Category Archives: The Recruiting Rules

5 Things to do at work the day after Thanksgiving

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The Friday after the Thanksgiving holiday has to be the most useless day of work ever.  I know many folks who still don’t get this off as a holiday, and either have to burn vacation or burn PTO to get this day off paid – obviously not including all of those folks who work in the service areas and have to actually work to deal with all those crazy black Friday shoppers!  I’ve been there – both working on the service side of the world on the day after, and on the side when you work for some lame company who makes you come in on the day after, when clearly none of your customers will be working – so you just try and find stuff to do, before sneaking out at 3pm to meet the family at the mall.

Don’t fret, I’m here to help.  Here are my Top 5 things to do when you’re stuck at work the Day after Thanksgiving:

1. Clean out your files – I know this doesn’t sound fun but it needs to be done and it makes you look really busy with your desk all filled with files and stuff! Really cleaning of any type works really well on this day and burns a solid 2-3 hours.

2. Research – What does that mean!?  No one knows, that’s why it’s so great! You can be on LinkedIn, Facebook, reading blogs, it doesn’t matter – it’s Research!

3. Policy Revisions – Again, what does this really mean!?  You bring up some electronic versions of some policies and you have them in the background as you search the internet for the best Black Friday Deals!  When someone walks into your cube – you click on the Word file and say “hey, just working on these policy revisions, what are you doing?”  They say, “I was just doing some research, what do you want to do for lunch?”

4. Rewriting Job Descriptions – see #3 Policy revisions.  The good thing, really, about any of these is you can also have Pandora playing in the background and just become a complete vegetable for about 8 hours.

5. Updating Performance Plans – you can also call this reviewing performance reviews, etc. Basically, you’re going around talking to employees about what they had for Thanksgiving dinner and talking about how awful it is watching the Lions and Cowboys play every Thanksgiving.  Just make sure to mention something about their annual goals and Bam, mission accomplished.

I will say that this is a great day to send notes to executives as well.  Let’s face it, they’re not in the office – they’ve got more vacation than you and know it’s worthless to come in on the day after Thanksgiving.  But you sending a note and “actually” working makes you look like a champ!  The best part is you don’t even have to be working – I just pre-write my emails and then schedule them in Outlook to be sent to executives at 7:23 am on Black Friday, then a follow up on how I solved the issue at 6:12pm on the same day!  That’s a Pro Tip, use it wisely!

Snapchat Video Resumes

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I hear the all the kids love Snapchat!  Okay, I’ve been hearing this for over a year now, but never really found any reason to write about the product.  I even downloaded the App and tried it out.  I still don’t seem to have a need.  I’m an adult.  Unless I’m doing something I shouldn’t, there is no need for me to have a message that self destructs in 1 to 10 seconds.  I guess it might be something to give your managers who love to say inappropriate things to their staff, but then you’re encouraging them to say and do inappropriate things!

Even though I don’t get it, doesn’t mean it’s not a great idea.  It just means I’m old.  I mean the dude who stole the idea developed the idea just turned down a $3 Billion offer to be bought!  I’m sure the kids will keep using it, that was probably a good call.  Kids never give up on an App, and move on to something else every 27 seconds…

The way blogging works is you have to beat the millions of other bloggers to market with your idea.  They then steal your idea and write it up as if it was their own brilliant idea.  So, I’m hear to share with you the next great HR/Talent Acquisition idea for the last 30 days of 2013!  Snapchat Video Resumes!  Please don’t tell HireVue or WePow, they have more money than me and will have no problem implementing this into their existing product offerings!   I checked and Snapchat is the only technology partner HireVue hasn’t signed a partnering agreement with!

Here how it works:

1. You’ve got 10 seconds, so you have to be able to articulate your entire worth to a company in 10 seconds.   For many of you this is about 7 seconds too long.

2. Push the circle on the bottom of the screen.

3. Look into camera and start talking or do whatever it is you’re going to do to show how great of employee you will be.

4. Select who you want to send it to.

5. Send.

6. Wait for Job Offers to coming flying in!

Before you laugh and say this is impossible, you know I found a company that is already doing it.  File this under “Recruiting Professional with Shortest Career Ever“:

Likeable Media, a social media marketing agency in New York, is also finding value in the photo sharing app — as a recruiting tool.

When applicants apply to the company — which hundreds do each month, says Brian Murray, Likeable’s director of talent and culture — Likeable’s automatic resume processor sends an email alerting the applicant his or her materials have been received. It also offers a chance to follow up with Murray in email, over Twitter, or as of four weeks ago, via Snapchat.

“When you’re applying for jobs a lot of the time, you feel like you’re sending something into the black hole of resumes,” he says.

“We’re always looking for ways to give applicants a way to be creative outside of the resume.”

For the past month, applicants have been sending Murray Snapchat messages showing off their creative sides. Likeable has received more than a dozen messages from prospective employees, and roughly a third of them have been brought in for interviews.

Brian Murray, call on line one, it’s SHRM, they are sending out a kill squad.  Let’s just say if your screening process of candidates has a Snapchat element to it, you should be shot!

Program Kids – Hiring for your Culture

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If you didn’t catch it last week, Michigan State Basketball, rated #2 in the country, knocked off the University of Kentucky, rated #1 in the country.  An early season match-up in college basketball which ultimately has little impact on the bigger picture of this basketball season, but it as fun to watch!

What the game really ended up being about was two different sets of kids, not based on their uniform, but based on their path.  Kentucky, under current coach John Calipari, has become a NBA basketball factory of first round draft picks.  Coach Cal has basically made the decision to use the NBA draft rules, that a kid must be one year out of high school and over 19 before being draft eligible, to build his winning program.  He basically sells to the best high school basketball kids in the country, who could probably jump immediately to the NBA, that you come to UK for 1 year, then leave and go to the NBA.  This system is working really well for him!  These kids come and take classes for one semester, and then basically leave as soon as basketball is over in March.  Doesn’t really seem to fit the goal of intercollegiate athletics, but what the hell, he’s winning…

On the other side you had Michigan State and coach Tom Izzo (to be fair, I’m a big fan of the program and Tom, I think Coach Cal is a cheater and a liar) whose has built one of the best programs in the country over the past 19 seasons, by taking almost the opposite way to success.  Tom goes out and recruits ‘Program’ kids.  Tom grew up in Northern Michigan, he was raised with a blue collar work ethic.  He is everything that Calipari isn’t.  He isn’t flash.  He’s loyal.  He wants his kids to leave MSU better men, not better basketball players.  While Tom would take a top player, he’s only ever taken a kid who was ‘one and done’, and even that kid didn’t think that would be the case when he came to MSU.  The kids who get recruited to MSU know they’ll be broken down, taught how to play defense first, team basketball, it’s about the program, not about you.  As you can imagine, a kid wanting to jump right to the NBA, doesn’t find this attractive.  Coach K at Duke is very similar, although, he tends to get a few one-and-dones based on his past success!

The game was close at the end, but not really as close as the final score.  MSU had juniors and seniors on the floor – grown mature men.  Kentucky had kids on the floor, very, very talented kids, but kids all the same.

Both programs successful.  Both programs win.  I like one way more than another, but I can’t argue the successful business model that Coach Cal has produced.

It brings up a great question for HR/Talent Pros and leaders of organizations.  We all say we want the ‘best’ talent. We want ‘rock stars’. But I wonder, do we?  Do you want ‘Program kids’, hires that fit your culture?  Or do you want ‘One-and-dones’, hires that have extreme talent, but might not want a long-term career with you?

You might say it’s a hard comparison because we are talking about amateur (Program Kids) versus professional (One-and-done) level talent. Of course in business we would always want professional level talent.  But I’ll argue that Program hires, those who fit what and where you want your organization to go will always be better in the long run.  What happens when the next big school or pros come calling for Coach Cal?  What happens to Kentucky?  It would left in shambles.  The strategy doesn’t have legs because you must rebuild every year. What happens if another big time school with a flasher coach starts getting all the one-and-dones?  Program kids don’t want to go to Kentucky.

Hiring for cultural fit has huge impact to long term organizational success.

Secrets of a D-List Conference Speaker

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Just got through another fall conference season and I think I’m starting to pick up a few things and understand the game a little better.  I’m definitely not an A Lister, or B Lister, hell I’m not even on the C List, but I like to think I’m a Top 10 D List Conference Speaking selection!   As you run around the circuit speaking, those A and B Listers will definitely give you some pointers, the C’s won’t, they’re all high and mighty about how they’re no longer on the D List, so they kind of hold stuff close to the vest.  It’s a great education that spans much more than just your ability to go on stage and “Dance Like a Monkey“.  The Conference Speaker education has to do mostly with human behavior and likeability.

Knowing I only have a few secrets I wanted to share them with you before I get dropped from the D List, either up or down, we conference speakers only have small windows in time to share our very specific knowledge.  Here are my D List Conference Speaker Secrets:

  • Everything should be sunshine and rainbows!  The best content you can produce is actually content that challenges how someone does their job. Think – “5 Reasons You Suck at HR and How to get Better”, but while that content is great, it bombs on the speaking circuit.  People want to come and hear speakers tell them that they made a great life decision to be in this career/position they are in, and here’s 3 Silver Bullets that will change your life forever and make you prettier and thinner. By the way, that’s my 2014 Conference Season Session: “You’ve Made Great Life Decisions: 3 Things You Can Do Today To Be Prettier and Thinner”.
  • There are no Silver Bullets, but you always have to have Silver Bullets.  Let’s face it we live in a USA Today society.  We want to be told quickly how to make everything better, without doing any work to make it better.  That can’t happen, but as a D Lister, it’s my job to sell you on the fact that you can do that. That’s why there is a lot of Dancing on the D List circuit.
  • The differences between an B Lister and a D Lister is that the B Lister is usually a lot better looking, taller and much more polished in their Dancing ability.  The knowledge content usually isn’t really that different, the B Lister is just much better at how they share that knowledge.
  • The differences between an A Lister and D Lister is that the A Lister is selling an ‘idea’ and that idea is usually something they’ve trademarked and written a book about. Think: 7 Habits, Good To Great, First Break All The Rules, Who Moved By Mercedes, etc. Or, the A Lister is famous for something (business, political, sports type celebrity) and they are sharing their own story about how they became famous and while you’ll never become famous the same way, they try and make you feel like you could also win the fame lottery, but you can’t.
  • When being paid to speak, for all those under A List status, who gets paid and how much has a lot to do with how much someone making the pay decision likes you personally.  That’s hard for a lot of speakers to take. Some have great content, but they aren’t very likeable or even approachable.  Some have crap content and aren’t even that good at speaking, but are extremely likeable. Those people get paid!
  • Having a book makes you ‘smarter’.  It really doesn’t, but on the speaking circuit it does.
  • Being a Practitioner makes you know more about a subject. It really doesn’t, but on the speaking circuit it does.  This one is really funny! Because conferences now say ‘we want practitioners’ to speak.  Do you realize those speaking as “consultants” where great practitioners that were so good they made a career out of selling their knowledge.  They were the 1% best practitioners.  But, no, really, let’s listen to Mark from Albuquerque explain why his hiring process he just developed is so cutting edge…

That’s it, the only D List secrets I have. If I get to the C List I’ll let you know what else I find.  My guess is it will have to do with being able to negotiate first class travel, or least I hope it does!

This Is Only For the Advance Class

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As my friend Laurie Ruettimann pointed out last week, recruiting is easy and can be done by basically anyone, so just go hire some soldier to do it.   Laurie might not be that all far from the truth.  Recruiting isn’t brain surgery, it’s a process.  A process that is hated by the majority of human resource professionals around the world, which is why it is a $9 Billion dollar industry.  Not a hard skill, but many times, a really hard job to be successful at.  Old school recruiters like to believe recruiting is an Art form.  It’s not.  New school recruiters like to believe you can just source everyone you need off the internets. You can’t.

Recruiting is all about activity.  It’s a sales cycle.  The more contacts (phone calls, emails, handshakes, etc.) you make, the more candidates you will find.  The more candidates you find and get interested in your jobs.  The more jobs you will fill.  Not hard, right?  The problem is, ‘most’ recruiters look to do things that allows them not to make contacts!  They will buy every kind of technology imaginable to get people to call them.  They’ll do just about anything, besides picking up the phone and making that one call.

Want to be successful at Recruiting? Find people who are willing to make 100 calls per day and who love your company.  Go ahead, go find those people!  It might be a soldier, it might be your neighbor, it might a former crackhead, who knows!  The fact is, most people do not want to do this, even when you hire them and pay them to do just this!

So being a successful recruiter is basically easy.  You must find the sweet spot in the amount of activity you need to do each week that will get you the amount of contacts you need to get enough people for the jobs you want to fill.  Once you find that level, you need to maintain that level forever. Easy. I’m not kidding.  You don’t need fancy branding, and big ATS Systems and a bunch of processes.  You need people who will bang your internal resume database and job boards constantly, and faster than your competition.  That really isn’t that hard to do, because most shops don’t even do the basics well!

Now for the Advance Class participants:

Want to be Ridiculously Successful at Recruiting?

Do that which is written above and add just one thing.  Maintain a relationship with your companies Alumni.  There is this funny thing about human nature.  When we leave some place, we always want to know what’s going on back there!  If we move to a new city, we love updates from our old city.  When we run into past coworkers at the mall, we love updates on who is still there and who is running different departments, who got fired, who got promoted.  If we know this about human nature, why aren’t we giving it to our Alumni?

It doesn’t have to be constant, but is has to be consistent.

Do a quarterly Alumni update via email to everyone who has every worked for you. Even the crappy ones who you are glad they are gone !  Give them some juicy details about promotions. Let them know some new things you’re working on.  Let them know what jobs you’re trying to fill, and how they can refer people.  Do this every quarter for 2 years.  Want to be class valedictorian?  On a monthly basis call a handful of alumni and just have chat, build some relationships, check on where are they now.  As them if you mind if you share their story in the next Alumni News going out next quarter.  If you commit to do this for 24 months, you will start to see positions fill themselves.

This is advance course stuff, because 99% of companies aren’t doing this with their recruiting!

Pity Hires

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Some of the best business interactions I have each week are on the back channel with the gang over at Fistful of Talent.  It usually starts with one of our tribe asking the rest of us a question, and quickly spirals out of control.  Almost every time someone will say “this email string should be a blog post”.  Almost 100% it’s not, because the snark level is Defcon 1!  The concept of “Pity Hire” came from one of these recent interactions and I’ll give credit to the brilliant Paul Hebert (original FOT member and if you need an expert on rewards and recognition, and almost anything else, he’s your dude!).

The conversation actually started around “hiring pretty“, which I’m a huge fan of and have written about it several times.  It’s my belief that over hundreds of years, genetics has and will continue to build better hires.  Hires that are more attractive, taller, etc.  It’s just simple science and human behavior interacting.  I won’t go into detail here, you can read my previous post to get the background.  Let’s just say smart powerful rich men, get pick of women. They have kids. Better healthcare, nutrition, family wealth, access and education, lead to the cycle starting all over again. Eventually, pretty people are not just pretty, they are also smarter.  Looks at our business and political leaders for the most part – usually pretty people.

So, it’s not really that hard to then make the jump to the fact that all of us really like to hire pretty people.  Like it!  We actually love it!  Therein lies the problem.  There are only so many pretty hires to go around, and let’s face it, not all pretty people are genetically superior!  This gets us to Pity Hires.  A Pity Hire is a hire you make of someone out of shear pity for them.  They might not be so good looking, or smart, or they come from circumstances that are less than ideal.  So that you can identify and help stop this kind of hiring I wanted to list out the types of Pity Hires we tend to make:

Pity Hire Types —

Second Place Hire:  The second place pity hire is the hire you make when you someone doesn’t get hired initially because you actually had a really beautiful person to hire.  The second place hire was probably a better fit, but not as ascetically pleasing.  You find another lower level position, at lower pay, and offer that to them.  You feel bad, so you give them a lessor job.

Crappy Situation Hire: The crappy situation hire happens when you interview someone who is in, or has went through recently, a crappy situation. Newly divorced and the spouse left them for a younger, more beautiful person (happens to both males and females).  The boss from their old job, they were having an affair with, found a new younger, more attractive admin to sleep with.  Things like that – crappy situations.

Recent Breakup Hire: They were fired from their last job, when they were let go through a layoff where their past company was getting rid of the less attractive people.  You feel bad they had to go through those situations, so you hire them for your job.

No One Will Give Me My First Job Hire:  One of the most common Pity Hires is the entry level hire.  Many of us have given out this hire in our careers.  Entry level candidate, got some worthless degree in something like “Historical Urban Anthropology” and can’t figure out why no one will hire them!  They’re not good looking enough to get a job like a normal person, so you hire them.

 Pity hires aren’t necessarily bad hires.  It’s really a kind of HR charity.  We do them for friends kids, and favors for old co-workers.  They usually don’t work out well, but we can compartmentalize them for what they are, Pity Hires.  As I write this I’m wondering if we might have just come up on the next great Recruiting Metric for 2014!  Can you imagine going to your executive team — “Well, we lost 25 hires last year, but we aren’t counting 5 of those losses, they were Pity Hires!”

 

 

After The 4th Round Interview…

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I had a client recently that was undecided about a candidate after the 4th round interview.  They were thinking that maybe a fifth round would make the difference.  I told them that it wouldn’t.  In fact, it was a mistake to allow them to get to four.

Do you know what the fourth round interview says about your process?

It says that your process is broken.  No one needs four rounds of interviews to decide if a candidate is the right candidate for your organization.  A fifth round, or any number higher, is just adding insult to injury.

Here’s what anything beyond the third round interview says to your candidate:

 – “Hey, come work us, so we can totally frustrate you with our indecision culture.”

– “We need more interviews because we don’t have our shit together, but please don’t notice that.”

– “You are so mediocre we just can decide if we should pass on you, or hire you.”

– “I bet you can’t wait to come aboard and be a part of this process in the future!”

– “We like to where down candidates to see who ‘really’ wants out jobs!”

Organizations that can’t figure this out are always interviewing second tier talent.  Organizations that are talent attractors have determined that less is more.  Have a concise process. Move quick. We’ll get it right, more than we’ll get it wrong.  If we get it wrong, don’t take long to make the correction.

The reality is, is that 99% of your interviews should never need to go beyond three interviews.  It looks like this:

1st round – This is your pre-employment screening/assessments  and phone interview. Perfect placement for video screening tool (HireVue, WePow, etc.).

2nd round – Face-to-face with hiring manager and any other key stakeholders (i.e., people this person might support from other functions)

3rd round – if needed-  Face-to-face, phone, skype-type interview.  Executive sign off.  Really only needed if your line executive doesn’t have faith in the hiring manager.

More interviews after this point, yield negligible additional information, and actually might be a detriment to your hiring decision.  Why?  Here’s what happens happens after you talk about someone for so long, they turn into a piece of crap!  This is normal human and organizational behavior, by the way.  We start out talking about all the good qualities and experiences the person has, and how they can help us.  We then start searching for hickeys and, no matter what, we will find them!  Then we start talking about what’s wrong with the person and before you know it, that great candidate, becomes a piece of garbage and not good enough for your organization.

They’re not really garbage.  They’re still the really good person you initially interviewed.  We just let it go too long, and discovered they have opportunities and we don’t want to hire anyone with ‘opportunities’ we want perfect.  This is what happens after round three in almost every organization I’ve ever witnessed go to four, five, six, etc.   It might be the biggest misnomer by candidates who feel the longer you go in the interview process, the better the chance of an offer.  It’s untrue!  If you don’t get an offer after the third round, your percentages of getting an offer fall exponentially every round after!

 

To Haze or Not to Haze at Work

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If you follow sports, especially NFL football, you haven’t been able to get away from the nonstop coverage of the hazing issue that took place with the Miami Dolphins between two of their offensive lineman. Long story short, veteran offensive lineman, who is white, decides rookie offensive lineman, who is black, isn’t being man enough (whatever that means).  So, veteran begins hazing him to get him tougher by leaving racist voice mails, threatening the rookie’s family, trying to force him to pay for $30,000 dinners.  This Miami Dolphin veteran feels this is normal NFL rookie hazing behavior, which usually includes carrying a veteran’s luggage at away games, carrying shoulder pads off practice field, maybe buying some donuts for morning meetings, or picking up some pizzas for lunch.  The rookie he decided to haze was a Stanford graduate, with parents who are Harvard graduates. Where do you think this is going?

The question comes up constantly in workplaces, of which the NFL should be considered a workplace, shouldn’t ‘some’ hazing be allowed?  It’s easy for all of us to say “NO!”   It’s hard for us to know that in many, many instances our positive, not negative, workplace culture is built on many forms of hazing.  Phil Knight, the Godfather of Nike, wrote in his own autobiography, Just Do It, that his own sales reps, called ‘Ekins’ (Nike backwards), all got Nike swoosh tattoos on their calf when they were hired.  It wasn’t required, but if you wanted to ‘fit’ in, you got it.  Hazing at one of the largest, most successful companies in the world.

At my own company we tell new recruiters that they have to use their first commission check to buy everyone a round of drinks.  Knowing that this check will never cover the amount of what that tab will be.  (For the record – we just threaten this and don’t tell them the truth, but I always get the tab!) Hazing, all the same.

I’m sure, as you read this, that you are thinking of things that happen in your own company.  “We decorate peoples cubes for their birthdays” or “We make the new employee stand up in a meeting and share their most embarrassing moment” or “We don’t let the new employees know when it’s jean’s day”.  All harmless, all hazing.

Show it comes down to one small question: Should you allow hazing or not?

Or do you just call it something different like, cultural norms, team building, trust exercises, initiation, rite of passage, a test of loyalty, etc.?

I wonder how many of us admonish this veteran Miami Dolphin player (who for the record isn’t a choir boy) as a monster, while we turn a blind-eye to what is going on in our organizations.  What is happening in Miami, and I’m sure many sports franchises, fraternities/sororities, college locker rooms, etc., is very similar to what is happening in the hallways of your office building, on the floor of your manufacturing facility, sales bullpen and cube farm.

We allow hazing because it has become a societal norm.  “Well, I went through it, so should everyone else that comes after me.”  “Getting the tattoo is part of ‘who’ we are.”  “She’s ‘one’ of us, she gets it.”  This is what a NFL player was doing.  He was doing what he was taught to do by those before him.  By the culture he was working in.  No controls.  Just culture.  The funny thing about culture is that ‘it’ happens.  Whether we like it or not, our culture happens.

The Life Cycle of a Hot Job Market

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In any market, even during really bad recessionary economic times, there are certain categories of jobs and skills that remain extremely hard to come by.  In one market it might be a certain kind of engineer, another time and place it might be nurses, or it might even be seemingly something as simple as truck drivers.  Many of us are now facing this market with various kinds of IT professionals (Developers, Analyst, etc.).   Through all of these gaps in inventory of skills something remains very common and predictable — the cycle that takes place.

Here’s what the cycle of a Hot Job market looks like for a certain ‘specialized’ need: (let’s use Bakers for our example, no one really ever would feel we would lack for Bakers, right!?)

1. Companies begin by hiring up to ‘full employment’ with in the market category.  Usually 3% unemployed Bakers would mean ‘full employment’, those last 3% no one really wants there the folks who don’t really want to work, have other problems (like substance abuse, harassers, etc.).

2. Companies begin taking ‘fliers’ at the bottom 3% that are on the market.  “Come guys, Billy is a good Baker and he says he won’t put Crack in the Cupcakes anymore!”

3. Companies begin to feel pain of not enough Bakers. Their overtime is going up, positions are taking longer to fill, product quality goes down a bit, etc.

4. Companies begin brainstorming on how to get more Bakers.  They add a Baker apprenticeship (we can build our own Bakers!), they add retention bonuses to ensure they keep their Bakers (Free cookies!) and they start coddling to all the Bakers needs (you need a new baking hat!? You got it!).

5. Bakers start to get calls about jobs.  Those jobs are paying much more than they ever imagined they would make, plus you get free cookies and cakes!

6. People start to hear stories about Bakers making six figures! Wait, I want some of that baking cake money!  I would love to bake cakes for a living!  How do I get me some of that baking cake money!?

7. Bakers start demanding things they never thought they could.  4am is too early for me to make the cupcakes, I only want to bake cupcakes after 6am. I don’t bake cupcakes on Sunday. I only work on wedding cakes, not birthday cakes, I’m a professional!

8.  More and more people start coming into the market to become bakers.  It’s the ‘hot’ field, the best and brightest want to be bakers. There are TV shows about Bakers. Bakers are cool.  Baking is ‘the’ profession to get into.  USA Today has Baking as the growth profession to be in the next 10 years. (USA Today announcing anything as ‘hot’ is the key that it’s probably on the backside of being hot)

9. Good and bad Bakers, alike, start to become arrogant.  This is the tipping point of a Hot Job Market — Arrogance.

10. Companies don’t like to be held ‘hostage’ by any certain skill set, so they ensure the market will get flooded with candidates.  The pain of not having enough talent has gotten bad enough to ensure companies will fund whatever it takes to get them out of this pain.

The Wall Street Journal announced recently that Silicon Valley has an arrogance problem.  Those IT professionals that all of us need and can’t do with out, are beginning to feel their market power.  Some of you might say, well this has been going on for 10 years, and you would be correct.  It has been a hot job market going on a decade and continues to be hot.  The arrogance isn’t even new for many.  But it is now becoming common place.

I have quick story.  In 2001 automotive designers in Detroit could have a different job every day if they wanted and they named the price they wanted to make. The market was on fire. Thousands of people start to flood the market.  Designing wasn’t easy, but you could get educated and start at the bottom and learn the skills it took to become a good designer.  It was ‘system’ based, meaning you had to learn certain computer systems to learn how to design, plus some other skills.  Today, designers are still making less than what they were 15 years ago.

Basic economics will tell us these ‘hot’ markets will eventually work themselves out.  The cycle is always the same.  The ending is always the same.  In the history of civilization there has never been a ‘hot’ job category that hasn’t, eventually, been figured out.

Failure is the new Black

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This inspiration came from my friend William Tincup.  If you don’t know him, you need to know him, he’s brilliant.  Like my head hurts after talking to him brilliant, in a good way.

He made a comment recently which was just this:

“Failure is the new black.”

Another friend of ours, Jason Seiden, has been saying this for years, in a little different way, with his “Fail Spectacularly” motto.  Either way, you get the point, it’s now ‘in’ to talk about your failures. It’s a really popular and motivating thought process for a lot of people. Basically, it’s alright that you failed, go do it again and eventually you’ll get it right.

Past generations would go to great lengths to hide their failures.  Think about your parents and grand parents, you never heard them talk about things they failed at.  Think back about how your own parents spoke to you. Was failure really an option?  It wasn’t in my household.  We’re Sacketts, and Sacketts are winners, and winners get to do what they want (oh wait, that was me weekly to my own kids!).

I’m just wondering who originally decided that it was alright to fail?

You can’t go anywhere anymore without everyone telling you “Success starts with Failure” or “The Secret to success is failure”.  This comes from the concept of traditional scientific theory.  Have a theory. Test theory. Fail. Try another approach. Fail. Keep trying and eventually you’ll be successful.  Straightforward. Makes sense.  But that really only plays out when you’re testing scientific theories.

Can we agree real life might be a bit different?

Malcolm Gladwell’s new book David and Goliath talks about the concept of failure and what it does to the brightest college students in the world.  His research found that the top 50  PhD students going into schools like Harvard, are all smarter than the smartest kid going into Missouri.  But at the end of their schooling the brightest kid at Missouri is more successful than the number 50 kid at Harvard.  Why is that?  The number 50 kid believes they are a failure because they are not as smart as the 49 kids above them at Harvard. While the kid at Missouri, who wasn’t as bright as all the Harvard kids, became a rock star at Missouri. That success, that confidence, led him/her to more and more success.  Put that same Missouri kid at Harvard and he/she would have failed miserably and may have even dropped out of the program.

Let me give you an example.  Your kid goes up to bat.  Strikes out, which is a failure. Goes up the next time and strikes out.  Goes up again and strikes out. Continues game after game, never hitting, only striking out.  Continued failure will not lead to this kid’s success.  In fact, continued failure will lead to more failure as their confidence is shattered.

The path to success, for most life situations, is not through failure, it’s through success.  Continued little successes that will eventually lead to big successes.

Celebrating failure, like it’s some sort of a success, doesn’t lead to success.  Is it alright to fail?  Of course it is. But should we be celebrating it?  I have children.  I want them to be successful at anything they do.  When they fail, we don’t throw a party.  We talk about where failure leads, what we/they need to do to ensure we don’t fail the next time.  Many times that entails a ton of hard work.  Failures enemy is hard work.

I don’t like that we are getting comfortable as a society with failure.  That failure has become something to celebrate. Something that is now cool.   That we give a trophy to the team that lost every game.  It doesn’t make us better as a society.  It doesn’t make our organizations better.  Failure leads to more failure, not to success.  Here’s hoping ‘Success’ becomes the new black!