The week of The Talent Fix, Volume 2! And SHRM Talent!
Grab your copy today: https://www.amazon.com/Talent-Fix-Leaders-Guide-Recruiting/dp/158644638X
The week of The Talent Fix, Volume 2!
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Category Archives: SHRM
The 2024 Conference Season is Here! Here is what I’m looking forward to
The HR/TA/LOD/Payroll/Etc. conference season is upon us. I’ve got a new book launching at SHRM Talent in April, so it will be an especially busy season for me this year. I’m excited for 2024 for a number of reasons.
I think the one thing I enjoy about conference season more than any other is connecting with peers and friends in the industry. I have the most inspiring and challenging conversations at conferences. I’ve found lifelong friends at professional conferences. I genuinely find it an awarding and educational opportunity that I love being a part of.
It came to my attention late last year that a group of professionals is working to put together a movement called #OperationPurpleLight that helps protect individuals from getting assaulted at conferences. I’m not naive to the problem of mostly women getting drugged and raped in our society. I was shocked to hear the rate at which this happens at professional conferences. Especially at HR-related conferences, with a demographic upwards of 80%+ female, we have to find ways to keep all participants safe.
It’s disgusting that anyone would ever feel threatened at a professional conference to begin with, especially if the perpetrator is a peer! So, as you are out this season, make special note of the efforts by Operation Purple Light, the conferences that are supporting this effort, and what you can do personally to ensure the peers around you have an enjoyable and safe experience attending conferences!
What am I looking forward to?
- TransformHR – Vegas, March – Transform has a unique format where almost all of the content is done in a panel format with actual practitioners. Many of them are from SMB and Mid-enterprise organizations, and it leads to some amazing conversations that can really get into the weeds about the what, why, and how we do things!
- Michigan HR Day – Lansing, MI, April – 2,500 HR pros all coming into Lansing, MI, for a day full of content and development. It’s one of the largest HR conferences in the US at that number! And it’s in my backyard! How the heck?! Over 15 years ago, the governor of Michigan decided to declare the second Wednesday of April to be a state-wide day of celebration and development for HR, and this thing has gotten big! The majority of state SHRM conferences can’t get 2500 attendees!
- SHRM Talent – Vegas, April (I spend way too much time in Vegas) – Besides the aforementioned book launch, I’ll also be the closing keynote speaker at SHRM Talent this year. I’m super excited about that and a bit nervous. It’s a big crowd, but I’m speaking to my peeps, so that’s comforting. I believe this is the best Talent Acquisition conference currently running.
- HR Tech Europe – Amsterdam, May – The sister conference to the world’s largest HR Tech conference in Vegas, HR Tech Europe is going on the road overseas, and it will be an amazing show. The HR Tech Conferences are amazing, and I’ve gone every year for the past decade. This is one I won’t miss on my calendar.
- SHRM Annual – Chicago, June – Ted Lasso is keynoting!! Always huge. Always fun. I’ll be speaking and signing books. It’s the single largest HR conference on the planet, and really, no one else is even close. It’ll be 20,000+ HR pros in one place. If you ever have the ability to attend, it’s an HR bucket list must-do.
- RecFest USA Nashville – Nashville, September – This is an outdoor recruiting festival, big tents and all, in the heart of Nashville. There is nothing else like this on the planet! It’s completely unique, and I’m taking my entire TA team with me to this event this year. In 2023, the best TA conversations I had all year happened at RecFest!
- Workday Rising – Vegas, September – One of the fastest-growing and largest HCM suites in the world, Workday seems to be taking over the universe! Workday Rising brings together thousands of enterprise Workday clients for development, education, and a little bit of fun. If you’re a Workday client, you should be investing to send your team here.
- The HR Technology Conference – Vegas, September – If you’re an HR Technology nerd, like I am, this is another bucket list conference to attend. You’ve got the startup pavilion, Pitchfest competition, HR tech products of the year awards, and the biggest HR Tech expo in the world; it’s by far the top HR Tech conference on the planet.
This is just a tip of what’s available and out there for your own professional development. There’s been a giant growth of HR Tech user conferences as well – Workday Rising, Oracle World, LinkedIn Talent Connect, etc. are a few giant ones. This isn’t even getting into the SHRM state conferences, industry-specialized conferences, etc. Then you have local DisruptHR events, local SHRM events, etc. If you wanted to, you could go to an HR event every single week of the year.
Let me know if you’ll be attending any of these conferences that I’ll be at. I would love to connect and share ideas.
5 Mid-Year HR Trends You Should Be Thinking About for 2024!!
Is the world moving faster after the pandemic or is it just me?! It seems like for all the bad that Covid brought, it did make us slow down a bit. Now, we are back on the treadmill running faster than ever.
I’m sitting down this week and doing a live webinar (if you can’t make the live time, just sign up and we can send you the recording) discussing the biggest trends in HR and Talent Acquisition that are happening right now but that will also have a tremendous impact to our 2024 planning!
The webcast will be live on Wednesday, July 19 at 3 pm EST.
Shout out to the amazing team at Pillar for making this happen…
Here are some more details.
We’re halfway through 2023 (crazy, right?!), so now seems like the perfect time to reflect on the top 5 trends that have shaped the year thus far. And who better to do it with than Tim Sackett, President of HRU Technical Resources & top 100 Global HR Tech Influencer?! Join us as we sit down with Tim to discuss what is trending today in the HR & talent acquisition space and what he sees as the trends that will continue into 2024 and beyond.
Here’s what you can learn during the session:
- Practical strategies to leverage these trends for maximum impact
- How to gain a competitive edge by understanding how these trends can transform your HR/TA practices
- The key drivers shaping the way organizations attract, engage, and retain talent
…& more! Looking forward to seeing you on July 19th as we have the opportunity to learn from one of the industry’s most respected thought leaders! It’s also been a year since we launched our webinar series with Tim himself, so join us as we celebrate our webinar series 1-year anniversary.
The Reason You Got Ghosted by a Candidate!
Yesterday I answered a question from a candidate about why an employer ghosted them after their interview. Many readers were upset because they were also getting ghosted by candidates. In fact, like all the time, way more than then they would ever ghost a candidate. Oh, two wrongs do make a right!
All ghosting is sh*tty behavior by candidates and by those of us who hire. Period.
The reality is that this is hard to admit, and as a professional, we own a portion of the candidate ghosting. Are candidates awful for doing it in the first place? Yes. I will not let them off the hook. But I also only control what I can control, and that is my process, behaviors, etc.
Why are candidates ghosting us?
1. We are moving too fast. Wait, what?! We are told to move fast because that’s what candidates want!? Yes, but when you move so fast, the candidates don’t really know you (your company and you personally), the job, the boss, or the reasons why they should come and interview. It all doesn’t seem real. So, it becomes easy to just not show up. (Que Taylor Swift – We need to slow down!)
2. We aren’t giving candidates a way to easily tell us they moved on with another offer. Hourly candidates, especially, are moving fast and have multiple offers. You might have scheduled them for an interview later in the week, but they have already decided to go with another offer. While we gave them instructions on where to go and when we could have made it easier for them to opt out. Many organizations are using auto-scheduling tools like Paradox, which sends reminders and lets candidates choose to reschedule or cancel via text. Those organizations get significantly less ghosting!
3. We believe that once a candidate schedules an interview, our job is done. The most powerful human emotion in existence is being wanted by others. Candidates come to you for a number of reasons, all of which they can most likely get from someone else as well. But, you showing them more desirable than someone else is a key to great talent attraction. You still need to do that with your messaging even after the interview is scheduled.
4. We allow it to happen without any ramifications. (Okay, this might be a bit aggressive!) What if, every time a candidate ghosted you for an interview, you posted their picture and details on social media!? Yikes! Right?! “This is Tim Sackett, a cute redhead. He ghosted us for an interview yesterday at 3 pm. If you see him, tell him we are thinking about him!” Do you think it would get noticed? Heck, yes, it would!
5. We are making it too easy for candidates to interview. This is a catch-22. We need talent, so we reduce every roadblock possible for candidates. It’s so easy. Most don’t care if they burn the bridge or not. That is truly why employee referrals are so valuable for most employers. Referrals are far less likely to burn a bridge. That might be a trick to use. Ask a candidate: Do you know anyone at our company? Begin to tie the personal connection back to them, and they will be far less likely to ghost. Also, make it super hard to get an interview, and people will hold it as a higher value! “Only 1% of people who apply to our company ever get an interview! it’s a rare thing we offer to only the top candidates.” If you knew that was the case, you would show up for that interview!
I think most of the candidate ghosting is truly reflective of the poor morals and values of the people who are doing it. You made a commitment to someone. You keep that commitment, or at the “very” least, you inform that person you will no longer be able to keep that commitment. It’s a pretty basic human condition. Those who ghost probably had crappy parents and mentors in their life who didn’t teach them the basics. I’ve never once spoken to or met an upstanding individual who thought highly of themselves that would ghost. High-quality people don’t ghost. Low-quality people do.
People don’t like to hear that. They want to talk about circumstances and bad employers, etc. The reality is high-quality people will contact someone and let them know they no longer want to be considered, regardless of how crappy the employer may or may not be. Low-quality people just don’t show up. Don’t hate the player. Hate the game. I’m just telling you the truth. You already know.
If you’re an employer and you ghost candidates after interviews – You (not your organization). You, personally, are of low quality, just like the candidates who ghost you. I don’t like to hire low-quality people. But I also want to give every opportunity for a low-quality person to become a high-quality person.
The Reason You Got Ghosted After Your Interview
Dear Timmy,
I recently applied for a position that I’m perfect for! A recruiter from the company contacted me and scheduled me for an interview with the manager. I went, the interview was a little over an hour, and it went great! I immediately followed up with an email to the recruiter and the manager thanking them, but since then, I’ve heard nothing, and it’s been weeks. I’ve sent follow-up emails to both the recruiter and the manager, and I’ve gotten no reply.
What should I do? Why do companies do this to candidates? I would rather they just tell me they aren’t interested than have them say nothing at all!
The Ghost Candidate
************************************************************
Dear Ghost,
There are a number of reasons that recruiters and hiring managers ghost candidates, and none of them are good!
Here’s a short list of some of these reasons:
– They hated you and hope you go away when they ghost you because the conflict is uncomfortable.
– They like you, but not as much as another candidate. They’re trying to talk into the job but want to leave you on the back burner, but they’re idiots and don’t know how to do this properly.
– They decided to promote someone internally, and they don’t care about candidate experience enough to tell you they went in another direction.
– They have a completely broken recruitment process and might still be going through it believing you’re just as happy as a pig in shi…
– They think they communicated to you electronically to bug off through their ATS, but they haven’t audited the process to know this isn’t working.
– The recruiter got fired, and no one picked up the process.
I would love to tell you that ghosting candidates are a rare thing, but it’s not! It happens all the time! There is never a reason to ghost a candidate, ever! Sometimes I believe candidates get ghosted by recruiters because hiring managers don’t give feedback, but that still isn’t an excuse I would accept. At least tell the candidate that!
Look, I’ve ghosted people. At conference cocktail parties, I’ve been known to ghost my way right back up to my room and go to sleep! When it comes to candidates, I don’t ghost! I would rather tell them the truth so they don’t keep coming back around unless I want them to come back around.
I think most recruiters ghost candidates because they’re in over their heads with the amount of work they have, and they mean to get back to people but just don’t have the time. When you’re in firefighting mode, you tend to only communicate with the candidates you want, not the ones you don’t. Is this good practice? Heck, no! But when you’re fighting fires, you do what you have to do to stay alive.
What would I do if I was you?
Here are a few ideas to try if you really want to know the truth:
1. Send a handwritten letter to the CEO of the company briefly explaining your experience and what outcome you would like.
2. Go on Twitter, and in 140 characters, send a shot across the bow! “XYZ Co. I interviewed two weeks ago and still haven’t heard anything! Can you help me!?” (t will work on Facebook as well!)
3. Write a post about your experience on LinkedIn and tag the recruiter and the recruiter’s boss.
4. Take the hint and go find a company that truly values you and your talent! If the organization and this manager treat candidates like this, imagine how you’ll be treated as an employee.
HR 101: My Favorite (and Biggest) HR Mistake!
I’ve made more mistakes in my HR career than I care to even remember. I could probably write a book!
It’s funny to think about your mistakes because I think invariably every person takes those mistakes and tries to turn them into some type of “learning.”
It’s a classic interview question – “So, Mr. Sackett, tell me about your biggest mistake in your career and what did you learn from it?” I have even asked it myself when interviewing others.
A nauseating response
Just once, I want someone to answer, “Well, besides coming to this lame interview, I’d have to say drinking my way through college, getting average grades, and having to take positions within HR, are probably my biggest ones. What I’ve learned is that all those high school kids in band and on the debate team really were smarter than me, and my ability to be a third-team all-conference point guard, in hindsight, probably didn’t get me into the career I was hoping for.”
But it never happens. No one is really honest about their mistakes because in making the most mistakes you do something stupid – something so stupid, you would rather not share it with anyone. So, we come up with answers like, “My biggest mistake was working too hard on a project with my last employer and not getting others involved, and I’ve learned while you can get the project done and on time by yourself, you really need to include everyone.”
That kind of answer makes me vomit. And somehow, as HR pros, we accept that answer and move on to the next question, almost like that question was just a test – a test to see if you were stupid enough to actually tell us the truth and brighten up our day!
But I’ve got a good one. I do have a favorite HR mistake, and two friends of mine recently made me think about it.
Yes, this is my favorite HR mistake
Here’s my all-time favorite HR mistake – Telling someone to go after a promotion and more money, leaving a position they truly enjoyed.
When I started my career right out of college, I gave myself 12 years to become a Vice President. Seemed like a logical goal at the time, but in hindsight, it seems obviously stupid now. It took me 16 years, and only after I realized it no longer mattered did I finally reach that level.
Two friends both recently had opportunities to leave organizations and positions they really liked, and I gave them both the same advice – you can’t even come close to measuring the value of truly liking the job you have. You just can’t, so answer me this one question: Do you love what you are doing, and who you are doing it for?
If the answer is “yes,” stay put. It’s that simple, and that was my learning.
I finally learned my lesson
I’ve left two positions in my life where I loved what I was doing and loved the organizations – both to take promotional opportunities with other companies. Both times I made the wrong decision. That is a tough mistake to make twice
I used to give out this advice to people — go ahead and leave because you’re going to have ten-plus jobs in your life, and you might as well move up as fast as you can. I don’t do that any longer; in fact, I now spend time trying to talk people out of taking new jobs – which I know is ironic since, at my core, I’m a recruiter!
I think we all hope that we learn over time from our mistakes. Once in a while, I actually do!
@SHRMLabs Announces 2023 HR Technology Winner! #SHRM23
This was the third year of SHRM’s Better Workplaces Challenge Cup, which is a startup competition for HR Technology companies. SHRM CEO, Johnny Taylor, has been very open about his vision for SHRM when it comes to HR Technology. It is his belief that SHRM should be the leader in HR Technology.
Part of this leadership is the Better Workplace Challenge Cup. Still, it’s also the creation and support of SHRMLabs which acts as an innovation hub for SHRM’s HR Tech aspirations, that are now seeing SHRM make actual venture capital investments into HR Technology startup companies. This is a big move for SHRM and something new for members to pay attention to. SHRMLabs is being led by Guillermo Corea, who continues to push the boundaries of what SHRM can be known for in HR Tech.
HR Technology might be the most important competency for HR Leaders of the future, but it currently stands as the weakest competency by a mile. SHRM is definitely looking to change this and bring HR technology to the forefront of its membership and HR leaders.
I spoke to a number of SHRM Executive Network attendees, and they also echoed these conversations were happening in their meetings this week as well.
Okay, what about the winner of the Better Workplace Challenge Cup?!
First, I was a judge for the finals. Along with my good friend Wiliam Tincup, SHRM Knowledge Center Director Amber Clayton, Tech Entrepreneur Jeff Wald, and author and TV personality Suzy Welch. A lot of smart folks in that judge’s panel!
The competition started with over 400 entries from around the world, and those were paired down to the top 50. From those fifty finalists, we got to one North American finalist: Maxwell, and one international finalist: Inuka.
Maxwell is led by founder Adriana Cisneros Basulto (one of the two female finalists), and it’s a work/life benefits & rewards technology. Basically, through a debit card issued to each of your employees, Maxwell allows each employee to select some select benefits/rewards that fit them specifically.
Inuka is led by founder Robin van Dalen, and it’s a combination of coaching tech and employee experience. Inuka is a technology that works to increase the resiliency of your workforce through science and expert coaching at a very competitive price point that allows all employees to receive coaching, not just those at the executive level.
The winner of the 2023 Better Workplace Challenge Cup is Maxwell.
Why?
That’s always the question. I’ve been lucky enough to be a judge in quite a few of these startup competitions, and it’s never one thing or the same thing. Each founder has just a few minutes to talk you into why they should win. That tends to work very well for technologies that are easy to explain and the judges can wrap their minds around what it is and how will the eventual buyer use the technology.
In this case, Maxwell was super easy to understand how it will work and the judges seem to believe buyers would have an interest in using it for their employees. The reality is both techs were great or they wouldn’t have made it that far. Inuka will also do well and they already have a great list of enterprise brands using the technology. It was just a bit more complex to explain.
I want to thank the SHRMLabs team for inviting me to be a judge and to be apart of SHRM’s journey to get more professionals to pay attention to HR Technology and grow the industry and their competency level. HR Tech isn’t scary or too complex for anyone in HR to understand. If IT or vendors are making it seem that way, you have the wrong IT leaders and HR Tech vendors! HR Professionals and leaders deal with some of the most complex things on a daily basis, technology is definitely something we can master.
75 Years of SHRM! What does the next 75 years bring? #SHRM23 @SHRM
It’s the annual conference for SHRM this week, and I’m in Vegas for the show. This is SHRM’s 75th year, so it’s a big celebration and the biggest conference they’ve ever put on, with over 24,000 HR Professionals in attendance.
This is my 12th or 13th SHRM conference, and every single one I’m still amazed at the passion and energy HR professionals bring here. I love to tell any audience I speak to that those who attend a SHRM conference – local, state, or national, are in the top 1% of HR Professionals worldwide. Why? The vast majority of HR Professionals will never do anything to make themselves a better HR professional. The professionals who make the effort to attend SHRM events are purposely working to increase their HR skills. I think that is amazing.
SHRM has had a mission to help HR professionals be the best HR professionals for 75 years. Building community, building educational resources, building certification. The SHRM I originally signed up to be a member of in 2001 is not the same SHRM that it is today. Today’s SHRM has a large international presence that grows every year. Today’s SHRM is pushing the boundaries within the HR Technology community with their Better Workplace Challenge Cup and SHRMLabs, investing in many HR Technology startups. SHRM continues to publish amazing authors with a specific emphasis on our profession. They’ve added specialty micro-credentials to help HR professionals as we get more and more specialized in our field.
I’m not a SHRM historian. There are way better people who can give you that knowledge. For me, the history of SHRM isn’t as important as the future of SHRM.
SHRM is one of the largest associations in any capacity in the world. Over 300,000 members strong and growing. HR, over the past few decades, has continued to increase its relevance and importance to world-class organizations, and I don’t see it stopping.
What would I like to see SHRM do over the next decade?
- Bring Talent Acquisition into the fold in a much bigger way. Some sort of full-blown certification, training, and education. TA, in many ways, rivals HR as a function. Most CEOs would say there is nothing more important for the organization than their ability to acquire and keep talent.
- Build HR Technology as a core competency that is a strength in HR Leaders. Currently, HR Technology is the weakest competency overall for HR leaders. In the future, that can not be the case.
- I love what LinkedIn Learning has done, and I think SHRM can do the exact same thing for HR. Short, impactful video-driven HR education for top voices and minds in our field. GenZ grew up on video, shorter range, on-demand, and classic education and development will not call to them.
- Get more involved in university HR and TA program development. We continue to see more and more high school graduates specifically choosing HR and TA as careers. While we see a lot of HR college programs, honestly, they aren’t the best. I believe SHRM could lead the charge to help make these programs better. And almost no universities have TA-specific programs, and it’s one of the most important functions in organizations!
I could go on because SHRM is my association and I like to push them forward, but if any of these things can happen above it’s a giant win for our profession. I want to wish all the employees and members of SHRM a Happy 75th Anniversary. It’s a huge accomplishment and our size and voice in industry are being heard.
Job Advertising: Missed Opportunities and Easy Fixes
My friend and exceptional journalist, Roy Maurer, covered my Job Advertising session at SHRM Talent 23 and this is an excerpt from his article over at SHRM. Check it out:
Hiring often begins with a job ad. And attracting the right candidates starts with thoughtfully developing a targeted, creative job ad that stands out. Unfortunately, the vast majority of employers still practice the “post and pray” approach—posting generic job ads on a careers site and hoping someone will apply.
“Job ads are meant to interest people in your jobs,” said Tim Sackett, SHRM-SCP, an industry veteran, technology expert and author of The Talent Fix (SHRM, 2018), speaking April 17 at the SHRM Talent Conference & Expo 2023 in Orlando, Fla. “Applying is an outcome, but the interest must come first. Great job advertising is not about getting more people to apply—it’s about getting the right people to apply.”
Sackett outlined some job advertising fundamentals to help attendees craft more effective job ads, best utilize their recruitment marketing budget and understand the latest job posting trends.
Job Description vs. Job Ad
Misunderstanding the difference between job descriptions and job ads has long been an issue, Sackett said. Many employers are copying and pasting the job description—an internal document—right into the external posting for the job ad. But job descriptions and job ads are fundamentally different and require different treatments.
“The ad is designed to attract. It sells the job. The description describes it. One is created by recruiters [to attract applicants], and one is created by HR with compliance in mind,” he said.
“Recruiters must become more like marketers,” Sackett added. “Your job ad should be mission- and vision-driven. It should not be compliance-driven. You can have fun with it. You can be creative. Think about what it would take to get someone to apply. It’s certainly not a bulleted list of requirements.”
He recommended getting content ideas by asking people already in the role:
- What do you like about the job?
- What about the job challenges you?
- How would you describe this job to someone with no knowledge of the industry?
Sackett said that including a video component is essential. “Simply with the addition of a short video in the ad, 46 percent more people will apply. Even if the video is awful. And every ATS [applicant tracking system] has this functionality.”
Salary Range or Not?
The majority of employers are not yet required to add salary ranges in job ads, but doing so is another surefire way to attract candidates.
“If you can put the salary in the job title, you will get seven times more candidates applying for that job,” Sackett said. “Even if the posted range is under market, more people will apply. People want to know what they will be paid.”
The most common reason employers hold off on adding salary ranges is to avoid upsetting current employees who may not be making as much as a new worker, Sackett said.
Lowest and Highest ROI
Sackett said employers get the lowest return on investment (ROI) from their careers sites. “If you don’t advertise your career site, no one knows to go there,” he said. “You can spend time and money building a beautiful career site, but if you don’t advertise your brand to get people to go there, it’s like putting a billboard behind your building and wondering why no one sees it.”
He said that an employer’s highest ROI is its ATS database full of past candidates. This should be a gold mine of potential employees.
“The message is that if they are not hired, they are…
How do you “practice” HR?
We are constantly told that if we want to be good at anything in life, we must practice. It starts when we are kids, and we want to be our heroes. If you want to be good at sports, or dance, or computer games, you must practice. Not just “play” but specific steps that lead to success in the endeavor we’ve chosen.
Tyler Cowen released his book “Talent” in 2022 and I really like this quote from it:
“What is it you do to practice that is analogous to how a pianist practice scales?”
What do you do each day to practice your profession?
What I find when I ask HR and TA professionals this question, and we really dig in, is there “practice” is showing up and doing the job. That is akin to an NBA player just showing up and playing games but never putting in time and effort outside of the game to increase or maintain their basketball skill level. They wouldn’t be successful for long.
Just showing up and doing the job isn’t practice. That’s the job.
Are we talking about practice…
YES!
Let me tell you how I practice my skill in HR and TA:
- I write on this blog that has nothing to do with my paying job.
- I design and present content for roughly 20+ webinars every year.
- I design and present content to present live on stage for around 20 different talks every year.
- I consciously reach out and schedule calls with experts in our industry to “talk shop” each month that has nothing to do with my paying job.
- I network on sites like LinkedIn to expand my professional network and ask and answer as many questions as I can.
- I will do upwards of 100 tech demos per year in the technology that impacts my industry.
- I will attend upwards of 12 HR and TA professional conferences.
Okay, I’m a complete freak around personal development, primarily because I actually really like this stuff. That makes it easier to do, for sure.
But, I rarely get into a professional dilemma where I don’t feel prepared to handle the situation. I believe that is because I’ve “practiced” a whole bunch!
I get asked frequently, “How did you learn this stuff?”
Practice.
Honestly, my hope is one day, I’ll take this love of practice in my professional life and turn it into some other sort of practice in my personal life. Like, someday, I’ll roll out of bed and be like, “okay, today is the day I stop being an out-of-shape dough ball and get back into shape like I was in college!
I mean, if I can put this level of practice into my professional life, it stands to believe I could put that same level of practice into any part of my life.
Do you want to be “Great” at your Career?
I find almost 100% of people I would ask this question to will say, “Yes, of course!”
But like my lazy butt sitting on the couch at night watching Netflix, they are willing to put in the practice of being great. They are just showing up to work and doing the job. That usually doesn’t lead to greatness.
Don’t get me wrong. Some folks can show up and be great, just like freak athletes. That is about .001% of our society. So slow your roll. That isn’t you.
I want to be great at my job, but I don’t really do anything other than the job to ensure I’ll be great at it. Doesn’t that sound funny? It goes against everything we know about greatness in our lives.
Don’t get me wrong. I don’t believe I’m great at HR and TA. I think I’m pretty good at certain parts of it, but I know people who are so much better than me at so many parts. When you compare yourself against the top 1% in your profession, you feel small. You feel like you need more practice.
When you compare yourself against Kevin in payroll, that constantly loses his way back to his cube, you feel like you’re a giant. Practice isn’t needed to be greater than Kevin. That’s our problem. Most of us are surrounded by average players, and your slightly above-average performance makes you feel like you no longer need practice.
Pick higher performance targets. Chose to emulate someone who amazes you in your profession. Chase greatness through practice.