. It wasn’t easy. After completing the examination and passing it was a big deal. 17 years of pursuing continuing education puts me in a really great position as a professional that I know a great deal about HR in a number of facets.

Does this make me a ‘better’ HR professional than someone who does not have a certification? That’s the big question, right? I believe it does, on average. Sure someone can know more than me, who does not have an HR certification, but normally, I would say that is not the case.

So, kudos, to Johnny, who got beat up recently in social media for shaking President Trump’s hand and taking a pic at an event. I believe requiring HR certifications for HR positions is the right stance to take for SHRM and for the profession.

HR Mind Games: Does a Cognitive Assessment Tell Me a Candidate is Stupid?

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HR Mind Games Hangout – Episode #2 – Does This Cognitive Assessment Tell Me a Candidate Is Stupid?

HR Mind Games is a quick hitting, 20-30 minute hangout hosted by Kris Dunn, founder of FOT and the HR Capitalist and sponsored by Caliper, the leading provider of Assessments for Selection, Talent Management, and Leadership Development.

In each episode of Mind Games, we’ll cover how general assessment geekiness/expertise helps HR and Recruiting Pros make better hires as well as maximize performance once that talent is in the door!

Episode #2 – Does This Cognitive Assessment Tell Me a Candidate Is Stupid?

CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP FOR THIS EPISODE OF HR MIND GAMES!!!!

In our second episode of HR Mind Games, we’re going to focus on the use of cognitive tests as part of the assessment platforms. Does a low cog score mean someone is stupid? Can low cog person be a high performer? How do you coach a low cog scoring person to be successful in your organization that demands speed?

If you’ve ever run into a cognitive test as part of an employment assessment and said, “****”, this one is for you. Join us on 7/31 and we’ll break down the wide world of cognitive tests in candidate/employee assessments.

Future episodes: Narcissistic Managers, How to Use Assessments for Good, Not Evil….

CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP FOR THIS EPISODE OF HR MIND GAMES!!!!