Category Archives: The Recruiting Rules

The Propinquity Effect

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Ok, kids – it’s Readers Digest Word Power time!

I’m constantly trying to get my HR and Talent peers to spend more time with those they serve.  Shared time – face-to-face – lunch, coffee, cigarette breaks, drinks after work, Thursday night bowling league – it doesn’t matter.  The time and space is the important thing.  More time. Closer together.

There’s a name for this, it’s called the Propinquity Effect:

The propinquity effect is the tendency for people to form friendships or romantic relationships with those whom they encounter often, forming a bond between subject and friend. Occupational propinquity based on a person’s career, is also commonly seen as a factor in marriage selection. Workplace interactions are frequent and this frequent interaction is often a key indicator as to why close relationships can readily form in this type of environment.[1] In other words, relationships tend to form between those who have a high propinquity.

It’s hard to get most HR Pros to believe this.  It’s science that has real personal value to your overall HR effectiveness within your organization.  Spend more time, building a relationship with another individual outside of HR in your organization, and you’ve just added to your organizational influence.

I’m not saying you have to become close friends and go on vacation with each other.  What I’m saying is you need to find value in building personal relationships at work – if – and this is a big ‘if’ – you have a goal to be more effective in HR.  That might sound slightly facetious – but it’s not.  Some of you are fine with where your role in HR is in your organization.  Others of you are not satisfied with how your role is seen in HR.   Propinquity is easiest way to change that.

 

Why Hasn’t Paying Employees To Leave Caught On?

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Remember a few years back when Zappos, the darling of the HR world, announced it was offering new employees $1000 on their 90 day anniversary to Leave the company?  At the time that’s all HR people talked about – it was revolutionary – pretty soon every company would be paying their employees to leave.  What happened to that?  Zappos is still offering to pay employees to leave.  Is your company? Why not?

It hasn’t caught on because your leadership is afraid your good hires would actually take you up on your offer!

Of all the HR gimmicks Zappos does, offering employees at bonus at 90 days is the best one – because it puts everything on the table.  It’s the one thing they did that other companies are too afraid to steal!   When you go to an employee and say we need you to be all in – so – if you can’t be all in, here’s $1000 bill, all you have to do is leave.  That’s having true faith in your organization, your culture.  We only want people to work here – that really want to be here.  Many of say it, but 99.9% aren’t willing to back it up with an offer.

It hasn’t caught on, because your HR team is too weak!

Think about the HR person who takes that idea to the executive conference room.  They’re either really good at what they do, or crazy.  Because most leadership teams are not going to buy in on the initial idea.  To get an idea like that approved, you have to have executive buy in, in a major way.  You have to be able to sell it.  That person is not your average HR person. That’s an HR person willing to do thing different, willing to put their beliefs on the line.  Those kind of HR folks are the ones who get the corporate logo tattooed on their ass – and don’t even tell you about it.

It hasn’t caught on because the recession put people 2nd and business 1st. (Remember when your employees were 1st!)

In a down economy the importance of your workforce has taken a back seat.  It has.  Leadership and management training was almost non-existent, retention programs disappeared and work-life balance turned into get-your-ass-back-to-work balance.  That’s simple economics.  When your pool of labor far outreaches your needs, the employer holds more of the power.  This makes the exercise of giving people money to leave, seem a little silly.  First, people aren’t leaving because they have no where else to go. Second, if someone sucks, I’m getting rid of them because I have 100 others waiting to take their spot.

HR Pros discount this policy.  They say it’s meaningless. It wouldn’t make a difference in their environment.  They have a performance management process that gets rid of ‘those’ kinds of employees. The fact is, we are scared.  We are scared to go and do this because we know the truth.  That it would cause turnover, that would cause our systems and processes to be taxed.  We don’t have the resources to handle it.  We don’t have the leadership to handle it.  We don’t have the guts to try it.

It’s the single most brilliant thing that Zappos has done in the HR space, and you’re not doing it.

 

Are You Great At Faking It?

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In our zest to have high employee engagement, HR has once again outsmarted itself.  Follow the logic:

1. High Employee Engagement is a desired measure.

2. HR creates programs to drive Employee Engagement upwards.

3. Employee Engagement thresholds are reached with said programs.

4. HR needs more.

5. If we ensure every new hire comes in ‘loving’ their job/company/industry – we will ‘pre-buy’ some of the engagement measure.

6. Only hire people who ‘love’ our job/company/industry.

7. Candidates have brains.  “Oh, you only hire people who ‘love’ your job/company/industry”

8. Candidates now become really good at ‘faking’ their ‘love’ for your job/company/industry.

9.  Employees are smart to – “Oh, you mean if our ‘engagement’ score comes back higher, you’ll stop making us do these stupid team building exercises?”

10. Employees become really good at ‘faking’ it.

Being male, I was never good at faking it.  I’m Popeye – “I am, what I am, and that’s all I am”.   Fast Company had a solid post on why “Faking Enthusiasm” has become the latest job requirement. From the post:

“Timothy Noah wrote in The New Republic about how Pret A Manger requires its employees to master “Pret behaviors,” such as “has presence,” “creates a sense of fun,” and “is happy to be themself.” Yes–in order to sell you a bacon sandwich, employees must be fully self-actualized. And the amount that they touch fellow-employees is considered to be a positive indicator of sales, not a red flag for sexual-harassment lawsuits.”

It’s such a slippery slope.  Every action we take in leadership has consequences – some of which we know, some we don’t know until they happen.  The best leaders thoroughly try to anticipate these consequences their actions will create.   Requiring employees/candidates have high levels of enthusiasm might seem like a really great idea – but you better have authentic ways of measuring, or you’re just setting yourself up to fooled by those who ‘get’ the game.

Ultimately time and pressure always win out.  Given enough time and/or enough pressure an individuals true colors will show.  This is why it’s important to job requirements that are actually needed.  Authentic enthusiasm is not needed for high performers in most jobs.  Trying to hire for it can create some negative hiring scenarios when time and pressure take their tolls.  Is it great to have enthusiastic employees? Yep – it sure is.  I love being around those employees.  Do I set out to hire that ‘skill’ as a requirement – no – I have great even keel employees as well.  While I might not stop and interact with them as often – they are just as good as the enthusiastic ones.

Here’s what I know. If you’re hiring for a skill that can be faked – candidates will attempt to fake it, if they really want to work for your company.  How do you combat this – eliminate as much subjective stuff as you can from your selection process.  One other thing, if you do decide you need that high-energy personality, understand that personality just doesn’t come when you want it – it’s a person’s core – you get it all the time – there’s no light switch when you decide you’ve had enough.  I see hiring managers all the time that want a ‘certain personality’ – so we find it for them – only to have that same hiring manager come back 6 months later complaining it’s too much!

The Importance of ‘Dear John’ Letters

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Check out this great letter from Coach K to Michael Jordan, after Jordan told Coach K he was going to North Carolina:

Jordan letter

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Coach K gets it.  Yeah, Jordan went to North Carolina, won a national championship and became the greatest basketball player of all time.  But Coach K gets it!

Coach K understands what over half of HR and Talent Pros don’t get – in recruiting top talent – you never burn a bridge.  I’m sure he was upset about losing MJ to UNC – but he never let on that he was.  He sent a very cordial letter, complimenting him and wishing him well.  How many of you do that when a candidate turns you down?  My guess is – not many.  Better yet, how many actually have these letters coming from the hiring manager that interviewed the person, hand signed?  BETTER YET, how many of you have these letters coming from the CEO of your company, hand signed?

The world is a small place and you’re going to be on for a long time.  MJ respects Coach K, because Coach K treated him with respect and always left the door open.

People make mistakes all the time.  Candidates take jobs thinking its going to be great, and some times it turns out to awful.  Many of those folks believe, since they turned you down, and her nothing after – you were pissed.  So, they’ll never reach back out to you and say – “Hey, give me a second chance – this current place sucks!”  Takes about 33 seconds to send this letter out – could have years worth of payback.

 

 

The 1 Thing That Can Make Your Corporate Recruiters Better Overnight

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

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

Doesn’t matter now – deliver the miracle!

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

So – how do you do this tomorrow?

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

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

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

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

Miracle, delivered, almost instantly.

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

How Recruiters Will Break Up the SEC Dominance

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NCAA Football fanatics love recruiting signing day!  That one day, each year, when you get to find out how good your team will be in 2-3 years.  For the past 5 plus years the SEC Conference has been dominating college football’s signing day (as well has the National Championship games!).  2013’s Signing Day was no different.  Of the top 300 college football recruits – 41% signed on to play football at a SEC school! (see chart below)

2013 Signing Day

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There really isn’t much difference in recruiting a college athlete than there is in recruiting talent to your organization.  The SEC dominance in football recruiting, is similar to the dominance that Google has over Yahoo or Facebook.  The dominance that Gap might have over similar retailers, etc.   If you are being dominated in recruiting by your competition there are some things you can do, and there are some things that will happen naturally to help return balance to the universe.  Here’s how I think Big Ten, Pac12, ACC, etc. conference will break up the SEC’s dominance in college football recruiting, and how you can do the same with your organization:

1. Stars want to shine – Great you go offered to go to Alabama, along with 20 other 5 star recruits – it all becomes relative.  Recruiters, in non-SEC schools, must sell the ‘opportunity’ for these kids to star right away at their schools.  A 5 star kid at Alabama might be a backup for 2-3 years. While at another school they could start as a freshman.  Not every recruit will buy into this – but many will.  Sell opportunity.

2. The NFL Dream – It says something about you when you’re the 9th best player on your team to NFL scouts.  The 9th best NFL player at Alabama might be much better than the best player at Michigan State – the best player at Michigan State is getting more publicity and more NFL scout action than the 9th best player at Bama.  The difference might only be 3-5 rounds in the NFL – but that’s huge!   Sell the NFL dream that 99% of D1 football recruits have.

3. Stop selling “Michigan Man” – 2nd tier conferences and schools sell this concept of being the right ‘kind’ of person for a school – University of Michigan calls it ‘The Michigan Man’ – we only want kids who are Michigan men, blah, blah, blah.  Really!? Well then, I only want to recruit ‘Alabama Men’ because they seem a quite a bit better!  If you a recruiter is selling this concept of culture to top level recruits – it might make you feel really good about yourself – but it doesn’t ring true for great talent.  Nick Saban doesn’t sell ‘Alabama Men’ – he sells championships.  Sell winning, sell being number one in your industry.  People love playing/working for a winner.

4. Set Up Shop – Eventually you are going to see Big Ten recruiters actually living, buying a house, etc. full time in SEC territory if they truly want to compete for talent in those areas on a regular basis.  Having a local presence, establishing local relationships with high school coaches, etc.  says a ton to a player and his family.  Flying in once every few months, when Johnny Alabama is there every week, says something completely different.  Works the same for your organization – want Silicon Valley talent to come to Tulsa – you better get some feet on the ground!

5.  Start Early – You know there are very little recruiting rules in place for kids under the 9th grade!  A ‘donor’ for your school could fly in a 8th grader, buy him a sweatsuit and take him to his suite to watch your game – all legal, if under 9th grade.  Can you image the impression that makes on a young kid?!  Now you might not know if the kid will actually project out to be great – but you get enough interested at a very young age and you begin to get talent you never got before. Long-tail recruiting.  This is why campus recruiting is so important to many organizations for talent – you need both a long and short term recruiting strategy to fill your pipeline.

There’s one other thing that will eventually work against the SEC recruiting which seems to happen at all great organizations – laziness.  Success doesn’t always breed more success – many times in breeds complacency. The might be the biggest risk of all.  The more success they have in recruiting and the more championships they win – the more other recruiters from outside conferences are going to be working harder to get ‘their’ talent.  Their great success might be their biggest risk!

 

To Be Honest, We Hate Analytics

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Don’t kid yourself – you hate analytics.  It wouldn’t be politically correct to say that you hate analytics, so you won’t.  That’s why I’m here.

You hate analytics because using them in your organization increases accountability.

Increased accountability = Increased stress.

Increased stress = Increased job dissatisfaction.

Increased job dissatisfaction = Increased Turnover.

You see the cycle, right?

So, who likes Analytics?  Bosses. Why?  Because they like having increased accountability on you.  It makes them feel all strategic and shit.   When analytics are used against you like a weapon – they suck.  Too many organizations are analytics as a weapon to judge your performance.  Leadership justifies this because ultimately they are held accountable to the ultimate analytic – the bottom line.  So, they feel you should be held accountable to.  We would like analytics better if they weren’t used to bash us over the head.  If they were used to help make us better, to help us improve, to help us understand.

Harvard Business Review had a great post on this subject: The Real Reason Organizations Resist Analytics by Michael Schrage

The evolving marriage of big data to analytics increasingly leads to a phenomenon I’d describe as “accountability creep” — the technocratic counterpart to military “mission creep.” The more data organizations gather from more sources and algorithmically analyze, the more individuals, managers and executives become accountable for any unpleasant surprises and/or inefficiencies that emerge.

For example, an Asia-based supply chain manager can discover that the remarkably inexpensive subassembly he’s successfully procured typically leads to the most complex, time-consuming and expensive in-field repairs. Of course, engineering design and test should be held accountable, but more sophisticated data-driven analytics makes the cost-driven, compliance-oriented supply chain employee culpable, as well.

This helps explain why, when working with organizations implementing big data initiatives and/or analytics, I’ve observed the most serious obstacles tend to have less to do with real quantitative or technical competence than perceived professional vulnerability. The more managements learn about what analytics might mean, the more they fear that the business benefits may be overshadowed by the risk of weakness, dysfunction and incompetence exposed.

I recall a very technical business acronym I was taught in my Master’s program called: CYA.  Be very careful with your big data initiatives because many turn into CYA projects.  If I can show these analytics – it will show why this major issue doesn’t have anything to do with my department, but everything to do with another department.  Days To Fill reports are filled with CYA.  “It’s the hiring managers not getting back to us in a timely matter to set up interviews – this is why are Days to Fill is so high.”

Accountability sucks – when it is happening to you.  It’s great when you’re holding someone to it. Big Data might be the biggest weapon you have in your tool box – be very careful who you point it at.

 

HR – It’s You or it’s Me

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I love ‘end of days’ type posts and articles.  The end of Job Boards!  The end of HR!  Here’s another one great one over at ERE by Dr. John Sullivan called: The End of Sourcing Is Near…, which talks about how eventually (in John’s opinion) most sourcing information will be readily available to almost everyone.  This makes really the only thing left to do in recruiting is to sell the candidate on your job and your organization.  Sullivan explains the importance of this very critical step in recruiting – the sell:

“Recruiting leaders should begin focusing on these selling aspects because, as previously stated, “finding” is becoming so easy, and there is little push for change in candidate assessment because most recruiters and hiring managers are comfortable with the existing process of assessing candidates through interviews.

Once you realize that the selling aspect of recruiting is almost universally under researched, underfunded, and it is almost always executed in an unscripted manner, you’ll see that it’s ripe for significant improvement and change. If you review the recruiting literature you will find very little written about the science of selling and the importance of using data-driven selling approaches within the recruiting function. The pressure is increasing on recruiting leaders to make a decision to shift resources away from sourcing by recruiters and toward the remaining big challenge: selling.”

Like most ‘end of days’ type posts, Sullivan’s end of sourcing post is probably a little over the top, but he makes a great point.  HR Pros don’t recruit well for one simple fact – HR Pros didn’t get into HR to sell – they got into HR to do HRy things like: build processes, improve processes, administer people practices within an organization, training, problem solving, etc.   They didn’t go – “Oh boy! I can’t wait to get into the Fortune 500 HR shop so I can sell our company like a a life insurance salesman trying to make quota!”

That’s where I come in.  I don’t hire HR pros to work in recruiting.  I don’t sell the recruiting position as an HR position.  I don’t go over to Michigan State’s HR program and speak to students about ‘getting their start’ in HR by coming to work for me.  99% of those folks, while great people, would fail in my environment.  They want to be in HR – Recruiting is not HR.  There in lies the problem for most HR shops.   Most HR folks – probably 70-80% – have to do some ‘recruiting’ in their organizations.  They don’t have a recruiting department or a sourcing group to do all the heavy lifting.  Most HR Managers, if they’re lucky, have a full time recruiter, but this still means, when it’s busy, they still have to recruit.

That’s why so many HR pros engage recruiting agencies.  We offer a skill set they don’t, necessarily, have on their staff.  We sell.  We sell the crap out of a position and your company.  We can make an average company look like the Best Place to Work and a really bad company look like the next big opportunity.  No power steering – No problem – manual steering builds up great arm muscles!  Want tinted windows?  Yeah, we can get those installed.  Recruiting is selling.  In fact, Recruiting is double selling.  You sell the candidate on the position, then you sell the hiring manager on the candidate.  Good recruiters can work in any industry – because selling skills are transferable to any product or service.

So – do you want your HR Pros to sell, or do you want me to sell?  By the way – I don’t hire HR Pros, I hire closers.

Let my company do some selling for you – let’s connect: sackett.tim@HRU-Tech.com; 517-908-3156 or @TimSackett.

 

How Does HR Think?

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I’m not sure how HR thinks.  I know how I think, and from what people tell me, I don’t think like a ‘normal’ HR person.  One thing I really like, though, is to see how other pros think.  I learn a lot from how maybe an engineer addresses an issue versus say how a Designer would address the same issue.  I like to take aspects of how other professionals think and incorporate those thought processes into how I think about HR.  I think this helps me solve HR issues in ways that the business can grasp onto better.

I found a cool article recently on how Designers think.  Here are some of the ways Designers think:

– “Design is not about solving problems.  It’s about making people happy. And there are always so many personalities and ideas to consider. So you’re trying to simplify it to its fundamental structure.” 

– “You have to understand when the timing is right for dialogue, and when its time to move the limits. Designers arrive at a company to move its limits.”

– “Try to pare things down. Very few moves do a lot.”

– “Unoriginal, ugly and cheap. Revolutionary, gorgeous and luxurious. These do not have to be contradictions.”

– “The idea of innovation as a structured process has been taken to the extreme, where it is no longer a really useful or robust concept. You’ve got to go about letting people take sensible risks.”

– “…Pain is temporary. Suck is forever.”

In HR, I tend to believe that most HR pros don’t believe they work in a creative function.  In reality what you create in HR speaks volumes about the culture you’re shaping in your work environment.  If HR lacks creativity – your work environment is going to lack creativity.  The rule setters need to show the organization that from time to time, we need to break the rules to get us to the next level.  Sensibly, but rule breaking nonetheless.  Breaking the rules is like ‘kryptonite’ to HR Pros.  It goes against our very being.  Most HR Pros pride themselves on being ‘the one’ part of the organization that actually follows the rules. “If we don’t do it, Tim, who will?”

I don’t know.  What I know is I like how designers think.  It seems like a thought process that opens my mind and gets me thinking about how I can make things better.  It’s a thought process that challenges me to rethink what I’m doing and why.  That seems like a good thing. I don’t want to suck.  I hear suck is forever.

 

 

Job Description Killers

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You know what position I would love to apply for!?  Jr. Human Resource Manager – said no one ever!

I hate spending 3 seconds on Job Descriptions – because JD’s just scream “Personnel Department” but I have to just take a few minutes to help out some of my HR brothers and sisters.  Recently, I came across a classic JD mistake when someone had posted an opening and then broadcasted it out to the world for a “Jr. Industrial Engineer”.  I almost cried.

Really!  No, Really!  “Jr.”  You actually took time, typed out the actual title and then thought to yourself – “Oh yeah! There’s an Industrial Engineer out there just waiting to become a ‘Jr. Industrial Engineer’!”  Don’t tell me you didn’t – because that’s exactly what it says.  “But Tim, you don’t understand – we’ve always called our less experienced Industrial Engineers, Junior, so we can differentiate them from our ‘Industrial Engineers’ and our ‘Sr. Industrial Engineers’.  What do you want us to to do, call them: Industrial Engineer I, Industrial Engineer II and Industrial Engineer III?”

No – I don’t want you to do that either.

Here’s what I want you to do.  I want you to title this position as “Lesser Paid Industrial Engineer” – you’ll get the same quality of responses!

You know how to solve this – but why you won’t – just have one pay band for “Industrial Engineer” – from $38K to $100K.  Pay the individuals within that band appropriately for their years of experience and education.  This is why you won’t do it.  Your ‘Sr.’ Compensation Manager knows you aren’t capable of handling this level of responsibility and within 24 months your entire Industrial Engineering staff would all be making $100K – Jr’s, Middles and Sr’s!

And please don’t make me explain how idiotic it looks when you list out your little number system on your post as well (Accountant I, Accountant II, etc.). Because you know there just might be an Accountant out there going – “Some day I just might be an Accountant II!” If SHRM actually did anything, I wish they would just go around to HR Pros who do this crap and visit their work place and personally cut up their PHR or SPHR certificates in front of them – like a maxed out credit card that gets flagged in the check out line.  That would be awesome!

All this does is make it look like you took a time machine in from a 1970 Personnel Department.

But, seriously, if you know of any Sr. Associate HR Manager III positions please let me know.