Category Archives: Social Recruiting

Pretty People Make the Best Employees

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What do you think of, in regards to smarts, when I say: “Sexy Blond model type”?

What about: “Strong Athletic Jock?”

What about: “Scrawny nerdy band geek?”

My guess is most people would answer: Dumb, Dumb, Smart – or something to that context.

In HR we call this profiling and make no mistake, profiling is done by almost all of our hiring managers.  The problem is everything we might have thought is probably wrong in regards to our expectations of looks and brains.  So, why are ugly people smarter?

They’re Not!

Slate recently published an article that contradicts all of our ugly people are more smart myths and actually shows evidence to the contrary. From the article:

Now there were two findings: First, scientists knew that it was possible to gauge someone’s intelligence just by sizing him up; second, they knew that people tend to assume that beauty and brains go together. So they asked the next question: Could it be that good-looking people really are more intelligent?

Here the data were less clear, but several reviews of the literature have concluded that there is indeed a small, positive relationship between beauty and brains. Most recently, the evolutionary psychologist Satoshi Kanazawa pulled huge datasets from two sources—the National Child Development Study in the United Kingdom (including 17,000 people born in 1958), and the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health in the United States (including 21,000 people born around 1980)—both of which included ratings of physical attractiveness and scores on standard intelligence tests.

When Kanazawa analyzed the numbers, he found the two were related: In the U.K., for example, attractive children have an additional 12.4 points of IQ, on average. The relationship held even when he controlled for family background, race, and body size.

That’s right HR Pros, pretty people are smarter!  I can hear hiring managers and creepy executives that only want “cute” secretaries laughing all over the world!

The premise is solid though!  If you go back in our history and culture you see how this type of things evolves:

  1. Very smart guy gets great job or starts a great company and makes a ton of money.
  2. Because of his success, this smart guy now has many choices of very pretty females to pursue as a bride.
  3. Smart guy and pretty bride start a family which genetically result in Pretty-Smart children.
  4. Pretty-smart children grow up with all the opportunities that come to smart beautiful more affluent families.
  5. The cycle repeats.

First, this is a historical thing so my example of using a male as our “Smart guy” and not “Smart girl” is just how this originally developed in society. I’m sure in today’s world this premise has evolved yet again adding women as breadwinners, but attractiveness probably remains. We are talking about how we got to this point, not where are we now.

Additionally, we are looking at how your organization can hire better.  So, how do you hire better?  Hire more pretty people. White, black, male, female, American, Hispanic, gay, straight, it really doesn’t matter, just make sure they’re attractive!

Seems simple enough. Heck, that is even a hiring process that your hiring managers would support! The one thing I’ve never had a hiring manager tell me, male or female, is “hey, you know Tim, they’re just too pretty, they won’t work here.” Never happened. Never will.

Want to increase the talent in your organization? Just hire pretty people!

Talent Acquisition Is Dead!

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So, I wrote this little eBook called, “Talent Acquisition is Dead: Talent Attraction Takes Root“, just click through to read the entire book. It’s built on the concept that for decades, truly the entire history of hiring employees to work for companies, we’ve only ever worried about acquiring talent.

When you think about acquiring something, like assets (“Employee are our most valuable asset!”), the process you go through to acquire something is very different than the process you go through ‘attracting’ something. I believe we are entering a new era in human resources where we no longer look to acquire, we now look to attract!

The concept of acquiring talent is one-sided. I want to acquire something, I go out and acquire it. Hiring people for your organization is not a one-sided affair, but we’ve treated it like that for the history of talent acquisition. The best talent does not like to be acquired. They want to be attracted!

So, how do you attract talent?

Well, that’s what the entire eBook is about, the ideas and technology used in today’s most innovative companies to attract talent.

What we have learned over the past decade is just doing what everyone else does, does not attract great talent. If everyone has ping pong tables and beer on tap, that is no longer an attraction, and many would argue it was never an attraction, to begin with!

How do you attract someone you would eventually like to marry?  You do many things. You might change your outward appearance. That might help attract, but it might not help retain. A true attraction between two people usually happens when their visions of life are comparable. I like you, you like me, we like living on the coast and want a puppy, one child, we hate mean people, and love the environment. We should spend out lives together!

That’s tricky when it comes to hiring, but that’s exactly what talent attraction is all about. How do we share our stories and find out if we are compatible? In the eBook, I lay out five detailed ideas that will help you attract talent into your organization.

I’m thankful for Appcast in giving me the platform to write this, and the help on the editing and design side. Check out the eBook, “Talent Acquisition is Dead: Talent Attraction Takes Root” and let me know what you think!

Maybe Facebook Taking on LinkedIn is the end of Facebook!

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I’ve always been a huge proponent that Facebook could end LinkedIn at any point they decided. Facebook has more active users, more data, it’s a platform everyone is comfortable with, and companies love it as well.

So, when Facebook opened up a company’s ability to now create a job posting on your company Facebook page recently, and have candidates can apply right on that page, stuff just got real for LinkedIn!

It seems like the logical conclusion that Facebook can do what LinkedIn is doing better. But, should it be the logical conclusion?

It seems like all of these social media companies constantly stumble over themselves, primarily because they are constantly breaking new ground with each turn. You try stuff, it doesn’t work, you try more stuff, eventually, you find the secret sauce.

LinkedIn has gone through this pain, multiple times. They had one of the greatest things going ever when they were flat out a professional network and professionals flocked to LI to network, share ideas, etc. It was a modern day equivalent to the old school Rolodex. LinkedIn made professional networking popular.

Then they broke it. Let’s be fair, they broke it because eventually, we all need to get paid, LI was no different. But opening up LI to recruiting nation killed the desire for people to want to be on LinkedIn and get constantly pimped. But, at the same time they actually created a pretty cool job board 2.0, when everyone thought those were going to die.

So, now Facebook wants to come into the playground, push LinkedIn down and take their milk money.

The problem is, Facebook hasn’t really ever broken their platform before and had to recreate it into something new. The Facebook I use today is virtually the same Facebook I started using nine years ago. LinkedIn today, is not LinkedIn of five to seven years ago, it’s very different. Some people will say worse, some people will pay $26.2 billion for it!

I’m wondering if Facebook goes all full blown LinkedIn with their platform, what happens to Facebook?  Is it still a place where you’ll want to hang out four or five times a day? Do you want to share cookie recipes with your Nana and talk financial strategy with coworkers all in the same place?

It’s arrogant to think you can just come in do something better than someone who has lived the pain of creating something. LinkedIn’s history of development gives them an advantage. Can Facebook come in and do it better? Maybe, but I don’t think you’ll see it happen overnight.

I’m a huge advocate for ‘one-life’. I don’t want to live multiple lives. I don’t want to be one person on Facebook, and another person on LinkedIn, but I’m in the vast minority when it comes to that view. Most people do not want to mix their personal and professional lives. They want to be freaks in the sheets and a lady on the streets, err, LinkedIn.

Should be interesting to watch these two powerhouses fight it out. What do you think TA pros and leaders? Are you ready to do all of your recruiting on Facebook?

Too Many Recruiting Tools Are Killing Your Recruiting Efforts

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You’ve heard of this concept of the Inverted-U Curve, right? It’s fairly straightforward. In the beginning, you have nothing or very little. As you increase the resources you begin to become more effective. Eventually, as you add more resources you’ll actually reach maximum potential.

In the attempt to go even higher, you keep adding more resources, but you don’t see an increase in effectiveness or output, you actually see a decrease. This is the basic concept of the chart above.

This happens in recruiting too many organizations.

We start out with a bunch of recruiters and some phones. That’s not enough we need to add some other stuff, these recruiters need tools! So, we give them email and an ATS. Then comes the job boards, postings, InMails, etc. Might as well automate background checks and references. We really need to fill the pipeline, here comes sourcing tech!

Wish we had a way to get our messages out to candidates more effectively! CRM, branding technology, data analytics, SMS messaging, etc. Just keep adding more tools! That’ll a fix it!

Except it doesn’t!

What happens to your recruiting team as you add more tools?

  • The complexity of the process increases.
  • Core recruiting skills diminish, or at the very least don’t increase. (Laziness factor)
  • Increased points of failure in communication with each piece of new tech.

What we know is technology doesn’t make you better at recruiting. Technology makes you faster at recruiting, but if you suck at recruiting, technology will only make you suck faster!

Great recruiting starts with your people. Your recruiters. That’s your foundation, not your technology. Technology can help cover up some hickeys of bad recruiters temporary, but eventually, we will all see the real hickeys!

So, before you sign that next contract for some new technology, first take a look at your team. Do you have the right people on your recruiting bus? Do they have the core skills they need? How will I get them the skills they need?

The continued increase in technology will only take you so far. You can either solve this problem on the front side, or eventually, you’ll face it on the back side, but either way, it’s coming. In my experience, it’s easier to solve up front then wait for it to come up when twelve technologies deep into your TA stack!

#TransformRM – Day 1 of first ever Recruitment Marketing Conference!

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I’m at TransformRM this week in Boston as the folks from Smashfly are hosting the first ever Recruitment Marketing conference. Day 1 was packed with content as the designers of the conference mixed in quick-hitting 30-minute sessions around 50-minute keynotes.

Turns out you don’t have to do an hour and fifteen minutes per session and your conference won’t explode! Who knew!

I will say the content design made the day fly by and having mostly practitioners come on stage for thirty-minute sessions forced them to get to the point and share great stories, tips and results from their own organization. I loved it!

Finally, TransformRM pulled in keynote speaker Mel Robbins, of TEDx fame, and her 5 Second Rule theory. She freaking killed it! Get ready to see much more of Mel around the HR community conferences. She’s a legitimate speaking superstar.

Here are some of the key takeaways from Day 1:

  • We’re all still pretty new in this whole recruitment marketing skill set. So, you still hear a lot about ‘brand’ and less around the actual marketing aspect. (Yes, I know brand is part of marketing!)
  • Most impressive practitioner/company presentation was from John Qudeen, VP of Recruiting at Thomson Reuters. If you’re looking for a company that flat out gets recruitment marketing, you need to check them out. One of the few that seems to have figured out measurement of RM, definitely a market leader out of the gate!
  • Across the board, though, all practitioners shared great ideas and were very forthcoming in sharing their secret sauce, notably, Julia Levy from Fiserv, Jared Nypen from Great Clips (who had the hardest job of the day in following Mel Robbins and he killed it!), and John Cotton from CH2M.
  • Not a ton of talk around the actual tech stack it takes to pull off great recruitment marketing, but as you can imagine all those who were doing it well were all using CRM technology to help retarget candidates and elevate their message and content to those they were trying to attract.

Can’t wait for Day 2! Check out the live stream at TransformRecruitmentMarketing.com, I think you’ll really get a ton of takeaways on what some great brands are doing in their own shops with RM! Also, follow along on Twitter at #TransformRM.

The 7 Deadly Words You Should Never Say To a Candidate

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Communication is a tricky thing. It’s so easy to turn off another party by simply using just one wrong word, especially when you’re trying to build a relationship with a candidate you potentially want to hire.

I think there are some words and phrases that have a high probability of turning off a candidate to want to come work for your organization. I speak to students a few times a year about interviewing and I tell them something similar, which is what you say can automatically make a hiring manager not want to hire you!

Think about being an interview and the candidate starts to tell you why they’re no longer working for ACME Inc. “Oh, you know it was just a ‘misunderstanding’, I can explain…”

“Misunderstanding” is a killer word to use while interviewing! It wasn’t a misunderstanding! You got fired!

So, what are the 7 Deadly Words you should never use as a recruiters? Don’t use these:

-“Layoff” – It doesn’t matter how you use it. Even, ‘we’ve never had a layoff!’ Layoff isn’t a positive word to someone looking to come to work for you, so why would you even add it to the conversation!

-“Might” – Great candidates want black and white, not gray. “Might” is gray. Well, we might be adding that tech but I don’t know. Instead, use “I’m not sure, let me check for you, because I want to get you the truth.  Add

-“Maybe” – See above.

-“Unstable” – You know what’s unstable? Nothing good, that’s what! If something isn’t good, don’t hide behind a word that makes people guess how bad it might be, because they’ll usually assume it’s worse than it really is!

-“Legally” – “Legally” is never followed by something positive! Legally, we would love to give you a $25K sign-on bonus! It’s always followed by something that makes you uncomfortable. When trying to get someone interested in your organization and job, don’t add “Legally” to the conversation!

-“Temporarily” – This is another unsettling word for candidates. “Temporarily” we’ll have to have you work out of the Nashville office, but no worries, you’ll be Austin soon enough! Um, no.

-“Fluid” – Well, that’s a great question, right now it’s a fluid situation, we’re hoping hiring you will help clarify it! Well, isn’t that comforting… Add: “Up in the air” to this category!

We use many of these words because we don’t want to tell the candidate the truth. We think telling them exactly what’s wrong with our organization, the position, our culture, will drive them away. So, we wordsmith them to death!

The reality is most candidates will actually love the honesty and tend to believe they can be the one to come in and make it better. We all want to be the knight on the white horse. Candidates are no different. Tell them the truth and you’ll end up with better hires and higher retention!

Michigan Recruiter’s Conference 2016 Takeaways

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Last week the 3rd annual Michigan Recruiter’s Conference took place in Grand Rapids, MI onsite at our corporate host Amway World Headquarters. 150 Corporate Talent Acquisition Leaders and Pros participated and heard from an outstanding lineup of speakers including Gerry Crispin, Laurie Ruettimann, Chris Bailey, Kerri Mills and Katie Born.

I leave each time amazed at the talent we are able to bring into Michigan! Some of the brightest minds and ideas in the talent acquisition industry, but also the passion the TA pros in Michigan show in coming in and engaging with each other on a peer level.

My Takeaways from MRC 2016: 

– It takes a very confident HR and/or TA Leader to want to bring in another 150 corporate TA pros into their own shop. We’ve been extremely lucky with Accident Fund, Spectrum Health and now Katie at Amway over the past three years. I think it demonstrates how important TA is to the organizations that host and how important developing their team is to that leader.

– Gerry Crispin comes in and looks like he’s been in TA for 40 years. Wait, he has! But, for those who haven’t seen him, they believe, “oh, here comes some old dude to tell us how he recruited people back in WWII!” Gerry always blows them away!!! He is so on top of how the best, most innovative TA shops are doing it on the planet, he leaves with jaws dropped. I always chuckle at the young bucks who had no idea they are about to get completely schooled by an old dude!

– You know you have a great speaker when people can’t write down the ideas fast enough! Kerri Mills had pens burning up at MRC. I had a feeling she would kill after seeing her presentation at SourceCon and she did awesome. Side note: when you work at Indeed, people expect you to know everything about Indeed!

– People who can tell a good story, are great speakers. Laurie Ruettimann and Chris Bailey both killed with great stories! They had great content as well, but you could tell me how to make Mac and Cheese and if it’s wrapped in a great story I’ll be entertained for an hour! Also, if you have a British accent you’re automatically considered brilliant, funny and adorable by an American audience. (Note to self: work on British accent)

– In classic HROS.co fashion, Amway’s TA Leader Katie Born figuratively opened her Kimono and shared what she and her team were working on to the entire talent market in their area. The good and the bad. What’s working and what they still need to get better at? What tech we’re using and what tech we’re looking at? It was a great example of what we should all strive for as TA Leaders.  Bravo!

I had one trainwreck moment. The idea was to speed network. I hate when people go to a conference and either sit alone or sit with the only people they know, so my idea was to get them to meet 4-5 new people and make some connections. Great idea! But 150 people trying to find smaller groups of three in a room was comical and loud! In the end, people did meet new people!

Our goal for MRC 2017 is to be in the Detroit Metro Area! To bring Detroit its first ever corporate talent acquisition conference specifically for Michigan TA Pros and Leaders! Want to be a part of it?  We are currently looking for a corporate host! What does that mean? We need a big room that can hold 150 or so people, with tables and some AV equipment!

We’ll bring the food, the talent, and the TA Pros!  We just need to use your space for the day. Let me know if you’re interested (timsackett@comcast.net).

 

It’s Super Hard to Write a Cool Job Posting!

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Almost every solid TA pro and leader I know wants to have cool, hip, on fleek, whatever new saying the kids on Snap are saying, type job postings. What most organizations end up with is still the old written job description, KSAs, boring I just feel asleep same posting as they always have had.

The main problem is you usually have some over-conservative lady in a cat sweater cardigan who a tiny ounce of power and believes you adding the word “crazy” to your job posting will get you put in prison. True Fact: I’ve been in the HR/TA game for twenty years and still to this day I have never seen anyone go to prison for getting ‘crazy’ with job postings!

I even, yes this is true, saw one company not put “EOE” on their job posting! Yep, no prison! Not even a fine! No grounding. Nothing!

Still, most of us struggle to do something about our crappy job postings and job descriptions. Well, Apple tried to do something! They got creative, kudos for that, but sometimes being creative and HR don’t mix well. Apple’s attempt was to create “Apple’s Orchard” (see what happens when HR and Creative get together! Lame city!) to attempt to recruit entry-level marketing professionals to Apple.

Because you know what’s really hard to do!? Get entry level marketing grads to want to come to work for Apple! Here’s how it sounded:

“The moment is now. Throw everything you know out the window. All in. Head first. Join the Orchard. If you’re lucky enough to make the cut, expect to surround yourself with like-minded souls who are as terrified and excited as you are. Be part of a hand-picked team with a plethora of talent. Kick ass together. Panic together. Grow together. Work alongside the brains of all the iconic work you love from Apple. Watch and learn. Trust your gut. Challenge our ways. Have an impact on everything you touch. Be prepared to stumble and fumble and embarrass yourself. It will be messy, and it won’t be pretty at times, but if you stick together as a team, you’ll build a special bond and something truly great will come out of it all. Take it from us. It’s the only way. Does this whole proposal sound crazy to you? Good. We like crazy.”

“We live crazy!” Like certifiably crazy? No, wait, I’m asking for a friend, who’s locked up..

Apple was forced to take down the land sight almost immediately after complaints started raining down on them like dollar bills at a strip club where you took the new entry level marketing recruits to show them how cool you were.

It’s kind of creepy and overzealous, right? I’ll give them credit for trying to be creative. Apple found out what most of us find out. Writing really good, creative, engaging, funny, endearing, job postings are really freaking hard! 99.9% of TA and HR pros will never be able to do this. My advice is to go out and hire real creative types to do this work, don’t kill yourself trying to do it yourself.

 

 

LinkedIn “Open Candidates” Is Going To Get People Fired

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By now you’ve heard the news coming out last week’s LinkedIn Talent Connect where LI announced a new feature called “Open Candidates”. Here’s how LinkedIn explains Open Candidates:

Open Candidates is a new feature that makes it easier to connect with your dream job by privately signaling to recruiters that you’re open to new job opportunities. You can specify the types of companies and roles you are most interested in and be easily found by the hundreds of thousands of recruiters who use LinkedIn to find great professional talent…

To enable the feature, simply turn sharing “On” and fill in some brief information about the types of roles you are interested in. Who among us hasn’t, at some point, tried to find work without our boss finding out? Now, you can privately indicate to recruiters on LinkedIn without worrying. We will hide the Open Candidates signal from recruiters at your company or affiliated company recruiters.

So, now if you’re a LI user you can let companies know you’re full on looking to change jobs without having to post it in your profile title and let the entire world know you’re looking.

So, is this a good thing? 

I have some feelings on this:

– First, this is brilliant from employer’s perspective! I can now call my buddy over at XYZ company, have him pull up his LI account and tell me exactly which employees of mine are looking for jobs. I can then pull up my account and tell her which of her employees are looking.

– If you want to turn on the “Open Candidates” feature in LI it would be best to assume that your organization’s recruiting/hr team will find out you’re looking like I mentioned above!

– Most organizations freak out when they find that their employees are out looking for jobs on company time. It’s one thing to say, “Oh, I’m just using LI at work because I’m ‘professionally networking’, not looking for a job!” It’s another when they know you’ve turned on the feature and are actually getting paid to look for your next job. That usually gets you fired.

Now, I’m sure LI will say, “Tim is just saying something that very few recruiters will actually do.” They might be right, but it was the actual first thing that came into my mind when heard of the new feature. How to get around it, and I was at HR Tech with other TA and HR leaders who felt the same way.

TA Leaders love this feature! For the first time, they’ll now actually get to find out for real what employees of theirs are actively looking and actually doing it on company time.

So, Open Candidates is not something you should fear as an employer. Embrace it! This might be best new feature LI has launched in years for employers to finally know which of their employees are actually on the market. It’s brilliant!

Check back next week when I start my blog series on how to have conversations with all of your employees who you find on LI actively looking to leave your organization!

The 7 Brutal Truths About Recruiting No One Wants to Admit

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Don’t you love Clickbait titles!?  I mean you read that title and you’re like, “JFC, Tim! Okay, I need to see what crazy sh*t he’s going to say about recruiting and who he pisses off today!”

Okay, so, here you go!

I recently got back from CareerBuilder’s Empower. It’s basically a recruiting conference for CB clients. Empower had a great recruiting content for both sides. Both corporate recruiters and agency recruiters were in attendance. You can easily spot the two groups. The agency recruiters wear suits and have big watches. Watches so big Flavor Flav would be jealous. The suits aren’t your dad’s suit, either, they’re the new ‘modern’ fit suits that look like they might be one size too small.

The agency guys don’t care. They’re making twice what the corporate sap makes, who is wearing either jeans and button-down or Khakis and a button-down. I’ll say most of the corporate TA ladies dress smart and stylish, most are also former agency recruiters!

Being surrounded by 1,000 recruiters always helps remind you why so many folks dislike the industry and function of recruiting. Here’s my take:

1. There’s no difference between selling cars and recruiting. In cars sales you make the car look as great as you can, even when it’s a piece of sh*t. In recruiting you make the organization and the hiring manager look as great as possible, even when they’re a piece of Sh*t.

2. Recruiting has nothing to do with Quality. Recruiting is all about speed. Every recruiter wants to argue it’s about quality, but it’s not. It’s not because you don’t actually know if someone is a quality hire until about a year into position, for most roles. Recruiting is about filling positions as fast as you can with the best talent that is available at the time you’re actually looking to fill the position.

3. The majority of Recruiting leaders have no idea what they’re doing. That sounds harsh, doesn’t it? It’s mostly true for a couple of reasons. First, TA was a dead function for about 8-10 years in most organizations during the recession, so most TA leaders either weren’t in TA or weren’t developed. Second, the technology is evolving so quickly, 99% of TA leaders can’t keep up with it. So, you get a mix of incompetence and old school know-how.

4. Real Recruiters have figured out Employment Branding has little impact in filling positions. Great recruiters can fill roles in a company that has no brand, or a negative brand, it makes no difference to them. What real recruiters understand is that the majority of the population pays little attention to your employment brand. Great TA comes mainly from great recruitment marketing (which I know some of you will argue is all about branding). You can be great at recruitment marketing and still have a brand no one knows about and fill your positions.

5. Your organization would fill openings with or without a Recruiting Team. Ugh! That one hurts, but it’s true. I speak with organizations every week that don’t have TA and don’t use agencies, but still fill positions. What!? How can that be!? The executives, the hiring managers, etc. all do it. They own their own staff and make sure they find people to fill the needs they have. As an organization grows this becomes harder, but not impossible.

6. Corporate recruiters will always be less effective to Agency recruiters until you change your compensation. Corporate recruiters only have to work as hard as the weakest recruiter on the team. Agency recruiters have to work to eat. Corporate TA leaders would do well to add some incentive to the compensation mix to their teams that is directly tied to individual recruiting accomplishments of the roles they fill.

7. 90% of your positions are filled by candidates finding you, not a Recruiter finding them. Take a look at your source of hires, how many are sourced directly by one of your recruiters reaching out to a candidate that didn’t first reach out to you? This number will put that giant corporate TA recruiting salary into perspective! I can find a great admin pro to run a TA process for $15-18/hr.

What are your brutal truths about recruiting? Hit me in the comments.