Category Archives: The Recruiting Rules

PeopleCompanies

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I’ll give inspiration for this post to awesome HR Pro Trish McFarlane. Trish posted a small little vent on Facebook this week about all these HR companies who use “People” as part of their corporate name – and none of us really know what the hell they do.  So, I’m going to help you out and tell you what I think they do based on their company Name!  Here we go:

PeopleClues – I’m going to assume they are finding out ‘clues’ about people – probably people we want to hire into our companies.  The problem is I don’t want ‘clues’ – I want ‘Facts’!  Please change your name to ‘PeopleFacts’ – and then I will work with you. Truth be told – I have no clue.

PeopleScout – Seems like a never easy one – a company who is going to go out and ‘scout’ people for you.  Not Boy or Girl scout. Scout as in find.  As in pilgrim days when you went to go ‘scout’ out a site to build your cabin.  Solid.  I hope that’s what they actually do!

PeopleFluent – Um, I’ve got nothing.  But that never stopped me before!  When I think ‘fluent’ I think language – “Why Yes, I’m fluent in Spanglish!” So, this clearly is a company who will help out your company when you have interpreting issues, language barriers and such.   I don’t have that issue, but it’s good to know such a niche company exists.

PeopleTalent – I’m guessing staffing firm – only a staffing firm would think “You know what the world needs – they need people and they need talent – PeopleTalent”

PeopleCorp – No idea.  A corporation that is run by people and not machines, but it’s really run by machines – but they want you to think it’s run by people.

PeopleMatch – This screams assessments – but it could also be staffing.  Either way I’m betting on a catchy slogan like – “We Match People!”

PeopleSoft – This is clearly an American company.  We are people.  We are soft.  Thanks for point out we are fat and miserable.

PeopleAnswers – I’m hoping this is a company that you can call and they will have answers for you about your employees that you don’t get. “Why does Tim have tuna fish on Tuesdays each week?”

PeopleClick – Probably started in late 90’s, early 2000’s – the computer mouse goes ‘click’ – we’re techy and in the HR space – People + Click = PeopleClick.  Potential million dollar ad campaign – “We’ll find you Talent in the Click of a button”

PeopleReport – Sounds like a company started by a bunch of ex-principals.  What’s better than HR and the ability to report what everyone is doing wrong!?  Absolutely nothing!

PeopleMatter – No they don’t.

PeopleNet – This is probably a late 80’s, early 90’s – even before ‘click’ – we had ‘The Net’ – another tech savvy HR company who wanted a techy sounding HRish name.  No idea what they do – could be a sourcing company – ‘We throw a wide ‘net’ around talent’  (I really should have gone into used car sales marketing)

PeopleQuest – True story – on my son’s baby name list – ‘Quest’ – was an actual option!  Can you imagine growing up with a name like – Quest!  The world would be your oyster. You would be unstoppable – Watch the F out -here comes Quest!  In terms of this company – I’m guessing staffing again – you’re on a quest to find talent or some lame thing.

People-Results – First off let me tell you this company almost didn’t make the list because of the Hyphen in the name!  What People-Results are you too good to eliminate the hyphen, or do you feel people are too stupid to understand it’s two words and not one?  Performance Management all the way – People and Results – it’s all we ever wanted!

PeopleVerified – Background checking.  We need to know is this is a verified person or not.  Apparently is takes 48 hours to find this out from a background check company – or you can Google – it takes 48 seconds!

I honestly didn’t look at any of these companies before I gave my assessment!  How close did I come?  To be fair – I actually knew PeopleSoft and PeopleReport – I’ve worked with both. All the others?  No idea!  Really. How’s that feel marketing pros?

 

 

 

 

The Ultimate Guide to Mobile Recruiting

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867-5309 (Ok, if you under 35 years old you might not get this reference – but Kris Dunn is 43ish – and he wrote this content – so forgive the GenX reference – but here’s the link to the Tommy Tutone video back when MTV had videos!)

Jenny, Jenny, we’ve got your number…. But in the dynamic landscape of mobile recruiting, those seven digits aren’t always enough to get the job done. So what’s an HR or recruiting pro to do?

Sure you could leave your card plastered on a bathroom stall for all willing and able talent to see, or you could register for the April installment of the FOT webinar and start laying down the foundation for your mobile recruiting strategy.

Join Microsoft’s Xbox’s own – Jason Pankow and Kris Dunn (not from Microsoft Xbox) as they lay down FOT’s Ultimate Guide to Mobile Recruiting, brought to you by the mobile sages at iMomentous.  Join your hosts April 24 at 1pm ET and they’ll hit you with the following:

  • A survey of the mobile recruiting landscape and the factors driving the need for HR and recruiting professionals to develop their mobile recruiting strategy.
  • Mobile site vs. Native App? FOT tackles the great debate, presenting scenarios of how each fit into your mobile recruiting strategy.
  • The five keys to enhancing your mobile recruiting strategy by capitalizing on features like quick apply, SMS, social media and QR codes.
  • The ultimate checklist for selecting your mobile recruiting vendor, including the top questions you need to ask when vetting potential vendors.
  • How to go beyond the optimized screen to attract top talent to your organization by incorporating video content and thought leadership into via your mobile recruiting strategy.

Hire Jenny.

Register for FOT’s Ultimate Guide to Mobile Recruiting webinar today! (It’s FREE because we make someone else foot the bill!)

Do you value new employees over old?

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Here’s a quick way to check!

When an old employee comes to you and says, “Hey, I really like working here but I’m hearing from folks that I can make like $10-15-20K more doing the same thing at the company across the street.”  And you go, “Well, you know, we love you and you’re doing great work, but we just can’t afford to pay you that much more. Sorry.  Let me see what I can do for you – I need to talk to HR.”

Your supervisor then goes to HR.  She tells HR what you said.  HR might actually know that your competition is indeed paying that much more – but the budgets are done – we didn’t figure in 20-20% pay increases.  Let’s first go back and try and give them $3,000, bringing their total to $75,000, and again tell the employee how valuable they are to us and how much we need them on ‘our’ team.  Sound like a plan?  Sound like you’ve had this conversation before? I have.

So, the supervisor does it – gives them employee $3,000 and waits and hopes the employee will take it and not actually go out and look.  Here’s the problem.  The $3,000 increase you just gave them – probably was the straw that actually broke the camels back!  Now, for sure they’ll look.

Let’s fast forward a month down the road.  Same employee comes into the supervisor’s office and turns in 2 week notice.  They got their offer for $20K more than you were originally paying them, they are now at $95K – they gave you a chance – you blew it.

Fast forward two months down the road.  You’ve posted the position, did interviews and now want to make an offer to the replacement.  The replacement wants $95K.  You go to the hiring manager and tell them the budget only has $75K in it.  The hiring manager comes back and says they have no choice, we have to pay $95K…

You value new employees over old employees.

 

Little Becomes Big

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I think most things don’t change or get done in our organizations because people look at what needs to be done and thinks – “Holy crap! That’s a big job”.  That’s such a big job and I don’t have the resources or the time or the energy to tackle that right now.  In HR this happens to us all the time.  I would rather just stick with what we have because the amount of work it would take to make a change just isn’t something we can do, right now. “Can’t do right now”, by the way, means “never” in most organizations.

I’m not a all-at-once guy.  Many people are.  “If we are doing this, we’re doing it all!”  This is really an artificial roadblock many people put up to stop you.  They know you don’t want to do it all, ‘right now’, so they force the all-or-nothing compromise.  Which almost always goes to the ‘nothing’ decision.  I think HR can be much more effective by starting very small and moving slowly, but surely, in a direction of major change that you have planned out in the future.

Here’s how I like to do it – let’s use changing your interview process and beginning to get 100% compliance on using new competency driven interview guides.  Sounds like something your hiring managers will hate, right!?  Here’s how this normally works: Step 1 – Put together a 7 page questionnaire on competencies and send out to all 200 hiring managers in your organization with a time line of 4 weeks to return.  At 4 weeks, 12% have returned, after reminders 17% have returned. You’re dead in the water because you can get a majority of your hiring manager to even agree on which competencies are important in your organization.  Step 2– you give up.

Here’ how I do it:

Step 1: I meet with 4-5 top performing hiring managers who give a damn, individually, and gather their ‘opinion’ on what competencies really matter to them.

Step 2: I come up with a consensus of this small group and deliver them back an initial ‘draft’ interview guide, based on their recommendations, and ask for any additions or subtractions they would like to see.

Step 3:  I begin using these guides for all interviews with these managers as a ‘test’ case on how these might work with the rest of the organization.  This test might take 3-12 months based on how much hiring you do in your organization.  I change and tweak and better the guides constantly to make the more end-user friendly based on the hiring managers using them.

Step 4:  My 4-5 best hiring managers now have a habit of using competency based interview guides – 100%.  They are believers because they were the designers of them. They work, for them.  They will not want to change.

Step 5:  I present my ‘Competency based interview guide’ test results to leadership.

Step 6:  We roll out competency based interview guide process to the entire company – 100%.

Ok, I probably missed a couple steps in this quick example – but you get the idea.  Little steps become big steps.   How do you eat an Elephant?  One bite at a time.  The easiest way for an HR shop to get anything done in an organization is to find champions who are high performers to work with you and believe in what you’re doing – then just start doing it – ‘as a test’!  Most leadership love to see their employees trying things that is an attempt to make the organization better – especially when it’s their best and brightest!  Don’t get caught up in “Everybody has to do it”!  No they don’t – ‘Everybody’ will actually slow down what you’re trying to accomplish.

Little, becomes Big.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Recruiting, Reenvisioned

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What is the worst buying experience you’ve ever had?  For most people, it’s buying a car.  New or Used, it doesn’t matter – buying a car, sucks.  It starts with the sales person.  You go onto a lot, you see a car you like and you want to take it for a test drive.  The last thing you want is to have someone you don’t know, ride a long with you and make small talk when you’re trying to decide if the car if right for you.  It starts the entire experience off on the wrong foot.  Then you finally decide and you have to sit through a minimum of an hour while you do this stupid dance between the sales person and their ‘sales manager’ as you negotiate the car.  From top to bottom, most people would rate – buying a car – as the single worst buying experience they’ll ever experience.  The entire process is set up for the car dealers, not for the buyers.

From a recent article in Time on re-envisioning the car buying experience:

…“I wish the Apple store was more like an auto dealership.” Or even something like: “My check engine light comes on and I smile.”…When asked what car shopping should be like, Michael Accavitti, vice president of marketing at American Honda, and one of the judges at the challenge, offered the following description:

“It should be like when you go to an ice cream store. Everybody is happy at the ice cream store. They are laughing, smiling and joking. When you buy a car, it should be the same.”

Recruiting is a little like buying a car for a company/hiring manager/candidates.  It’s uncomfortable. Both sides want to ask things, but they don’t. Both sides want information, but it’s not shared.  In the end, one side usually feels like they’ve won, and one side feels like they ‘left something on the table.’

How do we change that?

That is a really difficult question.  Like the car buying experience, dealers and auto companies would have changed it decades ago if they would have a better answer.  The problem comes down to the company not believing the buyer is smart enough to understand their position and need for a profit.  “Hey, look, the car cost us $15K, we need to make $2K, the taxes will be $1K – it’s going to cost you $18K” Instead they they list it $25K, and let us feel like we are ‘getting a deal’ when they negotiate it down to a purchase prices of $21K – then we find out a neighbor down the street got his for $19K and we lose our minds.  Trust broken – you made one sale, you won’t make another.

I think, like the article explains, recruiting functions need to become more match making services versus we’re going to sell you what we have!  Ultimately, I’m not looking for the best talent. I’m not.  I’m looking for the best talent that matches my culture and can work effectively within our organization and those already in it. Those could be very different people.  Recruiting tends to only look, or mostly only look, for skill match.  Hiring manager needs Java Developer, Recruiting delivers Java Developer, one or both are miserable because they didn’t really match to begin with.  The problem with why we don’t do this now, is that it frankly takes to long and is too subjective.  Subjectivity causes HR heartburn.

I don’t have an exact answer, but I wonder what recruiting would look like if we went more match.com vs. monster.com?

 

Ugly People Hate Recruiting’s Newest Silver Bullet

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One really great thing about the traditional resume is that you can be a Troll and no one will know until you actually show up for the interview! Hey, getting to that point is half the battle.  Once you get into the interview room and you’re super uggs – you’ll get a courtesy 20 to 30 minutes at least.  This gives you some time to actually break down those initial rejections to your looks and prove yourself worthy of working with these beautiful people!  It’s really win-win.  Long live traditional resumes.

The reality is, ugly people are running scared right now!  While video interviewing and video profiles aren’t new – they’ve finally gotten to the point where ultra conservative corporate HR and Recruiting departments are beginning to use them.  The tech has gotten so simple, your baby boomer hiring managers can figure it out – at least if they can figure out how to open an email. Plus, the ROI on cost is ridiculously low, as compared to flying someone in for an interview.  It’s not if, but when, most companies will be doing video interviewing and screening as a major part of their recruiting process.

That sucks if you’re Ugly.  Now, you’ll never make it to that interview room for the courtesy interview – Video Interviewing Vendors have stolen your dream.  Blame them – and your parents for your genetics, heck blame it on the rain – doesn’t matter, you’re not making it through.  Unless!  Unless, you follow these easy tips for nailing your video interview/screening opportunity:

Don’t look like yourself.  Seriously – if you’re not the ‘pretty friend’ in your friend group, ask the pretty friend to help you get ready for the interview. It’s a video – not a runway – only worry about what you’re wearing from the shoulders up.  You have to have your best hair day ever.  Professional makeup – cover up anything you can see in good lighting.  Again, don’t do this yourself – ask someone much better looking than you for help – or pay to have it done.

Practice. Not into a mirror, not to your cat, not to your Mom.  Practice on video. Yes you can – you have a smart phone – just set it up on something and push record – then watch it back. Repeat 250 times.   You’ll instantly notice all the things wrong with you – that’s good.  Now limit those annoying things you’re doing, because that is what someone else is going to see instantly.  Practice is key, because most automated Video interviewing/screening systems only give a few minutes, and only one take.

Connect. Find a way to tell your story in around 90 seconds.  Also, have other stories about your experiences you can also share in 90-120 seconds. People won’t remember your skills – they’ll remember your story – your personality.  Practice these as well – so many times that they don’t seem like you practiced them, but come off as natural, as a good memory you are recalling.

Believe me, I feel for you.  Growing up a short redheaded kid on the wrong side of the tracks – I’ve been where you are now.  Don’t curse the game – it’s here to stay.  Adjust, learn how to play it better than those running it.  Be better than those pretty brainless idiots you’re competing against.  Capture the hearts of your tormentors.  Embrace your trollness!

3 Things You Can Do To Increase Your Female Engineering Hires

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I run a small technical recruiting company.  We hire mostly engineers and IT professionals.  It’s a good group to go after – they’re educated and higher level wage earners which typically cascades itself into other traits that are nice to work with – career focused, courteous, responsible, etc.  Because the technical demographic we go after – to be fair – it’s mostly men we have to deal with.  As any company who is trying to hire technical professionals can attest it is really difficult to hire minorities and/or females in the technical disciplines. Tough, but not impossible!

The one thing we hear all the time from almost every company we work with is, “Hey, if you ever come across any female or minority engineers let us know – we would be interested.”  Which begs the question – “Do you want me to find you a female or minority engineer?”  Of course they do!  But these good respecting HR Pros we work with will never say that because they think it’s against the law to say that.  Which it isn’t. But they assume it is, because saying the opposite would be!  (I.E., “Please don’t give us any female or minority engineers!”)  I won’t say the name of our client, but one Fortune 500 manufacturer we work with does actually use us for minority hiring and will say very specifically what they want.  Like they’re ordering a pizza!  It doesn’t bother me, because I know what they are trying to do is ‘right’ – they are attempting to have a positive impact on their diversity – I can support that!

I saw this from Etsy recently on how they increased their female engineering hires by 500%! Don’t go crazy – it was 20 hires – but still impressive.  Again, they’re a female dominated company, so as you can imagine that having female engineers was important to them, and you could probably also imagine females would be attracted to a female oriented company. From the article:

“Most technical interviews suck – fundamentally interviewers ask the question, “Quick, prove to me how smart you are!” “Smart” is not optional. “Quick” and “prove to me” are very rarely actually part of the job and you’re interviewing for the wrong thing – which generally sets up women for failure in the process…after two years, female engineers at Etsy are nearly 20% of the team, four and a half times what they numbered at the start of the initiative. When reached for comment, Etsy’s corporate communications would not comment on the current number of female engineering staffers, but told FORBES that the coming months would see the company making women a even bigger priority, particularly in the wake of the media coverage sparked by Elliott-McCrae’s presentation. After all, roughly 80% of the over 800,000 shops on the site are owned and operated by women. At a certain point, they should be represented from within the company’s ranks.”

So, how did Esty do it?  How did they increase their female engineering hires?  I’ll give you 3 things they did:

Step 1   Make it known publicly you want to hire women!  Too many companies decide behind closed doors this is something they want to do in their organization, but then never go the next step and let their staff know, let their industry know, etc.!  And not only that, but let your staff know why this is important!

Step 2  Don’t lower the hiring standard.  The first thing most companies do when an initiative like this becomes hot, is lower the standard. “Oh, you want more women. Ok, you need to allow us to hire entry levels and from ‘B’ level schools!” Don’t do that, you’ll marginalize the entire program and your people and your candidates will know it!

Step 3  Put women in charge of hiring women.  It’s Ok to have different hiring processes if they are both getting you, in the end, what you want as an organization.  You can make two interview decks, one for woman and one for men, that are both still valid and reliable.  It’s just hard, so 99.9% of you won’t do it. Have your female leaders interview your female candidates – they will do a better job at selecting female talent, especially if this is a huge organizational weakness you’re trying to correct!

The more you hire of any kind of person, they more your organization will start to take on those traits.  The more women you hire, the easier it will be to hire more.  It doesn’t happen overnight – but you can do it!

It’s Time To Change Your Employee Referral Program!

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The really cool thing about superheroes is that they are superheroes for a reason – they have someone who is their equal to compete against them. These competitors are the villains, and in the movies they’re doing bad things – but in real life these “villains” are only the bad guys and girls because they work for the competition.

So, how do you get your competitors talent to come over to your side and put on your company’s cape?  A great employee referral program is the key.

FOT is back at it with the March installment of our monthly webinar series. This month, with the help from the heroes at Zao, HR SuperFriends Kris Dunn and Tim Sackett will be laying down seven strategies that are guaranteed to put your employee referral program on another planet.  Join us Wednesday March 27 at 1pm ET and we’ll hit you with the following:

  • Seven surefire ways to engage your best employees and increase referrals (while ensuring your employees don’t refer SuperDuds!)
  • How to develop an internal communication strategy for your employee referral program.
  • The keys to sustaining your program long-term.
  • How and why trends like gamification can lead to better employee referral results.
  • The top three reasons 99% of employee referral programs fail and how you can make sure your employee referral program is delivering the goods all year long.

Don’t let your employee referral program fall to the Legion of Doom.

Register now for The SuperFriends: 7 Strategies to Get Your Superhero Employees to refer Their Arch Nemesis! 

You Wish You Had Marissa Mayer As Your CEO!

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You know what I’ve learned in 20 years of being in HR?  It’s really hard to find a CEO that is worth a damn! Really hard!

To find a CEO who is willing to make tough calls, difficult changes and push an organization outside it’s comfort zone without caving to the pressure of the previous culture.  A CEO who is unrelenting in their beliefs of what it is going to take to make a difference for the organization they work for.  A CEO that demands better.

All you Yahoo haters – or should I say Marissa Mayer haters – can suck it!

Mayer was criticized publicly by almost everyone for wanting to hire better – from The Star:

Yahoo Inc. chief executive Marissa Mayer was asked at an all-staff meeting several weeks ago whether her rigorous hiring practices had caused the company to miss out on top engineering talent in Silicon Valley’s hyper-competitive job market.

Mayer dismissed the complaint that she had refused good candidates because they did not have degrees from prestigious universities, and instead she challenged her staff to get better at recruiting, according to an employee who was at the meeting.

“Why can’t we just be good at hiring?” Mayer said

Mayer didn’t say – “I only want engineering talent if they come from prestigious universities”, what she said was “I only want great engineering talent AND I want them from prestigious universities”.  She is raising the bar at Yahoo in terms of hires.  Which will raise the bar in performance at Yahoo.

Look, I hear you haters that believe you can find great talent at ‘B’ level schools and even great talent that didn’t even go to college!  I get it – I don’t disagree with you.  But when you’re trying to build a world class organization and culture – you need to draw some lines in the sand.  You need a vision.  You need, at some point, to be ‘exclusive’ – not ‘inclusive’.  To turn around an organizations culture, you need clear marching orders.  This is exactly what Mayer has done.  Which is very similar to other great leaders of our time.  I’m not saying Mayer is a great leader – but she is following a pattern of behavior which follows many great leaders of our generation. Great talent, with a clear vision, will help you get better.

I find it comical that anyone would ever criticize a CEO for sharing a vision of wanting to hire and attract world class talent from some of the best universities in the world. Who truly believes that is a bad plan? While it might not the plan you’ve chosen for your organization – I love the fact that Mayer is willing to come out and publicly state what Yahoo’s recruitment direction will be – it puts the entire organization on notice.  Kudos.

What say you Mayer haters?  Let me have it in the comments.

 

 

Na-na Na-na Boo Boo, I’m Better Than You!

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Quick question:  Would you rather have $50,000 salary or $100,000 salary?  (Same job – no strings)

$100,000, every single time.

File this under why we are all very stupid – From Fast Company:

A few years ago, students at Harvard University were asked to make a seemingly straightforward choice: Which would they prefer, a job where they made $50,000 a year (option A) or one where they made $100,000 a year (option B)?

Seems like a no-brainer, right? But there was one catch. In option A, the students would get paid twice as much as others, who would only get $25,000. In option B, they would get paid half as much as others, who would get $200,000.

What did the majority of people choose?

Option A. They preferred to do better than others, even if it meant getting less for themselves. They chose the option that was worse in absolute terms but better in relative terms.

We (yes – all of us) are so stupid that we will logically decide to make less money for the simple fact that it would be more than those working with us versus making more but making less that others!?  Compensation Managers take note!   Social Comparison Theory is very real.  If we think we are better off than others, we feel better about ourselves.  If we feel worse off than others, we feel worse.  Even if the reality is that we are better!  We compare our own self by those who are around us, doing similar things.  It’s one reason why your employees get so upset when they feel like they are paid less than someone else doing the same job – even though that other person might have more experience, more education, higher performance, etc.  “I’m going the same job – I should make the same!”

The awesome part of this, is that it’s totally adaptable to HR programs and doing what we do better.  Think about your dying referral program.  You launched it – had a really cool new poster in the break room – spent weeks crafty catchy communications to go along with your very creative theme “Here We Grow Again!” – it was going to solve all of your recruiting problems – 6 weeks later it was dead – no referrals.  One way to engage the concept of social comparison in a work environment is through gamification.  Weather you like it or not, competition within your work environment will deliver more results, almost always in the short-term.  Put up a scoreboard – and people will work to get their name up on it! Or their department, their function, etc.  Individual or team – both work.

If you have a monthly contest on which department refers the most candidates that month – and you’re showing it visually and communicating it often – Accounting will want to be beat Marketing! And, Marketing will want to be Operations, and the end result will be more referrals.  The key to gamification is keeping the game fresh.  Having a new game each week, month, period, etc. is key to giving everyone another shot at winning, and keep them motivated to play the game.  It’s not about the prize – it’s about the friendly competition and having fun with your competitions in your work environment.  It’s also about kicking their peer’s butts!  Sound like a lot of work? It might be to get started – but it’s more work to recruit talent on your own – then creating a great referral program and having your staff do the heavy lifting for you!