Category Archives: Selection

Talent Acquisition’s Digital Disruption

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I’m headed out to Park City, UT on June 1st to be part of HireVue’s first ever Digital Disruption 2014.  Semi-User Conference, Semi HR Tech Trends Conference, one of the more intriguing agendas filled with practitioners from across industry.  The keynote will be the famous Moneyball guy Billy Beane – remember the Brad Pitt and Jonah Hill movie about baseball and selection metrics, that Billy Beane.  He was really the first guy to bring selection metrics to the forefront of what we in Talent Acquisition now use daily.   He did it to get the best baseball team possible, using the smallest payroll possible, to stay competitive in a world of competition willing to spend whatever it took.  Sound familiar to your own industry!?

I’m looking forward to seeing him talk, again.  The first time I ever saw Billy speak was the day after the Oscars when Moneyball, and it’s actors, were up for a number of awards.  He had great stories from that, plus his normal presentation on metrics.  That was a few years ago.  Things have evolved, as has the emphasis of everyone now using the same metrics.  So, now what?  What do you do when those who have more money than you, now are also using your metrics as well?  My guess is you get back to strategy and culture, and make sure you follow it, like crazy!  It should be very interesting.

On a side note, ERE recently released their annual ‘State of Recruiting‘ study.  You know what they found out?  You don’t like to be called ‘Recruiting’.  In fact, the majority of you prefer to be called ‘Talent Acquisition’.  Did you know that?  It’s uncomfortable to me.  I like to shorten everything.  I like to simplify.  So, going from one word to describe something, to two words to describe something, seems totally ridiculous!  I can’t tell you how much of a pet peeve this is to me.  It’s like when someone named “David” or “Michael” demands you call them by their full name instead of “Dave” and “Mike”.  I hate those guys!  What do you mean you want me to use two syllables when I can only use one!  I demand efficiency!

My guess is people who do this type of business for a living, on the corporate side, felt like they needed two words to keep up with Human Resources.  “Well, if they have two words in their department name, we need to words in our name as well!”  No one would admit this, but in reality, it’s how this stupid stuff happens.  There is actually nothing wrong with calling Recruiting, Recruiting.  HR use to be ‘Personnel’, but had to change it because ‘Personnel’ just didn’t encapsulate what ‘we’ really did.  Now, even ‘Human Resources’ is coming under fire from progressives because we shouldn’t think of our employees, our people, as ‘Resources’.  They are People!  So, you get these ridiculous titles like Chief People Officer and VP of People.

I hear you Recruiters.  I know you want to be all big and fancy and “Talent Acquisition” seems so much more big and fancy…  But you aren’t kidding anyone.  You’re still a recruiter.  You’re not ‘acquiring talent’, you’re putting asses in seats.  Get over yourself, and get back on the phone.

I only bring this up because when I’m in Utah with the HireVue folks, I’ll be rubbing elbows with many ‘Talent Acquisition’ Pros.  Talking about all the new cool trends in, well, Talent Acquisition (a little part of me just died).   I think what Billy Beane will all remind of, though, is that while technology and analytics can disrupt any industry, you still need to have great vision, solid strategy and the courage to follow through with your plan.

My guess is that hasn’t changed as much as we like to change what we call ourselves!

3 Highly Effective Habits of Annoying Candidates

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I’ve noticed a run on ‘Highly Effective’ list posts lately!  It seems like everyone has the inside scoop on how to be highly effective at everything! Highly Effective Leaders. Highly Effective Managers. Highly Effective Productive People. Highly Effective Teacher.  If you want a post worth clicking on, just add an odd number, the words ‘highly effective’ and a title.  It goes a little something like this (hit it!):

– The 5 Highly Effective Habits of Crackheads!

– The 7 Highly Effective Traits of Lazy Employees!

– The 13 Highly Effective Ways To Hug It Out at Work!

Blog post writing 101.  The highly effective way to write a blog post people will click on and spend 57 seconds reading.

I figured I might as well jump on board with some career/job seeker advice with the 3 Highly Effective Habits of Annoying Candidates!

1. They don’t pick up on normal social cues.  This means you don’t know when to shut up or start talking.   Most annoying candidates actually struggle with the when to stop talking piece.  Yes, we want to hear about your job history. No, we don’t care about your boss Marvin who managed you at the Dairy Dip when you were 15.

2. They live in the past. Usually, annoying candidates are annoying because they were annoying employees and like to share annoying stories about how great it was in the past, when they weren’t thought of as annoying.  I guess you can’t blame them. If there was ever a possibility they weren’t annoying, I’d probably try and relive those moments as much as possible.

3. They lack a shred of self-insight.  That’s really the core, right?  If you had any self-insight, you would understand you’re just a little annoying and you would work to control that, but you don’t.  “Maybe some would say spending a solid ten minutes talking about my coin collection in an interview wouldn’t be good, but I think it shows I’m passionate!” No, it doesn’t.

You can see how these highly effective habits start to build on each other.  You don’t stop rambling on about something totally unrelated to the interview because you don’t notice Mary stopped taking notes ten minutes ago and started doodling on her interview notes, but you plow on because you told yourself during interview prep to make sure you got out all of your bad manager stories.

Highly effective annoying candidates are like a Tsunami of a lack of emotional intelligence.  Even if I was completely unqualified for a job I think the feedback afterwards from the interviewers would be: “we really liked him, too bad he doesn’t have any the skills we need.”   Highly effective annoying candidates have the opposite feedback: “if this person was the last person on earth with the skills to save our company, I would rather we go out of business!”

What annoying candidate habits have you witnessed?

HR’s Dirty Little Secret #26

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If you clicked over to read Dirty Little Secret #26 and you’re looking for numbers 1 – 25, hold tight, I haven’t written those yet.  I just like picking random numbers for posts because they work, and I believe HR has at least 26 Dirty Little Secrets.  This is just one.  I’m not really ranking them.  Number 26 could be as bad or worse than number 1.  I’ll let you decide when they’re all done.

So, what is HR’s Dirty Little Secret #26?

“We check secondary references, without you knowing, all the time!”

First let me give you the line 100% of all HR Pros will give to you and all employees, all the time.  “We do not give references.  We will only give you employment verification, which includes dates of employment. Thank you.”

You’ve heard that, right?

One of HR’s most dirty little secrets is that we give out references all the time!!!  Especially, if you’re a terrible employee!  We just don’t do it publicly.  The Chairman of JetBlue Airlines, Joel Peterson, wrote a blog post on LinkedIn (first, I doubt highly he wrote it, but his PR team did a nice job with the series) titled “Top 10 Hiring Mistakes, #5 Lazy Reference Checking”, where he gives advice about checking secondary references.  Secondary references are those references that a candidate didn’t give you, but you have through your own connections. His advice was awful, but he’s a public figure, he had to give it.  He said you should always let the candidate know you’ll be checking secondary references so they can reach out and let those people know.

First, thanks for the tip Joel, but that never happens. Never.  Plus, why would I want to give away the one unfiltered piece of the selection process I can get!? You don’t!

Here’s reality.  If you interview for a position, you should assume that someone in the organization is checking secondary references behind your back.  It’s easy to do.  I call up a buddy who works at your current, or old organization,  we talk, catch up on our favorite teams, crazy employees we both know, etc. Then, she let’s me know if you’re a train wreck or not.  Of course, she also first says, “Tim, you know we can’t give references.” Then she says, “Off the record, your candidate is a psycho path!”  End of secondary reference.

You think I’m joking.  It happens just like that, and it happens every. single. day.

Don’t get me wrong, most of the time, the secondary reference actually comes back positive.  You get more of an unfiltered references than you get by checking the ‘given references’ a candidate provides to you as part of your process.  Given References are completely worthless.  I don’t even waste my time checking given references.  If someone can’t find three people who think they walk on water, they’ve got bigger problems.

If you’re going to do ‘given references’ because you can’t talk the old white guys in your leadership out of it, because it makes them feel all warm, fuzzy and comfortable, at least talk them into automating this process.  Chequed is a company that does it better than anyone, and it will totally take this worthless activity off your back. Plus, Chequed has shown that people who fill out an automated reference check, even a given reference, will be more honest about a person’s actual strengths and weaknesses.  I’m a fan of their science. (FYI – they didn’t pay to say that, although, they should!)

I won’t ask what HR Pros think about this, because they’ll mostly lie and say they don’t do this.  That’s why it’s my HR’s Dirty Little Secret #26.

The Organization With the Most Expensive Selection Mistakes is?

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The NFL.  This Thursday that NFL will perform their annual selection process on ESPN, with their annual draft.  Just like you, they have no idea what they’re doing, but act like they figured out the secret sauce to great selection.  The big difference between you and the NFL, their mistakes costs them a lot more money!  Check out this chart from BI on the NFL Draft Guaranteed Contracts:

NFL draft

This chart basically shows you that the best, or highest, first round pick will get about $22 million guaranteed, while the lower third round picks will get $600k in guaranteed money over the life of their contract.

How would you like that level of possible expense in your selection process!?

All that money, all that time, all that research, and the NFL draft is still basically a crap shoot.  The pick people, like you pick people.  “Well, we really like Johnny’s football IQ and he just seems so personable! What the hell, let’s pay him $15M!”

What!?!

“Well, we know his ‘past performance’ in college.  We know all his ‘performance metrics’.  We gave him a personality profile.  We ‘feel’ like he’s a safe bet and potential high performer.”

It’s really not that different from you picking a $50,000 per year sales professional.   Many organizations put as much into their hiring selections, as the NFL puts into picking their draft selections.  Obviously, the NFL has more resources to throw at their process, so they probably have a few more bells and whistles.  But, they have no more success than you.  The ones who do the best, like you, are not only concerned about the ‘big’ hires/selections – your executive hires, their high first and second round draft picks, but put as much research and resources into each hire.  Making a great selection in the 7th round might be as valuable, long term, as making a great first round selection.  Just as you making a great entry level sales hire, might be as valuable, or more, to making a really solid Director level hire.

The learning on all of this?  You can’t take hires off.  There are no ‘throw away’ hires, just as their are no throw away draft picks for great NFL teams.

Are you Persuading or Convincing candidates to take your jobs?

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Convince – To cause someone to believe firmly in the truth of something.

Persuade – To cause someone to do something through reasoning or argument.

So, are you persuading or convincing candidates to take a position with your organization?

I think the majority of us try and convince candidates that our job, our organization is the best decision for them.  We have this belief, wrongly, that we don’t want candidates who don’t want us.  So, we shouldn’t ‘push’ them to take our job.  We’ll try and convince them we are a good choice, but ultimately the candidate needs to make that decision.  We do this because its the easiest on us, as Talent and HR Pros, not because it’s the best way.  It’s the most non-confrontational way to offer up our jobs.  We all like non-confrontational.

Persuasion involves a bit more.  The Talent and HR Pro who can persuade candidates to come with them, is much more valuable to their organization.  Persuasion might make you challenge a candidates beliefs, and get them to think about their career, their life, in a new way.  Ultimately, they still might make the choice not to go with you, but you want to make that decision very, very difficult on them.  They should agonize in saying ‘No’ to you.

Persuasion causes a Talent or HR Pros to become a sales person, a marketer.  To persuade means to get a person to ‘do’ something, not believe something.  I don’t want a candidate to believe my job is the best, but decide not to take it anyway.  I want her to take it! To do it!   Most people ‘believe’ that smoking is bad for them, as they put a cancer stick in their mouth and light it up.  Very few stop smoking.  Believing and doing are two very different things.

With candidates, persuasion can become an organizational dynamic, especially in hard to fill roles.  You have to have everyone on board the persuasion bandwagon!  From the hiring manager to executives to the admins who might speak to this candidate only to set up an interview time.  Everyone has to be ready, at all times, to close the candidate. A number of years ago I was offered a role, that I turned down, and the Chief People Officer of that organization called my on Christmas Eve Day to try and change my mind.  He made it very hard for me to turn down the role. He was very persuasive, to the point that I felt like I could be making a bad career decision to not take it.

We are coming into a time in our history where persuading, versus convincing, candidates to come work for you, will become a strategic advantage (it actually always has been an advantage, but this becomes more important as great talent is hard to find).  It should no longer be alright to allow candidates to just make the decision if they like you or not, and you just sit back and wait for that decision.  Your organization needs you to turn up the heat, in a positive way, to get candidates to take your jobs.  Persuasion appeals to emotions and fear and creativity.  People make emotional decisions when changing jobs, not rationale.  Are you feeding them documents and spreadsheets, or stories or glory?

Have I convinced you to change?

Corporate Recruiters Don’t Fear Agency Recruiters

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Do you believe the title?  It’s common belief, in most Talent and HR circles, that most corporate recruiters fear agency recruiters.  Go ahead and argue if you would like, but it seems a little silly.

The reality is, true recruiting professionals don’t fear amateurs.

It’s like a really great professional Photographer.  They charge money because they offer something someone is willing to pay for.  Professional photographers don’t fear the mom at the soccer game with her $2,000 dollar camera and $5,000 dollar lens.  Who cares that you have the equipment, if you don’t know how to use it!?  Pros don’t fear amateurs.

So, if you are a really good corporate recruiter who knows how to really recruit, agency recruiters don’t scare you, because you know your stuff!  That’s the problem, though, right?  The reason so many people feel the title of this post is true is because we all know so many corporate recruiters, who really don’t know how to recruit.  They aren’t pros, they’re amateurs.  Amateurs fear professionals when it comes to meeting head to head in competition.

The best professionals love it when a talented amateur tries to play at their level.  These types of individuals help to push both parties to do the best work they can.  Or, at least, they should!  A great agency recruiter, should push an average corporate recruiter to want to get better.  An amateur agency recruiter will starve, that’s why you only see amateurs in the agency ranks for a very short period of time.  If they aren’t good, they don’t eat! That is why on average, agency recruiters tend to have more recruiting skills than corporate recruiters.  Agency folks aren’t full salary. How they are compensated forces them to have better skills, on average.

So, how do corporate recruiters ensure they become professionals?  Well, I love Malcom Gladwell, so I’ll steal a little of his 10,000 hour concept.  You must make yourself a true recruiting professional!  You need to invest time and development in yourself, in the recruiting industry, to become a pro.   That means as a corporate recruiter, you focus on recruiting, not becoming an HR Pros. What?!  Most corporate recruiters are corporate recruiters because that’s their path to get into a straight HR position.  Their endgame is not recruiting, it’s HR.  That’s a problem, because they are not fully vested into the recruiting game.  This is an amateur move.

Your reality is, those who get promoted are usually professional at something.  Become a great recruiting pro and the powers-that-be will take notice, and you’ll find yourself in positions you never thought possible.  True professionals don’t worry about promotions, they worry about becoming a better pro at their craft.

The next time you start feeling yourself pushed by an agency recruiter, don’t curse them for what they do, embrace them for what they push you to become — a better recruiter.

 

Reasons To Try Stuff

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Last week I got a chance to speak at the 5th annual Michigan HR Day on Social Recruiting.  The group was great, I had fun, we gave out some Coach Bags and I made some HR ladies uncomfortable.  I don’t actually intend to speak and make anyone uncomfortable, that isn’t a long term plan of speaker success.  But it usually happens to a small number of folks.

Here’s how it normally goes:

1. I talk about how to use a social networking site like Facebook to recruit great talent.  Show them how to do it.  Show them how they can get really specific in who they are searching for by skill, gender, location, company name, Likes, etc. All really good information, and the crowd eats it up! Things are going really well for me.

2. “Um, I have a question?”  Here it comes.  You probably noticed it yourself in the line above. He said ‘gender’ didn’t he? You can’t do that mister!  I’m an HR lady. You can’t do that. Then she pulls out her HR lady badge.

3. I say, “Yeah, you can do that”, and pull out my HR Guy badge.

4. She says, “No you can not!” Like my Mom, but scarier. “If you use a program like The Facebook to recruit, you’re going to have ‘disparate impact‘!”

5. I’m a pro, I’ve been here before. So I start asking questions, like, “Do your hiring managers ever see your candidates?” Yes.  “What the difference if they see them as a candidate or as an interviewee?” Well. “If you have a hiring manager willing to discriminate, that isn’t a Facebook issue, that’s a manager issue, isn’t it?” Yes. “Do you have any set of demographics you would like to have more of in your organization, like female engineers, let’s just day?” Yes. “What are you really worried about when recruiting on Facebook?”  Silence.

We don’t try stuff, because trying stuff could cause change.  When I speak about things people haven’t tried, a very small group, no matter where I am, will immediately try to come up with reasons on why they shouldn’t try it.  Not why they should. Our initial reaction to change is to find reasons to not change.

It really has nothing to do with recruiting on Facebook.  Facebook’s own demographics will show almost a 50/50 gender mix. LinkedIn, admittedly, is heavily male dominated.  Do you recruit on LinkedIn?  Do you see pictures of potential candidates on LinkedIn?  Aren’t you, the HR department, the ones pulling potential candidates, who have been trained not to discriminate when it comes to hiring?  So, what’s really the issue?  You see, it breaks down very quickly.

We aren’t really concerned about disparate impact or being discriminatory, we concerned about this guy asking me to do something I’m not comfortable with.  I just like playing Farmville and watching so funny kitty videos on The Facebook.  Do make me feel like I should have to do work on there as well!

The problem we tend to have in HR is that we don’t find reasons to try stuff.  We are pros at finding reasons not to try stuff.  Find some reasons today to try stuff, you’ll be a better HR Pro because of it.

Tattoo Hiring

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A tattoo is basically forever.

I know, I know, you can get them removed by laser now. But most people don’t go into a tattoo proposition thinking I can’t wait to pay a couple of thousand dollars to get this removed! It’s permanent baby. Like a Sharpie, but better!

Most organizations do Tattoo Hiring.  They believe we are going to hire this person forever.  In fact, go ahead and tattoo the logo on their butt while their in orientation.   But the life cycle of most hires is similar to that of your tattoo you got on Spring Break back in 2001.

Tattoo Hires:

1. Day 1 – it’s a little painful, but your so excited to have the person on board.

2. First couple of weeks – pain has gone away, still doesn’t look right, but you can tell you’re going to love them. And you keep showing the new hire to everyone you see, that has yet to see them.

3. Years 1-3 – Tattoo Hire is awesome. You’re proud of your tattoo hire. People comment on what a great hire.  You couldn’t be more proud of your tattoo hire!

4. Somewhere past year 3 – the first Tattoo Hire went so well, what the heck, time for another Tattoo Hire!  This time we’ll go bigger and better!

5. Into Tattoo Hire #2’s first year – you begin to notice your original Tattoo Hire doesn’t look as good anymore. Isn’t performing as well. You think it might be time to change your original Tattoo Hire.  While Tattoo Hire #2 is more awesome than you can imagine!

6. Time to remove Tattoo Hire #1 – You’ve finally made the decision, Tattoo Hire #1 has to go. It’s going to cost you thousands of dollars to remove, but Tattoo Hire #1 just isn’t what you want anymore.

That’s alright you’ve got Tattoo Hire #2!  I mean what could go wrong, a Tattoo Hire is forever, right?

Organizations that hire with a Tattoo philosophy are bound to fail.  It’s not that you can’t expect, or want, employees to stay with you their entire career.  You can.  The problem we face is when we don’t set up our organizations to support forever hires.  The new tattoo always looks better, because it is usually more defined and brighter and you put more thought into it.  An employee is no different.  You can’t let a more tenured employee fade.  You must keep them vibrant and up to date.  Or, many times you will spend a ton of money replacing them.

 

7 Ways Recruiters Can Reinvent Themselves

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It’s that time of the month!  No, not that time – a better more enjoyable time!  It’s the FOT monthly webinar!   This month FOT will be doing Recruiter Makeovers and giving Recruiters 7 ways they can reinvent themselves as Marketers!  As always it’s FREE and comes with HRCI credit for all those SHRMies.

We know – you’re feeling stale as a recruiter. We get it, that’s why we’re partnering with Jobvite for the May FOT webinar – The Recruiter Makeover – 7 Ways Recruiters Can Reinvent Themselves as Marketers. The world’s full of great products/services that became commodities, and unfortunately, there’s a lot of recruiters in danger of becoming commodities if they don’t change with the times. Odds are you feel the shift under your feet – great candidates are less responsive than ever to average recruiters, which means you have to become a more effective marketer of the brand and opportunities you represent to keep your closing rate high.

If you’re still reading, that means you haven’t been average in the past. Join us for this FOT webinar and we’ll give you the roadmap for a career makeover that includes the following goodies:

—The Ugly “Before” Picture – We’ve all seen the “before” pictures used in makeovers and this one is no different. Using your “average joe/jane” recruiter, we’re going to take a snapshot of the recruiter most in need of our makeover. Brace yourself, because “before” pictures in makeover workups all look like mug/prison shots of Lindsay Lohan, right?

—Trendspotting 101 – We can’t start prescribing the skill equivalent of makeup or liposuction for recruiters until we tell you about the trends that are causing the need for the makeover. Candidates have more options and messages flowing to them than ever before. Whether its the emergence of Indeed, Glassdoor, LinkedIn or the social recruiting scene, recruiting is morphing into marketing. We’ll compare and contrast some of the trends to tell you why recruiters are evolving into marketers even as they keep their core recruiting skills strong.

—7 Ways Recruiters Can Reinvent Themselves As Marketers – Makeover time. We’ll hit you with our list of things you can do to reinvent yourself as a marketer who just happens to recruit for a living. You can do this. Don’t believe the naysayers that will say this is hype. Those people are just trying to keep you average.

—Our Top 5 List of Recruiters Who Have Strong Marketing Game – It’s all empty talk until we give you examples, right? The FOT crew will break down our top 5 list of recruiters who have added the marketing toolkit to their games, complete with emphasis of which of our “7 Ways” list they specialize in. Everyone in the world needs role models – even recruiters. We’ll tell you who to connect with and emulate to become a marketer in the recruiting game.

Evolving your game as a recruiter isn’t easy – it takes thought, expertise and time you don’t have, because you’re busy filling positions. Join us for the May FOT Webinar and we’ll show you how to add marketing chops to your personal recruiting brand so you don’t get left behind.

CLICK HERE IF YOU’RE A SMART TALENT PRO!

Evolving Just In Time Talent

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If you’re in the talent/recruitment game you are well aware it’s a Just In Time (JIT) game.  Has been that way since we were called the Personnel Dept. and will be that way for the foreseeable future.  Executives and hiring managers hate this about recruitment.  They think we should have this ‘pipeline’ of great candidates waiting to come into our organizations the moment we lose someone, or have a need to add additional talent.  But, we all know that while in theory that sounds really nice, it’s not reality.

There is a faction that tries to sell that this can happen, through things like talent communities, etc. Again, the reality is this is these types of things are just a show for our organizations, they really don’t do what our hiring managers are desiring.  Having a pipeline of candidates, who have yet to be screened, interviewed and offered (i.e., your talent community) is still just JIT talent.  Maybe a little quicker, but still far short of expectations from hiring managers.

So, how to you get On Demand Talent?

Eventually, we are going to see companies take a page from the contracting talent world and they are going to ‘bench’ their next hires.  In contracting great talent gets ‘benched’ in between their projects.  They actually get paid not to work, but be ready for the next major project they’ll be working on.  Could be a week, could be a month.  Corporate benching will be slightly different. Let me give you a peak of how corporations will eventually evolve JIT Talent to meet the expectations of their executive teams and hiring managers:

1. Active sourcing of top talent, even when they don’t have an opening.

2. Full screen, interview process and selection decision of this talent, even without an opening.

3. Contractual offer and benching bonus to be the next hire for a certain position.

What does all that mean?

Let’s say you have a group of Engineers.  You know at some point, based on your annual metrics over the last 10 years, you will lose an engineer to turnover within the next 12 months.  It’s critical that when you lose that engineer you have a replacement quickly, but the current cycle time of sourcing, interviewing and accepting is taking 8-12 weeks for your critical skill set.  Sound familiar?  Your hiring managers expectation is you’ll have someone in 2 weeks.  Which is impossible in your current process.

An On Demand Talent model would have you, without an actual opening, go through your full engineering search. Find that person who is right for you and extend them a hiring contract for the next available opening in the next 12 months. For accepting this ‘spot’ on your depth chart, you will pay this candidate a bonus.  Could be a one time bonus, could be a monthly bonus.  In the mean time, they continue to work at their current position and company, and wait.  When they get the call, contractually they have two weeks to give notice and start.

You meet the expectation of your organization, you have succession ready to go, you just created a better talent demand system.  Yes, it costs money.  But, so does having an opening in your organization for two to three to six months, while projects sit idle.

What do you think?  Blow holes in my theory of On Demand Talent in the comments.