Category Archives: Selection

The Employee Walk of Shame

Posted on by
Reply

I’ve lost jobs and I’ve called old employers to see if they would want to hire me back – I’ve usually gotten a response that sounded something like – “Oh, boy would we want you back – but – we just don’t have anything. Good Luck!”  Many of us in the talent game talk about our employee Alumni and how we should engage our Alumni – but very few of us really take true advantage of leveraging this network.

I was reminded of this recently when a friend of mine took a new job.  You know the deal – shorter drive, more money, growing company – oh, golly, just where do I sign!?  The fact was, it was all they said – shorter drive, more money and they were growing – but they forgot to tell him was – our operations are broken beyond repair, you will work 7 days a week and probably 12-14 hours per day because of the mess we have, but keep your head up – it’s the only way you won’t drown here!

So, now what does he do?

Already had the going away party – bar night out with the work friends with the promises to do lunches and not get disconnected – packed up and unpack the office into the new office.  Let’s face it big boy – you’re stuck!  Not so fast.  He did the single hardest thing an employee can do – he called his old boss – after 7 days – and said one thing – “I made a mistake, can I come back?”  Luckily for him – his past boss was a forward thinking leader and so this past Monday – he did the 2nd hardest thing an employee can do – he made the Employee Walk of Shame.

You can imagine the looks from people who didn’t know him well – “hey, wait a minute, didn’t you leave?” Having to tell the same story over and over – feeling like he failed, like he wasn’t good enough.

HR plays a huge part in this story because it was HR who can make this walk of shame – a little less rough.  Let’s face it, it is different.  You just don’t leave and come back like nothing happened – something did happen – there was reason he left and that reason isn’t going away.  A transition back needs to be put into place – even though he was gone 7 days.  It’s not about just plugging back in – it is about re-engaging again – finding out what we all can do better so it doesn’t happen again.

It’s also about making sure you let those employees who you truly want back – that they are welcome to come back (assuming you have the job) and not just saying that to everyone.  There are employees who leave that you say a small prayer to G*d and thank – there are others where you wish there was a prayer you could say so they wouldn’t leave.  Make it easy for your employees to do the Walk of Shame – it helps the organization – but realize they are hurting, they are embarrassed, but they are also grateful!

The Value of a Really Crappy Job

Posted on by
3

As some of you may have realized from recent posts (Wanted: People Who Aren’t Stupid), I’ve been interviewing candidates recently for the position of Technical Recruiter working for my company HRU. I love interviewing because each time I interview I think I’ve discovered a better way to do it, or something new I should be looking for, and this most recent round of interviews is no different.  Like most HR/Talent Pros I’m always interested in quality work/co-op/internship experience – let’s face it, it’s been drilled into us – past performance/actions will predict future performance/actions.  So, we tend to get excited over seeing a candidate that has experience from a great company or competitor – we’re intrigued to know how the other side lives and our inquisitive nature begs us to dig in.

What I’ve found over the past 20 years of interviewing is that while I love talking to people that worked at really great companies – I hire more people that have worked at really bad companies.  You see, while you learn some really good stuff working for great companies – I think people actually learn more working for really crappy companies!  Working at a really great companies gives you an opportunity to work in “Utopia” – you get to see how things are suppose to work, how people are suppose to work together, how it a perfect world it all fits together.  The reality is – we don’t work Utopia (at least the majority of us) we work in organizations that are less than perfect, and some of us actually work in down right horrible companies. Those who work in horrible companies and survive – tend to better hires – they have battle scars and street smarts.

So, why everyone wants to get out of really bad companies (and I don’t blame them) there is actually a few things you learn from those experiences:

1. Leadership isn’t a necessity to run a profitable company. I’ve seen some very profitable companies that had really bad leadership – people always think they’ll leave those companies and they’ll fail – they don’t.  Conversely, I’ve worked for some companies that had great people leaders and failed.

2. Great people sometimes work a really crappy companies.  Don’t equate crappy company with crappy talent.  Sometimes you can find some real gems in the dump.

3. Hard work is relative.  I find people who work at really bad companies, tend to appreciate hard work better than those who work a really great companies with great balance.  If all you’ve every known is long hours and management that doesn’t care you have a family – seeing the other side gives you an appreciation that is immeasurable.

4. Not having the resources to do the job, doesn’t mean you can’t do the job. Working for a crappy company in a crappy job tends to make you more creative – because you probably won’t have what you need to do the job properly, so you find ways.

5. Long lasting peer relationships come through adversity.  You can make life-long work friends at a crappy job – who you’ll keep in contact and be able to leverage as you move on in your careers.  And here’s what each of you will think about the other: “That person can work in the shit!”  “That person is tough and get’s things done” “That person is someone I want on my team, when I get to build a team”

We all know the bad companies in our industries and markets.  Don’t discount candidates who have spent time with those companies – we were all at some point needing a job – a first experience, a shot at a promotion or more money, etc. and took a shot at a company we thought we could change or make a difference.  I love people who worked for bad companies, in bad jobs with bad management – because they wear it like a badge of honor!

2 Reasons Women Don’t Get Hired or Promoted

Posted on by
4

The New York Times had an article recently regarding hiring practices and succession practices at Google – and G*d knows if Google is doing it – it must be important, and we must try and do the same thing. What I liked about this article was it didn’t necessarily look at practices and processes – it looked at data – and the data found that Google – like almost every other large company – does a crappy job hiring and promoting women. Shocking, I know, if you’re a man – we had no idea this was going on! In America of all places… Beyond the obvious though, Google was able to dig into the data and find out the whys and make some practical changes that I think most companies can implement – and that I totally agree with.  From the article:

“Google’s spreadsheets, for example, showed that some women who applied for jobs did not make it past the phone interview. The reason was that the women did not flaunt their achievements, so interviewers judged them unaccomplished.

Google now asks interviewers to report candidates’ answers in more detail. Google also found that women who turned down job offers had interviewed only with men. Now, a woman interviewing at Google will meet other women during the hiring process.

A result: More women are being hired.”

Here are two selection facts that impact both men and women:

1.  We like to surround ourselves with people who we like – which usually means in most cases people who are similar to ourselves

2. We tend not to want to brag about our accomplishments, but our society has made it more acceptable for men to brag.

This has a major impact to your selection – and most of you are doing nothing about it.  It’s very common that if you run simple demographics for your company – ANY COMPANY – you’ll see that the percentage of your female employees does not come close to the percentage of your female leadership.  Why is that?

Here are two things you can do to help make the playing field more level in your organization:

1. Have women interview women.  Sounds a bit sexist in a way – but if you want women to get hired into leadership positions you can’t have them going up against males being interviewed by males because the males will almost always feel more comfortable with another male candidate. Reality sucks, buy a helmet.

2. Ask specific questions regarding accomplishments and take detailed notes. Studies have found woman don’t get hired or promoted because they don’t “sell” or brag enough about their accomplishments giving their male counterparts a leg up – because the males making the hiring decisions now have “ammunition” to justify their decision to hire the male.

Let’s face it – Google is doing it – so now we all have to do it.  What would we do without best practices…(maybe innovate and create new better practices – but I digress…).

WANTED! People who aren’t stupid

Posted on by
42

I’m looking to hire an additional Recruiter for my team – business is brisk, we are growing, blah, blah, blah.  We’ve been in business 31 years, profitable all 31 years.  Part of that profitability is we don’t overpay for talent.  That is a good way of saying, we’ve been very good at hiring entry level college kids and turning them into very good recruiters.  Basically, I have some upfront investment into teaching them the trade and that investment pays off in the long run.

I hear that there are millions of people out of work.  What I don’t see are people who actually want to work to get paid.  I wrote a job description, qualifications, etc. and put it up on one of the Big Job Boards to see what I would get – see below:

Here’s the JD:

Technical Recruiter:
What the heck is a Technical Recruiter?  We find great talent for our client companies.  You need to be part private investigator, part blood hound and part jealous girlfriend – basically you will be using the training we give you to get out and find Rock Stars – the best of the best – in the fields of engineering and Information Technology.

You spend a lot of time on the phone and on the internet tracking down and networking to find these types of folks.  Then once you find them – you put them through the 3rd Degree on why they might be good enough to get passed onto to our client.  It’s a fast pace environment and every day you never know what you’re going to run into.

Why this might be for you?
1. You’re smart (i.e., you have a Bachelor’s Degree – no a real bachelor’s degree, not one out of the back of an airline magazine)

2. You’re are self motivated (Look, we don’t want to babysit you, we’re busy – you need to be able to push yourself)

3. You can take rejection (Recruiting isn’t easy – you spend all day tracking down the perfect candidate and they tell you to take a hike – that’s life – time to put on the big boy/big girl pants)

4. You’re a networker (this means you have probably have more than 1000 Facebook/Instagram/Twitter Friends combined – and most actually know who you are and haven’t blocked you)

Requirements

Ok, Let’s recap – here’s what you need to work here:

1. Smarts – Bachelor’s Degree

2. Motivation – I want to be successful, and willing to do more than show up and wait for someone to give me a trophy

3. Business Sense – we negotiate and sell all day – that’s the real world.  We sell people on why they should want to go to work for a company, and we sell the company on why they need the person we have. It’s fun!

4. Guts.  Yeah, that’s right – you’re going to have to pick up the phone and talk to real people that you don’t know – scary right – you mean I just can’t text them? No.

This is a Big Girl job – business cards, your own phone extension, 1 hour lunch breaks. Welcome to the show.  We expect that you’ll actually work.

If you send me your resume and you don’t have all the stuff above – we might ridicule you publicly on our blog.  The End.

********************************************

Seems pretty straight-forward right?  You need to be out going and have a BACHELOR’s Degree – and probably a sense of humor.  If you don’t have that, don’t send me a resume.

Guess what I got from my Ad?

19 responses with Resume.  Of the 19 – 6 had a bachelors degree (No, having 82 credits towards a Bachelor’s degree does not constitute you having a bachelor’s degree).  6 were female, 13 were male – 4 out of 6 females met the requirement, which tells me Females are less stupid than males.  One female was currently a Licensed Attorney with her JD – which tells me all I need to know about that profession right now.

We don’t have a jobs problem in this country.  We have a candidate problem.  People are mostly stupid.  Employers don’t want to hire stupid people.

So, I’ll ask you – my overly smart and snarky readers – Was I clear enough on my Job Descriptions and Qualifications on what I was looking for?

iRecruiter – How to Recruit more like Apple

Posted on by
Reply

Open position… Job posting… Mass distribution via automation… Rinse, repeat.

What’s that?  You took a flyer on social recruiting and it hasn’t delivered any real results for you?

There are a million things for people to read on the web.  With that in mind, if you want the right people to stop, read and take action on an open position at your company, your goal should be to entertain them with your recruiting pitch – or at least not bore them to death.

Join Fistful of Talent for our August installment of the FOT webinar, “That’s Your Pitch?  How to Raise Your Recruiting Game By Acting Less Like ACME and More Like Apple”, as hosts Kris Dunn and Andrew Curtis (from iCIMS) deliver the following:

1.    The Top 5 Traits of Successful Marketers and Advertisers recruiters should use to raise their promotional game.  We’ll deliver this in true Mac vs. PC style.  What do great marketers do to generate interest?

2.    How to Prevent Your Job Postings from Being Lame.  We’ll show you what to include with live examples ripped from the companies we love.

3.    How Cool Companies are Experimenting with Elements Beyond Text (including video, audio and more) to deliver some pop to traditional recruiting campaigns.

4.    We’ll play a game we like to call, “That’s Your Freaking Pitch?” – where we peel back the cover and take a hard look at traditional messaging that flows through your recruiting function today after the job posting goes out –  including ATS messaging, live call recruiter scripts and more

5.    A Plan to Customize Your Social Distribution Message Across the Big 3 (LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook). You know the same message doesn’t work across all social channels, we’ll tell you how to do it.

Stop thinking like a recruiter and start thinking like your marketing friends down the hall.  Join us for this webinar (sponsored by iCIMS) and we’ll help you breathe some life back into your candidate outreach.

Register Today – Click Here!

58% of College Students Are Willing to Lie

Posted on by
1

According to a recent study by NetImpact – What Workers Want in 2012 58% of College Students (1,726 total in the study) would take a 15% pay cut to work for an organization who’s values matched their own.  In another study, I’m willing to coach the Los Angles Lakers for less than half what they are paying their current coach (1 total in this study)!

These studies are silly – it’s hypothetical, college kids still believe in things – like fairness and equal opportunity and you’ll always be able to drink 12 beers and get up the next morning and run 3 miles.  Let’s wait for all 1,726 college students who took the study to get a job and then 5 years from now when they are employed we’ll go to them and force them to make a choice –

1. You keep your current salary and stay with your current job

2. You take a 15% pay cut and move to Employer A which happens to have the same values as you, under the current leadership team

I will bet my entire life savings that less than 58% of those people would choose to leave their current employers (no matter what job they have) and take a 15% pay cut!  In fact I would be fairly confident to say only about 10% would take us up on our offer, and they were already looking or getting pushed out. So, what does the study really say? That college students being asked silly hypothetical questions for a study about how they will act in the future, are willing to lie.

Why do I think these studies are silly?  Because solid, well meaning, HR Pros will go out and start recruiting folks to their organization who have the same values that “they” have.  “They” being the key word.  Who is “they”?  Well, Tim, we went to our leadership and our managers and our employees and we did value assessment and we found that 73% of our folks valued honesty and integrity over 67% that valued hard work and a fun work place.  Oh, you’ve got it figured out…

Here’s what I’m thinking – values are hard to hire – but you think they aren’t.  I can hire for skills, I can hire for past performance, etc. When it comes to values and morals, I’m really throwing myself down the rabbit hole.  Hiring for values and morals puts the selectors values and morals into play way too much.  If Peggy is your main screener – you better damn hope Peggy shares the exact values and morals you’re trying to hire for – or you’re going to be in for a surprise down the road.

I’m not saying don’t do it – I’m saying you better weight it appropriately with some other criteria.  I seem to be in the minority who still believes having the fire power to do the job, and some past performance to back it up, is still fairly important when selecting candidates. And if Humility doesn’t seem to be a part of their value chain, I think I might be able to work around that – if they can perform!

3 Reasons Good Recruiters are Good at Recruiting

Posted on by
6

I was reminded this past week that recruiting is very hard.  No, it’s not hard to post a job on your careers page and wait for a resume, that you won’t screen, and just pass along to the hiring manager -that’s not hard.  Recruiting is hard – when it comes down to finding talent that really doesn’t want to be found and has no desire to go to work for your bad culture and crappy manager who turns over people constantly – that’s when recruiting is hard!

I think there are 3 main differences that separate good recruiting from bad recruiting.  They are:

1. Good recruiters have the ability to change your mind about an opportunity, before money is even discussed.  Bad recruiters lead with the money.  Good recruiters believe in their organizations, believe in the position, and believe in the hiring manager as a great leader.  Then they make you a believer!

2. Good recruiters know your rejections before you know them and address them as such.   Relocation is probably the toughest one that comes to mind – next to relocation and a spouse who doesn’t want to relocate (that’s like Kryptonite to a Recruiter!).  Getting someone to relocate for a new position, new company – when they are a great talent with a great organization – takes a recruiter with an exceptional ability to connect the dots for the candidates.  This becomes the – this is why you need to be here, right now kind of moment that great recruiters come up with instead of just hanging up the phone and calling someone else.

3. Good recruiters know how to dig, and love to get dirty.  Let’s face it, you mining the Monster database isn’t recruiting – I can easily find a $10/hr admin type who can do that and they’ll actually be more engaged doing it!  Good recruiters love the search – yeah, it can be frustrating and heartbreaking, but when you uncover that hidden gem – it very much is worth the work!

The last four or five years have given us an environment where newer recruiters just coming into the industry, didn’t have to be good – they had to be present.  Being present isn’t a qualification, necessarily, to becoming a good recruiter.  High unemployment and low jobs, gives you an abundance to candidates and usually qualified candidates as well.  This doesn’t make you a good recruiter – it makes you a good screener.  In many industries we are now seeing the value of good recruiters come back, as certain job markets are opening up in a big way and candidates, even bad ones, are no longer advertising themselves as available.

Good recruiting is invaluable to a good HR shop – and bad recruiting is the quickest way for your HR shop to lose credibility with your leadership. So, what can you do?  Don’t allow bad recruiting to live in your barn! Good Recruiting is hard, and it shouldn’t look easy and it doesn’t work 40 hours per week, 8 to 5 pm, Monday thru Friday.  But, bad recruiting is betting on the fact that you don’t know the difference, or you are to lazy to do anything about it.

Can You Hear Facebook coming LinkedIn?

Posted on by
3

This is old news but – last week Facebook announced that Facebook Jobs is coming! You can almost hear the Jaws theme music playing in the background, can’t you!?  CareerBuilder, Dice, LinkedIn, etc. – all the job boards – you can bet are taking note.  900 Million users – everyone from your Grandma to your Mom to your cousin Mary – from Brain Surgeons to Alligator Wrestlers – Facebook has got them.

My good friend Lance Haun wrote about his over at TLNT last week – What Is Facebook Thinking? Do We Really Need Another Job Board? From Lance’s post:

“The strength is obvious: imagine you’re applying for a job at XYZ company and you find out that a friend’s family member works there. Or what if some sort of robust search capability were added to the site? Or what if Facebook could recommend certain career options based on your activity beyond career-related postings?

The problem is that it would also come at the expense of privacy and the sort of digital wall that many people have put up to differentiate between their Facebook life and their LinkedIn life. Yet, the sheer numbers potential is attractive in it’s own right.”

This is the argument that LinkedIn has been hoping you will buy!  And so far you have been! LinkedIn is for Professional, Facebook is for Personal.  It’s a 2008 argument.  Most people don’t want to live two lives – they would prefer to live one, but they feel they can’t be themselves professionally – they need to be this watered down version of themselves – at least when not at a conference – then anything goes.  Let’s get real for a second – everyone is on Facebook – Your Mom, Your co-workers, Your boss, the owner of your company, your HR Manager, your ex-boyfriends, your current boyfriend – everyone.  Your not hiding anything – even with your ‘privacy’ settings.  It’s time to stop living the double life and be yourself.

Here’s what is really exciting about Facebook Jobs – We finally get access to everyone!  Well, almost everyone – at least 7 times more than LinkedIn – and all those ‘Passive’ candidates!  Even if Facebook only goes for the quick cash grab and does postings for a fee – it’s still better than just posting on a Job Board or LinkedIn.  People like to look, lurk and see what’s open – it’s human nature.  Facebook is the perfect place for this.  Just like when LinkedIn started and HR Pros were actually encouraging their employees to get on, to ‘network’ (don’t we look stupid now!) – no one will consider a person on Facebook to necessarily be job hunting.  It’s the perfect safe environment for this to happen.  Plus, it easily allows people to engage their personal networks when they see something interesting that someone in their personal network would have interest in.

LinkedIn should be nervous – good talent is already leaving or ignoring them at this point – recruiters have taken it over – it’s become spammy.  Facebook is an open frontier – the best recruiters are already finding ways within Facebook to network and source.  Facebook Jobs – or whatever they decide to do – could be a big game changer for recruiters.

4 Annoying Ways To Follow Up After An Interview

Posted on by
8

Jenny Foss (@JobJenny) had a good article over at Forbes recently, 4 Non-Annoying Ways To Follow Up After An Interview, where she gave some tried and true job seeker advice out for post interview contact.  If was what you would expect from a Forbes article: Ask about next steps, send a thank you note, connect via LinkedIn, etc.  Safe stuff.  Not knowing Jenny, I looked her up on her blog – JobJenny.com and after learning a little about her – I think she probably wanted to write the 4 Most Annoying Ways – but didn’t want to throw her Forbes gig out the window – so I’m here to try and do it for her.  Let’s face it – Forbes isn’t asking me to write any time soon!

The one thing that all HR and Talent Pros can connect with is having to deal with stalker candidates who are relentless at contacting you after an interview.  The ironic part of this, is they are most likely following someone’s bad advice – usually a parent (If you don’t call them, they won’t know you’re “really” interested), or a grandparent (Back in my day we would go back the next day and knock on their door again to tell them how interested in the job we were) telling them what they needed to do.  Even worse – many times they are following the advice of a Pseudo HR Pro who is shoveling out free career advice like they actually know what they’re talking about – until you realize they haven’t actually worked in HR since the 1970’s.  For those of us in the trenches – having to deal with overly aggressive candidates following up can be the biggest pain of our day.

So, here are 4 Annoying Ways To Follow Up After An Interview (if you’re a candidate, stop doing this!):

1. Use Your Inside Connection in my company to get feedback. Nothing screams cheesy more than doing this! Hey, my uncle works in tech support, I’ll just have him contact Tim in HR to see how I did.  When this happens to me – I go overboard to the connection on how bad they did, so much so we are actually rethinking your employment because of your relationship.

2. Send me a Thank you note to my Home. Yes, this has happened to me – and yes it was way creepy.  The last thing I want to deal with when I walk into the door of my home is some crazy candidate from work.  No, it does not show initiative – it shows your propensity to be a stalker.

3. Ask me to be Facebook friends.  Look, I don’t even want to be work friends if we hire you, and I certainly don’t want you picking around my Facebook page.  I would rather you tattoo a picture of my on your chest and put it on a billboard before befriending you on Facebook. Don’t do this!

4. Leave me a voicemail everyday for 2 weeks.  Again, this doesn’t show initiative, it shows desperation – Like the veteran running-back who run into the end-zone and tosses the football to the umpire – act like you’ve been there.  You can follow up once – a quick “thank you” and a “I’m definitely interested” is all that it takes.

I can’t even begin to tell you some of the crazy ways that candidates have tried to stay in touch and get noticed over the years – but most bordered on insanity and just helped me screen them out as a possible selection.  The ones who seem not interested, are the ones I usually had to stalk myself! (Seem familiar ladies!?)  I would tell you to just use common sense – but that seems to be thrown out the window on most folks – so I’ll say less is more and be respectful of the hiring managers time.

Candidate Screener #1 – Baby Car Seats

Posted on by
3

There are some things I hesitate to write about – and this is one of them.   Sometimes, in HR, we allow are hiring managers to do somethings that should get us sent straight to hell. First class ticket – and we deserve it.  I have to be careful on how I phrase this one – let’s just say there is this major U.S. company that made Billions of dollars last year, and for a number of years before that.  Their product is something almost all of us have used in our lifetime.  And let’s just say, that maybe, once in a while (or every time) they interview someone – male or female – they “kindly” escort this person out to their safe, security-gated, parking lot, to their interviewees car.   A naive HR Pro would say, “Aren’t our hiring managers nice to do that.”  A savvy HR Pro would say, “Why the hell are you doing that?!”

You clicked the link with the title – so you already know why they escort candidates to their car – they want to see if the candidate has kids.  Ouch.  The feeling is, they don’t want to hire folks with kids, because folks with kids need more time off, and miss work more, and, well, just aren’t as engaged as non-anchor dragging childless employees.  Ouch, again.   There is an HR person, or two, that will be burning in hell for allowing this to continue.

And let’s continue to say, “hypothetically” that I know a person who has witnessed this type of thing happen – hypothetically.  What would you tell the candidate, hypothetically?   First, I’d tell them the truth!   Look you are about to be judged, in a negative way, on your desire and ability to procreate. That being said, we have a couple of options: 1. You can bail on the opportunity. (Great financial opportunity – you can imagine the culture!); 2. You can clean your car out of all incriminating evidence that you have children, like children, were once a child.   Hypothetically – most people are choosing #2.  That surprises me a little – but it’s dependent upon the job market, personal situations, etc.  A ton of factors go into people making that type of decision – I’m not judging – I’m empathetic to the cause!

Crazy right?  It’s 20 and f’ing 12!  We (hypothetically) have hiring managers looking for baby seats in the back of a sedan as a legitimate screening criteria for a job.  God help us.

If hypothetically the above story is true and I somehow get in a terrible accident because somehow my brake lines were cut, accidentally, just know I died with a car seat in the back of minivan – I’m not hiding it for anyone! Fight the Power!