Category Archives: The Recruiting Rules

Watch Me LIVE Right Now! #CBEmpower15

Posted on by
Reply

That’s right, someone made the brilliant decision to put me on TV LIVE. Lights, camera, action!  Today, I’ll be bringing you all the cool stuff happening at Empower 15 in Chicago!

The Live Stream will start at 8am CST today and go all day until 5pm CST (that’s 9am for you East Coasters – and way too early for those on the left coast!).

My friend Laurie Ruettimann will be joining me to kick it off in this morning, then I’ll be bringing you many other great HR and Talent Pros/Celebs throughout the day.

If you want to ask a question on the Live Stream – hit me on the Twitters at #CBEmpower15 or @TimSackett and I’ll try to make you famous!

Click below to get to Live Stream feed:

Empower 15 Live Stream

Remember! This is LIVE, who knows what might happen…

 

Not Enough Cooks In The Kitchen!

Posted on by
Reply

Last weekend I spent some time with a restaurant owner friend of mine.  He runs a great place, everyone loves it, but he’s having a problem.  They are having a hard time hiring cooks.  We can commiserate on this because of my background running HR at Applebee’s, he knows I understand his pain.

In the restaurant business you don’t just shut your doors when a cook doesn’t show up to work. You put on an apron and start cooking. Customers are coming, and they don’t care that some kid would rather get high, then cook their steak.  Welcome to the show!  Oh, you thought some upstanding educated professional was back in the kitchen cooking your $50 steak!? That’s cute.

I told my friend good luck, and we went on our way.

Then I read this from the Washington Post:

The shortage of able kitchen hands is affecting chefs in Chicago, where restaurateurs said they are receiving far fewer applications than in past years. “It’s gotten to the point where if good cooks come along, we’ll hire them even if we don’t have a position. Because we will have a position,” Paul Kahan, a local chef, told the Chicago Tribune last week.

It’s also an issue in New York, where skilled cooks are an increasingly rare commodity. “If I had a position open in the kitchen, I might have 12 résumés, call in three   or four to [try out] in the kitchen, and make a decision,” Alfred Portale, the chef and owner of Michelin-starred Manhattan restaurant Gotham Bar and Grill, told Fortune recently. “Now it’s the other way around; there’s one cook and 12 restaurants.”

And it extends to restaurants out West. Seattle is coping with the same dilemma. San Francisco, too.

Looks like it’s not a local hiring dilemma, but a national trend!

It’s not just cooks. All over the U.S. HR and TA pros are struggling to find people for low and semi-skilled jobs that want to work.  You know, the kind of people who will show up each day when their shift starts, for more than one day in a row! That is the new sought after skill in America! Just showing up for work.

So, why do we have a shortage of cooks?

  1. Many, many, many cook positions are filled by Mexican workers. Over the past five years the U.S. has seen a flat or negative growth of Mexican workers entering the U.S.
  2. We have entire generations that don’t cook and eat at home.  If you never learned how to make your own grilled cheese, there is a good bet you won’t apply for a cook position.
  3. The pay is lower than it probably should be (see #1 above). Restaurants have gotten away with paying low wages to cooks because many used illegal workers with shared or fake papers.  No one wants to pay $20 for a burger and fries.

Something interesting is going to happen, slowly. Prices will rise, because wages of cooks will rise to attract people to these jobs.  Menu prices will rise to meet the wage demand. Eventually that will drive prices to a point where many people will decide to cook and eat at home.  Restaurants will go out of business.

It’s the $15/hr fast food debate.  Do you want to pay $9.99 for a Happy Meal for your kid? No. Fewer happy meals sold equals fewer fast food jobs.

It’s all simple economics, not politics.  We make choices based on the perceived value we get.  If the perceived value is too low, we will make other choices.  Give it time, you’ll see.

The 1 Miracle That Can Make Your Corporate Recruiters Better Almost Instantly

Posted on by
2

I’ve had 3 opportunities in my career to step into traditional corporate recruiting departments and make changes that would ‘turn’ these departments around so that the organization would see them as a positive producing department, where previously that had not been viewed as this.  As you can imagine there are numerous changes that can be made to do this.  You could go out and hire more talented recruiters.  You could redesign and launch a new employment brand.  You can redesign your processes.  You can launch a new career website.  Add in recruiter specific training.  Get hiring managers and leadership involved in ‘owning’ their talent in their individual departments.  All great stuff.  All things that I eventually did – all which take considerable time and resources!

When you are stepping into a new organization and taking over, those who hired you expect instant miracles.  Why?  Because that’s what you told them you could do when you interviewed.  One problem.  You told them this without truly knowing what you were going to find when you started opening up closet doors in the department and skeletons began falling out all over the place.  You didn’t realize your staff of recruiters were really just HR admins in disguise.  That your ATS was an advance spreadsheet, and nothing more.  Your hiring managers believed the only way to get talent was to wait for you to deliver it to them on a silver platter, just so they could say “I don’t like that kind – bring me another platter!”  You didn’t know your major vendor was the CEO’s cousin who had no clue and no sense of urgency – but was entitled all the same.

Doesn’t matter now – deliver the miracle!

There is really only one thing I know that works in recruiting.  Doesn’t matter if you’re an agency or corporate.  Doesn’t matter the industry.  Doesn’t matter the recruiting experience level you have on your staff.  It’s been the one miracle that in good times and bad has always sets recruiters apart – at all levels.  Activity.  Outgoing phone calls, number of candidates interviewed, number of resumes sent to hiring managers, etc.  Higher activity level = higher recruiting department satisfaction and results, 100% of the time.  It’s a simple miracle.

So – how do you do this tomorrow?

Step 1:  Instantly track the number of ‘outgoing’ phone calls made per recruiter.  If you don’t have technology to track this – develop a simple call sheet that tracks candidate name, phone number, position called for and result.  Track calls for 2 weeks. (outgoing calls only – keep it simple, establish a habit – great recruiters call candidates)

Step 2: On week 3 – set daily outgoing call goal 25% higher than the two week daily average.  (don’t let on you will do this on week 3 or you’ll have low numbers your first two weeks)

Step 3:  Hold those recruiters accountable who aren’t reaching their call goal.

You’ll hear every single excuse in the world – you have to stay strong.  “I have too many meetings” – tell them you are giving them permission to no longer attend those meetings.  “I have to much paperwork” – stop doing paperwork – that’s for after 5pm and on weekends (recruiting isn’t a 40 hr per week job). Only concentrate on calls.  Calls. Calls. Calls.

Miracle, delivered, almost instantly.

Want to hear some more?  Call me – I’ve got more miracles. Sackett.tim@hru-tech.com; 517-908-3156 or @TimSackett  – my company delivers staffing miracles every freaking day!

CareerBuilder Empower 15 Live Stream Wednesday Sept. 10th!

Posted on by
Reply

Next week Wednesday, September 10th, CareerBuilder has asked me to Host their Live Stream of Empower 15!

That’s right, someone made the brilliant decision to put me on LIVE. Lights, camera, action!  To bring to you all the cool stuff happening at Empower!

The Live Stream will start at 8am CST and go all day until 5pm CST (that’s 9am for you East Coasters – and way too early for those on the left coast!).  My friend Laurie Ruettimann will be joining me to kick it off in the morning, then I’ll be bringing you many other great HR and Talent Pros/Celebs throughout the day. Click on the link above for Wednesday’s lineup of great presenters!

Click below to get to Live Stream feed:

Empower 15 Live Stream

What is Empower?

DISCOVER. ELEVATE. INSPIRE.

The act of connecting employers and job seekers to make meaningful matches has changed dramatically over the past 20 years. And new economic, digital, and social trends have introduced an entirely new set of challenges. We’re giving you a front row seat to share the journey as we look back and, more importantly, ahead to the next 20. Join CareerBuilder and 1000+ other leaders for the talent acquisition event of the year where we’ll identify opportunities to continue to move the industry forward and work together to make recruitment easier and more effective.

Empower is Talent Acquisition’s version of all those cool HR conferences your HR peers get to go to, but they aren’t really designed for true Talent Acquisition leaders!

Top 10 Ways To Use Glassdoor For Good (not Evil)

Posted on by
Reply

Let’s face it. HR pros have a long history of being uncomfortable with sites like Glassdoor.com. After all, the only people that use Glassdoor.com and sites like it are disgruntled ex-employees that you fired, right?

Wrong. It was wrong 5 years ago, and it’s horribly wrong today. Rather than view these types of sites as a threat, smart HR and Recruiting pros are learning how to use the reputation/rating sites to manage their employment brand, connect with candidates and make better hires.

The days of the employment brand strategy with scripted photos, smiling faces (just the right amount of diversity!) and PDFs are over.

That’s why we’re going deep on reputation sites like Glassdoor in the September version of the FOT Webinar entitled, Top 10 Ways To Use Glassdoor For Good (Not Evil). Join Kris Dunn and Tim Sackett from Fistful of Talent on 9/17 at 2pm Eastern, and we’ll hit you with the following:

– How the the yelp-ification of America—the trend towards consumer-based reviews in almost every area of our economy—is changing the way employees and candidates think about job search and employer brands. It’s second nature for your employees to rate a restaurant, a book or a movie online. That means that employees of all types (not just the ones who want to complain) are more willing than ever to participate in your brand through user review.

– We’ll cover the 5 Biggest Myths about company reputation sites like Glassdoor and tell you which ones are completely BS and which ones you actually perpetuate by not fully engaging on sites like Glassdoor. We’ll hit the usual suspects here: “The only comments are from the bad employees”  and “The salary data out there isn’t factual,” and tell you why things have changed. More importantly, we’ll cover how you actually may make the myths a reality by not fully engaging on reputation sites.  Think about that last sentence: You’ve got to be in the game to influence the game.

– Last but not least, we’ll give you a 10-step playbook on how to engage on reputation sites and become more of a Marketer as an HR/Recruiting Pro.  It’s true—you wouldn’t have read this far if you didn’t want to learn more about how to use reputation sites like Glassdoor to maximize your company and your career. We’ll help you get started.

The outside world now has a huge say in how your company/employment brand is perceived, whether you engage or not. FOT thinks you should engage.  Join us for Top 10 Ways To Use Glassdoor For Good (Not Evil) on 9/17 at 2pm Eastern and we’ll show you how.

(FOT Note: Glassdoor is sponsoring this FOT webinar. We’re happy to have them as a sponsor and, true to their commitment to transparency, they’re letting us talk about the myths and a lot of other realities HR and Recruiting pros have experienced related to Glassdoor—without restriction. That type of balance makes them a great partner.  Join us and we promise you’ll get a balanced view—no sales pitch—as well as an insider’s guide to how to use sites like Glassdoor to become a better marketer as an HR/Recruiting pro.)

Fill out the form below to register today!

It’s Not Amazon, It’s You

Posted on by
2

So, about know the media/opinion machine news cycle has run its course on Amazon.  The initial story broke from the New York Times and Amazon was EVIL!  For two days we got to listen to comments and opinions about how awful Amazon is.  The folks at Walmart were happy for a few days as they got pushed off the ‘worst employer in retail’ category for a while!

But, as the cycle moves forward, we all know what happens next. The Amazon machine kicks in and we get to hear about all those people who LOVE Amazon, and what a great place it is to work.  By day five, the Onion starts making funny headlines and the cycle is over.  The media outlets go back to making fun of Trump!

It used to take longer for the cycle to run.  It’s so fast now, because our attention span is about 13 seconds and we are on to the next thing to get all worked up about.

What’s the reality of this situation?

There is nothing wrong with Amazon.

Amazon doesn’t lie and try to hide who they are.  In fact, in their employment branding they basically try and talk you out of working there.  They say this place is going to be really hard to work at and you will have the highest expectations you’ve ever had placed upon you. Go away! Don’t apply! You aren’t good enough!

It’s like that kid who applies to Harvard because he’s the smartest kid in his school, only to realize upon arriving there are actually smarter people than him, way smarter.  In fact, he went from being the smartest in his high school, to the dumbest at Harvard. Welcome to the show. Life is going to hurt for a while.

Amazon, from what we are hearing, is a bitch to work at.  Super, unreasonably high expectations.  Co-workers and bosses telling you your ideas suck (which they probably do, but no one ever had the guts to tell you). Oh, and you can’t go home every day at 4:30pm.  The trade off is you get to work on cool stuff, with high levels of responsibility, alongside people who will push you farther in your career than you thought was possible.

But, Tim, I want all that, and I want to only work forty hours and not get yelled at and get a trophy for showing up most days.

Yeah, maybe you need to get yourself a government job, this gig isn’t for you.

You see Amazon isn’t the problem.  You are the problem.  You thought you could handle this insane environment and you can’t. That isn’t Amazon’s fault, they didn’t trick you.  They told you that you couldn’t handle it and you decided to try it anyway.  You failed. That’s okay, many will. There are still really good employers and jobs for you at companies with a culture that will fit you better. Go find that.

There isn’t ‘one’ great way to run a company.  If you don’t like how Amazon is running their company, than stop buying their products, and don’t apply for their jobs. No one is making you.  Our reality is we would rather buy cheap crap off Amazon, than make a real change.  Again, that’s a ‘you’ problem, not an Amazon problem.

The Top 10 Words You Should Never Use in Your LinkedIn Profile

Posted on by
3

I love Fast Company magazine from about five years ago.  Their writers pushed the envelope and challenged me in almost every article to rethink business and leadership. I couldn’t wait for the next copy to come out.

Recently, they’ve fallen off a ton on the quality side.  I blame their need to deliver daily content versus month content. When you have thirty days to put out limited content, you can make it really good. When you do daily content, some will be good, some will be complete crap.

Case in point, Fast Company recently posted an article titled “The 10 Words You Should Never Use In Your LinkedIn Profile” written by Stephanie Vozza.  It’s not really Fast Companies best work. It’s boring. It’s vanilla. They could have done so much better with this!

Here are the ten words Fast Company says you shouldn’t use on your LinkedIn profile:

LinkedIn Top Ten Global Buzzwords for 2014

  1. Motivated
  2. Passionate
  3. Creative
  4. Driven
  5. Extensive experience
  6. Responsible
  7. Strategic
  8. Track record
  9. Organizational
  10. Expert

These are all based on Vozza’s assumption that you shouldn’t use the same words as everyone else if you want your profile to standout. Not bad advice, but it’s not classic Fast Company advice.  It’s not edgy, or snarky, or fun.  It didn’t challenge me to think differently!

The “real” list of 10 Words You Should Never Use in Your LinkedIn Profile:

  1. Parole
  2. Moist
  3. Gingivitis
  4. Erection
  5. Maverick
  6. Disgruntled
  7. Horney
  8. Manscaping
  9. Purge
  10. Juicy

Honorable Mentions:  Any gross medical type terms – pus, mucous, ooze, cyst.  Ginormous. Retarded.  Nugget.

See!  My list is much better!  That is the list that Fast Company would have put out five years ago!

If you use Fast Company’s list, sure no one will notice your profile, but you can still get a job, and people will want to connect with you.  If you use words on my list, there’s not a chance you’ll get a job or connections.  Well, you might get connections, but probably not the ones you really want!

So, how do you make your LinkedIn profile stand out?

  • Have a pretty/handsome picture of yourself.
  • Don’t write your profile like you’re a used car salesman.
  • Tell people about yourself in real terms.
  • Let your personality come through, but make it the best side of your personality.

Here’s the deal. There is no secret sauce in building your profile because LinkedIn has become so diverse in its user base.  You need to write your profile for the type of person and company you want to connect with.  If you want to work for a big traditional, conservative company, you might want to tone down the profile to fit.  If you want to work for some cool, hip, new startup, you better not sound like your want to work for IBM.

Organizations tend to hire what they see in the mirror.  You need to look like they look. Not physically, but in your words and actions.

Positivity: The New Red Flag in Hiring

Posted on by
1

I’m trained as an HR pro to pick up on ‘red flags’ in interviewing, in employee behavior, potential turnover risks, etc. Sometimes those red flags are really obvious.  I tease my staff all the time, but missing time on Mondays and Fridays, unexcused time, is a red flag.  It says something about how you feel about work, that you want to extend your weekend. It’s subtle, but in my experience it doesn’t play out well.

My new red flag is Positivity.

First, I’ll admit to you that I’m a mostly positive person.  My normal gauge is set to “things will probably work out in the end”.  I try to be realistic, without thinking the sky is going to fall when something doesn’t go my way.  Life has been pretty good to me. My glass is over half full, and when it’s not, I believe I can find a way to fill it up.

What I don’t buy is the people who are so positive they seem to be telling themselves they’re positive.  I tend to believe if you’re positive, you don’t need to say you outlook is positive, people will hear it and see it in your daily interactions.  Those are the people you get drawn to. They are truly positive people who enjoy the life they’ve created for themselves.

There is another kind of positive person.  This is the person who needs to keep reminding themselves and anyone around them they’re positive. This positive scares me. This positive is a red flag for me.  This type of positive makes me believe you are actually fairly negative, but trying to turn yourself into positive.

Now, I don’t necessarily think that’s bad, someone wanting to change from negative to positive.  I applaud the effort. I also know that most people are hardwired to lean one way.  It’s your personality, and that’s really hard to change long term.

My friend, Kris Dunn, loves to ask applicants about what work experience in their life they enjoyed the most, and which one did they dislike the most. Each tell you something about the person.  A truly positive person will have a hard time finding a place they truly disliked, but they’ll speak a ton about what they really liked. A truly negative person will do the opposite. They’ll go on and on about what they dislike, but move on quickly with their answer about what they like.

Basically, you can fake positivity, and it’s common amongst candidates.  The problem is, you can’t fake it for long, and even if they can fake it, fake positivity can get down right annoying!

I think it’s important to remember that opposite of Positive Thinking isn’t Negative Thinking. It’s Possible Thinking. I want to hire people who are realistic about what is possible. Blind positivity doesn’t last and usually leads to a big fall.  I don’t need the drama in my work environment. Who would have ever thought that positivity would be a hiring red flag!

Blame the Search Firm for Your Crappy Hires

Posted on by
2

It’s become common practice in high level NCAA Division Athletics to use retained search firms to hire Athletic Directors and Coaches.  Recently, the University of Minnesota Athletic Director resigned, before UM could terminate him for inappropriate activity, after being on the job for two years.  How did the University of Minnesota respond to this termination?  Well, they blamed the original search firm of course!

Both the University of Minnesota Twin Cities and UMD (each part of the state’s public University of Minnesota system) hired Atlanta-based Parker Executive Search to find athletic directors.

It’s easy to see why they chose Parker, as the firm has been profiled by ESPN as one of the most influential search firms in college athletics and has had Indiana, Kentucky, Notre Dame, Oregon and Northwestern as clients.

Parker’s searches in Minnesota resulted in the 2012 hiring of Teague, who resigned last week while facing reports of sexually harassing employees. It also brought Athletics Director Josh Berlo to UMD, where he is facing criticism for firing five-time national champion women’s hockey coach Shannon Miller.

One Gophers booster told the Pioneer Press he won’t give any more money to the university if it uses any search firm again.

How much blame should the search firm get for Teague’s hiring? That’s a question likely to come up when the University of Minnesota Twin Cities conducts an outside investigation into the case.

I get it.  If I paid $125K for a company to do a retained search, I would hope they would let me in on every single thing in the candidates background, and even stuff that wasn’t in his background but they found anyway! It seems like the search firm, in this case, missed that Teague, Minnesota’s ex-Athletic Director, has previous issues related to harassment.

I doubt highly they hid this information. One placement fee, no matter how big, is worth burning a client.  I’ve never met anyone in the search business who was willing to burn a client over one placement fee.  I’m not saying it doesn’t happen. I’m sure there are firms that have done it after they’ve made the decision they no longer care if they have a long term relationship with a client.

What I rarely see happen is that the organization takes responsibility for making the hiring decision. In this case, the University of Minnesota wanted to hire Teague, who had help VCU rise to a national basketball power.  They were hoping Teague could bring some of that magic to the twin cities.  My guess is, even if they new of the harassment issue, they still would have moved forward with the hire.

The reality is search firms don’t hire anyone.  You hire.  You make the final decision.  The best search firms will advise you on the candidate and the market, but none hold a gun to your head.  When that decision goes south, it has very little to do with the search firm, yet, and I see it constantly, organizations love to blame search firms for their bad hires!

What’s the morale to this story?  Never pay $125K for a search.  You will never feel like you got value for that cost!

THE TOP 20 BRANDED HR & TALENT PROS: Meet Jim D’Amico from Spectrum Health

Posted on by
Reply

Let’s face it – Fearful of the spotlight and conservative to a fault, HR pros generally aren’t the best examples to look towards when it comes to professional branding. Kris Dunn (Kinetix RPO, The HR Capitalist) and Tim Sackett (HRU Technical Resources, TimSackett.com) think that needs to change.  That’s why they created this series – The Top 20 Branded HR Pros(sponsored by the team at Glassdoor).

KD and Tim searched the globe for HR Pros who used the tools at their disposal (writing, speaking, social and more) to brand themselves in the HR space, but limited the results to actual practitioners in the areas of HR, Recruiting and Talent Management.  No consultants, no vendors. They found out well-branded HR pros who are actual practitioners are hard to find.  

Tim and KD are running the Top 20 they found here on the HR Capitalist and at TimSackett.com.  No rankings, just inclusion in the list and some notes on why.  There are at least 20 well-branded HR Pros in the world.  These are their stories. 

____________________________________

Jim D’Amico was born to work in Talent Acquisition.  He’s the kind of guy who strikes up conversations with you while you wait in line at Starbucks hoping no one will strike up a conversation with you!  The great part of about Jim, is once he does strike up that conversation, you find out you just had a pretty cool conversation!

Jim is the Director of Talent Acquisition at Spectrum Health in Grand Rapids, MI.  Jim is personally responsible for branding his TA team, “The Best Damn Talent Acquisition Team on the Planet!”  To back up this assertion, ERE voted Spectrum Health the #1 Talent Acquisition team of 2015.  Jim is also the co-Founder of the Michigan Recruiters Conference, held bi-annually across the state to help other corporate TA shops develop into greatness!

Check out Jim’s player card:

Glassdoor Top 20 - Jim D'Amico

 

Jim has 15 years of experience in the Talent Acquisition game, with both domestic and international assignments.  His current role in healthcare supports an employee base of 24,000 and his team will hire over 5,000 in 2015 alone!

Jim’s branding game is anchored around his writing and speaking.  He’s a regular on the ERE speaking circuit, and a frequent contributor to the ERE writing side as well.  Jim also has been active and involved in many local grassroots efforts to support recruiting as a function in the communities he lives.  Most recently with the Michigan Recruiters Conference, but he also has worked on similar projects in West Michigan and Minnesota as well.

Jim is the poster child for being a Brand Ambassador. I mean, seriously, who comes in and names their TA team “The Best Damn TA Team on the Planet!” Jim Does!  That takes a ton of confidence to know that while we might not be ‘that’ yet, we are going to be!  ERE’s award this years solidified the title.

A fun fact about Jim?  He moonlights as a standup Comic!  He also does a ton of volunteer work in around Grand Rapids, MI.  Basically, branding, professionally and personally is who he is.   If you get a chance to catch him on Recruiting/HR speaking circuit make sure you do, he’s well worth it. Otherwise, connect with him on LinkedIn, you can try on Twitter (he’s a not a huge Tweeter), and don’t even try on Instagram!

———————————————————–

The Top 20 Branded HR Pros is brought to you by Glassdoor, who invites you to attend the Annual Glassdoor Employer Branding Summit on September 25th, where a stellar speaker lineup of industry experts and thought leaders exploring the intersection of employer branding and talent acquisition, the candidate experience and employee engagement. 

Tickets are sold out, but wait!  You can attend the livestream online featuring studio coverage with Kris Dunn and Tim Sackett by registering here (click to register).  Fun and games are sure to be a part of that coverage.