Category Archives: Selection

The Talent Fix Now Approved for @SHRM CP & SCP Recertification Credit!

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By now I hope you know I wrote a book! If not, guess what I wrote a book! The Talent Fix: A Leader’s Guide to Recruiting Great Talent is a top-rated Talent Acquisition book on Amazon and the best selling book at SHRM’s Talent Conference (Top 8 at SHRM National, which was really cool!).

Also, it was recently approved for SHRM CP and SCP recertification credit!

So, you buy the book. You read the book. And SHRM and I will approve you for recertification credit of your SHRM CP or SCP! Okay, I have really have nothing to do with approving your SHRM CP and SCP! 😉

One Big Takeaway

I had a reader reach out to me last week. They just got done reading the book and they shared one of the big takeaways they got from the book, and it wasn’t one I would have expected!

When you think of Employment Branding and Recruitment Marketing (Chapter 7) we tend to think that it’s first Employment Branding (EB) and then it’s Recruitment Marketing (RM). In fact, these two functions within Talent Acquisition are really completely separate!

This reader, like most us, believed these two were attached at the hip. You first created your EB, you then used RM to get your EB shared to the audience you were going after.

After reading my book she realized these two functions really have nothing to do with each other. Both can live without the other. You can use a great RM strategy to promote your jobs and organization and get very good results.

You can create an awesome EB and share that with candidates without any type of RM strategy or technology and it can be great. There is no need to have both, but both working together create a synergy that one does not have without the other!

Create a great EB and create a great RM machine and you will see results that are far better than anything else you’ve done. Far too often I see organizations that focus most of their effort and resources on one side and not the other.

I naturally put these two together within the chapter because I would never do one without the other. It doesn’t make sense to me, but you can. In reality, we all have an employment brand within the market, whether you actually created it or not.

Many times we internally think way higher of our EB than the actual market in which we are hiring gives us credit. Most of us will have an EB that the majority of our hiring audience has no idea about. Which is why a great RM strategy is critical to finishing off great EB work.

You can do one without the other, but rarely will it ever make sense.

Okay – that’s like 1/16th of a SHRM CP or SCP credit – go buy the book and get the rest!

The Top 7 Rookie Hiring Mistakes!

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One of my awesome recruiting managers at HRU (the technical staffing company I run) is in the process of making his first hire! It’s pretty exciting. Do you remember the first hire you ever got to make on your own?

You get nervous! You don’t want to make a mistake, because you know how awful it is to have a bad employee working for you, so the last thing you want to do is make a wrong decision. You want this first hire to be a rock star!

All of our managers who are going through the hiring process for the first time all face the same issues. They are unsure of what to really do. If you’re a parent, the best analogy I can give is when the hospital lets you leave with your newborn! Do you remember that?

You get to the lobby. You have your baby strapped into that car seat like they are about to enter a crash test site! When you reach the doors, they slide open, and you kind of look around. You’re waiting, for just a second, for someone to stop you! You can’t believe anyone would just allow you to walk out of the hospital with a baby! Did you guys even check who I am! I have a hard time throwing my clothes all the way into the hamper, and you’re just letting me leave with a baby!?!

That’s the feeling all of our managers get when they hire for the first time! Wait, you’re letting me choose!? Are you sure you’re okay with this?!

To help our new managers I put together the Top 7 Rookie Hiring Mistakes for managers to avoid. Here they are:

1. You wait for HR and/or Talent Acquisition to control the process. This is your hire, that you’ll have to manage, live with, and fire if they suck! Get involved! Immediately!

2. You fall into the trap of wanting to hire someone who is perfect. You’re not perfect. Your CEO is not perfect. No one is perfect. Hire someone who can succeed in your job, your organization, under your leadership. Don’t hire perfect.

3. You try and hire someone who is just like you! You were successful in the job, which is why you are now the leader. So, it makes sense that someone just like you will also be successful. This tactic fails more times then it succeeds because we actually suck at managing ourselves! Find someone who compliments your weaknesses, and has the skills to do the job and you’ll have a better chance to find success. You’ll also add more diversity to your team!

4. You don’t move fast enough. If you interview a very talented person, there is a good chance someone else is also interviewing this very talented person. Pull the trigger and get them before someone else steals them from you!

5. You wait too long to fire a miss-hire. First-time leaders are the worse with this. They feel like they can make anyone work! Plus, they feel more ownership since it was their first time. Stop it! This won’t be the last time you make a bad hire. Give yourself the best leadership gift ever and fire a bad hire quickly!

6. You don’t believe it’s your job to recruit and source talent. Guess what, champ? The organization gave you the keys to run a department. They believe in you. If I’m given the keys to run anything, I’m running the whole thing! It’s my department, which means I own the talent, which means I’m going to help find the right talent for my team. I know what is needed better than anyone! TA can help me, that’s great! But I own this!

7. You believe that leadership will judge you based on this hire. Leadership won’t judge you based on one hire. Leadership will judge you based on a pattern of hiring success, or lack thereof. One hire will not define you. Many hires will. R.E.L.A.X.

So, what do you think, HR and Talent Pros? What are the biggest mistakes you see Rookie managers making when it comes to hiring? Hit me in the comments!

HR Mind Games!

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HR Mind Games is a quick hitting, 20-30 minute hangout hosted by my great friend, 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 HR Mind Games, we’ll cover how general behavioral assessment geekiness/expertise helps HR and Recruiting Pros make better hires as well as maximize performance once that talent is in the door!

Episode #1 is going to be a doozy – How to Hire Sales Pros Who Are “Hunters”, not “Farmers”.  We have a LOT of opinions on this people, and the scars (and behavioral science) to prove it

If you love to geek out on the assessment side – CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP FOR THIS EPISODE OF HR MIND GAMES!!!

In our first episode, we’re going long on how to use assessments to figure out who the true “hunters” are across sales candidates.  Join us and we’ll share what we’ve learned and what to focus on from a behavioral perspective to ensure sales hires are “optimized” to bring home the bacon!!  We’ll even give you a great template to compare sales candidates to as you hit the recruiting trail!

Even if you’re unsure if you can make it or not, sign up to make sure you get the templates for future sales searches!

Future episodes: How to spot and deal with Narcissistic Managers, How to Use Assessments for Good, Not Evil…. good times in this series…

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

The ‘Can’t Buy Me Love’ Internship Program!

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I’m a kid of the 80’s! Breakfast Club, Ferris Bueller, Pretty in Pink, St. Elmos.

There was one other movie from that era that stuck with me called “Can’t Buy Me Love”, starring a very young Mc Dreamy, Patrick Dempsey, and a very young, Amanda Peterson. Of course this was a favorite of mine because well let’s just I indentified with the main character!

Quick story line – Patrick Dempsey plays a nerd-type, nobody in high school who just wants to be one of the popular kids. Basically, the same plot line for every teen movie ever. He mows lawns and saves all of this money. He asks Amanda Peterson’s cheerleader character to be his girlfriend and he’ll pay her, believing that’s all it will take to make him popular.

She does it. She does the makeover on him. It works. It works too well. She really falls for him. He gets cocky. His world falls apart. He gets the girl in the end! God, I miss the 80’s!!!

The concept of ‘buying’ popularity is both brilliant and stupid. In high school, popularity is a valuable currency. If you have it, it’s awesome. If you don’t have it, you want it, but it’s not something that is very transferable. The key is association! If you’re in with the popular crowd or the right people or person, you can catch their popularity exhaust.

So, what’s the “Can’t Buy Me Love” Internship Program? 

Here’s what I’m thinking. If I was a college student, right now in the world, I would pay the right person, at the right company, to be their intern for the summer!

Stay with me.

Two kids graduate from a B-level college, both with a degree in business, both will similar GPAs. Kid #1 did summer internships with local organizations, mid-sized companies, good brands locally, solid stuff, nice resume. Kid #2 also did summer internships, but her internships were with Apple, Amazon, and Google.

Which kid are you going to hire? Which kid will get a job faster? Which kid will get the better offer?

Kid #2 – will get better everything!

So, it would be to the advantage of every kid to get the best internships possible! But, we know getting the best internships possible are super competitive and hard to get.

Next question: What is an internship, really?

An internship is an experience someone obtains that will help them obtain the next experience. That internship is basically validated by the organization, and more specifically, by the person who manages the intern.

How much would it cost me to get a manager/director/vice president at a major brand to let me ‘shadow’ them for the summer? $2,000? $5,000? Let’s say it’s for 10 weeks, and I’ll do anything this person wants me to do to help them, and I’ll show up every day and stay as long as they want.

Whatever it would cost, that money would be coming back to me 10X or 20X over my career when I hit the market looking for a job with “Giant Brand Experience” on my resume as an intern, with a reference from my ‘internship’ supervisor to back it up.

The “Can’t Buy Me Love” Internship Program!

But, instead of can’t buy me love, it’s really I Can Buy Me A Great Resume! Don’t hate the game, love the hustle! It comes down to how much are you willing to invest in your future? You were willing to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on that education. Don’t you think it’s worth a few thousand dollars more to separate your resume from the pack?

Food for thought, kids.

The Talent Fix – My new book is now available to purchase! If your organization is having trouble hiring, this is a must buy! 

Talent Fix Review: My mom says it’s her favorite book that I’ve written!!! (I’ve only written one book!)

Purchase The Talent Fix now! 

“In Transition” Isn’t Helping You Find a New Job!

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I know you’ve seen this on resumes and profiles over the past few years! Someone is looking for work and they title their profile “In Transition”.

Quick – without taking five seconds to think about, be honest, what do you think when someone says, “In Transition” on their resume, cover letter, LI profile, etc.? Put it in the comments!

My guess is, like me, it’s not positive. If it’s not positive, you should remove it from your profiles immediately!

When I read “In Transition” my immediate thought is “why are you in transition? Must not be good! No one wants to be in ‘transition’!” A ‘transition’ can mean many things when it comes to your career. Some of those are positive, but I think the collective will see most of the reasons as negative.

I think the reason I read “In Transition” in a negative light when it comes to talking about careers, is that for me it makes me believe you don’t really know what you want. I’m not ‘in transition’, I’m making a change and this is exactly what I’m looking to do.

Reason’s you might be ‘transitioning’ in your career and now you are looking for another job:

Potential reasons for transitioning:

  • Retirement from your current role (which many will take as a negative because of age bias)
  • Completely switching careers (could be a positive, if you’re willing to start at entry level income for the career you’re choosing to go into)
  • You got fired
  • You got laid off/company closed
  • You had your own business, that has ended, now you’re finding your next gig
  • You took a leave of absence for personal reasons (FMLA, went back to school, child rearing, aging parent, etc.)

So, I’m on record saying that using the phrase, “In Transition” isn’t good for someone seeking a job.

The bigger question than becomes is there a good phrase for people who are out of job and want to get a job that TA pros won’t immediately believe is negative?

I’m not sure there is one, especially if the real reason you’re transitioning is negative! That seems obvious, but you would be shocked at how many messages I get from people ‘in transition’ that are wanting my advice on how to say ‘positively’ they were fired.

My advice is usually to tell the best version of the truth you can come up with, and try to back up that version of the truth is a lot of people who will give you a positive work reference. Ideally, from the place you just left, even if that last job ended in a termination for performance.

What experienced TA pros and hiring managers realize is that not every termination is really do to actual poor performance. Sometimes it’s just a simple personality conflict between the manager you worked for and yourself. That isn’t great, but it’s better than you just couldn’t do the job!

Here are some phrases I might use instead of “In Transition” –

– “I quit my last position because…”

– “I retired from my last position and I’m looking to work “X” number of years in “X” type of position…”

– “I haven’t worked in “X time” because…, and I’m looking for…”

– “I got laid off from my last position…” (This one seems easy, except so many people now use this when they were the only person laid off, but everyone else kept their jobs! That’s not a layoff, that’s just a nice way to get fired! So, you better be able to back this up because great TA pros will find out the truth!)

– “I started my own business. It failed (or it succeeded or I decided it wasn’t for me). I’ve got the entrepreneurial bug out of me and I want to help an organization succeed in the following way…”

So, what do you think TA leaders and pros? Does “In Transition” scare you off of a candidate?

 

The Talent Fix – My new book is now available to purchase! If your organization is having trouble hiring, this is a must buy! 

Talent Fix Review: My mom says it’s her favorite book that I’ve written!!! (I’ve only written one book!)

Purchase The Talent Fix now! 

Working at Amazon Sucks Because They Make You Work!?!?

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So, if you didn’t see it last week, Business Insider decided to run a story about how awful it is to work at Amazon in one of their warehouses. Why is it awful to work one of those hourly paying jobs? They time your breaks, limit you screwing around talking to coworkers all day, and hold you accountable to work! The horror!!!

You didn’t take that job at Amazon to actually do work! How dare they!

From the article:

Amazon “pickers” move around the warehouse on a predetermined route to collect items for delivery, scanning each one with a handheld scanner, which times the length between scans, employees said.

They say pickers must hit a certain number of scans per hour, and if they miss their targets, a manager will show up to see what they’re doing.

Employees say that things like spending time talking to co-workers, going to get a drink, or even taking too long to find a package are billed as “time off task,” too much of which leads to penalty points for an employee. Get enough of those, and you’re fired.

That — combined with security cameras dotting Amazon’s warehouses, its airport-style security checks, and short breaks — makes employees feel like “robots,” they said. And it’s all in the service of getting those parcels out faster.

So, Amazon puts performance targets on hourly workers and has security cameras to make sure no one steals all of the stuff Amazon has in their warehouses. Yeah, that sounds awful!

Amazon also doesn’t allow hourly workers to bring their cell phones into the warehouse and they must lock them in lockers. They can access those on their 2 fifteen minute breaks, or their 30-minute lunch break. Amazon also has each employee go through a metal scanner when entering the warehouse. I think a lot of employees would love that level of security at their job!

So, I have a bit of a unique take on this because one summer when I was in college I worked as a picker for a grocery wholesaler in a warehouse environment!

One major complaint in this article is that the expectations are too high for Amazon warehouse workers. You can’t even go to the bathroom for fear of missing targets, and you get in trouble for talking to co-workers while you’re on the clock, if you miss those targets.

My first month as a Picker was awful! I never made ‘rate’ (met my targets) because I didn’t know how to do the job well. I was stressed out! By month 3 I made my targets easily, but it was about effort and knowing how to work most efficiently. The targets are based on how long would it take a normal performing employee to do certain tasks.

Let’s say a Picker gets an order and that order target is 30 minutes. The best Picker can probably do that order in 20 minutes. The extra 10 minutes they can bank towards their overall daily target. The worst worker might take 45 minutes to complete that order, so now they’re behind. So, you can see how someone who is on task and focused can actually give extra effort, make target easily and the day really isn’t so bad.

I can see how some of the things happened in the article because if the job is important to you, you’re going to do what it takes to keep that job. But, I’ll say, these are outlier behaviors and inappropriate and it sounds like Amazon terminated individuals doing this.

Amazon has made it crystal clear in everything they do when it comes to hiring. We only want to hire people who want to work hard and be successful. CRYSTAL CLEAR! Many people want to work at Amazon because they have really good pay and benefits. Unfortunately, most people can’t handle the expectations. That doesn’t make Amazon a bad place to work.

I’m not saying Amazon is the best place in the world to get a job. For some, it will be, for others it won’t be. Is Amazon a bad place to work? No. Is Amazon a hard place to work with high expectations around performance? Yes.

I think it’s a shame that Business Insider would actually write this garbage as an Amazon attack piece. They should be writing it from the take of why aren’t more employers trying to emulate what Amazon is doing!

London/UK Friends! I’m Coming to You in June!! Let’s meet up! #sosuuk

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I have something to confess, I’ve never been to Europe! Never! So, a few months ago I put that fact out into my little social world and something amazing came back to me! The Sourcing Summit UK reached out and ask me to come speak at their event in June! And, they made a little video to help promote it:

I can’t wait to come to London and speak at this event! All Americans love British accents, and I’m no different! The accent makes us believe you’re truly brilliant, even if you’re not! Such a recruiting strength! I’ve often said I could start a recruiting company in the states with just recruiters with British accents and we would own the U.S. market!

The other thing I love is building a worldwide network of recruiting and sourcing pros that love what I love!

As I’ve traveled all over the world what I’ve found is that no matter where I go when I’m with people who are passionate about our profession, that is always a good time! We get to nerd out together and learn from each other, and it brings this giant community down to size and makes it very personal!

So, let’s do this! Come see me and all the other great speakers at the Sourcing Summit UK on June 20th and 21st

Can’t wait to meet you in person!

Ugh! Being an Inclusive Employer is Hard!

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It seems like being an ‘inclusive’ employer would be super easy! You just accept everyone! Can’t we all just get along!?

The reality is, being an inclusive employer is hard, because being inclusive isn’t about accepting everyone. What!? Oh, great, Tim has finally lost his mind, buckle-up!

I wrote a post about Jeff Bezos’s annual letter and how he lays out a great framework for how organizations and leaders should management performance. Many people liked the post, but there was also a strong reaction from a lot of people who hate Amazon’s culture.

They hear and read media accounts of Amazon being a bad place to work. About Amazon’s hard-charging, work a ton of hours, you don’t have a great work-life balance, etc. Some people go to work for Amazon and tell themselves during the interview process that “yeah, I’ve heard the stories, but I’m different, I want this, I want to be a part of a giant brand like Amazon, I can handle it because it’s a great step in my career.”

That’s when they find out they actually lack self-insight and they should never listen to their inner-voice because it lies to them!

So, what does this have to do with ‘inclusion’?

If you truly believe in inclusion, you then believe that Amazon is a great place to work, for those who desire that type of culture. It might not be a culture you would ever choose to work. Amazon actually likes the people that self-select out! It makes their job easier because they don’t want you anyway!

If you stand up and shout Amazon is an awful employer, you don’t understand inclusion. No one forces you to got to work at Amazon, and Amazon does not hide who they are. In fact, Amazon might actually be the best company on the planet to show exactly who they are as an employer and what you’re signing up for if you decide to go to work there.

Amazon is giant and the vast majority of their employees love working for them. Those employees thrive in that environment. It’s what they were looking for. It’s how they are wired. If you put them into another what you might consider, ’employee-friendly’ environment, they would hate it and fail.

Inclusion is hard because it forces you to think in a way that theoretically every environment is potentially a good fit for the right person. We struggle because in our minds something that is opposite of what we want must be bad. Because it’s so hard for us to even consider someone else might actually love an environment we hate.

Being an ‘inclusive’ employer is about accepting all types of people (race, gender, religion, etc.), but it’s also about only accepting all of those people who actually fit the culture you have established. That’s the hard part! Amazon accepts everyone, but you better be ready to go a thousand miles an hour and never stop.

Being an inclusive employer is hard because if it’s done right, it’s not just about being an accepting employer of all, it’s about being accepting and then only picking those candidates who actually fit your culture. The outcome can be awesome. The work to get there can be overwhelming. And if done incorrectly you go from being inclusive to exclusive.

The Life Span of a Crappy Recruiter!

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I have to give credit where credit is due, and Aerotek is the one that originally discovered how long it takes to figure out you suck as a recruiter! It’s right around 9-14 months. The TA world is littered with people who have worked at Aerotek for 9-14 months! If you’ve spent 13 minutes in Talent Acquisition on either the corporate or agency side, you’ve seen a ton of these resumes.

Just having recruiting experience, especially IT or Technical, can guarantee you a recruiting career for at least ten years or more, even if you are completely awful at recruiting! As a President of a recruiting firm, and someone who has run corporate TA shops for years, I see these candidates come across my desk on a weekly basis:

A crappy Recruiter looks like this:

1. First Recruiting job right out of college, working for a big agency recruiting sweatshop and this position lasts 9-12 months. They left because “they didn’t agree with the management style” of said agency. The truth is they weren’t meeting their goals, but we give them a pass because these sweatshops churn and burn through people.

2. The next gig is usually another agency or small corporate recruitment gig. This one usually lasts under 9 months. It’s more of the same, they couldn’t do it the first time, what makes you think they’ll do it for you!?

3. Now, if they’re smart, they jumped from the second gig before getting fired to a very large corporate gig where they have so many recruiters they truly have no idea what they actually do, this will buy you at least 24 months before you’re discovered as a recruiting fraud. In these big organizations you don’t even recruit, just post and pray, anyway, so you should be able to survive.

4. Big organizations finally figured out you’re worthless, but you now know the game, so you leveraged this big corporate name on your resume into your next gig, this time as a senior recruiter, with another big firm who wants you to sell out your last firm and all their recruiting secret. The big secret is, you have no idea, and the last big org gig you had, well, they had no idea.  Once you run out of fake secrets to share, you’ll be kicked to the curb, so start looking for a recruiting manager gig in about 18 months.

5. You jump at the first recruitment manager gig you’re offered. A mid-sized firm, who loves your big company experience and can’t wait for you to save them from themselves. They have super high expectations on what you’re going to do for them, this is not good for you, remember, you suck at recruiting! You’re gone in 9 months.

6. Welcome back to the agency world! You will now bounce around these companies for a while, selling the fact you have ‘contacts’ at big companies of which agency owners want to get into. You’re now 8-10 years into your Recruiting career, and you’re an awful, crappy recruiter.

If you’re truly lucky as a crappy recruiter you’ll fall into some recruiting gig with a college or university or some other sort of fake, non-profit. Those are like wastelands for crappy recruiters. Absolutely no expectations that you’ll do anything of value, just show up, collect a check and follow a process. It’s never your fault, and hey, they don’t want you to move to fast anyway!

Beware TA leaders. There’s a reason a recruiter has had 4 – 6+ jobs in ten years, and it’s not because they’re good at recruiting! The best recruiters don’t move around because they’re so valuable the organizations they work for won’t let them leave! If you’re crappy, people are hoping you leave and take your crappy recruiting skills to your competition!

Things I Learned at Greenhouse OPEN #ghOPEN

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Hey gang!

I’m on the road this week at the Greenhouse OPEN. What’s Greenhouse? It’s one of the top ATSs on the planet – but you already know that if you read my blog!

The Greenhouse OPEN is basically their user conference, where Greenhouse users and those considering using Greenhouse come together as Talent Acquisition Pros and Leaders to experience great recruiting related content from a corporate TA point of view.

I love attending conferences with great TA content, and Greenhouse has done a really great job growing this conference to 1,000 participants. You know it’s good TA content when it doesn’t matter if you use Greenhouse or not, to get a ton out of the sessions.

Also, being that Greenhouse is designed for corporate TA, and not having third-party recruiters in the room, you really get a ton of great sharing and conversation taking place between attendees.

Here’s some cool stuff I learned:

– Some organizations are using very specific, un-produced video, to source candidates! How? Instead of sending a candidate a blind email or text, the recruiter takes their iPhone and records a quick video to the specific person they want and sends them the link to watch. “Hey Tim, I found you and want to talk to you about…Here’s why you would be great…Etc.” The response rate from the organization using this is super high, as you can imagine.

– Organizations are worried about Recruiter Experience! You know what, you do not want your hiring process to suck for candidates. We all get that 100%! But, what about your recruiters? Does it suck to work as a recruiter in your environment? If it does, that might be worse for your organization in attracting talent, then if your CX sucks. We tend not to even give this concept of Recruiter Experience any thought at all, but we should!

– Across all industries, text response rates from candidates are running 70%-ish, in all kinds of roles from hourly to salaried, tech to healthcare. Texting candidates keep coming up as either something organizations can’t live without, or something they are not using, and don’t want to use. I find this really strange, as it seems like it’s a form of communication that everyone is using. Being able to have etiquette and rules of engagement are important.

– Not all employee referrals are created equal. Great employees are more likely to refer great referrals. Bad employees are more likely to refer bad employees. You don’t want bad referrals, so it’s best to have a program that allows you to segment and know who is providing you with your best referrals. Manually, this is difficult, but with technology like Greenhouse and Teamable, you can start to get a real sense of who should be referring more in your environment.

I’m going to keep advocating that you find ways to spend more time with other TA pros and leaders. We learn from each other when we are in safe, and encouraging environments to share. Does that have to be at a conference in New York? Nope. It’s great if you get the chance, but you can also start or find local outlets for groups of peers to get together.

I love that Greenhouse and others are showing the industry the way, and I thank them for bringing so many great and giving TA pros together. Such a powerful way to learn and develop as a professional!