3 Ways Contract Staffing Fails

Posted on January 29, 2013 by Tim Sackett

Contract technical staffing is what I do for a living – so I know exactly where it falls down. I spend every day trying to talk people into why they should use contract staffing and why it makes sense. In 13 years of being in this business, I’ve never had anyone ask me why it doesn’t work. That might be kind of odd. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve talked to hundreds of corporate HR and Recruiting Pros who HATE contract staffing – but 99% don’t know why they hate it. Most believe they hate contract staffing because it’s taking their job away. Nothing makes me smile more than to hear a really good HR Pro say “if I hire your company ‘they’ll’ have no reason to keep me around”. It makes me smile because I know they have no idea about what we do – and I can probably convince them to use our services!

To be honest, though, there are some reasons when contract staffing fails. If you deal with contract staffing firms, you might find that shocking to hear, because we are trained from birth not to ever say anything negative about our service. ‘Everyone’ can use us for any recruiting need you might have! Well, no not really. Let me give you 3 Ways Contract Staffing Fails:

1. To Attract your competitions talent when you are equal or trailing in market compensation. I always like to say there is no one I can’t recruit. Given enough time and money – I could get President Obama to quit the Presidency. But if you think a contract staffing firm is going to get your competitions best developer to leave their direct job for a contract job, for the same money or less – you’re crazy.

2. When you fall in love with the talent. Every once in a while I a client who gets upset. They bring on a high priced contractor, that person does great work, and the client falls in love and wants to hire them. The problem is many contractors are contractors because they like moving from project to project. They like you, they just don’t like-like you. Contract staffing works really well when it’s a win-win. We have a project, you nail project – we both got what we wanted. It fails when one party falls in love, and the other doesn’t feel the same!

3. When You Think I’m Magical. Recruiting is recruiting. I don’t have a magical stable of candidates waiting to come to work for you. Well, I might have one or two, but not a stable. When you tell me you need something – I, usually, have to go out and find the right talent, fit, etc. Just like you would, if you were looking to hire a direct position. I’m not magic, I’m just good at finding technical talent. There’s a difference.

I get why some new clients get put off by contract staffing. I call you, tell you how amazing we are and how good we are at what we do and then you expect I’m going to have 5 perfectly screened ready to work Controls Engineers in your inbox the next morning – when you’ve been searching for 6 months and don’t have one. Expectations are a huge issue we all face in recruiting – no matter what kind of recruiting we do. I have to manage my clients expectations, just like you have to manage your hiring managers expectations. Contract staffing works really well when you find a partner that makes sure your expectations and their deliverables all line up.

Want to discuss? Contact me: sackett.tim@HRU-TECH.com, 517-908-3156 or send me a tweet @TimSackett. I promise to under promise and over deliver.

Ex-employers, Please Send Gifts!

Posted on January 28, 2013 by Tim Sackett

Dear Applebees,

I use to work for you in Human Resources. It was a great 3 1/2 years, I loved working for you. I was surrounded by the most talented group of Human Resource, Operations and Training professionals I’ve ever been around. I tell this story often, but you know when you go into a large business meeting with like 20-40 people all sitting in a large square or circle of tables? And you look around and you instantly see a couple of slugs, people who shouldn’t even be working for the company, let alone be in this meeting. The first time I traveled to Applebee’s headquarters for a large operations meetings and I walked into the entire group of HR professionals that the Applebee’s leadership team had assembled, I looked around the room and couldn’t find one of those people! Then it hit me – I’m that person – I’m the slug! It was the coolest feeling to be challenged like that – to be surrounded by talented, caring people all working to make a company great.

I’ve moved on to bigger roles and a bunch of new experiences, but I still share so many things I learned while I was with you to those HR Pros I’m connected to. I still talk so highly of the brand and the people that make your brand what it is today. You’ve got some really great people still working for you, even after that crappy pancake place bought you. You’ve lost some great ones as well – I could point out a number and where they are currently working and what their numbers are – who knows, they might want to come back. You knows, maybe I want to come back.

Tell you what. Why don’t you send me something. Just a little something to remind me of what I’m missing – a gift card, a free appetizer coupon, a carside to go Frisbee – you could even have someone drop off lunch to my office — grilled chicken oriental roll-up . You see, I might want to come back, but no one has ever asked. No letters, no phone calls, no tweets or Facebook messages. I know I left you and that probably didn’t feel very good, but I think we can all be adults about this. I had some growing up to do, I needed to see if those fries on the other side of the street really were hotter. You can’t blame a guy for that.

So, who knows, we were so close once – and there’s nothing to say we can’t be close again,

Tim

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

Just in case you are very lost at this point – check this out from Yahoo! Also, Marissa Mayer if you want to send me stuff, I’ll even think about coming over to Yahoo! Who knows – I like gifts!

In case you’re still lost: some of the best recruits you’ll ever get, are people who’ve already worked for you and were good, but you’ve never asked them to come back.

The A+ Player Employee

Posted on January 25, 2013 by Tim Sackett

I know a ton of HR/Talent Pros are sick of hearing employees broken down into A, B and C players. It seems played out and dated. But I like it. I’m simple and the ABC player scenario is easy for me to describe, in very quick manner, how someone is performing. I’ll give you, though, there are problems. Once you have your “A” players, how do you tell which is the best one? Can’t a “C” player be close to moving up to “B”, but another “C” be close to getting terminated? The problem is, ABC doesn’t accurately enough describe individuals, it just describes groups of employees – a range of performance at any given snapshot in time.

I was having a conversation about this the other day with a peer and was describing a person’s performance who worked for me – an “A” player. As I was describing this person, I said, “but you know what, they are better than an “A” player – they’re an “A+” player”! Oh, boy, here we go. What the heck is an A+ player?!

Traits of your A+ Players:

– All the talent and performance of your traditional “A” player, but with:

A. Work like they’re a “B” player hungry to get to “A” status

B. Lack the ego some “A” players tend to catch upon gaining “A” status

C. Don’t believe they’ve reached “A” status, even when they have.

A+ players are special. As soon as you read the traits you had an individual come immediately to mind. That person who is a great performer, but also someone you wish all of your employees would emulate. A person who is a joy to work with, and gets things done. Maybe not the best at any single task – but the person you want to do every task. A+ players aren’t culture changers, they are the culture. Not everyone has an A+ player, and I don’t believe you can create one. You usually have to hire them – and they ascend to A+ level very quickly.

When people tell me they only hire “A” players I tend to judge them as not having any idea about HR/Recruiting/Life. You don’t hire “A” players. You hire talent you believe is capable of becoming an “A” player within your organization. Because they were an “A” player at another organization, has very little impact on their performance level within your organization – unless you somehow magically cloned their previous environment, leadership and resources and put them back into that same place. It’s true that past performance is predictive of future performance – but only when you put that talent into a very similar circumstance.

That’s why it’s really hard to find A+ players, because you don’t even know when you hire someone if they will reach that level. You might have a feeling – like – “oh boy, we’ve got someone special coming in”, but you don’t know, until you know. All I really know is when you have one, do what you have to keep them around, because you’ll never know if you’ll get another one.

Sales Pitch Tuesday – The Test Drive

Posted on January 22, 2013 by Tim Sackett

You know what car dealers know that they’ll never tell you? They know that if they can get you to test drive a car, there’s a great chance they can talk you into buying a car. That’s why you see all of these test drive special offers! Come on in for a test drive and you’ll automatically get 2 free tickets to a Piston’s game. The best ones are the ones when it’s for a charity or non-profit school organization – “we’ll donate $20 per test drive this Saturday to the little league!” They know that we are stupid and we are addicted to new car smell – get enough folks to come in and test drive, and they’ll be moving some cars that day!

Hiring really isn’t to awful different.

In my business, contract staffing, I know that if I can get you to hire some on contract, engineers or IT professionals – you’re going to eventually want to hire them. You’re basically test driving talent! The one rejection I get the most from corporate HR/Talent Pros is that we don’t want “contract” we want to hire direct. So, I ask the most obvious question – why? And I’ll get a range of answers that mainly stay around the theme of: “we want someone ‘permanently’ to come and work here”.

Here’s what I know about hiring.

1. No matter what hiring/screening/interviewing process that you have – you’re going to make some really bad hiring decisions.

2. Once you hire someone ‘direct’ – it’s highly unlikely you will be quick to terminate that person. (2 reasons for this: A. As a HR Pro you don’t want to admit that your process failed; B.Your hiring managers are bad at performance management and it takes them forever to get to a point to fire.)

3. You’ll fire a contractor without a 2nd thought. (HR Pros are great – because the exact things they would never fire a ‘direct’ employee over – they’ll ‘can’ a contractor over in a heartbeat! “Yeah, Tim, Johnny keeps wearing Capri pants, he doesn’t fit in here, we want to end the contract.”)

I always tease my clients that contract staffing a little like ‘Crack’ – once you start, you don’t want to stop. Here’s why you need to try ~~crack~~ contract staffing:

1. You hire faster. (You still screen, but you don’t have to get all HR crazy with it! Hiring managers love this because you get people in fast, determine if they are a good organizational fit and Bam – it works. I can’t tell you how many times on the corporate side we took months to make the ‘right’ decision, only to have the person come in and find out they really weren’t that great of a personality fit with the hiring manager. Such a complete waste of time and resources.)

2. Ultimately, when you decide to hire direct – you’re hiring a completely known talent. There are no surprises. You’ve test driven your candidate for an extended period!

3. You might find out you don’t need someone on direct. I can’t tell you how many times a year a client comes to us saying they need someone, ultimately for a direct position, but 6-9 months into it they’ll lose a project, or have another resource internally come available. 99% of HR/Talent Pros have no idea what percentage of their workforce should be contingent – with many ‘truly’ believing that percentage should be zero! If the recession has taught us anything, it’s we need to have at least a little flexibility to our workforce. Our European HR counterparts get this much more than we do.

Want to know more? Want us to find you some contract Tech Pros? Want me to come take you to lunch to discuss? (I’ll buy) Want to tell me I’m an idiot? Contact me directly at: sackett.tim@hru-tech.com; 517-908-3156 or @TimSackett on the Twitters!

Sales Pitch Tuesday – Why Us?

Posted on January 15, 2013 by Tim Sackett

It’s really the only question I have to answer when I call on a potential client to try and get their staffing business.

Why should you work with HRU vs. the thousands of other choices you have?

It’s not a cost issue for 99% of the business development calls I make. If a company has decided we need to engage a staffing firm – whether it’s for direct search or contract staffing – cost has very little to do with their final decision. Everyone likes to get the ‘best’ price – but in staffing you’re talking about talent. I’ve never met an HR executive or operational executive that wouldn’t in a heartbeat pay thousands of dollars more for a more talented candidate versus a candidate that fits the requirements but seems like a “B” level player. Corporate HR/Talent Pros constantly get frustrated with staffing firms for doing this! They tell us they want “X” candidate for $80K and we send over “X” candidate for $90K. They say they aren’t interested. So, we send over a $80K candidate. They interview $80K candidate. They they call us and say “Can we interview $90K candidate?” It happens constantly. Don’t hate the staffing company, hate the game.

It’s not a talent issue, either. What!? It’s not. The reality of staffing is that all companies have the exact same access to talent. Some companies are just faster at uncovering that talent versus others. In my 20 years of staffing – I’ve really seen very little difference in the quality of talent good staffing firms offer up to their clients (and remember, I’ve been on both sides of the fence on this – corporate and agency). Don’t get me wrong – bad staffing firms do very little vetting of candidates and just flow paper to you. Good staffing firms should be sending you fully vetted candidates. I like to tell my recruiters – “We are the sure thing!” When a company wants to interview or hire one of our candidates, the only thing they should hear is: “When would you like them to start?”

So, what is it? It’s a relationship issue. When I worked with a staffing firm, I needed to have trust in the people I was working with. I didn’t care about their brand or their process. I cared about how much do I trust this company is going to represent us as a company to the talent base that is out there. Period. Don’t get wrong – they better deliver great talent – but I’m assuming that is a given – if I decided to work with them! Trust. Part of that trust comes with full disclosure as well. Most staffing companies hate this! But I came from their world – I knew the game. So, if you wanted to play with me – I wanted to know everything. I was going to let you make money – but I wanted to know where it was being made. That helps me sharpen up my internal process. If a staffing firm really wanted to be a partner with me – then this wasn’t an issue. I wanted to see them succeed, just as they wanted to see our organization succeed. Most corporate HR/Talent Pros don’t have this mindset. They feel staffing firms are ‘out to get them’ and not a partner. They need to cut those relationships.

It works both ways. I stopped doing business with a really good paying client in 2012. Why? Because they were a pain to work with and didn’t get that this relationship should work for both parties. I want to work with people I truly like. People I would go on vacation with. Right now – every single one of our clients at HRU – I would go on vacation with. I would invite them to my house for dinner. I would look forward to having a drink with after work. That is why I love coming to work. It’s not stressful on either side – the way it should be. I understand their challenges and they understand my challenges and we can have ‘real’ conversations about each other – and provide feedback.

That is pretty rare in this industry.

Want to be apart of this? Contact me: sackett.tim@hru-tech.com; call 517-908-3156 or tweet me @TimSackett – I look forward to the conversation! Also check out my staff – I’d definitely go on vacation with any of these good looking people!

Sales Pitch Tuesday – The Giving Tree

Posted on January 8, 2013 by Tim Sackett

Three years ago I got involved in social media by blogging for Fistful of Talent. I love writing and I love Recruiting and HR – so this was a good ‘outlet’ for me and totally got me engaged in my career like I never thought I would be. I was writing 3 – 4 posts per month “and the tree was happy.” But for those who have engaged in social media and social recruiting, 3 – 4 posts per month isn’t sustainable. Those posts turned into me following other HR/Talent bloggers and reading their stuff. That turned into conversations on Facebook and Twitter. Soon, without much of a thought, I was engaging with a whole new community. I had friends and peers from all over the world I was having conversations with about HR and Talent issues we were experiencing in our daily lives. All of this turned into people asking me to come share my opinions and knowledge live – to speak, to run workshops, webinars, etc.

In my little brain – I told myself – all of this ‘stuff’ is good for my business – my brand. The more of this I do – the more people will become aware of my company. My ‘real’ job. The job that actually pays me enough to pay my bills. This great community will see me as knowledgeable, as passionate, as someone they would want to partner with and work with. All of this is good for my company. And the boy would be happy.

3 years.

I did something really stupid the other day and my friend, Laurie Ruettimann called me out on it – which is why she’s my friend. I sent out a tweet. She called it “the laziest sales pitch ever” and it was (plus it had a typo – which was like the cherry on top of the laziness!). The tweet said: “Tweeps – looking to expand out our client base in 2013. Hit me up if you need some help finding great IT/Engineering Talent.” When I sent it – I told myself not to. I was actually sitting at my desk and thinking – “Tim – you would make fun of someone who did this – you’re better than this” – then that little guy on my other shoulder said “Tim – you’re an idiot – you’ve put 3 years of time into this without ever asking this community for business! You just give – time to take.” So, l pushed the Tweet button.

I deleted that Tweet – thank you Laurie.

So, I have one question I would like to ask of any of you who read this – Do you know what my company is and/or what we do? I know a lot of you know who “I” am – which is great if I was really in need of building myself up – but that doesn’t put shoes on my 3 sons. Do you know what I do on a daily basis? In my work-life? You probably don’t.

Most people probably believe, if they actually have an idea about what I do, that I run a staffing company. Some might actually know that we specialize in technical. But few actually know that 90% of what we do isn’t what you think. My company does contract Engineering and IT – not straight search (that’s the other 10%). I don’t see myself as competition to your Talent Acquisition group, usually, because we are looking to place highly technical folks that you don’t need permanently – you might only need them for 3 months, 6 months, a year – who knows, depends on the project. Many times our clients end up hiring our contractors direct. It doesn’t start out that way. The client thinks – hey, I only need this person to help us implement, then we can handle it on our own – then life happens and they go, you know what, we need this person on for good. Win-Win for everyone.

Please check out what I really do. I’m proud of it. I think we do it better than anyone else. I’m so transparent in social media that if we weren’t good – I’d be called out on a daily basis.

3 years of deposits – www.HRU-Tech.com (check out the “our staff” section, everyone loves that!) – or contact me directly – I’d love to come and talk about your staffing needs – sackett.tim@hru-tech.com / 517-908-3156.

And the tree was happy.

Want something better than InMail?

Posted on December 27, 2012 by Tim Sackett

Facebook announced it’s testing a new product last week. What’s the product? A version of paid messages within Facebook. Think LinkedIn’s Inmail, but for Facebook and an additional 800,000,000 users and potential candidates! From the article:

“Today we’re starting a small experiment to test the usefulness of economic signals to determine relevance. This test will give a small number of people the option to pay to have a message routed to the Inbox rather than the Other folder of a recipient that they are not connected with.

Several commentators and researchers have noted that imposing a financial cost on the sender may be the most effective way to discourage unwanted messages and facilitate delivery of messages that are relevant and useful.

This test is designed to address situations where neither social nor algorithmic signals are sufficient. For example, if you want to send a message to someone you heard speak at an event but are not friends with, or if you want to message someone about a job opportunity, you can use this feature to reach their Inbox. For the receiver, this test allows them to hear from people who have an important message to send them.”

Oh, please, if there is a Facebook God, please pick me for this test!!! You see, I’m a believer. I fully believe Facebook is going to change the way we recruit talent in the future. The way we network to find referrals, etc. I’m also a believer that companies will pay Billion$ of dollars to have this ability. I also, fully, believe that the majority of recruiting professionals out there will understand how to use this function appropriately. Plus, having a financial consequence will ensure this won’t become spam central.

Let me give you an example. I have a client right now looking for 2 Human Factors Engineers. They are hard to find because individuals in these roles have fully employed and get multiple contacts per week with offers. We’ve had success finding good ones – but eventually even the best networks start to dry up. Facebook has an additional 500+, self identified HF engineers that I can find through friend search – but that I’m not connected to. I can try to connect through a request, but they’ll say they don’t me – and Facebook will slap my hands and warn they are going to kick me off the network. If Facebook said to me – Hey, Tim, for $1 per message, we’ll allow you to send a message to all 500 HF Engineers – I would sign that check right now – twice! And these are just the ‘self-identified’ folks – Facebook has thousands more who have identified but not made it public. I’ll pay for those as well! So will most companies.

Think this isn’t going to happen, eventually? You’re wrong – this is a multi-billion dollar opportunity – every year. You know what else? It won’t have any impact to your Facebook experience. While it sounds like a Spam nightmare – it won’t be. First, these are directed ads for specific people, not everyone. So, Charlie working the friers at McDonald’s, calm down, I’m not sending you any messages. Second, they cost money – so companies aren’t going to be sending millions of these messages – they can’t afford. This isn’t a shotgun strategy, this is a sniper rifle strategy.

Facebook – call me. We need to talk!

How Not To Hire A D1 Football Coach in the BigTen

Posted on December 10, 2012 by Tim Sackett

For those College Football fans, last week was a bit crazy on the college football coaching carousel! The one that really caught my eye was Bret Bielema, the University of Wisconsin coach, leaving to go to the University of Arkansas in the SEC. First off, I hate the University of Wisconsin. Second off, I hate Bret Bielema. Being a Michigan State University fan/donor – the University of Wisconsin has been a rather large pain in our backside the past few years! So, it’s with respect (and hatred) that I bid the rather large jackass, Bret Bielema, adieu. Here’s what is really great about this whole thing, though – the head coaching job at the University of Wisconsin (like most state colleges) is a state job – and with most ‘government’ jobs they have processes they need to follow when hiring. No. Matter. What.

Here’s the posting – from the University of Wisconsin career site! It’s awesomely bad HR!

Want the job? Here’s what UW is looking for in their next coach:

– Bachelor’s degree required (I mean this isn’t Arkansas!)

– Minimum of 5 years of successful collegiate football coaching experience, preferred. (way to shoot for the moon!)

– Other qualifications include the ability to work cooperatively with diverse groups and administrators, faculty, staff and students. The successful applicant must be able develop and implement innovative approaches and solutions; work well independently and in teams; and be flexible in accepting new responsibilities. (Um, what!?)

– Anticipated start date: December 24, 2012 (Merry F’ing Christmas we need recruits – start calling!)

I really would love to sit down with the President and Athletic Director of the University of Wisconsin and find out if they ‘truly’ feel this is the job requirements for their Head Football Coach at UW! And, oh brother this is a BIG and, is this current ‘recruiting’ process meeting their needs!!! I can only assume I already know this answer.

Want to apply:

Unless another application procedure has been specified above, please send resume and cover letter referring to Position Vacancy Listing #75429 to:

Holly Weber

1440 Monroe St.

Kellner Hall

Madison, WI

I’m sure Holly is a solid Talent Acquisition Pro and will do a proper job screening you before you meet with the Athletic Director.

Is it just me, or do you feel they might end up using a head hunting firm on this hire?! To me, this is the exact reason HR/Recruiting get zero respect. This job should not be posted on the career site next to the janitor opening. This hire will have millions of dollar impact to the funding of this school – stop treating it like it’s like every other hire – it’s not – and it makes you look like you have no idea what you’re doing.

When is Gutting Payroll the Right Thing?

Posted on November 15, 2012 by Tim Sackett

HR-Sports Post Alert!

Many of you probably cared less about the recent trade between Major League Baseball’s Miami Marlins and Toronto Blue Jays (check out the details here) – suffice to say the Marlins were able to decrease their annual payroll from $188M to around $35M in one giant trade! Classic rebuilding type of move, right? People/fans are saying the Marlins shouldn’t do this to their fans and they gave up on some great talent. Let’s take a look back at recent Florida/Miami Marlins history:

1997 – Won the World Series (payroll at $47.8M)

By 1999 – they gutted their roster of high priced talent for younger up and coming talent (payroll at $15.2M)

2003 – Won the World Series (Payroll at $76.9M)

By 2006 – they gutted their roster again (payroll at $15M)

The difference the Marlins and large market teams like the Yankees and Red Sox is that the Marlins can’t make giant financial talent mistakes without something major happening in the next year or two. They took some gambles over the past couple of years trying to assemble a world series capable team (they’ve done this before – twice!) and it didn’t work out. So, change needed to happen – rebuilding needed to begin. Any fan of the Marlins could have predicted this.

So – what does this have to do with HR – or my company?

There is some huge wisdom in how the Marlins manage their talent finances that we can all learn from. Let’s make no mistake about this – this is not Moneyball, in fact he might be the opposite of what Billy Beane had envisioned. But, many would argue that the Marlins version, had worked out better, certainly from a results standpoint. My question is – could this type of talent financing work in a corporate setting, or in your company?

Think about it that for a minute.

How could you make this happen? I tend to think about it in terms of your high priced – A talent – not necessarily your executives. What if your company was looking to drive and increase in market share in your industry. Your main competitor currently had 50% of the market, while you only had 25%, with the other 25% spread amongst competitors 3-10. Your goal was to grow your market share to 35% in 3 years – a large task for most companies in most industries. Conventional corporate wisdom would work this way – Step 1 – we hire away one of competitor 1’s executives to tell how they did it; Step 2 – The new executive brings over as many people as he can get, usually starting with a solid player from competitor 1’s marketing department; Step 3 – you re-brand and spend a crap ton of money; Step 4 – 3 years later you’re at 28% market share with less margins. Ouch.

If the Marlins management ran your company here is what they would do:

Step 1 – Go hire the top sales person from your main competitors – all of your competitors and pay them double what they are making.

Step 2 – Go directly after every single account the competitors have with the inside knowledge you just gained in your sales staff.

Step 3 – Build their market share to 40% within 24 months

Step 4 – Systematically let go of all of their high priced sales people – losing about 5% of their market share.

Step 5 – At 3 year mark be at their 35% market share with roughly the same payroll as they had 3 years prior.

I mean it could happen that way!

We/HR/Management tend to believe we have to keep our people on forever – even after they stop being rock stars, but are still getting paid like rock stars. The Marlins have said, ‘look this is a dual benefit play – we get our championships and the players gets a giant check, then we both move on’. It’s not “traditional” so everyone tends to think its wrong. I don’t know if it’s right, but I’m sure their are some Chicago Cub fans that would take 2 World Series championships in the last 15 years!

Give Your Employees Permission

Posted on November 14, 2012 by Tim Sackett

It’s pretty widely accepted that referral hires are the best hires that most companies make. Pretty easy math equation on why :

Good Employee + wanting to stay a good employee + employee’s reputation = usually good people they recommend to HR/Recruiting to go after and hire

I’m like Einstein when it comes to HR math!

But, there is one piece to the equation that most all companies struggle with. We don’t get enough of these referrals!

So, we look at our referral process. Then we go out and look at our collateral material associated with our referral program. Then we look at using technology to automate our referral program. Then we look at the numbers again – and again – we still don’t have enough of these hires…

There is still one thing we keep forgetting to do – it’s simple – which is probably why we “assume” we don’t need to do it. We/You need to give your employees permission to do share this with their personal and professional networks – each and every time you want a referral for a certain position.

You know what we do really well in HR? Roll-outs! We do! We can roll-out the shit of just about any program you can think of. We love roll-outs. We live for roll-outs! You know what we do really bad in HR? Continuing programs after we roll them out! The truth sucks because it’s true.

How can you get more referrals?

1. Have a program (don’t laugh, too many still don’t)

2. When you want a referral – ask for it – each and every time. (We tend to roll out the referral program and assume each time we post a position our employees will just naturally share it with potential referrals – they don’t)

3. When asking for a referral specifically “Give Permission” to your employees to share this with their Facebook friends, their LinkedIn Professional network and their Tweeps. (Specifically)

BEST PRACTICE ALERT: Create email groups by department, when you get an opening for that department send an email to the group with your standard referral “permission” language – plus one other item – an easy cut and paste hyperlink that they can post or send to their networks with specific instructions on where to paste/send it to.

Giving someone “permission” to do something strikes a trigger in their mind to actually do it – it has something to do with psychology or something, I don’t know I’m an HR pro, but suffice to say it works! Think about it, like you were a 5 year old. Your parents tell you, you can’t ride your Green Machine in the street. Then, one day, Mom is out getting her nails done and your Dad sees you doing circles in the driveway on that Green Machine and he goes “Hey, why don’t you take that into the street?!” What do you do? You immediately take that bad boy for a ride in the street! Dad “gave you permission” and you ran with it!

Referrals might be a “little” different but I’ve actually had conversation with employees who’ve said “Oh! It’s OK if I send this to my friends and family?” Like our posting was sort of corporate secret or something! We shouldn’t assume. You’ll be surprised.

Now – go give your employees permission to get you some referrals!