Category Archives: Selection

Job Descriptions are Just Commercials for Jobs

Posted on by
6

Only Employment Lawyers and HR Pros from 1990 believe that Job Descriptions are important legal-type documents that are still needed in 2014.   Most companies have given up on job descriptions (JDs).  At best you’ll find them, today, using ones from back in 1990 when people thought writing JDs was an important part of human resources.  You’ll still find a few HR Tech vendors around trying to make you believe this is an important skill to have.

Our reality, though, is that JDs are really just a marketing tool to get you interested in a position and company. Nothing more, nothing less.

If this is true, 99% of companies are failing at JDs in a major way!

The other 1% are using titles like “Ninja Developer” and think they’ve gotten it solved.  The problem we all share is that we haven’t let marketing just take this part of our business over. It’s a legacy thing.  Somehow we believe only people in HR can write job descriptions.  It’s that ‘legal’ thing again.  We need to make sure we put “EOE” on the bottom, and you know you can’t trust marketing to do that!

Last week a Facebook group I’m in shared the following employment branding commercial:

I know, this isn’t a job description, but do you really think the JDs at Kixeye look like your JDs?  No, they don’t!

I know. I know. Your company can’t do something like this.  You’re probably right.  But you can do something that is more like you. More authentic.  More real. More, well, you.

That’s the problem with your JDs.  They aren’t you.  In fact, I would argue they aren’t anyone!

Your JDs, most JDs, are just a boring list of job requirements, that may not actually be required, and skills needed to do the job, that may not actually be needed to do the job.  Job descriptions have turned into those things most companies are embarrassed to even show you.  Weekly, I have conversations with companies that will either say they don’t have a job description, or the job description is old and updated, or just flat out ask me to help right them a new one!

It’s time HR gave up the job description business and handed it over to marketing where it belongs.

 

The New Hire Genius

Posted on by
2

No matter what the organization, or what the industry this holds true.

You will never be ‘considered’ smarter by your boss, then you are on the first day you’re hired.

Take advantage and change as much as you can, as fast as you can.

It only lasts as long as the next hire into your department.

Then you’re back to being the idiot.

Fear Can Create Sustainable Success

Posted on by
1

I’ve been told that fear can only create short-term success.  That’s a lie.

You see I grew up with a single mom.  She probably didn’t sleep most nights, and the nights she did it was probably helped by a glass of cheap boxed wine.  She had a mortgage and she had two kids to feed.  She lived every single day in fear.  Fear of losing her kids.  Fear of losing her house. Fear of her check bouncing at the grocery store.

She did the one thing she knew how to do, recruiting, and started her own business.  She started as a branch manager for a local temporary employee company.  Learned the business in the hardest way possible. Temp staffing is the lowest common denominator in the staffing world.  It is the definition of ‘grind’!  She knew technical staffing, high end bill rates, was a much better life, but she was a woman and it was the 1970’s.  Fear.

She built a successful technical staffing business that has lasted for the past 35 years.  Never has the fear stopped.

You see she grew up in an era where you managed by fear.  It seemed normal.  If I’m living in fear, why shouldn’t I share some of this fear.  It was a very common management tactic in the baby boom generation.  You had Opec, the cold war, recessions, etc.  People didn’t believe they have the choices they have today.  If you got a job, you had to keep ‘that’ job, and if that meant a little fear, so be it.

If you didn’t do what you were told.  If you didn’t make your monthly goal. If you talked back. All of that could get you fired, and you never wanted to be fired.  Fear.

I took over the company five years ago.  I’m a man.  I also have fears.  I fear I won’t be able to pay my mortgage if I don’t have a good job.  I fear how I’ll pay for my son’s college education. I fear I’ll have enough money to ever retire.  Different fears than my Mom.  But I live with some fear in my heart.  Maybe I was wired that way from growing up the way I did.

Fear pushes me out the door to work every single day.  Fear isn’t my enemy.  Fear of failure motivates me to succeed.  If I didn’t have fear, I’m not quite sure how I would perform.

I tend to believe businesses and business people who succeed have embraced living with this fear.  They’ve decided to become partners in a way.  Fear is their life coach. I won’t call fear a friend, but I know it’s something I can count on. Rarely a day goes by when we don’t meet for some reason or another.

Here’s what I know from 35 years of sustained profitable success.  Fear isn’t what you believe it to be.  We believe fear can only motivate for short bursts, and then people will fall down in a puddle and be less productive.  That’s a lie.  The unmotivated are selling this version of fear.  Those who don’t want to reach levels they never thought they could, are selling this version of fear.

Fear can create sustainable success, but it might not be as comfortable as you would like it to be.

Baltimore Ravens Failed HR 101

Posted on by
4

By now everyone has seen former Baltimore Raven running back, Ray Rice, knock out his wife with two punches to the head in the elevator of an Atlantic City casino.  My question is, why didn’t anyone in the Baltimore Raven’s organization see this before agreeing to bring him back initially, with only a two game suspension?

The Raven’s claim no one in their organization saw the video from inside the elevator until it was leaked to TMZ this week.  Do you buy that?  I don’t.  Twenty years in HR and I would have put a stop to this with one decision.  “Ray, you want to be a part of this organization, we need to see what happened from inside the elevator before that happens.” But, I can’t get the tape, the casino would release it, it’s not mine to get, etc. Bullshit.

Then, I guess you don’t want to play football very badly.  It’s a very simple HR problem.  You have an employee (Mr. Rice) who does something you believe to be really bad, but you can’t fully prove it, but you know he can.  Make him prove he’s innocent.  Make him go get the tape.  An innocent person will do that.  A guilty person will give you excuses about why they can’t.

I truly think that someone on the Ravens knew what was on that tape, but had the casino’s word that it would never get out, and they believed them!

Once it got out, yes, they did the right thing.  But, it never should have gotten this far.  Good organizations get the information they need, or they stay conservative as possible.  The video footage was out there. If TMZ can get it, you better believe the Ravens could have gotten it.  It’s all about money and pressure.  The Ravens have both and decided not to use it to get to the truth.  That’s an example of a poorly run organization.

I’m guessing this guy will never get a chance to play football again in the NFL.  I can’t believe another team would ever take the publicity hit to bring him in, even if he ever gets reinstated by the NFL.

It begs the question: what if this happened to one of your employees?  Yeah, you would fire them, but do you believe they should ever get a chance to work again in their chosen profession?

It’s messy. It’s HR. Ray knocked her out.  She forgave him and married him.  Life is really screwed up.  My guess is eventually he’ll have to work somewhere, or he’ll end up in prison, probably where he should have ended up in the first place.

I know one thing, the NFL pays better than prison.

 

Is Your Recruiting Department Racist?

Posted on by
5

At one point in my career, over a decade ago, I was working with a company where we hired a high percentage of foreign born applicants based on the technical skill set they had.  Many of the names of these applicants were extremely hard to enunciate.  Most of the hiring managers I worked with would spell the names out or say “the guy that worked at…” A few would try and say the names and butcher them badly.

Internally, in our recruiting department, we would ‘joke’ about asking these candidates to change their name to something it was easier for the managers to say, ‘Joe’ or ‘Charlie’ for instance.  Deep down we knew we had some managers who would be more willing to interview if the name came across as ‘Joe Vishay’ or ‘Charie Xjang’.  The manager would assume that because the candidate ‘choose’ an American name they must have better English skills.

It’s racism at a strange level.  You want to hire the person, but you feel because you can’t say their name, they must not be worthy.

Check out this video –

This Man Changed His Name From Jose To Joe And… by buzzfeedvideo

I know if I asked 100 HR and Talent Pros if they were ‘racist’, 100 would say they were not.  But, at a certain level we are.  We won’t interview Jose, but we’ll interview Joe. You won’t interview Marcus, but you’ll interview Mark.  My hiring manager wouldn’t interview “Arjun” but he would interview “Al”.

How do you stop this?

Hire Jose and Marcus and Arjun to do the hiring. That’s a start, at least.  Call out those hiring managers who continue to not want to interview qualified candidates because they can’t pronounce the name of the candidate.  You know who they are.

Also, educate your hiring managers, and give them the phonetic spelling of the candidates name.  Let your hiring managers know the pride they feel about their own surnames is shared by cultures all over the world.  I’m proud to be a “Sackett”. I get asked almost monthly by someone if I’m related to the Louis L’amour ‘Sackett’s’, and rarely do I point out those were fictional books!

Take the names off all your resumes you send to managers, as a ‘test’, and replace the name with a code number.  Did it make a difference in who they chose to interview? It’s a great inclusion exercise to have with your leadership team.

No one ever wants to admit they are racist.  The truth sometimes is very sobering.  This isn’t about blame, this is about fixing what’s wrong. Great leadership teams will understand this.

Prospective Employee Camp

Posted on by
3

In athletic recruitment there are these things called ‘Prospect’ camps.  Depending on who you talk to these are either just coaching staff supplemental income, or serious recruitment functions needed to get prospective student athletes on campus.

Whatever they are, they’re a little genius!

Here’s how the entire system works.  Usually an assistant coach emails your kid, who has a dream to play college athletics, that they are having a prospect camp and you’re invited to attend, for $150. Two things just happened: 1. Your kid just got an email from a college coach; 2. That coach insinuated that your kid is a ‘prospect’!  Either way, there’s a good chance you’ll bite and pay the $150.

A couple of things happen at these camps.  Coaches actually invite players they really do have interest in, and they invite anyone else who is willing to pay $150!  So, a hundred kids show up, two or three which have actual ability to play college athletics, and they go through drills and modified games.  You instantly know who has ability because the coaches spend time with those kids.  If your kid doesn’t have a coach talking to him or her, they don’t have ability.  It’s a real quick and easy way to set your own expectations.

These camps are a necessary evil of the function of recruitment.  While most parents don’t like them, they all pay the money and have their kids attend.

These prospect camps got me to thinking if we in HR could do this in our organizations.   Could we charge $150 to have potential employees come in and check us out, while we check them out?  We run them through some tests, show them our facilities, make them compete against others in their same job function, spend time with our employees.  At the end of the day, we offer a couple of them jobs.

Could it work?  Maybe not for the average organization, but what about Google or Apple or some other big organization that has thousands wanting jobs with their company?  I think it could work.  The one issue we face is the expectation.  “Well, I paid $150 what do I get for this?!”

We would have to deliver $150 worth of ‘value’ in these Prospective Employee Camps.  I think that is probably the easy part.  Think interview skills, resume skills, leadership skills, some hardcore job function skills based on what they actually do.  It’s part self-development, and part dating game.  People pay millions of dollars per to sites to find their perfect romantic match, with most failing to do so.

Prospective Employee Camps might just be a way for your organization to set itself a part from all the noise, and get candidates to come in that truly interested in (I’m willing to pay to be here, truly) and want to be a part of your organization.  I know, crazy idea, but when you see it work in one area it just begs to be tried in another!

 

It’s Too Long

Posted on by
5

Wait for it…

“That’s what she said!”

I saved you the trouble.

Being too long is a major problem in the world today.  People aren’t willing to wait, primarily because they don’t have to.  Baseball can’t attract a young audience because the kids don’t want to sit around for three hours, at a minimum, to find out the outcome of the game.  Soccer is exploding in the U.S. because it’s 90 minutes and they don’t even stop the clock when someone is injured!  No commercial breaks, except for a short halftime period.

People won’t read a 700 page book, they want 300.  No one wants to watch a three hour movie, make it two.  Why do we have to have an hour meeting, make it thirty minutes.

Being too long is not a weakness you want to have in todays world.  Being too long is now a sign that you probably don’t really know what you’re doing.  If you can’t be short and concise, you’re looked at as ‘old fashion’.

That’s what your candidates are thinking of your selection process.  You try and tell yourself, and your leadership, that we ‘take our time’ because we want to ‘make the right decision’. But your competition is making those same decisions in half the time.  You’re old fashion. You’re broken.  You’re taking too long.

Moving fast used to be considered reckless.  Older generations would tell us to ‘slow down’.  Measure twice, cut once.  But, what if I made a process where measuring once was all that was needed, and I could eliminate the second measure?  Wouldn’t that be better?

The legacy of the recession in Talent Acquisition is this, you had less to do, so you filled that time trying to add value.  There is a tipping point to adding value.  You extending the length of your selection process at a point no longer adds value.  You’re taking too long to make hiring decisions.  I know this because I’m constantly hearing stories of candidates you want, accepting offers from other companies before you’re ready to make an offer.

You’re taking too long.

 

There Are Only 6 Ways To Engage Employees

Posted on by
8

We think there are millions of ways to engage, or disengage, employees but there aren’t.  Truly, there are only six.  The six basic emotions we feel as humans, which are:

1. Anger

2. Disgust

3. Fear

4. Happiness

5. Sadness

6. Surprise.

Knowing there are only six doesn’t necessarily make it any easy for us to figure out how to raise engagement, but at least it will help you giving you a concrete starting point.

Let me help get you started.  Of the six, only one really help you engage in a positive way: Happiness. The other five can all be very disengaging factors: Anger, Disgust, Fear, Sadness and Surprise.

So, you want to raise engagement?  Well, that seems easy, happy employees will equal engaged employees.  But, you’ll have your haters which will say, “Tim! Just because I’m happy doesn’t make me ‘Engaged’!” Yes, you’re right.  But, have you ever tried to engage an employee who was angry, disgusted, fearful, sad or unexpectedly surprised?  It’s tough.  If I need to increase engagement, I would prefer to start with happy employees.  Makes my job easier.

In the short term you could ‘engage’ employees by the negative emotions as well, but that never plays out well long term.  I can make employees fearful for their jobs, their livelihood and they will perform better, for a little while and seem very engaged. Until they find another job.  All the negative emotions can be played out like this.

So, I’m left with Happiness.  It’s not a bad emotion to be stuck with if you can only have one that helps you.  I like happy people, even on Monday mornings.  It’s better than assholes for sure!

We focus our engagement on so many things that have little impact to the emotion of happiness. We spend millions of dollars a year on leadership development, because better leaders raise engagement, we’re told.  We spend millions of dollars on building better environments because $800 office chairs raise engagement.   We spend millions of dollars on increasing wages and benefits, because more raises engagement.  But none of these really raise happiness.

“But, Tim! You’ve told us before you can’t ‘make’ someone happy.”

Ah, now we’ve come to something important.  If you can’t ‘make’ someone happy, how can we positively raise the engagement of our employees?!?

You can’t.  It’s a dirty little secret the engagement industry doesn’t want you to know (oh boy, can’t wait for Big Papi Paul to kill me in the comments on this one!).

You can raise engagement of your organization, though.  Hire happy people.  Happy people aren’t just happy some of the time, they’re predisposed, for the most part, to be happy.  Hiring happy people consistently over time will raise your engagement.  Do you have a pre-employment assessment for happiness?  Probably not. HR people hate happy people.

 

10 Mistakes You Don’t Want To Make In HR

Posted on by
3

I thought it was time that I randomly start listing mistakes we make in HR and letting those coming into HR what not to do.  So, here you go, enjoy!

10 mistakes you don’t want to make in HR:

1. Hiring someone who reschedules their drug test more than once.  I’m willing to give someone one reschedule, stuff happens.  After one, if you’ve got a druggie trying to find out how to keep his Mom’s pee warm long enough to make it to the testing center.

2. Creating a leadership training program when it’s really one bad leader who just needs to be canned.  Everyone knows who the problem is, and now ‘HR’ is making everyone go through training one person needs.  They hate us for this.  Just shoot the one bad leader and move on.

3. Changing policy or making a new policy, when it’s really one idiot who is taking advantage of the current situation. See above.  We do this because *93% of HR Pros and Leaders are conflict avoidant (*Sackett Stats, it’s probably higher!).  Come join the 7% of us who aren’t, this side of the pool is really enjoyable!

4. Designing health benefits that are better for you, but worse for everyone else.  Don’t tell me this doesn’t happen!  It happens all the time.  The person in charge of plan design sees something that will help them, and believes it will also help everyone else.  Oh, look! We now can go see the Chiropractor for massages, but I can’t get my kid the name brand Asthma medicine he needs.

5. Talking about how much less money you make in HR, as compared to a bad performer in any other area. No one cares that you make $25K less than Mark in sales who is a buffoon.  It just makes you look bad and petty.

6. Throwing a fit about hiring an executives kid, or anyone else they want you to hire.  Just hire the executives kid.  This is not a battle you want to fight, it’s not worth it.  In the grand scheme of things this one hire doesn’t mean a thing.  The kid will either be good, average or bad.  Just like the rest of hires we make.

7. Designing a compensation plan which, by peer group, puts you higher than other functions.  I don’t care what the ‘Mercer’ data says, you shouldn’t put out there that you should be making $15K more than the person in Finance at your same level.  No one believes you, and they don’t trust you can handle this when the data doesn’t seem right.  This is especially sticky for Compensation Pros, who always believe they should be paid higher within the HR function.

8.  Thinking you can be ‘friends’ with people you work with, outside of work.  I’m not saying it can’t happen, it might.  It just becomes really bad when you have to walk into your BFF Jill’s office and ‘can’ her one day.   You can have very friendly relationships at work without inviting those folks over to the office for Girls Night Out.

9. Believing it’s not your job to do something.  In HR we fill the voids left by every other function.  It’s our job to do everything, especially those things no one else wants to do.  Never believe something is not your job!  It is.  Plus, that actually adds value to the organization.  Be the one function that doesn’t bitch and complain when they need to do something that isn’t on their job description!

10. Telling an executive they can’t do something because ‘we’ll get sued’.  Our job in HR is not to tell executives, or anyone else, they can’t do something.  It’s our job to tell them how they can get it done, while making it less risky to the overall organization.

What mistakes do you see HR makes?

 

The Candidate Fade Away

Posted on by
4

There’s this thing that happens with dating nowadays, called the Fade Away.  I know this because I have teenage sons.  The Fade Away is when you’re dating someone and you know it’s not for you long term, but instead of just telling that person you start the Fade Away process.

You stop talking, and start texting.  The texting slowly becomes less frequent, spread out and shorter in length, to eventually stopping altogether.  No finalization.  No uncomfortable exchange of items. Just fading away into a life without that other person being in it.

You see, back in my dating days, well, we didn’t have texting.  You had phone calls that you could duck for a while, but let’s face it your parents were not going to cover for you, so eventually, you had to face the other person.  Those conversations were awful, I so wish I had the fade away!

Because of how we treat our personal relationships today, candidates are now using the Fade Away on companies.   Recruiters talk to a candidate, they seem excited, they call you back every time you call them.  They give you their cell phone number and you begin to text. All is right in the recruiting world.  At some point the candidate decides that the position, or the company, or you just isn’t right for them and they stop returning calls and texts.  It’s not all at once, it just gets less, until it fades away completely.  Just like we were dating.

Here’s some ways to stop the Candidate Fade Away:

1. Be the understanding Girlfriend.  You know the type: “No! No! Really!  I get it! At any point you aren’t cool with this, I’m totally cool with this, let’s just make sure we are straight with each other and tell each other!”  Then you tell her and she loses her effing mind! Okay, ladies, I know, it works both ways!  As a recruiter start out the candidate relationship like this, be a pro. “Tim let me tell you how I work up front.  There is going to come a time when you might feel I presenting you something that you just don’t want for some reason. I’m completely cool with that, I’m presenting you.  I’m your Jerry Maguire. Let me know right away, and I’ll make sure we both look good when speaking to the company and hiring manager.  But I need to know up front what’s going on.”

2. It’s about you, not me.  Find out how the candidate prefers to communicated to and have them set the terms.  This usually works out well, because they become invested.  You told me this is how you wanted to be communicated to, and I’m following what you wanted.  Experienced recruiters usually hate this route because they’ve been trained to ‘control’ the candidate.  Used in the right manner it can be very effective.

3. Call out the Fade Away!  Making fun of what is going on won’t connect with everyone, but it will definitely connect with some.  Many folks will get defensive if you call them out on the Fade Away, but if you have fun with it, you’ll get some to come back around and laugh it off. “Timmy! Are you trying to break up with me!?  Come on, let’s talk this out, we could be so good for each other, at least talk to me before you break up with me!”  You’ll get a response to this, trust me!