Category Archives: The HR Rules

The 5 Whys

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There’s an interactive questioning technique called The 5 Whys.  The theory is that if who continue to ask ‘why’ enough times you’ll get to the root cause of every issue.

Timmy is a bad performer. Why?

He doesn’t follow through on anything. Why?

It seems like he gets things started well and then moves onto other things before the first thing is finished. Why?

He likes the energy of starting new projects. Why?

He thinks if he’s on the front side of project he’ll have more influence in the direction the project is going. Why?

Because that has been his experience with our organization.

Oh, so he might not be a bad performer. He just has an opportunity area that we might be able to help him out with – getting projects across the finish line.  And we’ve taught him to behave in this manner.

I don’t know if you have to use to 5 whys each time, I do think you have to ask at least 3 whys to get past the emotion of any decision.  We tend to make most decisions with some element of emotion.  Getting to the third why will get the emotion out in the open.  That is important in any decision making process.

Does this technique seem a little ‘parental’?  It does, which is why you probably don’t want to make a habit of using this technique too often.  It is definitely a tool, though, that can be very effective for a leader to use from time to time.

“We need to change our hiring process!”

Why?

“We have had 3 consecutive failed hires.”

Why?

“Well, one person was a referral from an executive, so we hired without really checking references. One hire totally aced our pre-employment testing, but had a sketchy work history, but tested off the charts. One was a knock out in the interview, marginal testing, and just didn’t pan out.”

So, do we really need to change our hiring process? Or should we just start following our hiring process?

3 Whys takes the emotion out of any decision making process.  It gets out everyone’s inner issues about the problem.  We tend to lead with a crisis statement that will lead to action.  If we take action based on incomplete information, we will unnecessarily start doing things that we might not need to do, or make changes that really don’t make sense to the organization.

Next time you are facing a tough decision, start asking ‘Why’ and see where it leads you, you might be surprised where you’ll end up!

 

7 Hard Truths That HR Must Learn To Accept

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In a perfect world we all get a seat at the table,  all of our employees go online and fill out their open enrollment forms on time, and all of our hiring manager give us immediate feedback on each candidate resume we send them.  Unfortunately, none of us live in a perfect world, there are some hard and fast truths in our profession that we have to accept, and by accepting those truths, it allows us to let go and move on with trying to better our organizations each day.

Accepting these truths doesn’t mean we are giving up, and not trying to change our profession, our organizations and ourselves for the better.  Accepting these truths gives us permission to accept our reality, and it allows us to work towards, little-by-little, making the HR profession better.

Here are the 7 Hard Truths HR Must Learn To Accept:

#1 – Focusing on compliance, will never allow you to become strategic.  Operations in our organizations have long known this, and this alone allows them to control most of the decision making power in your organization.  A compliance focused department, will never be innovative, it will never creative, it will never be Strategic.

#2 – Your Performance Management system, will not fix everything.  In fact no system or process will fix everything – we drive a people business – thus we deal with a very nebulous product – people.  As soon as you create a process or implement a system, some hiring manager or employee will find a way to find a flaw in it. It’s OK not to be perfect.

#3 – You’ll never get all the resources you need to do the job you want to do.  People are your most important asset, but shareholders/stakeholders need a return on investment.  Thus, resources are always going to first go to where that return is highest, and sorry but HR isn’t first on the list.

#4 – Your companies Deepest Secrets are only a Tweet away. And your social media policy and lock down of social media sites isn’t going to stop these secrets from getting out, if you have a rogue employee who wants to get them out.  This is similar to the reality of you will probably more likely die on your way to work in a traffic accident, then in a plane crash on your way to vacation – but we tend to worry more about the plane crash.

#5 – Your employees and managers will never fully support themselves on Self-Service Modules. It’s a dream, sold to you by software vendors, and you buy into it because you hate dealing with the daily administration of HR.  No matter what, we’ll always have some of this to do – it also, is OK, it’s not what we do all day, every day – no job is perfect.  Pull up your big boy pants and help them out – you’ll live.

#6 –Fraternization will always happen.  We manage adults (even if they don’t act like adults), and until the end of time adults, put in close proximity of each other, will eventually be attracted – blame G*d, blame laws of the universe, blame your parents – I don’t care.  It’s a fact – deal with it.

#7 – You’ll Never get the full respect you deserve.  This is a function of organizational dynamics.  HR doesn’t make the money, operations makes the money – respect will be given to those who actually keep the doors open and the lights on.  If you got into HR for your deep need for respect, sorry, you picked the wrong career.  On the plus side, we get a lot of conference room cookie leftovers!

Is LinkedIn’s Recruiter Certification A Scam?

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At LinkedIn’s (LI) annual Talent Connect Conference last week they announced the addition of a certification program for recruiters.  I love the idea!  Much like SHRM has their PHR, SPHR and GPHR certifications, no real recruiting certification has taken hold.  A number of organizations have tried, the most successful probably being American Staffing Association’s Certified Staffing Professional and AIRS Internet Recruiter certification (CPC through NAPS for my Agency friends), but all seem woefully incomplete and none have really ever gained traction as ‘the’ certification to have if you’re a true recruiting professional.  That’s why LinkedIn’s announcement intrigued me.  LI has the brand recognition and money to really own this space if they decided to.

Unfortunately, I think the new LinkedIn Recruiter Certification is going to cause confusion in the corporate and agency recruiting ranks.

Here’s why it’s probably is worthless:

1. LI’s Recruiter Certification has very little to do with actual recruiting and everything to do with how well you know how to use LI’s Recruiter product.

2. If you get ‘certified’ from LI you get to add a ‘badge’ saying you’re a ‘Certified LI Recruiter‘, which is cool enough, but I think that title is easily used to give a false impression of what it really means.  “Oh, you’re a ‘certified recruiter’ that is really impressive!” Instead of the reality ‘Oh, you’re a ‘certified LI recruiter’ which means you know how to use one recruiting tool really well.

3. LI is charging people to get ‘certified’ on a product they are paying for.  Does this seem odd to anyone? Anyone?  Let me see if I get this right.  I pay around $8K per seat annually, and you make me pay another $199 every two years to show you I know how to use the system I’m paying for. Yes. Okay, I thought so.  Can you now punch me in the face?

4. Most of the content you get tested on to gain certification, from LI’s on certification program book, seems to be process oriented.  Do you know how to post a job? Do you know how to search? Do you know how to effectively use InMail? Is this the kind of ‘certified’ knowledge we need for the recruiting profession?  Can you do the process of recruiting?

Here’s why it’s going to be wildly successful:

1. LI gives you a certification badge.  Recruiters are extremely hungry for validation.  We see our HR brothers and sisters with PHR and SPHR, dammit, we want something at the end our name too!

2. LI knows that Talent Acquisition leaders will easily pay a ‘little’ extra to ensure their people are using and understand their big spend (LI Recruiter).

3. People like being a part of a tribe. LI has a special invite only group for LI Certified Recruiters.  Want to make something popular? Make it exclusive!

4. Many HR Leaders don’t get ‘recruiting’ so they will believe this is hugely important and teaching their recruiting team how to really recruit.  It’s not, but no one really looks into the details for $199.

It does really open up a broader conversation about why no one has really been able to create a recruiter certification program that is widely respected and used.  It might be that recruiting, like sales, is hard to train and even harder to come up with concrete components around what makes a recruiter really good at recruiting.  There are so many opinions on that subject and ways to do the job effectively.

Does being a Certified LinkedIn Recruiter make you a better recruiter? No. Will it make people think you are? Yes.

Is it a scam?  Well, it definitely seems a little ‘scam-ish’.  I won’t say it’s a complete scam because they are very up front at what they are delivering for your money. Does LI really need the extra $199 per recruiter? Sure! Every company needs incremental revenue, LI is not different, they’re aren’t a non-profit. God bless them for coming up with a great idea on getting another $199 per recruiter out of your organization.

Here’s my question: Would you pay $199 to become ADP certified? What about Oracle? Halogen?  SuccessFactors?  That’s what this is.  Your HR vendor partner charging you to become a certified expert on their system.  This isn’t transferable.  You can’t leave your company who uses LI and go to a new company who uses Monster and say “Well, I’m a ‘Certified Recruiter’.  You’re not.  You’re just certified on one system. By the way, your two years is up, please send another check.

 

 

 

 

It’s Hard To Judge People

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I was out walking with my wife recently (that’s what middle aged suburban people do, we walk, it makes us feel like we are less lazy and it gets us away from the kids so we can talk grown up) and she made this statement in a perfect innocent way:

“It’s really hard to judge people.”

She said this to ‘me’!  I start laughing.  She realized what she said and started laughing.

It’s actually really, really easy to judge people!  I’m in HR and Recruiting, I’ve made a career out of judging people.

Candidate comes in with a tattoo on their face and immediately we think – prison, drugs, poor decision making, etc. We instantly judge.  It’s not that face-tattoo candidate can’t surprise us and be engaging and brilliant, etc. But before we even get to that point, we judge.  I know, I know, you don’t judge, it’s just me — sorry for lumping you in with ‘me’!

What my wife was saying was correct.  It’s really hard to judge someone based on how little we actually know them.  People judge me all the time on my poor grammar skills.  I actually met a woman recently at the HR Tech Conference who said she knew me, use to read my stuff, but stopped because of my poor grammar in my writing.  We got to spend some time talking and she said she would begin reading again, that she had judged me too harshly and because I made errors in my writing assumed I wasn’t that intelligent.  I told her she was actually correct, I’m not intelligent, but that I have consciously not fixed my errors in writing (clearly at this point I could have hired an editor – I probably have at least one offer per month!) — the errors are my face tattoo.

If you can’t see beyond my errors, we probably won’t be friends.  I’m not ‘writing errors, poor grammar guy”.  If you judge me as that, you’re missing out on some cool stuff and ideas I write about.

As a hiring manager and HR Pro, if you can’t see beyond someone’s errors, you’re woefully inept at your job.  We all have ‘opportunities’ but apparently if you’re a candidate you don’t, you have to be perfect.  I run into hiring managers and HR Pros who will constantly tell me, “we’re selective”, “we’re picky”, etc.  No you’re not.  What you are is unclear about what and who it is that is successful in your environment.  No one working for you now is perfect.  So, why do you look for perfect in a candidate?  Because it’s natural to judge against your internal norm.

The problem with selection isn’t that is too hard to judge, the problem is that it’s way too easy to judge.  The next time you sit down in front of a candidate try and determine what you’ve already judge them on.  It’s a fun exercise. Before they even say a word.  Have the hiring managers interviewing them send you their judgements before the interview.  We all do it.  Then, flip the script, and have your hiring managers show up to an interview ‘blind’. No resume beforehand, just them and a candidate face-to-face.  It’s fun to see how they react and what they ask them without a resume, and how they judge them after.  It’s so easy to judge, and those judgements shape our decision making, even before we know it!

 

Are You An Employee Friendly Company?

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If you were to ask any HR Pro or Executive from any company if they were ’employee friendly’ I can guarantee you 100% of the time, their answer would be ‘Yes’!

But are you really?

I’m sure you would point to your some of your policies to demonstrate to me how employee friendly you are.  You would show me your policy on flexible work arrangements or your personal time off (PTO) policy, maybe even your anniversary policy.  These would prove to me that your truly are employee friendly.

What I wouldn’t see would be policies that aren’t so employee friendly.  Like the policy of only allowing lunch to be reimbursed when traveling if you were with a client (you have to eat lunch when you’re in the office and we don’t pay, this is no different!). The policy that forces someone traveling for the day to come into the office if they get back before 5pm, even thought they left on a Sunday to get to the client location. The policy that forces you to use your PTO when you decide to stay home during a snow storm, instead of trying to make it in to work in dangerous driving conditions. The policy requiring you to ‘sign out’ a laptop to take home to do work at home. The policy requiring a ‘doctor’s note’ when you stay home sick (just what our healthcare system needs, employees coming in with colds).

The reality is, most policies are written in the best interest of the employer.  It’s the employer who writes them, so we can assume that they’ll weighted to ensuring the employer is protected, first and foremost.  Put it this way, we have way too much tax policy/code in our country.  Do you think that is in place to protect you, the individual, or the government and/or the companies that pay billions of dollars to lobby for company friendly tax code?   Companies don’t top being companies when they start writing employment policies.

Employee friendly companies usually have one very common thing — they have few policies.  Treat people like adults.  Do what’s best for all stake holders, employees, shareholders and customers.  Don’t put up with idiots who try and take advantage of your awesome employee friendly policies! That’s the real issue, right?  We have policies because of the 5%.  Hey, one time we had this guy and stole a laptop he used to take home for work.  So, now we have a policy to make sure that never happens again.  If we told people they would get paid if they stayed home when it snowed, people would stay home when there was 1 inch!

If you manage ‘the exception’ through policy, you’re really good at bad HR.  You are not employee friendly.  I blame unions for most unfriendly employee policies, because unions will take everything to the letter of anything written (and I like to blame unions for the downfall of American manufacturing, the economy and Santa Claus not bringing me presents once I turned 13).  Common sense is thrown out the door.  You said in paragraph two that employees should use their judgement when coming in if they feel road conditions are dangerous, and Mr. Smith felt like 1 inch of snow is dangerous, so you can’t fire him and you have to pay him.  Mr. Smith stayed home because of bad road conditions 27 times in the past 3 months.

So, are you employee friendly?

A New Way To Retain Employees!

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(I just returned from the 2013 HR Technology Conference where I got to see all the latest and greatest HR technology, and speak to some wickedly smart people.  So, for the next week or so, my plan is to share some of the products and insights I gained from this experience. So we are clear, no companies I write about have paid me to write about them.  I requested Diet Mt. Dew be delivered and no one brought one.  Enjoy…)

I swear last product I want to talk about from HR Tech!  This one is near and dear to my heart because it’s about employee retention!  I know boring right!  No sexy, stealthy way to find talent or Jedi Mind Tricks to get your staff to perform better, just good old solid how the hell do we keep our people from leaving!  HR to it’s core.

The company is BlackBookHR, there new product is called Sense and it won best new HR Tech product of 2013!  I continually referenced them as BackDoorHR (because deep down I’m a 12 yaer old boy at heart).  I’m sorry about that Chris Ostoich, the Founder and CEO of BlackBookHR.  Chris is a really great person, with a really great story.  He’s one of those guys you route for. He couldn’t really even afford to have a booth at HR Tech, but won the prize for best product anyway! (He told me he could afford a booth, but thought there were better ways to spend the money – he’s right!)  Also, he brought his Mom out to Vegas to see him get the award!  Pure Midwest, baby!

Sense is a software which sets an engagement baseline for your entire staff.  Don’t worry that takes about 5 minutes for your employees to complete.  Then, each week Sense goes out and within 30 seconds re-measures to the baseline of each employee (through an email interface and quick point and select questions).

Here’s a quick example: An original question might be — “My company gives me the tools and resources I need to do great work?”  On a scale of 1 to 10 I say, “Yep, they do at an 8”.  Everything is going great at an 8, then a few months later my boss tells me he’s cutting some tool out of my budget I rely on.  That Friday Sense asks me the same “tools and resource” question, but this time I answer “1”.  The system ‘senses’ something went wrong with my engagement, and that I could be a flight risk, so HR is told.  HR then determines how to elevate this to my supervisor, or do they handle it themselves. Pretty cool!

Sense also does one other very cool thing and shows you how an employee influences within your organization.  Not all employees are created equal.  Some have major influence and connections, and one of those employees leaves, usually others follow.  Sense will show you who those employees are in your organization as well!

Beyond cool, is that some very big Fortune 500 types have been using this and the metrics show that it actually works.  Like reducing many percentage points off your turnover works!

How did Chris know this idea would work?  He lived it!

Chris isn’t from HR or even from IT.  He was a finance dude who had a feeling he could easily be talked into leaving his current company.  He saw others like him, and thought there is a way to stay connected and at least giving the company a chance to hang on to him, and show him some love, on those times when he was most vulnerable to leaving.  Long story short, he shared his idea with his company, and they listened, and they told him to get his ass back to work!   He did, on his own, building Sense!

Check it out – quickly!  Sometimes the simplest ideas and products have the biggest impact to our bottom line.   I have a feeling Sense won’t be around as a stand alone product for long.  My guess is Oracle, SumTotal, Halogen, SuccessFactors, etc. will come knocking on Chris’s door and offer him a huge pile of cash to integrate it into their own suite.  It’s that good.

Cool New HR Tech…that you might even be able to afford

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(I just returned from the 2013 HR Technology Conference where I got to see all the latest and greatest HR technology, and speak to some wickedly smart people.  So, for the next week or so, my plan is to share some of the products and insights I gained from this experience. So we are clear, no companies I write about have paid me to write about them. Enjoy…)

Here’s a run down from the HR Tech Conference Expo:

BambooHR: Tagged as your “1st HR system” or “we love you, if you use spreadsheets as your HR system” – Ben Peterson, the CEO, was by far the coolest and nicest and real CEO (and maybe person) I met all week at HR Tech.  They don’t like to use ‘HRIS’ because small and medium sized businesses and HR shops don’t even really know what that means.  BambooHR is an easy to use HR system and nicely designed, for a very, very cheap price.  Don’t let the price scare you off — cheap, in this case, doesn’t mean they try and a one-size and process fits all perspective down your throat – they’ll customize for you – and still be cheap!  If you are looking for your first HR system, or to up grade your old system, and you don’t look at these guys, you should be fired as an HR professional.

Blissbook: “Employee Handbooks to Smile About”.  I know, I know — Tim, you’re talking handbooks!?  Here’s the deal.  They have a super cheap, super cool UI (user interface — BTW, no one at HR Tech talks English, they only talk tech).  So, you can put your handbook online and add video, and hyperlinks and all kinds of stuff, and they make it really easy.  Don’t think PDF of your handbook on your careers site, it’s more than that.  Think of it as a cultural narrative of your organization having it’s own website.  One issue I see them having, the examples they show are really cool and hip.  So you think you can do the same thing, the problem is content isn’t easy to write to be cool and hip.  If you aren’t creative, neither will your Blissbook.

SumTotal: SumTotal is like BambooHR, if BambooHR was a gigantic enterprise total HR solution for your business.  Let’s be clear, SumTotal is a big company, like Oracle, ADP, SuccessFactors, etc. Big companies have the resources to do some really cool things, and Sum Total did that this year.  They added the industry’s first Context-Aware user experience. What’s Context-Aware?  You know when you go online to a store and look at a really nice pair of shoes you want, you put it in the cart, but last second you decide, I just can’t get these today.  We all do it.  Context-Aware marketing is the Ad a few days later on the side of another site you’re reading where those exact same shoes you were looking at pops up and now are 10% off!  How does this work in an HR system? Let’s say you have an employee who is not reaching their sales goal.  SumTotal’s new addition will recognize the employee is missing their goal, and without prompting or any HR or manager interaction at all recommend a training course for this person to take to better help them make their goals and maybe even a mentor in the company they should speak with who could help them become better at their job.  I don’t do this justice — trust me, it was super cool!

Work4Labs:  Work4 does Facebook recruiting, in an industry where no one has really figured it out yet (do you hear that Facebook?).  Work4 makes an solution that makes it really easy for companies to get their jobs posted on their company Facebook page and help them navigate, very easily, how to search for talent on Facebook’s Graph Search.  Also, they do this for a rather cheap price!  (Cheap meaning the cost of one or two headhunting fees, so you can see a very quick ROI)  Matthew Brown, Head of Product and co-Founder, might be 24 years old, which also helps let you know these guys get Facebook!

WePow: Formerly known as Wowser.  WePow is a video interviewing platform.  They’re really good at branding.  They gave out royal blue Converse Chuck Taylors at their booth and had pairs for all the big name pundits in our industry: Kris Dunn, Steve Boese, Gerry Chrispin, John Sumser, William Tincup, Laurie Ruettimann, etc.  Those kinds of things make a splash and get a good buzz going about their product.  Apparently, I’m not a big name in the industry, I didn’t get a pair of shoes (which is really the only reason they get mentioned here!).  Also, apparently, they are “like HireVue” when I asked their booth crew what they did.  Thanks HireVue for being so good at marketing you now have become the Kleenex of video interviewing.

YouEarnedIt:  New up and coming awards and recognition firm, designed around delivering a product that small and medium sized businesses can use.  Think Achievers, for smaller companies, and a lot less money.  Much more accessible for smaller companies because you aren’t forced to purchase their catalog of merchandise/awards which usually carry an industry standard 20% markup.  They do have that as well, but much more cost effective than the giants in the industry.

More next week – I’ve got two companies – one really well known and one hardly anyone knows doing some really cool things!

The #1 Isssue At Every Organization

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(I just returned from the 2013 HR Technology Conference where I got to see all the latest and greatest HR technology, and speak to some wickedly smart people.  So, for the next week or so, my plan is to share some of the products and insights I gained from this experience. So we are clear, no companies I write about have paid me to write about them. Enjoy…)

There are a few things we just come to know as fact in organizations.  If you were to ask anyone, at any level of your organization to come up with just one issue they have at their organization, hands down, without a doubt, across all organizations, the number one issue would always be communication!

Before I traveled to the HR Technology Conference, Halogen Software asked me to complete a Myers-Briggs Assessment (MBTI).  It had been many years since I did one, and they wanted to show off some upcoming additions to their talent suite and how they are utilizing MBTI to address the communication gap found in all organizations.  Halogen didn’t tell me anything about what to expect, so my guess was they were going down some lame path of using my Myers-Briggs in some sort of new selection functionality, but what I found was really something completely different and awesome!

By the way, my MBTI was ENTJ (What the what!? Don’t you love acronyms!) Basically, ENTJ, is one of 16 possible Myers-Briggs profiles of an individual and one of the most rare.  ENTJ is an executive profile, they get things done, they make decisions quickly and move forward.  Yep, that’s me.  My good friend, Kris Dunn, also took the assessment and was profiled as an ENTP.  Only one letter difference separates us, so basically we are the same in many ways: quick thinking, extroverted, creative, well read, etc. The one letter difference means I like to get things done and KD likes to talk about getting things done! 😉

Why do I bring Kris into the mix of this communication tool that Halogen added to their product?  Because communication happens between two or more people.  The reason all organizations have communication problems somewhere in their organization is because we try and solve communication individually.  “It’s Tim’s problem, he’s just a bad communicator.”  “Our managers don’t know how to communicate.”  “Our executives don’t know how to communicate.”  Halogen found out a way to put a tool in the face of every single person in your organization that helps them become better communicators, with every other single person they work with!

What Myers-Briggs does is not only show us how we are from a personality standpoint.  It also shows us how we like to receive and give information.  Halogen has integrated the assessment within their product, but took it a few steps further from a development standpoint and it allows you as an individual to compare your type to a co-worker’s type.  So, I’m having trouble getting along with Kris.  I go in, compare my MBTI type with Kris’s type, and the software gives me ideas and examples of how I can better communicate with Kris. Simple and effective. As a manager this is awesome, because I can now see how do I communicate with my team on an individual basis.  It was really powerful, and I didn’t see anything else like this being done from any other company.  It was one of the cooler advancements into an existing product I saw at HR Tech this year.

I can’t tell you how many times I meet with company executives who are looking to try and make their organizations better, or their leaders better, and it always comes back to communication and them wanting me to help them make individuals (or their organization as a whole) better at communicating.  The problem is, and which MBTI points out, this isn’t a one-way problem.  It’s two-way!  Want to solve your communications issues?  Find out how you get both sides to communicate like the other wants.

 

 

 

LeBron James Isn’t Good Enough For My Team

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Just putting together the roster for my annual Men’s City Rec Basketball team.  I’ve been pretty lucky in the past and have gotten some great players to come out and let me jump on their back to the championships.  As of right now here’s my roster for 2013-2014 season:

Current Starters (based on last years roster):

Point Guard: Craig Miller – Mid 30’s, 5’10”- still in ‘decent shape’ (this means he’s younger and faster than most of us).  He’s good for one wide open layup per quarter and one turnover.

Shooting Guard:  Don McCormick – 39, 6’0″ – He’s flat out money, I don’t think he’s missed a shot since 1998. Played DIII ball back in the early 90’s.  His job sometimes makes it so he can’t make games – we struggle in those games.

Small Forward: Marcus Jones – 47, 6’2″ – He’s our one black guy (we’d like more black guys, but it’s hard to find middle aged black guys in the suburbs who want to play with a bunch of white guys), he’s also the oldest guy we have.  Really never makes a mistake unless it’s a no look pass to one of us which we weren’t expecting.

Big Forward: James Brookes – 32, 5’11” – He’s not a basketball player, he’s a weight lifter.  Can’t shoot or dribble, but he’s good to hurt at least one opposing player each game, sometimes two.

Center: Mikey ‘Stretch’ McGee – 42, 6′ 5″ – He’s our tallest guy.  He likes to shoot the three.  Could have played D1, ended up going the CC route.  Currently he’s a UPS driver.

The Backups:

Point Guard: Me – 43, 5’7″- player/coach/manager – I get in if we are really up big or down big.  I’ve never seen a shot I didn’t like.  My philosophy: ‘Shoot till you get hot, then shoot to stay hot”

The 6 footers:  Ben, Jerry and Ken: All of these guys are 6 foot and basically play any position.  I lumped them together because they really are the same player. Solid, can do it all, just don’t make them run too many minutes at one time.

We are looking to add one more player to our roster this year.  We lost Billy.  He had to have his knee replaced and his real estate business was taking off again after the recession, so he’s out.  Here are the three candidates we have to replace:

1. Matt Smith – New guy in town.  He’s really in shape.  His wife is way hot.  He has a great basement man cave.  Seems like he would fit in with the guys really well.

2. Josh Moore – Another six footer.  He’s subbed for us in the past.  Likes to shoot (meaning he takes my shots).  The guys know him, but he rubs some guys the wrong way (mostly me, he takes my shots)

3. LeBron James – Yep! You read that correctly.  Let’s just say I have a connection.  Nothing in his contract to stop him from playing with us on Tuesday nights.  His schedule actually allows him to make 90% of our 12 game schedule.  We would own the league!

Seems like a really easy choice right!?  Wrong!  You see, I went to the guys to vote.  Knowing they would all laugh and Lebron would get his ‘Legion 124’ jersey shipped in the mail.  But to my surprise Matt Smith won the vote.  I couldn’t believe it, I had to find out why.  Across the board the guys came back with the following reasons why LeBron wouldn’t be a good fit for our team:  Wouldn’t find it a challenge, he would be bored, he was over qualified, he would end up quitting half way into the season, he wouldn’t take it seriously.

We had a shot a Lebron James for our team, and we didn’t take him.  Hard to believe, right?

It’s your reality.  Everyday you turn down great talent in your organization.  You turn down LeBron James because you’re scared.  We don’t say we’re scared.  We give ‘legitimate’ reasons like: “You’re over qualified” and “You wouldn’t find this position challenging”.  But we are just telling ourselves this, to make us feel better about making a terrible decision to turn away great talent.  ‘Being over qualified’ for a position is the single lamest reason to turn down talent that HR and Talent Acquisition has ever come up with.

The question is, would you turn down LeBron James if he wanted to join your team?

I Once Got Fired In A Burger King Bathroom

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It didn’t escape me this past Sunday that USC head coach Lane Kiffin was fired in a private room at an airport.  Kiffin and the USC team were just returning from a loss at Arizona State University and the AD thought the best thing to do was fire him in the airport.  An airport seems like an odd place to perform a termination of a Division 1 Football coach. I mean, why fire him at the airport, why not bring him into the AD’s office, the next day or that evening, and have that conversation?  Make sure you have all of your paperwork and have talked through everything with your legal team.

It wasn’t that I was surprised.  Being in the HR field for 20 years, I’ve had my share of odd places to fire people.  For the most part you can call an employee into their bosses office, an HR conference room, etc. to be fired.  The tricky ones are when you’re dealing with an employee who is off site, a remote worker or the supervisor and worker reside at different locations.  Sometimes leadership termination locations can be tricky as well.

I started to think where were some of the odd places I’ve had to terminate an individual?  Here’s the top 4 I could come up with:

1. My Car.  Yep, right there in the front seat of my Hyundai.  I was a Regional HR Manager and was mostly on the road working out of my car.  I once had to fire a manager in my car.  From a spacial standpoint it was a little uncomfortable. Think about any serious conversation you’ve ever had in a car. You have to turn sideways, you’re only inches from the other person.

2. A Burger King.  It wasn’t the bathroom!  But afterwards, I joked with an HR coworker of mine that ‘I got busy in a Burger King bathroom’ doing HR (Digital Underground shout out!). Many times we don’t want to terminate someone onsite at your own work location, so you set up some elaborate scheme to get them offsite and terminate them there.  The problem is, you’re in a public location!  You might have the best intentions and you show up at 10am at your local Burger King just as they have a class field trip going through and learning about the new “Satisries!”  It’s recipe for disaster, but everyone I know in HR has at some point made the decision to go offsite to terminate someone!

3. A Starbucks.  Starbucks might actually be the official SHRM location for Terminations!  Starbucks should sell official naming rights for a termination spot.  Nothing says ‘Termination’ like a nondescript meeting notice at Starbucks on a Friday afternoon around 3pm.  Coffee shops in general are great firing locations.  Quiet, you don’t have to buy anything if you don’t want, and it seems semi-plausible that you might actually just meet an employee there to discuss work stuff.

4. A Walk-in Freezer.  When you work in restaurants, sometimes the only private place you have is the walk-in cooler and/or freezer.  The freezer works best for two reasons: 1. You want these conversations to go quickly; and 2. Tears will freeze.  Plus I think the extreme cold helps to break the shock factor.

So, what about it HR Pros – give me your best/worst location for terminations that you’ve had to use!