Category Archives: SHRM

The Life Span of a Crappy Recruiter!

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I have to give credit where credit is due, and Aerotek is the one that originally discovered how long it takes to figure out you suck as a recruiter! It’s right around 9-14 months. The TA world is littered with people who have worked at Aerotek for 9-14 months! If you’ve spent 13 minutes in Talent Acquisition on either the corporate or agency side, you’ve seen a ton of these resumes.

Just having recruiting experience, especially IT or Technical, can guarantee you a recruiting career for at least ten years or more, even if you are completely awful at recruiting! As a President of a recruiting firm, and someone who has run corporate TA shops for years, I see these candidates come across my desk on a weekly basis:

A crappy Recruiter looks like this:

1. First Recruiting job right out of college, working for a big agency recruiting sweatshop and this position lasts 9-12 months. They left because “they didn’t agree with the management style” of said agency. The truth is they weren’t meeting their goals, but we give them a pass because these sweatshops churn and burn through people.

2. The next gig is usually another agency or small corporate recruitment gig. This one usually lasts under 9 months. It’s more of the same, they couldn’t do it the first time, what makes you think they’ll do it for you!?

3. Now, if they’re smart, they jumped from the second gig before getting fired to a very large corporate gig where they have so many recruiters they truly have no idea what they actually do, this will buy you at least 24 months before you’re discovered as a recruiting fraud. In these big organizations you don’t even recruit, just post and pray, anyway, so you should be able to survive.

4. Big organizations finally figured out you’re worthless, but you now know the game, so you leveraged this big corporate name on your resume into your next gig, this time as a senior recruiter, with another big firm who wants you to sell out your last firm and all their recruiting secret. The big secret is, you have no idea, and the last big org gig you had, well, they had no idea.  Once you run out of fake secrets to share, you’ll be kicked to the curb, so start looking for a recruiting manager gig in about 18 months.

5. You jump at the first recruitment manager gig you’re offered. A mid-sized firm, who loves your big company experience and can’t wait for you to save them from themselves. They have super high expectations on what you’re going to do for them, this is not good for you, remember, you suck at recruiting! You’re gone in 9 months.

6. Welcome back to the agency world! You will now bounce around these companies for a while, selling the fact you have ‘contacts’ at big companies of which agency owners want to get into. You’re now 8-10 years into your Recruiting career, and you’re an awful, crappy recruiter.

If you’re truly lucky as a crappy recruiter you’ll fall into some recruiting gig with a college or university or some other sort of fake, non-profit. Those are like wastelands for crappy recruiters. Absolutely no expectations that you’ll do anything of value, just show up, collect a check and follow a process. It’s never your fault, and hey, they don’t want you to move to fast anyway!

Beware TA leaders. There’s a reason a recruiter has had 4 – 6+ jobs in ten years, and it’s not because they’re good at recruiting! The best recruiters don’t move around because they’re so valuable the organizations they work for won’t let them leave! If you’re crappy, people are hoping you leave and take your crappy recruiting skills to your competition!

Things I Learned at Greenhouse OPEN #ghOPEN

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Hey gang!

I’m on the road this week at the Greenhouse OPEN. What’s Greenhouse? It’s one of the top ATSs on the planet – but you already know that if you read my blog!

The Greenhouse OPEN is basically their user conference, where Greenhouse users and those considering using Greenhouse come together as Talent Acquisition Pros and Leaders to experience great recruiting related content from a corporate TA point of view.

I love attending conferences with great TA content, and Greenhouse has done a really great job growing this conference to 1,000 participants. You know it’s good TA content when it doesn’t matter if you use Greenhouse or not, to get a ton out of the sessions.

Also, being that Greenhouse is designed for corporate TA, and not having third-party recruiters in the room, you really get a ton of great sharing and conversation taking place between attendees.

Here’s some cool stuff I learned:

– Some organizations are using very specific, un-produced video, to source candidates! How? Instead of sending a candidate a blind email or text, the recruiter takes their iPhone and records a quick video to the specific person they want and sends them the link to watch. “Hey Tim, I found you and want to talk to you about…Here’s why you would be great…Etc.” The response rate from the organization using this is super high, as you can imagine.

– Organizations are worried about Recruiter Experience! You know what, you do not want your hiring process to suck for candidates. We all get that 100%! But, what about your recruiters? Does it suck to work as a recruiter in your environment? If it does, that might be worse for your organization in attracting talent, then if your CX sucks. We tend not to even give this concept of Recruiter Experience any thought at all, but we should!

– Across all industries, text response rates from candidates are running 70%-ish, in all kinds of roles from hourly to salaried, tech to healthcare. Texting candidates keep coming up as either something organizations can’t live without, or something they are not using, and don’t want to use. I find this really strange, as it seems like it’s a form of communication that everyone is using. Being able to have etiquette and rules of engagement are important.

– Not all employee referrals are created equal. Great employees are more likely to refer great referrals. Bad employees are more likely to refer bad employees. You don’t want bad referrals, so it’s best to have a program that allows you to segment and know who is providing you with your best referrals. Manually, this is difficult, but with technology like Greenhouse and Teamable, you can start to get a real sense of who should be referring more in your environment.

I’m going to keep advocating that you find ways to spend more time with other TA pros and leaders. We learn from each other when we are in safe, and encouraging environments to share. Does that have to be at a conference in New York? Nope. It’s great if you get the chance, but you can also start or find local outlets for groups of peers to get together.

I love that Greenhouse and others are showing the industry the way, and I thank them for bringing so many great and giving TA pros together. Such a powerful way to learn and develop as a professional!

5 Traits that Make Great HR Partners Great!

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I use to think the title ‘HR Partner’ was played out and it probably was for a time.  There was a point a few years ago when every HR Pro had to change their title from HR Manager, HR Director, etc., to HR Partner.  It always made me feel like we were all apart of a bad cowboy movie, ‘Giddy up, Partner!’

I’ve actually grown to really like the “Partner” in the title of an HR Professional.  While many HR Pros just changed their title, I’ve met some great ‘Partners’ in HR who have changed their game, to match their title change.

What makes a Great HR Partner Great?  Here are 5 things I think makes them game changers:

1. Great HR Partners know your business.  Now, wait.  I didn’t say they ‘knew their own business’, they know the business of who they support. But wait, there’s more!  They know the business of who they support, the way the person or team they support knows it. Say what?!  It’s not good enough to know the business of your organization.  You have to know how those you support know and support the business.

That could be different, based on the leader.  One leader might be ultra-conservative in their business practices, another risky. A great HR Partner knows how to support them in the way those they support, want to be supported – while still being able to do the HR part of their job.

2.  Great HR Partners have a short-term memory. Great baseball pitchers don’t remember one pitch to the next.  Each pitch is new. Each pitch has a potential for success.  If they remembered each pitch, the last one, that was hit for a home run, would cloud their judgment about the next pitch.

Great HR Partners are willing to change their mind and try new things.  They don’t carry around their experiences like a suitcase, pulling them out and throwing them on the table each time those they support want to try something new.  Don’t forget about your failures, but also don’t let your failures stop you from trying again.

3. Great HR Partners allow risk.  A great HR Partner is able and willing to accept that organizations have risk.  It is not the job of HR to eliminate risk, it is the job of HR to advise of risk, then find ways to help those they support, their partners, to achieve the optimal results in spite of those risks.  Far too many HR Partners attempt to eliminate risk and become the ‘No’ police.  Great HR Partners know when to say “No” and when to say “Yes”.

4. Great HR Partners don’t pass blame.  If you are a great HR partner and you work with great partners, you will all support each other in the decision making process.  A great HR Partner will never pass blame but will accept their share as being one of those who supported the decision to move forward.

This doesn’t mean you become a doormat.  Behind closed doors, with your partners, you hash out what there is to hash out.  When the doors open – all partners support the final decision that is made.  A Great HR Partner will have the influence to ensure they can, and will, support that decision when those doors open up.

5. Great HR Partners don’t wait to be asked.  A great partner in any capacity is going to support those they support with every skill they have available to them.  In HR we have people skills – so when those who we support have issues, we offer up our ideas on what we can do to help the team.  Great HR Partners don’t stop at HR advice!  In a time of brainstorming and problem solving the idea that goes unshared, is the worst kind of idea.

I might not know operations, and I will say that up front, but I’m going to put myself out there and tell my partners that eliminating the rubber grommets on bottom of the widget is a bad idea, because while it saves us $.13 per unit, it also makes our product slide around and that ultimately will piss off the customer.

Being an ‘HR Partner’ has very little to do with HR.  Those you support expect you have the HR expertise. What they don’t expect is how great of a ‘partner’ you can be.  Great HR Partners focus on the partnership, not on the HR.

The Latest Dating Trend has Always been a Leadership Trend!

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Have you heard of the dating concept called, “Stashing”?

Here’s the Urban Dictionary definition of stashing (editor’s note: you know you’re about to read a great HR post when it starts with a definition from Urban Dictionary!):

“Stashing is when you’re in a relationship with someone and you refuse to introduce them to your friends and family; mostly because you view the person as temporary, replaceable, and/or you’re an assh@le.”

There are other reasons you might ‘stash’ someone. Maybe you know your friends and family would approve of this person, so you stash them because you still like them, but you don’t want to upset your friends and family. Maybe you’re worried your friends might try and move in on this person themselves, so you stash them.

But, usually, stashing has more to do with there is something about the person that embarrasses you, most likely because you’re a shallow, horrible person, so you stash this person you’re in a relationship with. On the leadership side, stashing actually takes the exact opposite effect.

Leadership Stashing

Leadership stashing is when a leader purposely makes sure one of their direct reports doesn’t have a high profile, so that other managers within the same organization won’t know you have a rock star on your team and then try to steal them to their team.

This happens all the time, especially within large organizations!

Here’s how it works. I’m a leader of a group, my name is Tim. A year ago I hired Marcus right out of college. Your basic new hire grad. Green as grass, just like every other new graduate. I quickly came to understand that Marcus had ‘it’. He was a natural. I know Marcus will easily be better than me in the near future if he’s not already better than me.

As a leader, I’ve got a decision to make. Keep Marcus stashed on my team and reap the professional benefits, or position Marcus for promotion, in which I’ll probably lose him off my team. With Marcus on my team, I exceeded all my measures last year, and Timmy got a big bonus. So did Marcus.

When asked in leadership meeting what I’m doing with my ‘team’ to exceed all my measures, I let everyone know some of the ‘new’ leadership accountability strategies I’m using, and how it really comes back to setting great measures and then holding your team accountable to meeting those measures. Marcus, specifically, doesn’t come up.

Am I a bad leader?

Yes, and this is happening in every organization on the planet.

We love to frame this around, “well, Marcus just needs some more seasoning, and I’m the right person to give it to him”. “Marcus is young, and not quite ready.” “Under my leadership, Marcus is thriving, but under some of these other yahoos, who knows what might happen.”

The right thing to do is obvious and simple. My group is doing well, I let the organization know, it’s a team effort, but you all have to know, I hired a rock star, and we need to get Marcus on a fast track to leadership. That’s the right thing, but it’s not as easy as it sounds when you’ve been struggling to climb your own ladder.

What we know is leaders stash talent.

It’s our job as HR pros and leaders to find that stashed talent and elevate that talent within the organization. If we don’t, that talent will most likely leave because being stashed sucks in life and in your career.

 

Career Confessions from GenZ: Are You Recruiting Me on YouTube?

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In the past few years, I have developed a new obsession: gymnastics. I have gone full on gymnastics crazy. I watch all of the meets I can and often will go the Michigan Women’s gymnastics meets alone because I don’t want the distraction of having to entertain a friend! Although I don’t exactly know the root of my obsession, I know what has been aiding it: YouTube.

YouTube has become a driving force in the lives of Gen-Z. A new statistic came out recently that over 70% of Gen-Z watches 2 hours of YouTube videos a day. Also, in a survey of teenagers, 97% said they use YouTube which was almost 30% more than Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat.

In my opinion, YouTube is the most diversified of all media platforms. There is something interesting for literally everyone in the world. For example, there’s a whole community of people that post entire gymnastics meets so I can watch them over and over (or so I can watch them on mute during class….).

In order to recruit Gen-Z candidates, I’d argue that YouTube is the way to go.

Not only are you statistically going to reach more of us, but you are going to hold more of our attention due to the nature of the platform. Most of the ads on YouTube are videos and often you can’t close them until at least 5 seconds have passed. I can describe many more YouTube ads than I can of any other platforms.

Another appealing characteristic of YouTube is the ability to appeal to a certain audience. Since YouTube has a wide array of channels and videos, it is easy to target a certain audience by finding the videos they watch. While I don’t really know what audience will try to reach me through gymnastics videos, you can probably find some computer programmers through gaming channels.

I think that YouTube should be the go-to media platform for recruiting.

There is a difference in uses of YouTube amongst generations. While my parents may only be using YouTube to watch the occasional viral video (my current fav is Fergie’s National Anthem), Gen-Z sees it as a place to interact with people of common interests over video content. And we all know how Gen-Z loves our video content. I encourage everyone to go on YouTube and get lost for awhile, and then you’ll see the appeal it has to us Gen-Zer’s.

This post was written by Cameron Sackett (not Tim) – you can probably tell because it lacks grammatical errors!

HR and TA Pros – have a question you would like to ask directly to a GenZ? Ask us in the comments and I’ll respond in an upcoming blog post right here on the project. Have some feedback for me? Again, please share in the comments and/or connect with me on LinkedIn.

Is This a Major Sign Your Company Culture is Broke?

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Or, is this just the reality of workplaces today, in the world we live in with the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements?

That’s the question I was asking myself this week when the Wall Street Journal reported that a group of female employees at Nike circulated their own survey about workplace behaviors. Here are some details from the Quartz at Work article:

According to The Wall Street Journal, the developments were precipitated by an employee-led survey circulated among women at the company. It reportedly asked respondents about inappropriate behavior by men at the company and gender inequities more generally.

Sources told the paper that Parker eventually learned of the survey, which led to a recently completed six-month formal review of company culture. Then, last week, employees learned that Nike brand president Trevor Edwards, widely considered Parker’s likely successor, would step down in August, while one of his top lieutenants, vice president Jayme Martin, was terminated immediately. According to the Journal, the two men “protected male subordinates who engaged in behavior that was demeaning to female colleagues.”

So, before I give you my opinion, I have to tell you I’m a complete Nike fanboy! My first pair of Nike’s happened around the 6th grade when I was in high school the first Air Jordan’s were released. I saved my money all summer to get my first pair (by the way, I came home from college to find my Dad mowing the lawn in these same shoes, believing since I left them in my closet I no longer wanted them!). I’m not a complete sneakerhead, but I’m a wannabe sneakerhead for sure. I love Nike, as much as anyone can love a brand.

I believe Nike’s culture is fine. It’s probably better than most places to work in the world by a great deal. I feel this way from people I know who work there and feedback I hear in HR circles. Nike is not Uber, by a million miles.

I think this shows that every workplace, no matter how good, still has some things we need to clean up. Should female employees at Nike have to circulate their own survey to deal with poor workplace behaviors? No. But, understand that Nike, over most companies, hires emboldened, powerful women. That means this isn’t surprising. The surprising part would be that these women didn’t take action.

I’m not sitting in Nike, so I don’t know if the response that happened was right, or enough. On the outside looking in, it seems like the senior leadership team handled this appropriately.

In the past, I can only imagine how this would have been handled, but my guess is it wouldn’t have been with a senior leader leaving the company, it probably would have been a lot of coaching these female employees around the appropriate way to lodge a complaint, followed by many of these females eventually leaving or being pushed out.

That was the old HR/leadership playbook. That playbook no longer works.

I would love to hear your opinion on this real HR issue and how it was handled by a very visible brand? Hit me in the comments!

 

3 Ways Employers Should Be Encouraging March Madness!

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For those that know me, I’m a huge basketball fan.  Pro, college, AAU, high school, hell, if you really dig into my past you would probably find me hanging out at some playground breaking down the defense effort of a pickup game between grade school kids.  So, when March Madness time comes around each year I’m like many of your employees.  I’m trying to find the best ways to work and watch basketball, or at the very least stay up on my brackets and see who is getting upset!

With all the hype over the past few years about lost productivity, do to March Madness, in the workplace.  I felt it was my duty to provide HR Pros with some helpful tips and tricks to get your staff to highly productive during this time of year.

Here are my ideas:

1. Put up TVs throughout the office.  Let’s face it, you really only have one or two hoops junkies in the office, and those folks usually spend vacation time to ensure they don’t miss a minute.  Everyone else just wants to see scores and highlights.  They’re a casual fan.  They’re willing to work a perfectly normal day, and will probably be just a productive, if not more, with the TVs steaming all the games in the background.  Plus, if you get a close game or big upset, you’ll get some team excitement in the air.  This also stops most of your staff trying to stream the games on their desktops for the entire afternoon.

2. Call off work those afternoons.  Let’s face it, March Madness is pretty close to a national holiday as we will ever get.  Doesn’t matter if you’re female or male, young or old, what religion you are, we all love the drama and excitement of March Madness.  Just close the office.  Make a deal with your staff to reach certain goals and if they’re met, take them to the local watering hole yourself and have some fun with it.  Employees like to rally around a fun idea.  You don’t have to make everything fun, all the time, but once in a while, it helps to lift productivity.

3. Shut off all access.  Yep, you read that correctly. Have IT shut down all access to anything related to March Madness.  Threaten to fire any employee caught checking scores on their smartphone, or calling a friend to see how it’s going.  Fear!  Fear is a great short-term lifter of productivity.  Whether we like to admit it, or not, it’s true.  If you went out right now into your office and told the entire staff at the end of the day you’re firing the least productive person, you would see productivity shoot through the roof!  You would also see about half your staff, the half you want to keep, put in their notice over the next 4-6 weeks.

The reality is, most people will do business as usual.  While the CNN’s of the world love to point to the millions of dollars American corporations lose during March Madness, it’s no different than so many things that can consume our thoughts in any given day.

I do think HR and leadership, each year, lose out on a great way to have fun and raise engagement during March Madness.  It’s something most of your staff has some interest in, and depending on your city and the schools your employees went to, it can get heightened pretty significantly.

For the record, I’m not picking Michigan State.  I want to with all my might, but I’m nervous that my bracket mojo would work the opposite, so I’ll pick someone else, and feel awesome when Sparty wins and I lose my bracket!

 

Are HR Conferences Responsible for Ensuring You Connect? #UltiConnect

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So, this week I’m out at Ultimate Software’s annual customer conference called Ultimate Connections. They do a great job with their conference, and like their software, they’re willing to change quickly and try stuff.

A couple of things happened while I was here and it got me thinking about what the true value of any conference is we attend. Of course, the easy answer is always – it’s about connecting with peers and learning! But, then you show up at the conference and you talk to know one, you ask no questions, and you’re back in your room by 8 pm.

Ultimate Connections has peer networking time, but like many conferences, they make these sessions, with activities, based on the size of similar organizations. This is brilliant for a number of reasons because you now will make some really good connections and share your pain and successes, and down the road when you have a question you now have a handful of people to reach out to!

Speaking of questions. You know that awkward time at the end of conference sessions when the speaker says – “So, any questions?” and you hear crickets, or that one person who will ask, “Is the powerpoint deck available?”

Ultimate figured this happens to everyone so what’s a better way to increase engagement? How about you give the session attendees a phone number to text your questions to throughout the session!? It’s simple and you can’t believe how many questions come in. As a speaker, you bring a partner who can filter similar questions and now you have some real dynamic Q&A to go along with your session!

Conferences, for the most part, are all fairly similar. You get some great content, some average, some cool keynotes, some parties, a vendor show, etc. The reality is the best conference you’ll ever attend is the one where you remember actually connecting with real people, and you maintain those connections.

That will be a great takeaway for the Ultimate team in how can they continue the great connections beyond the conference with their customers. Not only is a super value-add for the attendees, but it also ensures higher retention when you can build your professional network because of the technology you’re using.

So, as the HR conference season gets into full swing, challenge yourself to force yourself to make connections with people you don’t know and build that network!

HR Blogging is about making HR Connections #UltiConnect

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An HR friend of mine, Cheryl Nelson, and I are out at Ultimate Connections, Ultimate Software’s annual user conference. I twisted her arm to get her on video because she just started writing her own HR blog after reading hundreds of my posts!

Cheryl’s new blog is called “Kolor Me HR” check it out. Cheryl is a real-life HR leader/Pro who is in the trenches every day. I love when practitioners take up writing because that’s when you really learn that we are all in this together!

Cheryl said she was nervous about doing this video, but said, “Amazing things happen when you say Yes!” She even wrote a post on that concept! I love it! I think you’ll agree, she was great!

Career Confessions from GenZ: Are you Pre-boarding Interns?

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College orientation was one of the most uncomfortable and awkward experiences of my life. I would say that most other current college students would attest to this. I think it’s very unreasonable to expect a group of 18-year-olds to meet for the first time and become friends in a short time span while learning everything you’re supposed to know about the school you are attending.

Thankfully I am through the college orientation process, but I have a lifetime of job orientations ahead of me. Apparently, this process in the workforce is called “onboarding” (thanks, Dad!), but to newbies like me, we invented a new term to describe this orientation called “pre-boarding”.

This new style of onboarding is a more in-depth look into general ideas about the workforce in addition to normal onboarding events. This is for people that have never worked real-life jobs before (yup, that’s me). I like this idea of pre-boarding because I am a very curious person that has a million questions and likes them all to be answered! So, here are some specific topics that I want companies to focus on while pre-boarding newbies like me:

  1. Dress Code: For someone that has always put a heavy emphasis on what I wear, this is very important to me and other young people. The words “business casual” mean absolutely nothing to me. I need concrete examples of what to wear and this means VISUALS.  I want someone to show me pictures or even show me real-life examples of what I should be wearing every day to work. Please and thank you.
  2. Logistics: I’m calling this section logistics because it encompasses a whole array of logistical things. I need to know where to park, where to sit, when I eat, where I eat, where’s the bathroom, when I’m supposed to arrive, when I’m supposed to leave, among many other things. And I would like a concrete answer to all of these. Coming from a school environment, like most newbies are, we are always told when to do things and how to do them. Therefore, it is important to realize this and adhere to how your new employees have been given information for most of their lives.
  3. Job-related content: This part of the pre-boarding process should be different for every job because it has to do with the specific duties and tasks that new employees will be performing. This can include things like meeting your fellow team members, learning how to use certain software or programs, and other instructional demonstrations as needed (you guys already know how to do this part). Will I have a laptop, desktop, no computer, no desk? Should I bring my own laptop? What about my phone, you know I’m not going anywhere without that!? 

I’m sure I’m forgetting a million other things that are important, but these are just things that I specifically worry about. For this pre-boarding process, it is extremely important to leave all questions unanswered. Gen-Z (and young people across history) DON’T ask questions, so it is important to make sure you think of everything beforehand. This process will help alleviate pressure from your new employee and will warrant an easy and successful transition into their new position.

Here’s to hoping that my future bosses will be reading this post to make it easier for me!

 

HR and TA Pros – have a question you would like to ask directly to a GenZ? Ask us in the comments and I’ll have Cameron respond in an upcoming blog post right here on the project. Have some feedback for Cameron? Again, please share in the comments and/or connect with him on LinkedIn.