Category Archives: The Recruiting Rules

Better Employee Relocation Design in 4 Easy Steps!

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I have to admit I’ve been one of those HR Pros who has had to design and develop relocation policies a few times in my career.  My philosophy on relocation has changed somewhat over the years. In my career, I’ve accepted positions 4 times in which I went through “professional” relocation for various HR positions in my career.  That fact has more impact on my philosophy of relocation than all other issues combined.

So, Fact #1 on getting a better relocation policy for your company: force those designing the policy to relocate, at least once.  If you haven’t relocated, you can’t design the policy, it’s that simple.

People who haven’t relocated to another state for a job have no idea what impact it has on your life.  It’s not the same as moving to a new house in another part of the city you live in.  For the most part, if you have a significant other and some kids thrown into the mix, it’s probably one of the most stressful events you’ll go through in life.  You get hired, Yeah!  You now have to go show up at the new job, without family, belongings, etc. You’re trying out the new position, culture, etc., all the while your spouse is home trying to run life, now without 50% of her support resources. That person, you, is now living in a hotel or furnished the apartment, eating out each meal, sitting around doing nothing, etc. You’ll only understand if you’ve been through this!

You need to find a new house, but not until the old house is sold, find the right schools, etc., etc.  Oh, and, by the way, you probably have some HR administrator going over your relocation expense reports like they’re a Zapruder Film. Oh, I’m sorry Mr. Sackett, you seem to have spent $1.32 too much on parking at the airport last week. Really!? I haven’t seen my wife and kids for two straight weeks, and we’re talking about $1.32?  DON’T UNDERESTIMATE FACT #1.

I know the talk, lately, about relocation, has been about how difficult it is to get people to relocate because of falling housing values.  Workforce Management’s article Recruiters Get Creative with Relocation in Sluggish Housing Market by Leah Shepherd speaks specifically to this dilemma. Clearly, it’s more expensive to get people to relocate, but I will argue that it isn’t more difficult.  HR folks are classic in confusing expensive and more difficult – finance people don’t have this same issue.  It’s not more difficult to get some to relocate, it’s just more expensive.

Here is where Fact #2 comes in: Never allow your Hiring Managers to get involved with Relocation.

Believe me, they will want to. It’s interesting how people who already work for a company tend to view relocation dollars spent, like the person receiving the relocation is getting a huge bonus!  All of sudden your hiring manager believes they are personally responsible for every penny that is spent.  They aren’t, and you the HR Pro understand this, and that’s why we keep our hiring managers out of the picture.  We need them to have a great first impression of the new person, so take the money out of the picture so they can focus on the fit and skills.

HR/Recruiting Pros are in the business of increasing talent of their organizations, and this fact has to be paramount when discussing the finances of corporate relocation.  This brings us to Fact #3 on how to make your relocation policy better: don’t budget relocation as a single annual amount, budget relocation by the percent of hires you anticipate in having to relocate.

Look, it’s way too easy for finance and executives to look at the HR budget and say, “Wow, $1.5M in relocation budgeted for 2010? You need to cut that by $500K.”  Great, I’ll do that, but tell me which people we won’t be hiring?

Recruiting Pros need to come to the table with market data supporting why relocation is necessary and at which roles and levels.  Cutting relocation isn’t a question about saving money; it’s a question about which talent is less important to the company, because that’s the real cost.  Also, budgeting by hires forces departments and divisions to answer to their talent management strategies, instead of throwing it on HR’s back. Hey, it’s August, and we’ve already spent our Relocation budget for the whole company!  No, Mr. Hiring Manager, it’s August, and we’ve spent your department’s relocation budget. You better talk to Mrs. CEO and tell her why you couldn’t manage your budget.

And lastly, Fact #4 – Don’t come to a Relocation Gunfight with a knife.  Know what the person brings to the table and be able to show the alternatives to hiring that person, but either way show what the impact will be to the organization no matter what decision is made.

T3 – HarQen

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T3 – Talent Tech Tuesday – is a weekly series here at The Project to educate and inform everyone who stops by on a daily/weekly basis on some great recruiting and sourcing technologies that are on the market.  None of the companies who I highlight are paying me for this promotion.  There are so many really cool things going on in the space and I wanted to educate myself and share what I find.  If you want to be on T3 – send me a note.

This week on T3 I had the chance to demo two recruiting efficiency tools by Harqen.  Harqen has both their flagship product, Voice Advantage, which is a digital interview platform for both voice and video (Yes, I asked them to change the name!), and their newest product called Hot Sheet that I’m really excited about.

First, Harqen does things a bit differently than most Recruiting technology companies.  They have a great leadership team that has been in the talent acquisition game for a long time, so before you can demo, you have to have some business outcomes conversations.  The last thing they want to do is waste your time, and their time, if their products aren’t really what you need.  This is a must, because while we all want the new, cool tech to help us out, so many of us are just not ready for this change from a business processing state.

Harqen’s Voice Advantage is like many of the digital interview platforms that are out there, with the advantage that they don’t just assume you only want video. They also offer a voice/phone screen option, which is still the standard in many industries and professions. The platform is also mobile optimized and allows you do taped live interviews as well. Clean dashboard and UI, it’s simple and easy to use.

Harqen’s Hot Sheet is a real game changer. The one thing none of us in Recruiting and Talent Acquisition do well, is mine our own internal databases. You put a candidate in there two years ago and haven’t touched them since. You interviewed a gal last year, she was second choice by a hair, but you’ve never reached back out.  Hot Sheet is a process that Harqen takes your internal candidate data and reaches back out to your database. These potential candidates then can respond via the interview platform and your recruiters have interested potential candidates ready to go when they come in the next day.  One of the best parts of Hot Sheet, is you only pay for the candidates that actually show interest!

5 Things I really liked about Harqen:

1. One of the best management teams in the planet selling recruiting technology.  These people have actually recruited and know the pain recruiters feel, which shows up in the products they’ve created. They listen to you, and even if you don’t end up working with them, they’ll give you great advice on what you should be doing.

2. The key to their Hot Sheet product is the Harqen team putting some great marketing touches and creating a campaign when reaching out to your internal database. This isn’t just a mass email campaign, this is a recruitment marketing campaign to re-engage one of the most valuable resources you have in your shop.

3. You only send the people you want Harqen to go after with Hot Sheet, so it’s not some spammy program killing your database. You use as much, or as little as you want.  You can also shut it off at any point. Since you only pay for those that respond, this is one of the economical pieces of recruiting technology on the market.

 4. Harqen’s VoiceAdvantage digital interview product is one of the more flexible interview tools on the market. Video, audio, screen, live, etc. But you can also use for performance management, onboarding, etc. Harqen’s team is smart enough to show you how to fully integrate and utilize the tech for other things than just interviewing.

5.  I can’t say it enough, when you work with Harqen, you aren’t just buying recruitment technology, you’re buying Recruitment Consulting at no additional cost. Others will tell you they do this, but it’s only to make the sale. Harqen does this, at certain points, to talk you out of the sale, so they don’t have to work with bad companies that won’t utilize their products in a way they actually work! This is a rarity in the industry.

Check them out. The Hot Sheet is something that almost any shop should be using. It’s something my own shop will begin using soon, and I’ll update everyone on how it is working.  It’s just too good of an idea not to do, and a very inexpensive cost.

Everyone in HR Sucks at JDs

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“So, how are your Job Descriptions (JDs)?”

Ugh! It’s the question we hate to get asked because we know they suck!  There’s only like five companies in the world that have good job descriptions and that’s because they only had to hire like three different kinds of people.  Most of us are stuck with JDs written in the 1970s, and while we know they suck, we can’t seem to find anyone to write a better one.

By “anyone” I mean the hiring managers, who usually ask for the ‘latest’ JD we have.  We blow the dust off Mr. 1970 and send it along.  To which the hiring manager goes, “yeah, that’s about right.”  You then send her the candidates you get from the sucky job description and she says, “these people aren’t even close!”

Shocking…

Sucky job descriptions are like a right of passage for HR pros.  I can’t tell you how many corporate meetings I’ve been in when the topic of conversation was somehow swayed to JDs and it always ended with, “we should hire an intern this summer to redo all those.”  Which never happens. Even the interns know how bad of a job that is!

The real problem doesn’t have to do with HR, but we own it because we own the bible of JDs for the organization.  Obviously, hiring managers should own their own JDs for their departments, but most just won’t do it, or don’t care to do a good job until they can’t find anyone for their open position. Talent Acquisition wants to get all ‘cute’ with them and turn them into marketing commercials, which could be cool if done right, but they also suck at it!

HR is the worst of all to write JDs because they turn them into something SHRM would have an HR boner over, but no one else in their right mind would ever read.  It becomes of a game of how many acronyms can shove onto a piece of paper and for gosh sakes don’t forget the say if it’s “salary” or “exempt”. I mean who would apply for a job unless they know that data?!?

ATS vendors and many of the suites have tried to solve this by auto generating the most boring JDs known to the history of man for you to just cut and paste.  The only good thing about these systems is they give you someone to blame for how sucky your JDs are.  “It’s not us, it’s this crappy software they make us use!”

Some Silicon Valley companies attempt to have “cool” job descriptions and titles, but really how cool can you get with “Brogrammer” and “Coding Ninja”? It’s like watching your high school robotics team try and pick up the cheerleaders.  You root for them, but in the end you know it’s not happening.

What can you do?

I like in-take meetings.  HR and Talent Acquisition pros hate these because it forces them to spend quality time with hiring managers, but they work. A funny thing happens when you sit in front of a hiring manager for more than 45 seconds. They begin to really talk and tell you what they need.  Not the bullet point stuff, your 1970 JD already has that, but the real stuff they want. The stuff that gets people hired and gets the req off your desk.

We all have sucky JDs. It’s nothing to get embarrassed about.  I would have a contest and reward the suckiest JD in our company as a kickoff to making better ones.  Have fun with it. Embrace it.  Just do something to stop it!

Married with Children Campus Recruiting

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I wonder what would happen if we recruited married with children types, like we recruit kids on college campuses?

It’s a bit upside down, don’t you think?

We have separate recruiting teams, and strategies and little uniforms our recruiting teams wear at the booth on campus. We throw pizza and beer parties at the local campus watering holes to try and entice students to want to come to our companies.

Never once, after college, have I been asked to come have free pizza and beer by a company.  I mean, I don’t know if I would take that, but I would definitely take a free babysitter and free movie with my wife.  Even if it meant I would have to listen to some recruiter tell me how great ABC, Inc. was to work for and their great childcare benefits. Throw in popcorn and drinks, and I might just sign up on the spot!

But that doesn’t happen.

You see, experienced professionals don’t want or need that kind of pampering. Only college age kids want that. Why would over tired, over worked adults want something for free?

We go to campus to find kids who have extremely hard to find skills, and pay for their last two or three years of college in exchange for them coming to work for you for the same length of time.  Would you ever offer to pay for a candidates kid’s college education if they came to work for you, in the same skill capacity?

This isn’t a college recruiting vs. experienced recruiting issue.  This is a and-and issue. We need both college recruiting and we need better recruiting of experienced professionals.  Unfortunately, while college recruiting as evolved over time, how we recruit our experienced candidates has virtually stayed the same.  We post jobs. We ask for referrals. We hold job fairs, that no person currently working in their right mind would attend. We bang on resume databases.

I wonder how your recruiting, of experienced workers, would change if you spent the amount you spend on campus, on recruiting at the neighborhoods around the locations you recruit for now? Some of you will claim that you spend more money recruiting experienced workers, but most of those costs are wrapped in headhunting costs to agencies.

Imagine showing up and putting your booth outside the big Friday Night Lights local football game.  I know in my community we get 5-7,000 people coming out to those games. That’s a heck of a lot more than you will see coming through a career fair. How about outside the college football stadium!? Ten times the that amount will be milling around.

Married with Children recruiting events could work.  The campus isn’t as defined, but standing out front the Home Depot on a Saturday, next to girls selling cookies, might just work.

Privacy is the New Candidate Red Flag

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Have you interviewed anyone recently, and haven’t been able to find anything about them online?

No LinkedIn profile. No Facebook. No Twitter. No Instagram. Google even seem to turn up nothing. It was like the person didn’t exist, yet there she was right in front of you, with a resume, work history, and educational transcripts. A living, breathing, walking ghost.

A social ghost, to be sure.

I had this happen a couple of weeks ago. It was disconcerting to say the least.  Of course, I knew this when I asked the person to come in to interview. It was one of the main reasons I asked her to come in.  It was like I found this mythical creature, this interview unicorn. There was no way I was passing this up.

Besides the resume with verified job history, valid driver’s license, address, educational records and a credit history, it was as if this person never existed.

I think the kids call this a “Catfish”, or at least thats what I expected to have come interview with me. This ‘Susan’ would come in and really be a ‘Samuel’! I’ve been in the game a long time, ‘Susan’ wasn’t going to pull one over on me.

I once had a friend who told me he gave up TV.  I didn’t really believe him, either.  Let’s be real, no one gives up TV.  And, as usual, I was right.  He gave away his TV, but he didn’t give away his laptop, his tablet and his smartphone. He was still watching, trying to act like he saved the fucking world by giving away his TV device. Like we don’t know you have twenty other devices in your house to watch shows on.

But, I digress, back to my social ghost, Susan. (of course, Susan isn’t her real name I changed that, I’m a pro, her real name is Jennifer)

I asked Susan the question we would all want to ask in this circumstance: “Susan can you tell me why you hate America?”

She seemed perplexed by this, almost like she didn’t comprehend what I was asking her, but I knew better.  She knew exactly where I was going with my line of questioning.  Why would a person choose to lead a life of anonymity, when a fully functioning narcissistic life is easily within her reach?

I showed her how if you Googled “Tim Sackett” I, soley, was the first 127 pages of the search results, working towards 130. I explained how I ‘socially’ erased another “Tim Sackett”, the Truck Driver Chaplin, almost from existence. Almost like he never stopped at a truck stop along I80 attempting to save lives in the name of Jesus.  It was a life’s work. My life’s work. I could tell she was impressed.

At the point where I had just about cracked her, she softly spoke one word, “privacy”, spilled from her lips like a small newborn logging onto Instagram video for the first time.

Privacy.  I knew there was something about her I didn’t like.

The interview ended.  So, did her chances of ever getting hired by me.

No One Is Waiting To Discover You

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I’m a recruiter.  I search for talent every day.  Basically, I’m never not on the outlook for talent.  Of course I’m doing this at work, but I also do it while shopping, while eating, while I’m at the movies, while I’m on vacation, etc.

You see, I never know when I’m going to discover a talented person and have the exact right opportunity, with the exact right company and it all fits together.

But, if you’re waiting for me, to discover you, you’ll be waiting forever.

I don’t discover anyone who isn’t working to be discovered.   I’m not knocking on closed doors where it looks like no one is home.  It’s like trick or treating, I’m only going to the houses with the lights on.

I hear from a lot of people who are willing to change jobs, or are open to new opportunities.  Unfortunately, almost all of these people are waiting to be discovered.  They aren’t actively doing anything to show me who they are and why I should be looking for them.

Their argument is they don’t want their current employer to know they’re looking.  My argument back is that isn’t the best way to be discovered anyway!  Hiring managers love passive candidates, people who aren’t looking.  You can be a passively-active candidate without floating your resume all over God’s green earth and changing your LinkedIn headline to “Now Open to New Opportunities!”

Get active in your industry.  Get active in the city and community you want to live.  Let your personal network know you would be open to something great, and by-the-way this is what I think something great would look like.

We are coming into a decade where there will be more jobs than qualified people.  You can have some great options if people are aware of who you are.  Just don’t think there is some magical fairy that will discover you sitting at your desk doing your normal job in the third row, second cube, fifth floor on the seventh building in the office park, the world doesn’t work that way. This isn’t Hollywood, this is main street.

 

There is No Kill Switch On Awesome!

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Happy Monday Friends!

Let’s make this week completely Awesome!

Spring is upon us! (well, some of us)

There is no better time to be alive! Well, I hear the sixties were pretty great, and the fifties, possibly the twenties…anywho…

Remember –

No kill switch

 

What awesome stuff are you going to do this week?

 

Covering Up a Career Hickey

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I had a person work for me at past job in HR.  She performed the HR cardinal sin of sins, she shared personal, confidential information with an employee outside of HR.  My problem was, this person was a high performer, an outstanding employee, she had a frustrating, weak moment, and did something you just can’t do in a HR position.  This is what we call a Career Hickey. Sometimes you can survive these hickeys and cover them up, and continue to work as normal.  Many time you can’t.

So now, this Hi-Po has a huge Hickey.  Interestingly though, this Hickey can’t be seen when you look at their resume or interview them in person, but it’s a Hickey they can’t get rid of.  So, barring a life-turtleneck how does one cover this puppy up?

It’s interesting because I think that probably the best of us have a hickey or two that we would rather not have our current or future employer know about.  Sometimes they’re big-giant-in-the-back-of-a-Chevy-17-year-old-I-will-love-you-forever hickeys and sometimes they’re just oops-I-lingered-a-little-too-long type of hickeys. Either way, I would rather not expose my hickeys and have to worry about how this will impact the rest of my professional life. And here’s where most people drive themselves crazy.

As HR Pros I think it’s important for us to be able to help our organizations determine the relative value of individuals.  This person was a rock star at ABC company, did something wrong, and couldn’t maintain that position any longer with ABC because of said incident, and lost their job. Now we have a chance to pick up a Rock Star (and probably for a discount).

The question you have to ask is not could we live with this person if they did the same thing here?  Because that really isn’t the question, you already have that answer is “No.”  The question is: do we feel this person learned from said wrong doing and is there any risk of them doing it again?  You might come to the conclusion, “yes, they’ve learned, and yes, there is potential they might do it again” (let’s face it, if they did it once, they’ve shown they can do it, so there’s always a risk), but it’s a risk we are willing to take.

So how does someone come back from a transgression at work? The answer is that they have some help.  Eventually, someone is going to ask the question: “why aren’t you with ABC Company anymore?”  They’ll give you the canned answer they’ve been developing since the moment they lost their job. If you’re a good interviewer, you won’t buy the first answer (I mean really – so you decided it was better off not to have a job – is what you’re telling me?!) and you will dig to see the hickey.  Hickeys are funny in that you really can’t take your eyes off of them, but for those who can get by the hickeys, you might just find a great talent who is grateful for the second chance.

But, you also might find someone who just likes being in the back of that Chevy and getting Hickeys. You’re the HR Pro though and that’s really why your company pays your salary – to mitigate risk vs. the quality of talent your organization needs to succeed. So, you have to ask yourself, can you live with a Hickey?

How To Get a Great Job in 2015

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Last week I got a call from an old work friend. He wanted to have lunch.  He just left a position and was in transition.  Not a bad or negative job loss, just parted ways.  When you get to a certain executive point in your career, it’s rare that bad terminations take place. It’s usually, “hey, we like you, but we really want to go another direction, and we know you don’t want to go that direction, so let’s just shake hands and call it a day, here’s a big fat check.”

Executives get this.  For the most part there isn’t hard feelings, like when you were young and lost a job. I usually find that the organization the person is leaving from are super complementary, and usually takes the blame for the change.  Executives in corporate America are like NFL coaches. You get hired with the understanding that one day you’ll be fired.  It’s not that you know less, or aren’t going to be successful in your career, it’s just that the organization needs change, and you’re part of that change.

Welcome to the show, kid.

My friend decided that he was going to find his next position not through posting for positions online, or trolling corporate career pages, he was going to have lunches.  About two per week, with past work friends. Let’s connect, no pressure, we already know each other and I want to catch up.

You see, in 2015 you don’t find great jobs by filling out applications in ATSs and uploading resumes. You get great jobs because of the relationships and personal capital you’ve built up over your career.  Having lunch and reconnecting turn on a relationship machine. I believe that people, innately, want to help other people. When a friend comes to you with a situation, and you have something to offer or help, you will do that.

The problem is most people who are looking for great jobs don’t do this. They lock themselves in their home office and apply to a thousand jobs online and get upset when nothing happens. Great jobs aren’t filled by ATSs and corporate recruiters.  Great jobs are fill through relationships. Every single one of them.

Want to find a great job in 2015?

Go out to lunch.

6 Ways to Make Your Recruiting/Talent Metrics More Strategic

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Let’s face it—the recruiting metrics you use at your company are either non-existent or stale.  Sure, you tried to roll out the basics—time to hire, cost per hire—but all that did was put the focus on your HR/Recruiting function, not the people who actually make the final hiring decision.  Flash forward 12 months since the launch of those basic recruiting metrics, and you’re bored… heck, everyone’s bored.

Never fear! The FOT webinar makes it’s 2015 debut with Six Ways to Make Your Recruiting/Talent Metrics More Strategic – And Make Managers Own Their New Hires.

Join us for this webinar (sponsored by Chequed.com) on Thursday, February 26th at 2pm EST (11am Pacific) and we’ll hit you the following goodies:

– A review of the traditional talent selection/recruiting metrics.  We’ll give you a rundown of those metrics like Time To Fill and Cost Per Hire, what the standard benchmarks are for each and then explain why only using these traditional metrics is a lost cause/suckers play.

– An explanation of the Holy Grail of reporting Recruiting Effectiveness and why it changes the conversation from “Did we fill the position?” to “Did we make the right hire and what happened once we filled the position?“. We call this metric Hiring Manager Batting Average (HMBA for those of you that need an acronym), and it’s the cleanest, most all-encompassing metric you can have to make your internal recruiting conversation strategic—not transactional—and actually make it tie in to your overall talent strategy, not just Talent Acquisition.

– How to change the dialog of organizational turnover from being an HR problem to being everyone’s problem. Admit it, you report on turnover all the time. We’ll show you how to link turnover to your selection process in a way that spreads the wealth related to turnover responsibility—and actually sets you up to be more consultative and less reactive related to employee churn.

– We’ll give you 5 additional metrics to show how your recruiting/staffing process actually reduces risk of bad hires and prepares for future searches.  You need to get out of the trap of only reporting cost and time.  We’ve got the metrics to show you how to do that.

Things that are hard:  Riding a bike on a freeway. Getting your kids to eat peas. Getting managers to own the bad hires they make and be interested in getting better at selection.  Join us for Six Ways to Make Your Recruiting/Talent Metrics More Strategic – And Make Managers Own Their New Hires on Thursday, February 26th at 2pm EST, and we’ll show you how to create recruiting/talent metrics that get the attention of your organization.  You’re on your own with the other two.