Category Archives: The Recruiting Rules

Hiring Back An Employee Who Left You

Posted on by
Reply

Did you see what happened last week on the college football carousel?  The University of Louisville hired their ex-coach, and current Western Kentucky Coach, Bobby Petrino.  For those who don’t know the Bobby Petrino story check out his detailed coaching timeline on SB Nation (it’s awesome!) – I’ll give you a five second tour:

I. Hired Head Football Coach at University of Louisville – doing great (2004)

II. Hired Head Coach NFL Atlanta Falcons (Jan. 2007) – didn’t do great

III. Leaves mid-season and takes University of Arkansas Head Coach job – did good (December 2007)

IV. Head Coach Arkansas, has a motorcycle crash with a 25 year old female assistant on the back that wasn’t his wife and that he was having an affair with, and that he hired – Power drunk. (April 2012)

V. Fired as Head Coach at Arkansas – not good (April 2012)

VI. Hired Head Football Coach Western Kentucky University- did good (December 2012)

VII. Hired Head Football Coach University of Louisville. (January 2013)

There’s a bunch of other luggage along the way that SB Nation points out which leads me to only one question – Was it a good hire by Louisville to take Bobby Petrino back?

I asked a couple of my friends and fellow #8ManRotation authors this same question – here are their responses:

Matt (akaBruno) Stollak:

How much time off does a mercurial talent deserve before being brought back?  Is Jim Tressel looking at the Petrino hiring and thinking he is up next?

Similarly, how does Louisville Football Core Values (http://ftw.usatoday.com/2013/06/louisville-footballs-core-team-values-include-no-guns-no-drugs/) continue to exist when Petrino has blatantly violated #1 and #2.    Is it all about winning?  What message does it send to staff and players?

Steve (Mr. HR Tech) Boese:

Even a cynic like me is surprised by this move. I guess the argument was he hit rock bottom and now has done the football equivalent of finding Jesus or something, But it is also about positioning, Louisville does not want to be a stepping stone job between the MAC and the Big 10 or SEC, (they are delusional about this, but I think it is true). So at some level they see this hire as a the best they could do with that in mind. No successful power conference coach would leave for Louisville so with Petrino they find the closest they could to that ideal.

Petrino going to Western Kentucky after his biggest screw up at Arkansas and before coming back to Louisville also serves to give Louisville some cover on this. It is kind of like Western Kentucky took at least some of the flak for letting the guy back in to the world of coaching and at least in theory that will diminish the heat that Louisville is going to take.  Kind of like Petrino went to jail (getting canned at Arkansas), then got released to probation, (Western Kentucky), and now the ankle bracelet has been finally cut off (back to Louisville).

Here’s my take:

The best hires that most companies will never make are the ones like this.  He was great for us.  Went someplace else and had a meltdown. Now we won’t hire him back either.  For some reason, he was great with you.  Don’t discount what certain environments, certain cultures, etc. will do for someone’s performance.  Bobby Petrino is a broken man, coming home to where he had his most success.  This might turn out to a great hire for Louisville.

What do you think?

 

5 Top Regrets of People Leaving a Job

Posted on by
8

Being in my line of work, I get to hear from a ton of people who have left jobs.  One of the questions I like to ask people is to give me one thing they regret about leaving a certain position or company.  You might think that most people would find this hard to answer, but I’m always surprised at how quickly people can answer this question, and the fact that no one ever answers it with “I have no regrets.”  I use this question to help me understand a candidates level of self-insight.  If a person can look back on a job, and say you know what, the company might have sucked, but I could have done ‘this’ better, that’s someone who gets it.

Here are the Top 5 Regrets people have when leaving a job:

1. “I could have done better.” I like people who can come out and say, I just didn’t do enough.  It’s usually followed with reasons why, lack or resources or tools, etc. But it shows me they have a desire to be successful at anything they do.

2. “I should have made more work friends.”  I talk to a lot of people who have been at a company for years, and after they leave they realize they weren’t really close to anyone.  They realize they miss some of the people, but never really put in the time to establish enough of a relationship to carry it beyond just a working relationship.

3. “I didn’t let the executives know what I was really thinking.”   This happens to so many people. Even when leaving they somehow justify to themselves that it won’t matter, so they never share what they really thought of so many things.  While some of it might not matter, there might have been a great idea or change in there that could have a positive impact to the organization.  Yet, they walk away with it unsaid.

4. “I wish I would have celebrated my accomplishments more.”  You know what happens when you celebrate your accomplishments?  People begin to notice them as accomplishments.  Those things turn into positives for the organizations.  People are drawn to you and want to be a part of what you’re doing.  Celebrations, real celebrations, make a closer bond between you and your coworkers.

5. “I wish I never would have left.”  (or “I left for the wrong reasons.”)I hear so many people say these words – “I loved that job!”  My next question is – “Why did you leave?”  It’s always followed by a reason, promotion, more money, different location, etc.  After they left, they found out how much the job they had, was a really, really good job that they loved.  I always caution people from leaving a job, especially when they tell me they love the job.  Don’t discount loving your job.  It’s hard, really hard, to find jobs you love.

The beginning of the year is always a good time to reflect on your regrets from the prior year.  I know many people who took on new positions in the past year.  I always love to find out how the new gig is going, but I also love to ask about what they regret about leaving, and I’ve never disappointed by the response!

Hire More Pretty People

Posted on by
1

This post originally ran in January of 2012, and in one of the most read posts I’ve done.  It as so popular, Kris Dunn, stole the idea, tweaked it, and made it his most downloaded whitepaper in Kinetix history!  You’re Welcome, KD.  After 2 years, I still find this concept has merit! It’s also very close to how Hitler’s Germany started! Enjoy.

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

What about: “Strong Athletic Jock?”

What about: “Scrawny nerdy band geek?”

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

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

They’re Not!

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

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

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

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

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

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

1. Very smart guy – gets great job or starts great company – makes a ton of money

2. Because of success, Smart guy now has many choices of very pretty females to pursue as a bride.

3. Smart guy and Pretty bride start a family – which results in “Pretty” Smart Children

4. Pretty Smart Children grow up with all the opportunities that come to smart beautiful families.

5. The cycle repeats.

Now – first – this is a historical thing – thus my example of using a male as our “Smart guy” and not “Smart girl” – I’m sure in today’s world this premise has evolved yet again. But we are talking about how we got to this point, not where are we now.  Additionally, we are looking at how your organization can hire better.  So, how do you hire better?  Hire more pretty people.

Seems simple enough. Heck, that is even a hiring process that your hiring managers would support!

Recruiting without actually doing it

Posted on by
1

Most recruiters believe they are actually recruiting.

They ensure they have well written job descriptions.

They have a great process set up to screen applicants.

They’ve gone out and chosen the best pre-employment assessments for their organizations.

They implemented an awesome new applicant tracking system.

They’ve posted their opening on their careers page of their organizations website.

They’ve contracted out with the best background screening company.

They’ve done everything but pick up a phone and talk to someone…

You see recruiting is a lot like painting a picture.   Of course you have to have canvas, and paints, and brushes, but mainly you need to start painting.  In recruiting all you really need to have is one contact to contact.  That’s how it starts. You turn one contact into another, repeat. All the other stuff is great, but it’s not recruiting.  Although, it’s what most recruiters will tell you recruiting is.

The hard part of recruiting, is actually recruiting.

 

5 Things HR Can Learn from Airports

Posted on by
4

I know many of you will be getting on an airplane over the next few weeks to fly and see friends and family over the holidays.  Some of you fly all the time, so this will be something you experience often.  Many of you rarely fly, so you get really frustrated because you feel it should work better.  We work in HR everyday.  We get use to the stuff that doesn’t work, but we shouldn’t.  We should be like infrequent fliers, everything that is wrong should bother us greatly.

1. The airport never appears to have anyone who wants to take responsibility for anything.  Every airline is on their own. The security folks only handle their ‘area’ of concern. Food vendors only do their thing.  Does it sound familiar?  It’s your department and/or organization.  Some needs to take charge of stuff no one else wants to take charge of.  HR can fit that role perfectly.  Too many times in our organizations we/HR sees things that need someone to take responsibility. We need to be that person.

2.  The one thing about 90% of air travelers need to do after landing is go to the bathroom and charge something (phone, computer, tablet, etc.).  Airports figured out bathrooms, I’ve never had to wait to use the restroom in an airport.  I almost always have to wait to use an electrical outlet!  Should be an easy fix – go buy 100 power strips and increase the amount of charging points by 5 times.  But no one does this.  HR has this issue. We see things that can be fixed, by doing something simple, instead we don’t fix it, because we want to fix it permanently.  Believing is we fix it ‘temporarily’ we’ll never fix it the right way.  Do the temp fix first.  Tell everyone it’s a temp fix. Then work towards a permanent solution.

3. Airports use to treat everyone the same.  Everyone had to check in at the counter. Everyone had to wait in the same security line.  Airports figured out this doesn’t work for those they need most, frequent fliers.  Now, those who fly often, get treated differently.  They can by pass the TSA line through special pre-check lines.  They check in before they even get to the airport (most people can do this, but frequent fliers learn the tricks!). They have special clubs to sit in and get away from the rest of us.  HR needs to treat employees differently.  The only employees/people who want to be ‘treated’ the same, are those who are low performers.

4. Planes won’t crash is you have a little fun. For years Southwest was the fun airline.  They showed you could still fly planes and and have a little fun.  Others are beginning to follow in that same path.  HR is not known for being ‘fun’. In fact, we are probably known for not having fun.  We like to tell ourselves this comes with the territory of having to fire people. “Tim, this is serious business, there is no room for fun in HR.”   You can have fun in HR.  You need to have fun in HR.  Our organizations need proper role models of how to have fun.  People will still have to be fired, might as well have some fun along the way.

5.  It only costs a little more to go first class.  Actually it costs a ton more, but have you ever really seen an empty first class?  And, no, it’s not all frequent fliers filling those seats.  Some people are willing to pay more for a better flight experience.  You might not be willing, but some are.  Your employees are the same way about a lot of things.  Don’t think you know what is best for them, because it’s best for you.  They might want something totally different.  Well, we (in HR) like having half day Fridays in the summer, so we are willing to work 9 hour days Monday through Friday to get those. Everyone will want this.  Unless your the department that can’t take a half day on Friday because your clients need y0u there at 4pm on Fridays.

Here’s a tip to get you through your holiday travel, if you get stuck in an airport.  You aren’t forced to stay at the airport.  If you have an extremely long layover, grab a taxi and go someplace nice to eat, or even a movie.  It beats waiting 4 or 5 hours fighting over who gets the outlet next.

Renting vs. Owning

Posted on by
Reply

I’m proud to say that today starts off our first week as building owners, as HRU, the company I run purchased the building that we’ve been renting for the past 13 years. In fact, my company has rented office space for 34 consecutive years until today.  Today, we are owners.

There’s a ton of reasons why you rent for 34 years.  First and foremost, renting gives you flexibility.  Sure, it’s at a cost, but if you want flexibility you pay for that.

There’s also a ton of reason on why we decided to own.  We aren’t paying someone else for the space we feel we can stay in for a very long time.  We build equity, etc.

This big purchase got me thinking about how many of you, or even my own staff, are renting vs. owning.  Not their homes or cars, but their positions.  You treat it differently if you own it verse renting it.   Being in HR for 20 years I’ve seen a ton of employees who were just renting.  They didn’t want to commit to the company, to their position.  They were just renting it for a while.

I’ve also seen a ton of people who owned their positions.  You know something?  I’ve never seen a renter employee be more successful than an owner employee.  100% of the time, those employees who decide to own their positions are more successful.

Today, I’m thankful to be an owner.

 

Meanwhile in tedious reality…

Posted on by
2

Much of what we do in HR and Recruiting is tedious, never ending work.  Same stuff, same day, same month, year after year.  Welcome to the show, kid.

It doesn’t make the occupation tedious.

Sometimes I think we feel this need that we have to be doing something exciting all the time.  To feel this need to be challenged.  To change the world.  Unfortunately, that isn’t reality of any job.  Everyone has some level of monotony in their daily jobs.  Brain surgeons and Rocket scientists have monotony. It might not seem like it to you, but to them it’s the same old thing, day in, and day out.

I hear this a lot from people when we are talking shop about recruiting.  How do you do it each day, just doing the same thing? And this, coming from a Compensation Pro or a Benefit Analyst!

The very cool, non-tedious part of being in recruiting is that each and every day, people surprise you.  Sometimes in some really negative ways, but also many times in some very positive ways.  I’m always shocked at how people are willing to help me, by just asking.  First time contacts, don’t know me from Adam, willing to go out of their way.  What does that say about the human condition?  I think it says deep down, if given the free choice, we would rather help someone else, than to not help them.  Most people don’t think about that, when they think about recruiting.

Every day, while you’re ‘doing’ the same thing in Recruiting and in HR, people become our non-tedious reality.  I’ve heard for decades people say: “You’re good with people, you should go into HR!” Or have that be the reason why they did go into HR in the first place. But I think it’s more than being a  ‘good people person’.  It’s having a desire to delve into the human condition!  In HR we get involved into the motivations of why employees do this or that.  In recruiting we get involved into the motivations of why a person might want to leave their current job, etc.  In a way, so many people in these roles become a strange kind of untrained therapists.

Maybe that’s the key to dealing with our tedious reality.  We’ve become workplace psychotherapist for those we connect with on a daily basis.  I don’t even know what that says about us?

Oh well, back to life.

 

HR has “You” Problems

Posted on by
3

Did you know 67% of second marriages fail?

That seems high to me.  You would think conventional wisdom would teach us that those folks failing the first time what they did wrong, and what they need to differently the second time to make marriage successful.  But it doesn’t work that way.  By the way, 73% of third marriages fail.  We get worse, not better!

Why?

It’s because of you.  You suck at marriage.  Stop getting married.  Now, no one really wants to believe this, which is probably the foundational problem to begin with, but the one common denominator in every failed second and third marriage, is you.   You are the problem.  For whatever reason that might be, you’re just bad a picking a spouse that you are compatible with, and the more times you do it, the worse you’re going to get.  Buy a dog, there great companions.

HR has ‘You’ Problems.

We tend to want to think it’s everyone else.  It’s not us!  We get it.  It’s those damn idiots over in sales, they’re morons!  Stupid operations never does anything right!

Yeah, it’s them, not us.

We have ‘you’ problems because we refuse to believe that maybe, just maybe, we are the ones who don’t get it.  Maybe it’s us, that needs to change.  Maybe, all this time, the reason we haven’t gotten that seat at the table, no respect, lacked influence, had nothing to do with everyone else, it had to do with us…

No way, can’t be.  We get it. Right?

The Hunger Games for Talent

Posted on by
1

The wife and I went to see the movie The Hunger Games 2 – Catching Fire, like most of the free world at this point.  Here’s my review:

– As good as the first, if you thought the first one was good.

– It ended like they want to make a third movie…

– The Revolution has started! #HoldUpThreeFingersTogether

The thing I remember most about the movie is how all the people in the ‘capitol’ dressed very flamboyantly, and I think I would like my elected officials and Washington D.C., in general, if everyone was forced to dress like the Hunger Games capitol residents.   If I could figure out how to end each sales presentation with a new client by spinning around and my clothes caught on fire and turned into something else, I, also, think I would close more deals.

After I got home, it struck me that when we talk about a “War on Talent” we are actually using the wrong terminology.  War is when two sides are fighting for something, land, beliefs, etc. A revolution is a forcible overthrow of social order in favor of a new system.  I don’t really see what we are going through as a war.  I really don’t see companies fighting over talent, not in most parts of our country and in most industries.  I do, though, see employees beginning to start a revolution!

At one point in our country we needed unions to protect employees against the big bad companies.  I think we are getting to a point where companies will need unions to protect them against employees!  Employees leaving, employees living up to the employment contract, etc.

I believe employees, in many, many segments have taken back the power in the employee-company relationship.  Employees don’t have to leave a company to provoke change in the work place any longer, they just have to band together and figure out how to get to those who have the most influence to inflict the change they want to see.  This doesn’t even have to be formalized by union membership.  Most organizations are so hyper-sensitive to employee engagement, any deviation from normal sends executives and HR into ‘ice cream mode’.  Ice Cream Mode is when HR or executives feel engagement is lowering, so they run out and get ice cream to have an ice cream social and bring up morale!  You can replace ice cream with donuts, beer, pizza, etc. It’s all really ice cream.

Employees are learning they can start revolutions internally, and have drastic impact to how ‘their’ companies are run, and their ability to shape future decision making.  Those organizations that stomp out revolutions are learning the talent just gets up and leaves, goes to your competitor or another industry where their skills will transfer.  I think we all saw what might have been a war, change into a revolution.  I don’t see this changing.  The timing is right. The demographics of the workforce are shifting into the right mix for revolution.  Organizations have a decision to make.  You can continue to run your business like the Capitol of the Hunger Games, or you can become part of the revolution.  I haven’t read the third book, but I can guess how it plays out.  Can you?

Candidate Experience Isn’t a Real Product

Posted on by
6

I love watching really good comics.  Sarah Silverman has a new special on HBO called “We Are Miracles” it’s brilliantly funny in the way where she makes her self laugh at some of the things she is saying.  I love that.  I find it funnier when the comic finds themselves funny, not fake funny, but naturally tickled at what they are thinking and saying out loud.  There is one part in the special where she talks about a product that is being marketed to women for a certain kind of odor, in areas we don’t talk about on family blogs like this.  She describes how these odor fighting products, marketed directly at women, going after their worst fears, aren’t really products.  We think they are because we see the commercials and someone holding a can in their hands and talking on TV, I mean it has to be real, it’s on TV!

But they aren’t.  There is no real need for this product. Women can use soap and water, like they use on the rest of their body.  As Sarah says, if you do that, your normal washing, and you still sense an odor, you don’t need a ‘perfume’ spray, you need a doctor!

This is exactly how I feel about Candidate Experience.  It’s not a real product.

We think it is because we have really smart folks telling us it is.  These same folks make their living off of consulting to companies who have unrealized fears of a candidate having a bad experience and then those candidates no longer wanting to use or buy their products and services.  This is made up.  This is private parts deodorant.

Here is what Candidate Experience is built upon:

1. At some point an executive had their sister’s kid, a niece or nephew of the executive, apply for a job with the company online.  Your system/process did what is was suppose to do, it weeded out this crappy candidate, sent them the “Dear John” letter, and that was it.  But it wasn’t!

2. Executive hears from her sister that her daughter Mary, a brilliant child, was not selected and not even given an interview, in fact there was no human interaction at all!

3. Executive has to save face with family.  Comes down hard on Talent Acquisition leader about how can we treat our candidates like this!

This is how Candidate Experience was born.  A niece not getting hired.

The executive not wanting to make this ‘about herself’ comes up with other reasons, and all the sheep follow along.  “We need to treat all candidates like we treat our customers!  We need to make candidates advocates of our products and services.  We need to treat candidates this better than we treat each other because it’s a competitive advantage for talent.”  And we begin to buy into the rhetoric.  We begin to believe that we have an odor, that what we’ve been doing is bad.  Our worst fears, that a candidate who feels they have a bad experience will stop using our products, is so overplayed it’s actually funny when you stop and actually think about it!  You will have candidates who feel they are great, you won’t, they’ll get upset and not like your company.  That is life in Talent Acquisition.  A minute percentage will think this way, and there is nothing you’ll ever be able to do about it!

The reality is, for the vast majority of Talent Acquisition Leaders, what we’ve been doing is just fine.  We treat our candidates like normal humans, we communicate with them if we feel they fit or not, and the process works.  Sure, some of us, have some bad processes, or parts of processes that need to be fixed.  But we don’t have an odor problem.  The biggest lie that is perpetuated in the Human Resource Industry is that Candidate Experience is important.  The reality is candidates have extremely low expectations when it comes to applying for a job.  All they really want and need is to know that you saw their application and/or resume, and do you feel they would be a fit or not.  That’s it!  Treat them like normal humans.  Give them enough respect to communicate with them the next step: 1. Thank you, but no thanks we have some better fitting candidates, try again next time; 2. We’re interested, here is step #2.

It’s not hard.  You don’t need to spend time and money on this.  You don’t have a real problem. I know you think you do, so many people are telling you so, so it must be real.  But it’s not, it’s private parts deodorant!