Death of the Millennials

I was at a conference recently and one of the keynotes actually gave a presentation on how to work with millennials. I thought to myself, “how 2009 of this person to do this!” I’ve vowed at this point to never sit through another presentation on millennials in the workplace. Millennials are now dead to me.

Just as Baby Boomers, GenXer’s, GenZs, The Founders, etc., are all dead to me. All of us are people. All of us are in the workplace. All of us have to work together and get along. Focusing so much on one group over another just perpetuates dysfunction and confusion. I actually heard executives talking about kids graduating high school and believing they also are ‘millennials’. Just stop!

That all being said, IBM came out with an infographic about the myths, exaggerations and uncomfortable truths of millennials, last week, which sparked my little rant. I wanted to share these five myths and add some commentary:

1.Millennials’ career goals and expectations are different from those of older generations.

Turns out we all still, for the most part, want the same thing. Good job. Good pay. Stability. Don’t buy into the hype that any of your workers want to jump around from company to company. They don’t.

2.Millennials want constant acclaim and think everyone on the team should get a trophy.

Again, every generation wants feedback and told they’re a rock star, even when they’re not. As we age, we start to gain a little better self-insight that we might suck. When we’re young we think we’re awesome, even when we’re not.

3.Millennials are digital addicts who want to do everything online.

I have 8 aunts who are all in their 60’s, pushing their 70’s, all of whom spend most of their day on digital devices gaming and on social sites. This is the world we live in. My Mom would rather order a pizza online then pick up a phone. Welcome to modern day life.

4.Millennials, unlike their older colleagues, can’t make a decision without first inviting everyone to weigh in.

No one wants to be the one who made a decision that went wrong. In most corporate settings all workers play the CYA game by sharing decision-making responsibility. We all say we want to make decisions until we’re actually given that responsibility, then we turn into bowls of jello on the floor hoping we didn’t ruin our careers!

5.Millennials are more likely than others to jump ship if a job doesn’t fulfill their passions.

Guess what? Young people today have a ton of debt. That means you have to work and make money to pay down that debt. Then you decide to buy a house, get married, have a litter of puppies, etc. Passion is awesome. If you get a job you’re super passionate about, good for you, you’re winning at life. 99% of people will work in a job they like, make decent money, pay their bills, and probably will be passionate about other parts of  their life. I think they’re winning as well.

For the record, the last Millennials entered the workforce two years ago. Can we start talking about these snotty-nosed, spoiled brats who are beginning to enter the workforce right now with their Snapchatting and their video and their ability to brand themselves and never-ending gaze to the glow of their smartphone!? They’re calling themselves “The Founders”.

Go have fun with that. They named themselves…

#SHRMtalent – Is This a Recruiting Conference?

I’ve been pretty outspoken throughout the years about the lack of great Talent Acquisition conferences on the national stage.  There are some great local and regional recruiting conferences, like Recruit DC, Talent 42, Minnesota Recruiters and, of course, the Michigan Recruiters Conference.

I really love the folks at SourceCon, and they do a great job, but for many corporate talent acquisition pros, SourceCon can get really way too far into the weeds, and most will feel intimidated by what’s being discussed. ERE continues to trip over themselves and hasn’t never fully turned itself into that national TA conference.

This is my first time to SHRM Talent and I have to say SHRM is well positioned to create something really big for corporate Talent Acquisition leaders and pros!

Much of the content was on the same par you would find at any of the top recruiting conferences around the world. Of course, I’m doing a couple of sessions and people were highly engaged, asking great questions. Some of the others here include:

Johnny Campbell from Social Talent who had another super engaged session!

Chris Hoyt, the Recruiter Guy, sharing great information on Candidate Experience!

Dee Ann Turner, head of talent for Chick fil a, one of my favs, and say what you want about them, they hire super nice and friendly people, consistently, at every location I’ve ever been in.

Great Keynotes by Jim Knight and Kat Cole – again solid, solid, speakers and talent pros.

Chloe Rada, Recruitment marketing at Sodexo, talking employer branding.

And just a ton more talent practitioners sharing really solid information.

These are people you would expect to see at the top TA conferences in the world, challenging people with some really innovative ideas and best practices.

Of course, in a large national conference, you need content at all levels, so all of it won’t be for everyone. I’ve come to grips with that. I sat in a session and found myself wondering ‘how the heck did this person ever get picked to come to a TA conference?’ When you have 50 plus speakers, not everyone is going to be for every attendee.

But, for the most part, I’m thoroughly impressed with what SHRM put on, and you all know I don’t normally say that! There were around 1400 attendees at SHRM Talent, and I really thing SHRM can position themselves as the premier TA conference in the world, just as they’ve positioned SHRM National as the premier HR conference in the world.

What are the next steps for SHRM Talent, in my opinion?

  • They need a technology track – TA corporate pros are hungry to learn more about what technology can do for them.
  • They need a few more hardcore recruiting, sourcing speakers.  Some folks who will get into the weeds for those who desire that.
  • I would love SHRM play around with session times. An hour and 15 minutes is your parents conference presentation. Most attendees, now, would prefer TEDx style presentations. This becomes a logistical issue, but I think if you move speakers and not attendees, they could test some of these things. No one wants to sit for 75 minutes and hear speakers drone on.

I’m leaving Orlando encouraged about SHRM and the direction of SHRM Talent. Corporate Talent Acquisition is in desperate need of a great conference and SHRM might actually be able to fill this need for the future!

The Best Recruiters are Competitive, A Hypothesis

I’ve worked in recruiting and HR for about twenty years. At this point in my career, I estimate that I’ve hired about 100 Recruiters.

I’ve hired recruiters that come from almost every environment and education. I’ve gone the Enterprise Rent A Car route and hired college athletes. I’ve gone to colleges and hired HR graduates. I’ve hired seasoned recruiting veterans from both agency and corporate. I’ve hired uneducated individuals from service backgrounds. I’ve hired specific practitioners who have deep knowledge of what they’re recruiting – nurses, IT pros, etc.

None of these things made one bit of difference when it came to performance as a recruiter, in either environment, corporate or agency.

The only thing I’ve found to be a differentiator of true recruiting performance is the level of competitiveness an individual has internally. This is why it’s so popular to hire former athletes as recruiters, we assume since they are athletic, that they must be competitive. But, this also fails, many times.

You see, you don’t have to play sports to be competitive.  You might just be that kid you threw the Monopoly board across the room when you lost to your sister. You might be that person who can’t stand that your neighbor’s lawn looks better than yours. Who knows why and what you’re competitive with, but it’s the key to being great a recruiting.

Many will wrongly assume that males are more competitive than females. In my experience, I’ve found this not to be true. Both sexes can be very competitive, it’s finding which ones are competitive that becomes the difficult thing.

So, why does being competitive help make you a great recruiter?

I believe competitiveness is a great trait for recruiters because it leads them to want to ‘win’.  What’s the win in recruiting? It’s filling the position! Recruiting is just one small game, after another. Each one that is slightly different, with new complexities to complete.  Each time you fill an opening, that is like making a point on your scoreboard.

If you put a group of these people together, even though they’re all working on separate openings, they see each other making placements and they want to do this as well. This competitive drive, alone, makes an individual succeed or fail at recruiting.

This becomes the main issue of why selecting non-proven recruiters is such a crap shoot. It’s very difficult to measure someone’s competitive drive accurately, and interview questioning is unreliable. In my 100 hires, I would say I’m 50/50 in getting it right. When I talk to other agency executives and TA Leaders, many share the same ratio.

Want to hire better recruiters?

Focus completely on finding ultra competitive people, who love keeping score, and throw them into the game.  I like to say Recruiting isn’t hard, but I know that it is.  Recruiting is easy if you’ve got the right people, who will do whatever it takes to win. That’s the competitive difference!

T3 – Elevated Careers

This week on T3 I take a look at new careers site being developed by dating site eHarmony, called Elevated Careers. I actually reviewed them back in October of 2015 at the HR Technology Conference, but they were in beta. They had their big launch recently, so I wanted to remind folks to check them out now that it’s live!

I was at the launch and learned a few things to add:

  • Dr. Warren is super passionate about making this work. He truly believes Elevated Careers can match companies and candidates for the right fit.
  • Organizational Fit is still something that organizations haven’t figured out. Which makes this a giant market that is basically untapped.
  • Elevated Careers is taking great care not to become a job site for eHarmony.

Elevated has taken the successful compatibility matching technology of eHarmony that is responsible for 438 marriages per day – that’s 4% of all marriages in the U.S. per day! – and applied the same scientific methods to match employees with jobs and companies. Just as eHarmony came about because Dr. Neil Clark Warren knew there had to be a better way to finding love than just luck, Elevated believes that if jobs and employees are matched based on compatibility, people will be much more satisfied and fulfilled in their jobs, and companies will have higher rates of employee retention, motivation, engagement, and productivity.

If you’re like me, the first time I heard of Elevated Careers, I chuckled a bit. I admit, I’m sophomoric and a twelve-year-old at heart! Once I got a chance to see the product, and smart minds behind it, I was chuckling for a different reason. These folks know what they’re doing, and they have a giant captured audience to leverage. Think what you want about dating sites, but they know how to build trust, get massive amounts of data on their members and at that point is just a matter of leveraging that data.

5 Things I really like about Elevated Careers:

1. Elevated Careers gets what most career sites don’t even focus on – Fit Matters!  Their backbone is a freaking dating website; they’re going to be better at matching and fit than almost anyone!

2. eHarmony has been public about making this work. This bodes well for ensuring they’ll get the investment needed to make a great product. The UI is already very tight and intuitive. They made a very easy to use product.

3. Elevated will have a unique talent pool to leverage, that is unlike any other product on the market. You won’t be able to contact dating website members, that would kill that brand, which they have to very protective over, but you will be able to market to those members through Elevated.

4. Their fit technology will give candidates a Compatibility Score. This will help candidates know how well they will potentially fit with a potential company, but also show them where and why they fall short.

5. The job function is more than just an aggregator, as organizations will have to validate themselves before their jobs will show up in search. This way candidates know the jobs they’re applying for are current and up-to-date.

Having trouble hiring people that fit your company and culture?  Give Elevated Careers a demo and see what they’ve got.  The science behind their product is proven and very strong. They just might have found the secret sauce for organizational and job fit!

T3 – Talent Tech Tuesday – 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 T3 – send me a note.

Rerun – The #1 Cause of Bad Hires

It’s Spring Break in Michigan, so I’m going to step away from the daily grind and throw some Reruns at you! You guys remember Rerun, from What’s Happening? (look it up, kids!) So, enjoy the Reruns, they’re some of my favorites!

Originally ran May 2013 – 

A while back I interviewed a lady that would make a great recruiter. She was high energy, great on the phone, could source and an HR degree.  She applied for the job we had open for a recruiter and 100% positive she would have accepted the position if I would have offered it. I didn’t. 

She wasn’t a ‘fit’.  The job she truly wanted, her ‘dream’ job, was in straight HR, not recruiting.  She was willing to recruit – she really didn’t want to recruit.  We walked away from a terrific candidate.

Poor job fit is the #1 reason most people fail at a job.

Organizations spend so much time and resources ensuring they’re hiring the right skills, but most totally fail when it comes to organization and job fit.  Don’t get me wrong, it’s not easy to determine organizational fit.  Sure you can design an assessment, do peer interviewing, etc. But it always seems like a moving target, and it is.  Job fit also has multiple components:

1. The job you have open.

2. The company culture.

3. The job the candidate actually wants to do.

4. The job the candidate is willing to do and how good of an actor they are to prove to you that is the real job they want.

5. Your inability to see your perception of the candidate and their perception of themselves doesn’t align.

How many of you have ‘Poor Job Fit’ as a reason for termination on your exit interview form?

My guess is almost none.  Most managers and HR pros will list things like: performance, personality conflict, attitude, low skill set, personal reasons, schedule, etc.  We don’t want to use something like “Poor Job Fit” because what that says is “We suck at our jobs!”

The reality is – probably 75% of your terminations are because of poor job fit.  You hired someone with the skills you wanted, but the job you have doesn’t use or need most of those skills.  The job you have doesn’t meet the expectation you sold to the candidate.  The job you have isn’t really the job the person wants.

Most organizations would be farther off to hire by fit, than by skills. True statement.  HR pros hate to hear that – because it discounts a lot of what we do.  Job fit is the key to retention – not skills.  Find someone who wants to be a recruiter – and they probably

HR pros hate to hear that – because it discounts a lot of what we do.  Job fit is the key to retention – not skills.  Find someone who wants to be a recruiter – and they probably be a decent recruiter.  Find someone with great skills who doesn’t want to be a recruiter – and they’ll be a terrible recruiter. 

In almost every occupation where you don’t need professional certifications (doctor, lawyer, CPA, etc.) this holds true.  I know a great Accountant who never went to accounting school – better than anyone I’ve met you graduated from accounting school.  Some of the best teachers – never went to college to become a teacher – but they love teaching.

Do one thing for me the next time you interview a candidate for a job – ask them this one question:

“If you could have any job, in any location, what job would you select?  Why?” 

Their answer doesn’t have to be the job they’re interviewing for to be the ‘right’ answer.  Their answer should be in line with what you’re asking them to do – or you’re going to have a bad fit – and either you will eventually be terminating them, or they will eventually be resigning.

The Key to Handling High Maintenance Employees Like a Pro

Do you know the one piece of HR technology that hasn’t been created, yet? The Diva Detector!*

Wouldn’t that be nice? “Hey, Mr. or Ms. Candidate, please look into the DD 2.0 and don’t blink….Yeah, looks like you’re a straight-up diva, and sorry, but we’re fully loaded up on those at the moment. Please feel free to test again in 30 days. If your diva levels come down to just a know-it-all, you’ll be reconsidered!”

We tend to hire high maintenance employees because they’re very good at hiding their diva-ness during the interview process. Sometimes they even hide it through the probationary period of their employment. Those are the really hard-to-handle ones because they know they’re divas and hide it long enough to make your life difficult.

The question is, what do you do once you have a high maintenance employee?

I’ve had to deal with this in every single HR stop of my entire career, usually with a line out the door waiting to one-up each other on who has the biggest diva flag.

The thing about high maintenance employees is they usually want more attention than a normal employee. It’s this need for attention that drives you nuts, their manager nuts and all the other employees around them.  The key is getting them to focus on what the organization needs from them, not what they need from the organization. So, how do you do that?

Well, usually, high maintenance employees become a problem because their direct supervisor doesn’t stop this issue immediately when it comes to light. But, this is common, especially with new hiring managers, so it’s critical to work with them and help them become better managers.

High maintenance employees are at their best when they can divide you and the hiring manager. You can’t allow this to happen. You have to make a plan with the hiring manager and stick to it. The best way to box in a high maintenance employee is to never allow them to play two parties against each other. “Well,” they might say, “my boss said I could lead, then Jenny just took over, and I’m the one…”

You see where this is going!

As soon as this starts, you just need to say one thing, ” I’m going to call in your boss and Jenny so we can all talk.” To which they’ll probably say: “You don’t need to do that. You’re in HR! I thought this was confidential!”  (I love that one, by the way. I’m not a lawyer, I’m an HR leader, there’s a big difference.)

My reply to this, delivered in very calm, even-keeled manner is, “I can see this is very important to you, so I don’t want anything to get misinterpreted, it’s best that we get all of us together and get on the same page.”

High-maintenance employees hate to be on the same page because they get their power from the lack of communication within organizations. So the best way to limit their impact is to get everyone in the same room and nip the issue in the bud before it gets way out of hand.

(*Remember how I mentioned how great a Diva Detector would be? This isn’t exactly that…but Jellyvision’s unique recruiting process is a pretty close second. Check out how they weed out divas and slackers right here. It’s good stuff.)

T3 – The Great Facebook Sourcing Hope

About once a week I have this conversation with a fellow TA/Sourcing Pro:

TA/Sourcing Pro: “Ugh! I hate LinkedIn! If Facebook ever decided to put LinkedIn out of business they could do it overnight!”

Tim:Yep.”

Okay, usually there’s all kinds of explanation and brainstorming around how we could ‘show’ Facebook how to do this, easily. But, you’ve already heard, or had, this conversation about a thousand times, so I won’t bore you with it again!

My plan is that Facebook does a LinkedIn type reset, but doesn’t screw it up like LinkedIn has. There is a true need for a ‘professional network’, but you can’t turn it into Job Board 2.0 like LI did. How does that help us TA and Sourcing pros? FB could pull this off. 2 billion profiles. They would have virtually everyone, and could attract back the college kids with the potential of company and job matching, by just working with college career placement offices, etc.  LinkedIn started doing this but walked away from it way too early.

FB then makes money off of company pages and postings. Plus, pay per click ads to very specialized groups of candidates that companies would easily pay to get in front of. I’m sure they’re a few other ideas they could make money on, without giving away everything like LI did.

Only about .02% of TA and Sourcing Pros are actually using Facebook to recruit.  None of those people are telling you how, because they’re making money on it, and don’t want you to know! Basically, it’s not how you think.  Almost every great sourcing product to come out has to do with IT sourcing.

It makes sense because that’s where all the cash is, so that’s where all the investment is. Facebook doesn’t play nice with others (let’s face it, they don’t have to), so you see virtually nothing coming out around Facebook sourcing. The reality is, though, you have the ability to Facebook source, by location, by a company name, by gender, etc., but you won’t do it because it means you have to do the heavy lifting.

What is heavy lifting mean? FB will get you about 80% there, but you have to go get the other 20%. There’s no easy ‘InMail’ to bail you out. You might have to search for an email, call into a company, etc. Heavy lifting…

Here’s a Facebook search engine (hat tip to Recruiting God – Steve Levy for sharing this):

https://inteltechniques.com/intel/osint/facebook.htm 

This isn’t the first and only one of these out there, but it’s a good one for sure. In fact, these types of FB search engines started showing up around the exact time FB launched Graph Search, then almost immediately took it down because it was actually too easy to search and find people! People complained FB listened (did you hear that LI?).

So, what’s the FB sourcing gold?  It’s low-end positions, not high-end. The high-end folks (IT, Engineers, etc.) figured out early that putting your title, etc. on FB wasn’t going to get you pimped constantly by recruiters and sourcers.  The lower skilled folks don’t care, because they don’t get non-stop job offers.

I know of a few recruiters making well over six figures, right now, only recruiting lower skilled and/or not your normal technical talent type pros on FB! Technicians, truck drivers, sales people, teachers, nurses, etc. Companies are struggling to find great talent at this level as well, and FB is a goldmine that virtually no one is sourcing.

Check out the search engine above. Connect with Steve Levy. He’s a great dude and one of the good guys in recruiting who is always willing to share his knowledge!

Does my black face make me look more diverse?

I’m sitting at the conference room table. It’s surrounded by my peers, most of which are white, one other, besides me is black, sprinkle in a couple of females, welcome to corporate America. We’re here because the white folks want to talk about how diversity is important. The entire time this conversation is happening they just keep staring at me and my black face. I do believe they think diversity is important.

I agree, diversity is important. We need to do something about it at our organization.  But, I’m not who they think I am.

Yes, I’m black.  But, I’m not diverse. In fact, the color of my skin is the only diverse thing about me!

I grew up in an upper-middle-class suburb. Not an upper-middle-class black suburb. An upper-middle-class white suburb. So, most people would actually call this a rich suburb. I was classically trained as an opera singer. I didn’t play basketball. I was a great student. I work in a white collar profession. I eat at the Olive Garden with my wife and three kids. I drive a Toyota SUV, the big one.

I might be more ‘white’ than the other white people at this table, but I have a black face. Apparently, because of my black face, I should be chosen to ‘run’ diversity for the organization. Apparently, I understand the ‘struggle’.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m still a black person living in America. The white female CEO of our organization walked past me on the first month on the job. I recognized her immediately and said a jolly, “Good Morning”. She said nothing and walked past me. Not an hour later she realized the black man she rudely walked past wasn’t some random black guy, but a mid-level executive in her organization, and she stopped by to give me an excuse and a jolly good morning back.  I know she wouldn’t have walked past a white peer of mine without a greeting.

So, my black skin does present a challenge, but it does not make me diverse.

I ask the group, “why not Tom?” Tom, you see grew up in the inner city. Blue collar environment, with a single mom. Tom walked past a GM plant every day on his way to school. Once in a while, he would the workers selling dime bags out of the trunk of their cars in the GM parking lot. Tom played basketball and went to school on a scholarship. It was his only chance to get out of his neighborhood. Tom’s friend network has more black faces than mine, by a lot!

Tom grew up poor. Grew up surrounded by black people, Hispanic people, Asian people, people on the fringes of society, people I didn’t grow up around. Tom saw things I only saw when I went to the movies, which my parents paid for. Tom went to Baptist church, not because he was close to Jesus, but because the black women would cook a hot meal each day for the kids in the neighborhood. Tom has lived a diverse life.

“Tom!? Tom can’t lead up diversity, he’s…”, they stop before stating the obvious, like somehow saying “he’s white” out loud will change the color of his face.

Tom is diverse. Tom actually is passionate about diversity.  The only thing Tom doesn’t have is my black face.

It’s decided, I’ll take on diversity. I’m better “suited” for it, they say.

(Before you lose your minds and wonder why a white guy wrote this, understand that this came from a friend of mine. A friend with a black face who doesn’t have this platform. He told me the story, I wrote it. It was a story that needed to be told. Diversity isn’t about color, yet most organizations still make it about color. It’s the sad state of diversity in organizations in America.) 

T3 – Recruiting tools from @Sourcecon!

Sourcecon, one of the premier recruiting conferences on the planet, happened last week. I didn’t attend, but kept up on the action on twitter and on the Sourcecon site. Jeremy Roberts, the editor and director of Sourecon, does an excellent job over there, and I always find great content and ideas.  It’s not just for Sourcing! I mean sourcing is still part of recruiting I think.  I’m not sure, it’s all very confusing…

Anywho. Stacy Zapar did a presentation and shared some cheap/free tools she uses to help her source/recruit better and more effectively, and I wanted to share those because I think two of them are ones anyone in recruiting can take advantage of:

1. Email Hunter – is the easiest way to find professional email addresses. Give a domain name and get the list of all the emails related to it found on the internet. I can imagine a thousand ways to use this, but one of the best has to be raiding a competitor!  Can you imagine if you’re GM? All you have to do is put in ford.com and Bam! You have every address on the web of folks with a ford.com email address.

There’s a free version for a single user with limited searches, but you can also get a paid version which is still fairly inexpensive, and they have a Chrome extension as well.

2. YouCanBookMe – Which is a booking software that integrates with your Google or iCloud calendar. This makes getting candidate screens and phone interviews set up super easy.  You just send them a link and they pick what works for them in your calendar which you can personalize to what schedule you want to offer.  This makes the go-between dance a thing of the past!

Again, YouCanBookMe has a free version you can use by yourself, or you can pay a little and get some premium benefits.

These aren’t the normal big recruiting and HR software’s that I normally highlight, but these are two the ‘inside’ secret type of tools that real recruiters and sourcers are using each and every day to make their jobs easier.

I think so many recruiting pros get intimidated by Sourcecon.  You have people talking about stuff you can’t even comprehend. The reality is, at every conference you’re going to have your 1%ers, those folks who are totally geeked out by technology and the profession.  That’s cool, I love all of those folks. They are the ones leading the profession.  But you also have the other 99%ers. The real folks like Stacy, who will give you real tools and ideas that we all can use.

T3 – Talent Tech Tuesday – 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 T3 – send me a note.

Does it matter if a POTUS has ever hired anyone?

In the last Republican Presidential Debate, candidate Ted Cruz got in a nice jab on candidate Donald Trump about hiring illegal aliens. At which, Trump fired back (he always fires back) that he was the only candidate to ever have hired anyone.

That last part gave me pause. I don’t care who you might be voting for, Republican, Democrat, Socialist (hey, Bernie!), etc., is it important for a President to have experience hiring people?

It’s a great question to ponder. All of us who hire, as part of our jobs, know how difficult it is, and how frustrating and wonderous of an experience it can be.  We know how difficult it is to select the right candidate, and how disastrous it can be when the wrong candidate is selected.

I do get that while most political lifers have probably not hired in a sense we have hired, they do some kind of ‘hiring’ in their various political offices. They have to select staff to run their campaigns, to work with them in their elected positions, etc. So, while they haven’t had to hire for a private business, they have had to select individuals to come work for them.

Now, if you ever witness government hiring you could easily argue, as Trump did, that none of these people have ever really hired! Government hiring isn’t really hiring as much as it’s selecting the tallest of the seven dwarfs.  Not much recruiting ever takes place, it’s post and pray of the worst kind.

So, I tend to fall into the camp of I want my POTUS to be someone who has really had to go out and hire and fire. Don’t take this as I want Trump to be POTUS, I’m also of the camp that I don’t want my POTUS to be crazy!

If all you’ve done in your career is ‘appoint’ friends and associates to positions, you probably aren’t really ready to run the country. Both parties have this issue. Lifetime politicians don’t understand real world business. They understand politics, which has nothing to do with actually running a business, creating jobs, creating value, having your neck on the line for results.

I want a POTUS who has felt the pressure of having to truly perform, or you lose everything, or you get fired. At that point, they understand what the vast majority of real Americans feel every day.  Elected people don’t feel this. They get elected, and they immediately go back to work on getting re-elected, which mainly constitutes telling people what they want to hear. Again, both parties do this the exact same way.

Yes, I want a POTUS that has real world business experience. One that’s sat across a desk and had to make real hiring decisions that had a bottom line impact to the success, or failure, of a business.  I understand that person. I don’t understand politicians.