Category Archives: The Recruiting Rules

3 Ways Contract Staffing Fails

Posted on by
2

Contract technical staffing is what I do for a living – so I know exactly where it falls down.  I spend every day trying to talk people into why they should use contract staffing and why it makes sense.  In 13 years of being in this business, I’ve never had anyone ask me why it doesn’t work.  That might be kind of odd.  Don’t get me wrong, I’ve talked to hundreds of corporate HR and Recruiting Pros who HATE contract staffing – but 99% don’t know why they hate it.  Most believe they hate contract staffing because it’s taking their job away.  Nothing makes me smile more than to hear a really good HR Pro say “if I hire your company ‘they’ll’ have no reason to keep me around”.  It makes me smile because I know they have no idea about what we do – and I can probably convince them to use our services!

To be honest, though, there are some reasons when contract staffing fails.  If you deal with contract staffing firms, you might find that shocking to hear, because we are trained from birth not to ever say anything negative about our service.  ‘Everyone’ can use us for any recruiting need you might have!  Well, no not really.  Let me give you 3 Ways Contract Staffing Fails:

1. To Attract your competitions talent when you are equal or trailing in market compensation.  I always like to say there is no one I can’t recruit.  Given enough time and money – I could get President Obama to quit the Presidency.  But if you think a contract staffing firm is going to get your competitions best developer to leave their direct job for a contract job, for the same money or less – you’re crazy.

2. When you fall in love with the talent.  Every once in a while I a client who gets upset.  They bring on a high priced contractor, that person does great work, and the client falls in love and wants to hire them.  The problem is many contractors are contractors because they like moving from project to project.  They like you, they just don’t like-like you.  Contract staffing works really well when it’s a win-win. We have a project, you nail project – we both got what we wanted.  It fails when one party falls in love, and the other doesn’t feel the same!

3. When You Think I’m Magical. Recruiting is recruiting.  I don’t have a magical stable of candidates waiting to come to work for you. Well, I might have one or two, but not a stable. When you tell me you need something – I, usually, have to go out and find the right talent, fit, etc.  Just like you would, if you were looking to hire a direct position.  I’m not magic, I’m just good at finding technical talent.  There’s a difference.

I get why some new clients get put off by contract staffing.  I call you, tell you how amazing we are and how good we are at what we do and then you expect I’m going to have 5 perfectly screened ready to work Controls Engineers in your inbox the next morning – when you’ve been searching for 6 months and don’t have one.  Expectations are a huge issue we all face in recruiting – no matter what kind of recruiting we do.  I have to manage my clients expectations, just like you have to manage your hiring managers expectations.  Contract staffing works really well when you find a partner that makes sure your expectations and their deliverables all line up.

Want to discuss?  Contact me: sackett.tim@HRU-TECH.com, 517-908-3156 or send me a tweet @TimSackett.   I promise to under promise and over deliver.

Ex-employers, Please Send Gifts!

Posted on by
1

Dear Applebees,

I use to work for you in Human Resources.  It was a great 3 1/2 years, I loved working for you.  I was surrounded by the most talented group of Human Resource, Operations and Training professionals I’ve ever been around.  I tell this story often, but you know when you go into a large business meeting with like 20-40 people all sitting in a large square or circle of tables?  And you look around and you instantly see a couple of slugs, people who shouldn’t even be working for the company, let alone be in this meeting.  The first time I traveled to Applebee’s headquarters for a large operations meetings and I walked into the entire group of HR professionals that the Applebee’s leadership team had assembled, I looked around the room and couldn’t find one of those people!  Then it hit me – I’m that person – I’m the slug!  It was the coolest feeling to be challenged like that – to be surrounded by talented, caring people all working to make a company great.

I’ve moved on to bigger roles and a bunch of new experiences, but I still share so many things I learned while I was with you to those HR Pros I’m connected to.  I still talk so highly of the brand and the people that make your brand what it is today.  You’ve got some really great people still working for you, even after that crappy pancake place bought you.  You’ve lost some great ones as well – I could point out a number and where they are currently working and what their numbers are – who knows, they might want to come back.  You knows, maybe I want to come back.

Tell you what.  Why don’t you send me something. Just a little something to remind me of what I’m missing – a gift card, a free appetizer coupon, a carside to go Frisbee – you could even have someone drop off lunch to my office — grilled chicken oriental roll-up .  You see, I might want to come back, but no one has ever asked.  No letters, no phone calls, no tweets or Facebook messages.  I know I left you and that probably didn’t feel very good, but I think we can all be adults about this.  I had some growing up to do, I needed to see if those fries on the other side of the street really were hotter.   You can’t blame a guy for that.

So, who knows, we were so close once – and there’s nothing to say we can’t be close again,

Tim

****************************

Just in case you are very lost at this point – check this out from Yahoo! Also, Marissa Mayer if you want to send me stuff, I’ll even think about coming over to Yahoo! Who knows – I like gifts!

In case you’re still lost: some of the best recruits you’ll ever get, are people who’ve already worked for you and were good, but you’ve never asked them to come back.

 

The A+ Player Employee

Posted on by
Reply

I know a ton of HR/Talent Pros are sick of hearing employees broken down into A, B and C players.  It seems played out and dated.  But I like it.  I’m simple and the ABC player scenario is easy for me to describe, in very quick manner, how someone is performing.  I’ll give you, though, there are problems.  Once you have your “A” players, how do you tell which is the best one?  Can’t a “C” player be close to moving up to “B”, but another “C” be close to getting terminated?  The problem is, ABC doesn’t accurately enough describe individuals, it just describes groups of employees – a range of performance at any given snapshot in time.

I was having a conversation about this the other day with a peer and was describing a person’s performance who worked for me – an “A” player.  As I was describing this person, I said, “but you know what, they are better than an “A” player – they’re an “A+” player”!   Oh, boy, here we go.  What the heck is an A+ player?!

Traits of your A+ Players:

– All the talent and performance of your traditional “A” player, but with:

A.  Work like they’re a “B” player hungry to get to “A” status

B.  Lack the ego some “A” players tend to catch upon gaining “A” status

C.   Don’t believe they’ve reached “A” status, even when they have.

A+ players are special.  As soon as you read the traits you had an individual come immediately to mind.  That person who is a great performer, but also someone you wish all of your employees would emulate.  A person who is a joy to work with, and gets things done.  Maybe not the best at any single task – but the person you want to do every task.  A+ players aren’t culture changers, they are the culture.  Not everyone has an A+ player, and I don’t believe you can create one.  You usually have to hire them – and they ascend to A+ level very quickly.

When people tell me they only hire “A” players I tend to judge them as not having any idea about HR/Recruiting/Life.  You don’t hire “A” players.  You hire talent you believe is capable of becoming an “A” player within your organization.   Because they were an “A” player at another organization, has very little impact on their performance level within your organization – unless you somehow magically cloned their previous environment, leadership and resources and put them back into that same place.  It’s true that past performance is predictive of future performance – but only when you put that talent into a very similar circumstance.

That’s why it’s really hard to find A+ players, because you don’t even know when you hire someone if they will reach that level.  You might have a feeling – like – “oh boy, we’ve got someone special coming in”, but you don’t know, until you know.  All I really know is when you have one, do what you have to keep them around, because you’ll never know if you’ll get another one.

 

Sales Pitch Tuesday – The Test Drive

Posted on by
1

You know what car dealers know that they’ll never tell you?  They know that if they can get you to test drive a car, there’s a great chance they can talk you into buying a car.  That’s why you see all of these test drive special offers!  Come on in for a test drive and you’ll automatically get 2 free tickets to a Piston’s game. The best ones are the ones when it’s for a charity or non-profit school organization – “we’ll donate $20 per test drive this Saturday to the little league!”  They know that we are stupid and we are addicted to new car smell – get enough folks to come in and test drive, and they’ll be moving some cars that day!

Hiring really isn’t to awful different.

In my business, contract staffing, I know that if I can get you to hire some on contract, engineers or IT professionals – you’re going to eventually want to hire them.  You’re basically test driving talent!  The one rejection I get the most from corporate HR/Talent Pros is that we don’t want “contract” we want to hire direct.  So, I ask the most obvious question – why?   And I’ll get a range of answers that mainly stay around the theme of: “we want someone ‘permanently’ to come and work here”.

Here’s what I know about hiring.

1. No matter what hiring/screening/interviewing process that you have – you’re going to make some really bad hiring decisions.

2. Once you hire someone ‘direct’ – it’s highly unlikely you will be quick to terminate that person. (2 reasons for this: A. As a HR Pro you don’t want to admit that your process failed;  B.Your hiring managers are bad at performance management and it takes them forever to get to a point to fire.)

3. You’ll fire a contractor without a 2nd thought. (HR Pros are great – because the exact things they would never fire a ‘direct’ employee over – they’ll ‘can’ a contractor over in a heartbeat! “Yeah, Tim, Johnny keeps wearing Capri pants, he doesn’t fit in here, we want to end the contract.”)

I always tease my clients that contract staffing a little like ‘Crack’ – once you start, you don’t want to stop.  Here’s why you need to try crack contract staffing:

1. You hire faster.  (You still screen, but you don’t have to get all HR crazy with it!  Hiring managers love this because you get people in fast, determine if they are a good organizational fit and Bam – it works.  I can’t tell you how many times on the corporate side we took months to make the ‘right’ decision, only to have the person come in and find out they really weren’t that great of a personality fit with the hiring manager.  Such a complete waste of time and resources.)

2. Ultimately, when you decide to hire direct – you’re hiring a completely known talent.  There are no surprises.  You’ve test driven your candidate for an extended period!

3. You might find out you don’t need someone on direct.  I can’t tell you how many times a year a client comes to us saying they need someone, ultimately for a direct position, but 6-9 months into it they’ll lose a project, or have another resource internally come available.  99% of HR/Talent Pros have no idea what percentage of their workforce should be contingent – with many ‘truly’ believing that percentage should be zero!  If the recession has taught us anything, it’s we need to have at least a little flexibility to our workforce.  Our European HR counterparts get this much more than we do.

Want to know more?  Want us to find you some contract Tech Pros? Want me to come take you to lunch to discuss? (I’ll buy)  Want to tell me I’m an idiot?  Contact me directly at: sackett.tim@hru-tech.com; 517-908-3156 or @TimSackett on the Twitters!

 

Uncommon Trait of a Great Leader

Posted on by
4

For those who don’t know – I had great seats for the MSU vs. Iowa basketball game last week (see pic above of me being an idiot on national TV – it was AWESOME!).  My company, HRU, does a bunch of IT business with MSU and we are big supporters (yep, I now have the infamous “donor” tag at MSU) of MSU athletics – heck, our corporate headquarters is about 2 miles from campus and roughly 1/2 of my staff are Sparty grads.  All those things being put together – I was offered a chance to travel with the MSU basketball team to the Iowa game and got a chance to sit behind the bench for the game.

So, what does this have to do with Leadership Traits?  This is probably where you’ll believe I’ll go on and on about how great MSU Head Coach Tom Izzo (he’s also the guy on the front page of this blog in the pic with me) is – because he is – but you’re wrong.  The leader I want to talk about is one of the team captains from MSU, Russel Byrd (only a sophomore).  Here’s a kid who barely plays.  Was a highly recruited kid out of high school, but still hasn’t found his shot at the college level.  I think most of Spartan Nation was stunned when he was named one of the Captains for the 2012-12013 team.  How does a kid who rarely plays, become Captain of the team?

The uncommon trait of a leader – not being the most skilled.

Normally, in most organizations, the people who ascend to leadership positions, tend to be the most skilled, or pretty close to the most skilled.  It is very rare that a person is selected who isn’t the most skilled.  Why?  Traditional thinking says how can you lead people who are better than you.  The reality is, and we know this in HR, having high skill in a function and having the ability to lead in that same function – really have zero correlation.   No doubt, many great leaders are also highly skilled, but not always.

Back to my Spartys!  What I came away with from my trip with MSU Basketball was that Russell Byrd is a natural leader.  I called him the mayor, the entire trip – I might be his biggest fan now! He never missed an opportunity to engage with those traveling with him – his teammates, his coaches, the team managers, us tag-along donors, the hotel staff, etc.  It might be a handshake, eye contact with a wink and a smile or putting his arm around you and joking around.  He was encouraging, always, he kept a positive attitude even when his own performance, that night, wasn’t what he would have wanted.  While not having a good game, he set his own feelings aside, to pick up those on his team, who were more skilled, who needed some picking up.  He put his team, before himself.

When you think about succession in your organization, I wonder how many of us really look at one’s ability to lead vs. how skilled they are.  I immediately assumed Russell Byrd would not make a good Captain for his team, based on his skill level.  I think too often, those responsible for hiring leaders, do the same thing.  We pass over many of our most influential employees and give the job to the best performer – who often struggle in that role.  I’m not saying Byrd is a great leader because he’s not the most skilled, I’m saying he’s a great leader in spite of not being the most skilled.

Great skill does not equal great leadership.  Great leadership comes from having an ability to connect with people.

 

 

 

 

 

Sales Pitch Tuesday – Why Us?

Posted on by
Reply

It’s really the only question I have to answer when I call on a potential client to try and get their staffing business.

Why should you work with HRU vs. the thousands of other choices you have?

It’s not a cost issue for 99% of the business development calls I make.  If a company has decided we need to engage a staffing firm – whether it’s for direct search or contract staffing – cost has very little to do with their final decision.  Everyone likes to get the ‘best’ price – but in staffing you’re talking about talent.  I’ve never met an HR executive or operational executive that wouldn’t in a heartbeat pay thousands of dollars more for a more talented candidate versus a candidate that fits the requirements but seems like a “B” level player.  Corporate HR/Talent Pros constantly get frustrated with staffing firms for doing this!  They tell us they want “X” candidate for $80K and we send over “X” candidate for $90K.  They say they aren’t interested. So, we send over a $80K candidate.  They interview $80K candidate.  They they call us and say “Can we interview $90K candidate?”  It happens constantly.  Don’t hate the staffing company, hate the game.

It’s not a talent issue, either.  What!?  It’s not.  The reality of staffing is that all companies have the exact same access to talent.  Some companies are just faster at uncovering that talent versus others.  In my 20 years of staffing – I’ve really seen very little difference in the quality of talent good staffing firms offer up to their clients (and remember, I’ve been on both sides of the fence on this – corporate and agency).  Don’t get me wrong – bad staffing firms do very little vetting of candidates and just flow paper to you.  Good staffing firms should be sending you fully vetted candidates.  I like to tell my recruiters – “We are the sure thing!”  When a company wants to interview or hire one of our candidates, the only thing they should hear is: “When would you like them to start?”

So, what is it?  It’s a relationship issue.  When I worked with a staffing firm, I needed to have trust in the people I was working with.  I didn’t care about their brand or their process.  I cared about how much do I trust this company is going to represent us as a company to the talent base that is out there.  Period.  Don’t get wrong – they better deliver great talent – but I’m assuming that is a given – if I decided to work with them!  Trust.  Part of that trust comes with full disclosure as well.  Most staffing companies hate this!  But I came from their world – I knew the game.  So, if you wanted to play with me – I wanted to know everything.  I was going to let you make money – but I wanted to know where it was being made.  That helps me sharpen up my internal process.  If a staffing firm really wanted to be a partner with me – then this wasn’t an issue.  I wanted to see them succeed, just as they wanted to see our organization succeed.  Most corporate HR/Talent Pros don’t have this mindset. They feel staffing firms are ‘out to get them’ and not a partner.  They need to cut those relationships.

It works both ways.  I stopped doing business with a really good paying client in 2012. Why? Because they were a pain to work with and didn’t get that this relationship should work for both parties.  I want to work with people I truly like.  People I would go on vacation with.  Right now – every single one of our clients at HRU – I would go on vacation with.  I would invite them to my house for dinner.  I would look forward to having a drink with after work.  That is why I love coming to work.  It’s not stressful on either side – the way it should be.  I understand their challenges and they understand my challenges and we can have ‘real’ conversations about each other – and provide feedback.

That is pretty rare in this industry.

Want to be apart of this?  Contact me: sackett.tim@hru-tech.com; call 517-908-3156 or tweet me @TimSackett – I look forward to the conversation! Also check out my staff – I’d definitely go on vacation with any of these good looking people!

 

 

 

 

 

HR Can Succeed By Doing Less

Posted on by
2

You know Jim Collins – the ‘Good to Great’ guy?  He has another book to, it’s called How The Mighty Fall: And Why Some Companies Never Give In.  This isn’t a book review, or for that matter an endorsement of this book.  I will say, Jim brings up one very interesting concept in this book on why companies, organizations, departments, etc. – fail.  It’s something that we do constantly within HR, and most of us would never view it as something that would actually be hurting our organization.  We do too much!

This over-riding pursuit ‘to do more’ has some drastic consequences.

I will tell my HR brothers and sisters, if you never worked in a large HR/Talent shop – you might understand where I’m going with this.  That’s because small to medium sized HR shops usually are working their tails off just to keep their heads above water.  Large HR/Talent shops are a little like the game Monopoly. You’re either making yourself larger in some way or another, or you’re going through a ‘right-sizing’ so you can start over at making yourself larger again!  Within that mentality comes this ‘more’ cycle.

Most large HR shops don’t try to reduce their work because that goes against this empire building mindset.  They try and come up with more programs, more projects, more ways to measure, more ways to ensure an employee is engaged, more ways to check the checklist to ensure compliance, more ways to well, show that you’re doing more than the other guy/gal.  If you aren’t creating more, you’re aren’t valuable and showing your worth.  No one ever got promoted in HR for eliminating programs – the saying goes!

Here’s the other way to do HR that 90% of HR/Talent Pros don’t do:

1. Eliminate any HR program/project that doesn’t save employees time (not your HR department – but the time of the actual employee).  Remember that new Open Enrollment process you put in to eliminate all of that data entry by your department – but it now takes employees 25 minutes to sign up for benefits vs. 5 minutes – that 20 minutes times the number of employees just cost your company a ton of time – which means money in the real world.

2. Develop a talent management process that works for your hiring managers, not one that makes your feel good about yourself.  That 5 page annual review sure looks great – but it’s a pain in the ass of your hiring managers, and the reality is the employees aren’t getting in more feedback.  Stop that.

3. Stop designing processes around gaining 100% compliance and start designing processes so simple you’ll have 99% compliance (which is more than you should hope for).

Doing less HR is actually harder than doing more HR!  It seems like that should be the opposite, but it’s not.  Doing less means you have to really think strategically about what your function should be delivering and what it shouldn’t.  It means you move some things out of your department, that never should have been there in the first place, but “we’re in HR and we’re suppose to do whatever we can to help.”  No, you shouldn’t.  You’re in HR – you should deliver great HR that is simple and easy to understand.  For most HR/Talent Pros that I know – this concept of doing less goes against every bone in their body.  Great HR isn’t about doing more – it’s about doing the least amount possible to deliver the services that are needed for your organization to have great people.  That is really hard to do without adding more for people to do!

 

 

 

Which Best Practice is Ruining Your HR Shop?

Posted on by
10

There is a brilliant article over at Harvard Business Review called: Which Best Practice is Ruining Your Business by Freek Vermeulen (I’m naming my next child “Freek” by the way!).  ‘Best Practices’ are a sore spot for me when I attend HR/Talent conferences.  No matter what the conference you’ll find some HR/Talent Pro talking about their “best practice” and God bless them you’ll see a standing room only audience of HR/Talent Pros trying to find out all about this “best practice’ to take back to their own shops.  Therein lies the problem.  From Vermeulen’s article:

“Most companies follow “best practices.” Often, these are practices that most firms in their line of business have been following for many years, leading people in the industry to assume that it is simply the best way of doing things. Or, as one senior executive declared to me when I queried one of his company’s practices: “everybody in our business does it this way, and everybody has always been doing it this way. If it wasn’t the best way of doing things, I am sure it would have disappeared by now”.
But, no matter how intuitively appealing this may sound, the assumption is wrong. Of course, well-intended managers think they are implementing best practices but, in fact, unknowingly, sometimes the practice does more harm than good.

One reason why a practice’s inefficiency may be difficult to spot is because when it came into existence, it was beneficial — like broadsheet newspapers once made sense. But when circumstances have changed and it has become inefficient, nobody remembers, and because everybody is now doing it, it is difficult to spot that doing it differently would in fact be better.”

Best practices aren’t new ideas, they are tried and true ideas, proven out over time to work well for the organization that started using them.  Theoretically, if you use another organizations ‘best practice’ the best thing you can hope for is that you’ll meet what they’ve accomplished.  I know a ton of business leaders that would kick you out of their office if you came to them saying “Hey! I’ve got an idea that will allow us to meet our competitors!”   Most leaders want ideas that will allow you to ‘beat’ your competitors, even when you’re trailing in the industry that you’re in.

I’m not saying that many HR/Talent shops can’t improve by using a best practice from another organization.  That actually might be true.  But, again, you’ll only improve, at best, to the level that other organization has achieved.  You’ll never be industry leading – you’ll be industry following.  I always assume when I hear a best practice that it was something that worked really well for that organization, at a specific time, and then ask – “what are you doing now?”  Almost always, I’ll get a response of something new they are actually working on – but it’s not, yet, a ‘best practice’ in their eyes!  That’s what I want to hear – the new stuff – not what they’ve been doing for 5 years!

For me, true innovation does not start at best practice – that is an ending point.  If you truly want to innovate and turn your HR Shop into World Class – you have to be a best practice creator, not a best practice follower.  I’d rather hear presentations at SHRM (or any other conference) about stuff people haven’t even tried yet – but they think it could be out of this world and why they think it would be great!  Then we both go back and try it, fix it, try it again, and compare notes.

So, which Best Practice is going to ruin your HR Shop this year?

Want something better than InMail?

Posted on by
2

Facebook announced it’s testing a new product last week.  What’s the product?  A version of paid messages within Facebook.  Think LinkedIn’s Inmail, but for Facebook and an additional 800,000,000 users and potential candidates! From the article:

“Today we’re starting a small experiment to test the usefulness of economic signals to determine relevance. This test will give a small number of people the option to pay to have a message routed to the Inbox rather than the Other folder of a recipient that they are not connected with.

Several commentators and researchers have noted that imposing a financial cost on the sender may be the most effective way to discourage unwanted messages and facilitate delivery of messages that are relevant and useful.

This test is designed to address situations where neither social nor algorithmic signals are sufficient. For example, if you want to send a message to someone you heard speak at an event but are not friends with, or if you want to message someone about a job opportunity, you can use this feature to reach their Inbox. For the receiver, this test allows them to hear from people who have an important message to send them.”

Oh, please, if there is a Facebook God, please pick me for this test!!!  You see, I’m a believer.  I fully believe Facebook is going to change the way we recruit talent in the future.  The way we network to find referrals, etc.  I’m also a believer that companies will pay Billion$ of dollars to have this ability.  I also, fully, believe that the majority of recruiting professionals out there will understand how to use this function appropriately.  Plus, having a financial consequence will ensure this won’t become spam central.

Let me give you an example.  I have a client right now looking for 2 Human Factors Engineers.  They are hard to find because individuals in these roles have fully employed and get multiple contacts per week with offers.  We’ve had success finding good ones – but eventually even the best networks start to dry up.  Facebook has an additional 500+, self identified HF engineers that I can find through friend search – but that I’m not connected to.  I can try to connect through a request, but they’ll say they don’t me – and Facebook will slap my hands and warn they are going to kick me off the network.  If Facebook said to me – Hey, Tim, for $1 per message, we’ll allow you to send a message to all 500 HF Engineers – I would sign that check right now – twice!   And these are just the ‘self-identified’ folks – Facebook has thousands more who have identified but not made it public.  I’ll pay for those as well! So will most companies.

Think this isn’t going to happen, eventually?  You’re wrong – this is a multi-billion dollar opportunity – every year.  You know what else?  It won’t have any impact to your Facebook experience.  While it sounds like a Spam nightmare – it won’t be.  First, these are directed ads for specific people, not everyone. So, Charlie working the friers at McDonald’s, calm down, I’m not sending you any messages.  Second, they cost money – so companies aren’t going to be sending millions of these messages – they can’t afford. This isn’t a shotgun strategy, this is a sniper rifle strategy.

Facebook – call me. We need to talk!

How Not To Hire A D1 Football Coach in the BigTen

Posted on by
Reply

For those College Football fans, last week was a bit crazy on the college football coaching carousel!  The one that really caught my eye was Bret Bielema, the University of Wisconsin coach, leaving to go to the University of Arkansas in the SEC.  First off, I hate the University of Wisconsin. Second off, I hate Bret Bielema.  Being a Michigan State University fan/donor – the University of Wisconsin has been a rather large pain in our backside the past few years!  So, it’s with respect (and hatred) that I bid the rather large jackass, Bret Bielema, adieu.   Here’s what is really great about this whole thing, though – the head coaching job at the University of Wisconsin (like most state colleges) is a state job – and with most ‘government’ jobs they have processes they need to follow when hiring. No. Matter. What.

Here’s the posting – from the University of Wisconsin career site! It’s awesomely bad HR!

Want the job?  Here’s what UW is looking for in their next coach:

– Bachelor’s degree required (I mean this isn’t Arkansas!)

– Minimum of 5 years of successful collegiate football coaching experience, preferred. (way to shoot for the moon!)

– Other qualifications include the ability to work cooperatively with diverse groups and administrators, faculty, staff and students. The successful applicant must be able develop and implement innovative approaches and solutions; work well independently and in teams; and be flexible in accepting new responsibilities. (Um, what!?)

– Anticipated start date: December 24, 2012 (Merry F’ing Christmas we need recruits – start calling!)

I really would love to sit down with the President and Athletic Director of the University of Wisconsin and find out if they ‘truly’ feel this is the job requirements for their Head Football Coach at UW! And, oh brother this is a BIG and, is this current ‘recruiting’ process meeting their needs!!!  I can only assume I already know this answer.

Want to apply:

Unless another application procedure has been specified above, please send resume and cover letter referring to Position Vacancy Listing #75429 to:

Holly Weber
1440 Monroe St.
Kellner Hall
Madison, WI

I’m sure Holly is a solid Talent Acquisition Pro and will do a proper job screening you before you meet with the Athletic Director.

Is it just me, or do you feel they might end up using a head hunting firm on this hire?!  To me, this is the exact reason HR/Recruiting get zero respect.  This job should not be posted on the career site next to the janitor opening. This hire will have millions of dollar impact to the funding of this school – stop treating it like it’s like every other hire – it’s not – and it makes you look like you have no idea what you’re doing.