Category Archives: Trench HR

The One Word Recruiters Use to Describe Themselves That’s a Lie!

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Did you catch the article on LinkedIn by Lydia Abbot, The Top 10 Words Recruiters Use to Describe Themselves? If not, go check it out. Lydia is a content marketer for LinkedIn and she puts out some good stuff based on inside data LI data.

In this piece, she basically gave us the Top 10 words recruiters use to describe themselves (based on LI data):

I’ve been a recruiter for a long or worked in talent acquisition for a long time. I think I would say most of these words are pretty good. I want my recruiters to be experienced, skilled, passionate, motivated, etc.

The number 1 word is “Specialized”, it’s also the number 1 word that recruiters describe themselves, that’s almost always a lie!

“Specialized” isn’t really a word recruiters want to use to describe themselves. It’s the word that “You” want them to use to describe themselves!

Here’s what happens. You have a super important opening to fill. The leader of that group wants to ensure ‘you’ don’t screw it up. Since you don’t have anyone on your team that ‘specializes’ in the function of this position, she wants you to use an outside firm. A recruiter who ‘specializes’ in the function of this position.

The reality is, there are a few actual recruiters who “specialize” in certain functions. My friend, Stacy Zapar specializes in filling corporate Recruiter positions at The Talent Agency. That’s all she works on. I know a guy in North Carolina who specializes in filling PCB Engineering openings in the Aerospace industry. Those are the only positions he works on, period. That’s specialization.

If you fill “IT” openings or you fill “Accounting” openings. You aren’t a specialist. You don’t have specialization.

Recruiters will tell you they are specialized because that is what you want to believe, but 99% of recruiters are not specialized. They might enjoy a certain focus, like Nursing, or Engineering, or Designers, etc. But those are still very broad fields!

Corporate Hiring Managers and Corporate Talent Acquisition want to believe the recruiters they are using, or the recruiters they are hiring, are specialized, but they’re not. It’s not that they’re lying, it’s that it doesn’t really matter!

My company mostly works on recruiting positions in Engineering and IT. The reality is we train our recruiters to “Recruit”. Give them an engineering opening and they’ll kill it. Give them a Human Resources position to fill and they’ll kill it. If you can recruit, you can recruit.

Does specialization help? It can, if the recruiter is truly specialized. If you have a pipeline of very specific talent. The reality is less than 1% of recruiters will ever even come close to true specialization, yet it’s the #1 word we use to describe ourselves!

So, what do you really want out of a recruiter if we don’t need specialization? Experience for sure helps. The reality is the best recruiters take an interest in the position, the hiring manager, the department, and the company. They’re passionate about the position and can convey that to candidates. Also, they have the skill to uncover and track down talent others can’t.

In recruiting, specialization is oversold and overrated. Whereas actual sourcing and recruiting skills are underrated because we as recruiters do a terrible job of showing how a skilled recruiter is better than an unskilled recruiter!

 

The Reason You’re Being “Ghosted” After Your Interview!

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Dear Timmy,

I recently applied for a position that I’m perfect for! A recruiter from the company contacted me and scheduled me for an interview with the manager. I went, the interview was a little over an hour and it went great! I immediately followed up with an email to the recruiter and the manager thanking them, but since then I’ve heard nothing and it’s been weeks. I’ve sent follow-up emails to both the recruiter and the manager and I’ve gotten no reply.

What should I do? Why do companies do this to candidates? I would rather they just tell me they aren’t interested than have them say nothing at all!

The Ghost Candidate

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Dear Ghost,

There are a number of reasons that recruiters and hiring managers ghost candidates and none of them are good! Here’s a short-list of some of these reasons:

– They hated you and hope you go away when they ghost you because, conflict in uncomfortable.

– They like you, but not as much as another candidate they’re trying to talk into the job, but want to leave you on the back burner, but they’re idiots and don’t know how to do this properly.

– They decided to promote someone internally and they don’t care about candidate experience enough to tell you they went another direction.

– They have a completely broken recruitment process and might still be going through it believing you’re just as happy as a pig in shi…

– They think they communicated to you electronically to bug off through their ATS, but they haven’t audited the process to know this isn’t working.

– The recruiter got fired and no one picked up the process.

I would love to tell you that ghosting candidates are a rare thing, but it’s not! It happens all the time! There is never a reason to ghost a candidate, ever! Sometimes I believe candidates get ghosted by recruiters because hiring managers don’t give feedback, but that still isn’t an excuse I would accept, at least tell the candidate that!

Look, I’ve ghosted people. At conference cocktail parties, I’ve been known to ghost my way right back up to my room and go to sleep! When it comes to candidates, I don’t ghost! I would rather tell them the truth so they don’t keep coming back around unless I want them to come back around.

I think most recruiters ghost candidates because they’re over their head in the amount of work they have, and they mean to get back to people, but just don’t have the time. When you’re in the firefighting mode you tend to only communicate with the candidates you want, not the ones you don’t. Is this good practice? Heck, no! But when you’re fighting fires, you do what you have to do to stay alive.

What would I do, if I was you? 

Here are a few ideas to try if you really want to know the truth:

1. Send a handwritten letter to the CEO of the company briefly explaining your experience and what outcome you would like.

2. Go on Twitter and in 140 characters send a shot across the bow! “XYZ Co. I interviewed 2 weeks ago and still haven’t heard anything! Can you help me!?” (Will work on Facebook as well!)

3. Write a post about your experience on LinkedIn and tag the recruiter and the recruiter’s boss.

4. Take the hint and go find a company who truly values you and your talent! If the organization and this manager treats candidates like this, imagine how you’ll be treated as an employee?

The Cancer of Speaking Up!

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There was a post recently on TLNT by Tim Kuppler titled Society is Holding Organizations and Leaders Accountable for Their Culture. Go read it, it’s really good. I agree with so much of what Tim wrote in the piece.

There is one concept though that I’m beginning to question. Kuppler wants to believe that we have a problem in our society and that problem is people are afraid to speak up to their leadership.

About a decade ago I would have 100% agreed with him. In fact, I probably spent more time in training sessions working with leaders on how to get employees to open up, then any other single thing in my HR career a decade ago!

In 2018, we do not have a problem with employees speaking up. In fact, it’s a full-blown Cancer! Yes, I want employees to speak up when they have something of value to add to the conversation, or if they or another employee are being wronged. No, I don’t want to hear your idiot opinions that have nothing to do with anything we have going on to make us better!

I get it. Everyone should have a voice! We are in a time when people have the right to speak up.

Just because you have the right, doesn’t mean you should open your dumb mouth! You have employees in non-leadership positions who should open their mouth and add to the conversation. And, you have employees who make you dumber when they open their mouth.

Your company isn’t a democracy. Turns out businesses don’t run well as democracies. When everyone has a say, we tend to get very cautious and very vanilla, and no innovation happens, as we try to take into account every single opinion. The business gets pulled to the middle. “Middle” is not a good position for businesses.

The challenge we have as leaders and HR pros is not giving everyone a voice. It’s finding the best and brightest in our organizations, regardless of race, gender, etc., and making sure ‘those’ people have a voice.

The fastest way to failure is to listen to everyone and take into account every opinion. That isn’t helpful. Having the foresight to understand there are really great voices beyond your leadership team could be your greatest insight of all, but understand it’s not everyone.

In a representative government, you want all voices to come through. In business, you want the voices to come through that can actually make a positive difference. Unfortunately, that isn’t everyone who works for you.

In business and leadership right now we have a cancer that is growing out of control and that cancer is a belief that every voice matters. That’s wrong. Every voice does not matter, at every time. Do you think Steve Jobs listened to every person at Apple? No, he barely listened to anyone! What about Elon Musk? Again, no. What about Marissa Mayer? Heck, no!

Great business and great innovation don’t happen by listening to everyone. They happen by listening to the right ones. That might not be popular right now in society, but that doesn’t mean it’s not right!

Career Confessions from GenZ: What Attracts GenZ to Your Work Place?

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Career Confessions from GenZ is a weekly series authored by Cameron Sackett, a Sophomore at the Univesity of Michigan majoring in Communications and Advertising. Make sure you connect with him on LinkedIn:

I’m going to be frank: the prospect of working for the rest of my life is absolutely terrifying. I’ve been saying for years that I can’t wait to retire, and I’m only 19. Nothing makes my skin crawl more than the thought of waking up early every day (I’m such a teenager it hurts) and going to sit in uncomfortable clothing at an ugly office surrounded by people I don’t even like.

Whenever this gets brought up, people always try to reassure me that I might enjoy working and I might really like my job. While I hope this is the case, I do believe that a major part of making those 40 hours a week a little more enjoyable is the company and its culture.

There are definitely things that I know will make me more attracted to work for a company that can hopefully combat some of my worries. First, I would love to have flexible work hours. Something about 10-6 instead of 9-5 (Editor/Dad Note: This made me LOL 10-6! Oh, boy, reality is really going to hurt!) sounds so much more appealing to me. Waking up at 8 sounds infinitely better than 7, and I can tell you that most other teenagers will say the same.

Additionally, the thought of 10 vacation days a year HURTS. I feel physical pain when I hear that some people have that. The European Union mandates a minimum of 22 vacation days a year with 13 paid holidays. Now, I know we’re in America, the land of opportunity, where you make your own fortune. But please just give me some dang vacation days! This plays into one of my biggest fears which is working my life away. I can confidently say that so many of my peers have the same worries and a way to ease this pain is some time off!

On one of my first interviews for an internship this past year, I got to tour one of the coolest offices I have ever seen. It was right out of my Gen-Z dreams: brick walls with modern finishes, an open floor plan, Apple products everywhere (#TeamiPhone). If I’m going to sit in an office for 40 hours a week, 50 weeks a year, I would like it to look nice, not like a doctor’s office.

Similarly, my Dad has instituted something at his work that I love: a casual dress code. I really enjoy dressing up, but wearing a suit or even dress pants and a nice shirt everyday sounds exhausting. Please let me come to work with my shirt untucked and in a nice pair of sneakers, and I promise I will be much more focused than I would be with a tie and dress shoes on all day long.

Most important to me is the culture. I want to work in a place where everyone collaborates and there’s a mutual respect. Ideally, I’d love to be friends with my co-workers, but at least I’d like us to be able to work together in an environment where we aren’t in constant competition. Being a member of the Sackett family means that you are inherently a monster competitor and it’s exhausting. As much as I love to be competitive from time to time, I don’t want to work in an environment where everyone is constantly pitted against each other, instead of working together to achieve a common goal.

An added little bonus to my list would be food related days/events. I hear that a common event in some companies is Bagel Fridays and I’m ALL about it. I strongly relate to Stanley on Pretzel Day at Dunder Mifflin and if you don’t get the reference, exit the page (once you finish reading of course!) and go watch season 3, episode 5 of The Office. 

My job wish-list might not seem as wild as you may think. I’m not asking for a new iPhone or a new car when I commit (although that’d be nice!); I’m asking for things that are pretty common. Although I still can’t wait until my mid-60s when I’ll have no responsibilities, getting some items checked off my wish-list could help make my time in the workforce more pleasant.

 

 

HR and TA Pros – have a question you would like to ask directly to a GenZ? Ask us in the comments and I’ll have Cameron respond in an upcoming blog post right here on the project. Have some feedback for Cameron? Again, please share in the comments and/or connect with him on LinkedIn.

Are you willing to reduce your office cafeteria prices for female employees?

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I read an article a few weeks back in Detroit about a local gym that is offering a reduced gym membership for females. Males pay full price, females pay 30% less because females make less than males. How does that sound?

From the article:

“Ever wonder why XY>XX? WE DO! The Gym values its male members tremendously but we don’t value them a THIRD more than our female members!” the ad reads

The ad goes on to read that women can join for $20 a month with no initiation fee. The Gym Lake Orion’s ad promoting that women will pay 1/3 less for membership than men. (Photo: Rich Garvin)

The manager and operator of the gym, Rich Garvin, wants to even the playing field for women due to the pay disparity between men and women. “It’s just difficult to observe injustice or unfairness,” said Garvin. “I think it’s important that we don’t sit idly by … if we do, we condone it. And I don’t condone it.”

Garvin also said he’s not raising anyone’s prices. “You can get a $30 a month membership (for $20) … having a discount, encouraging women to come in, in an attempt to make it a little easier for them to do so, I think is a good business practice and just the right thing to do.”

So, first let me call B.S. on this entire thing and say I don’t believe Rich the owner one even little bit!

The type of gym that Garvin runs is more likely frequented by weightlifting dudes. He knows if he can get more women to sign up, even more, weightlifting dudes will show up. This is just good old fashion marketing, wrapped in activism for a hook.

Can you imagine if you actually tried to do something real like this in your workplace!?

Hey, employees!

This year we’ve decided instead of actually fixing pay inequality, we’re just going to reduce the cost of everything females might pay for in our environment! Health insurance is now 30% off! Coffee at the coffee bar is now 30% off and get scones buy 1, get 1! All full priced menu items in the cafeteria will be 30% off for women only.

Male employees don’t get upset, you make more money!

Have a great week!

HR

Yeah, that probably wouldn’t play well! But, is that the ‘right thing to do’?

So, this sounds completely crazy. Of course, you would never charge employees differently for the same access to healthcare and cafeteria food! I mean come on!

But, what do you do when you know you have certain employees making less for doing the same work? Do you automatically do what’s right and adjust their salary to make it equitable?

Giving your female employees a 30% discount on cafeteria food and drinks sounds ridiculous, but so does paying a woman less for doing the same work.

The Future of Executive Performance Reviews are Here! Are you ready?

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A small news story hit this past week and you might have missed it. It was about Facebook hiring a pollster to follow Mark Zuckerburg around to measure what people (all people) thought of him, not Facebook. Here’s a bit from The Verge:

“It was a very unusual role,” McGinn says. “It was my job to do surveys and focus groups globally to understand why people like Mark Zuckerberg, whether they think they can trust him, and whether they’ve even heard of him. That’s especially important outside of the United States.”

McGinn tracked a wide range of questions related to Zuckerberg’s public perception. “Not just him in the abstract, but do people like Mark’s speeches? Do they like his interviews with the press? Do people like his posts on Facebook? It’s a bit like a political campaign, in the sense that you’re constantly measuring how every piece of communication lands. If Mark’s doing a barbecue in his backyard and he hops on Facebook Live, how do people respond to that?”

Facebook worked to develop an understanding of Zuckerberg’s perception that went beyond simple “thumbs-up” or “thumbs-down” metrics, McGinn says. “If Mark gives a speech and he’s talking about immigration and universal health care and access to equal education, it’s looking at all the different topics that Mark mentions and seeing what resonates with different audiences in the United States,” he says. “It’s very advanced research.”

Facebook also conducted similar research on behalf of the company’s chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg. Surveys measured awareness about Sandberg, whether people liked and trusted her, and how they felt about her speeches, interviews, and Facebook posts…The company further measured how Sandberg’s public image compared with Zuckerberg’s. The results were shared directly with Zuckerberg and Sandberg” 

Most Executives of very large companies don’t really get performance reviews. The board of directors will do something formally, but it’s all wink, wink, fairly surface level stuff, we’re all in this together, how much of a raise should we give ourselves this year kind of thing.

Can you imagine how your C-suite would respond to having themselves polled at every turn on an ongoing basis kind of performance feedback! I’ll tell you, most would lose their minds!

When I first read this, I thought, oh, this is just Mark looking into Presidency options, but when Sheryl was also put into the mix, and they were compared, that changes the dynamic. If you think about the impact of the C-suite in the largest companies in the world in terms of performance of stock price, earnings, revenue, etc., you’re talking billions of dollars to the positive or negative.

Look at what Uber’s CEO did to their brand! Can you imagine how that might have played out differently from the start if he was constantly being polled on his behaviors? Can you imagine how most executives would be if they knew they were constantly being polled on their behaviors!?

I’m not sure we need or want constant polling of executives. Bad things can happen with that as well. They become politicians bowing to the whims of the masses, and that might not be what’s right for the organization. But I do believe this Facebook experiment gives us some foreshadowing of how we might start tracking and measuring the performance of our most senior executives in the future.

Internal 360 feedback has always been a great tool to use to get feedback on our senior leaders. This kind of surveying takes it one step further in taking it outside of the organization as well.

If you want to see how this kind of constant feedback loop could go really wrong, check out Netflix’s Black Mirror Season 3, Episode 1 – Nosedive, that looks at our constant need for social reinforcement with “likes”! (Reader alert – Black Mirror as a series is super Alfred Hitchcock meets 2050 weird – don’t judge me for watching!).

Career Confessions from GenZ: How Does GenZ Want You to Communicate With Them?

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Career Confessions from GenZ is a weekly series authored by Cameron Sackett, a Sophomore at the Univesity of Michigan majoring in Communications and Advertising. Make sure you connect with him on LinkedIn:

One of the things that my generation is most notorious for is our cell phone usage. According to The Washington Post, current teens are spending over 1/3 of the day on their phones. Now, I’m going to be upfront and say that I’m an avid phone and social media user, and I understand the potential dangers of spending too much time on your phone. On the other hand, I don’t foresee my cell phone usage habits or my generation’s changing significantly any time soon.

Due to this, companies are looking at changing how they recruit their candidates. As I am just dipping my toes into the workforce, I am starting to see how the interview process may be changing in the age of cell phones.

The majority of my communication with potential employers for all jobs that I’ve had has been e-mail. This is something that I’m all about. E-mail is like a more formal version of a text, where you don’t have the pressures to respond immediately and you can spend time thinking of a more formulated response.

Personally, I think that e-mail should stay as the main form of communication for communicating with candidates. I’ve heard that some companies are trying to implement texting or text messaging like platforms into their hiring process. Here’s the way I see it: when I text someone, I’m usually typing in an informal way and I typically respond ASAP. Also, a lot of errors occur in texting, like typos or texting the wrong person. These are easily fixed when you’re talking with your friends but not necessarily a potential employer.

I’m totally open to texting in the interview process, but I have my concerns.

Now when it comes to the more direct form of communication, let me dispel a common myth about Gen-Z: we don’t hate talking on the phone, we hate calling people on the phone. There is a HUGE difference between answering a phone call and calling someone and personally, I would much rather answer the phone than call someone. In addition, I think most of my generation does better in a face-to-face style of an interview because it allows for more of a personal connection. This may scare many people, but when a relaxed environment is created in an interview, I think that many of us would come to prefer in-person interviews.

Lastly, I don’t want to see recruiters messaging me on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat or any other social media platform. This isn’t because my social media profiles are inappropriate, thankfully I have some monitors on my profiles to keep them nice and clean (I see you Mom and Dad), but it’s because I see social media as a place that I can use for fun and enjoyment. I don’t want to have to constantly worry about messaging potential employers back on these platforms when I just want to use them to share/follow people and things I like.

Now, I am on the older side of Gen-Z (my 14-year-old brother is in Gen-Z too, how crazy!), so my opinions might not hold for the kids currently in middle and high school. I can say this: I (and most other college students) check our emails just about as much as you do, so that’s a good place to start!

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HR and TA Pros – have a question you would like to ask directly to a GenZ? Ask us in the comments and I’ll have Cameron respond in an upcoming blog post right here on the project. Have some feedback for Cameron? Again, please share in the comments and/or connect with him on LinkedIn.

Besides being a Dad with a network, I thought the best way to get my son some ‘real-world’ experience would be to put himself out there as a writer! Let him know what you think and let us hear what you would like to learn about the next big generation entering our workforce!

What ‘Aging’ Millennials Really Care About When it Comes to Their Benefits!

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In a world where 15 minutes of fame has become 15 seconds, our greatest generation, the Millennials, are now preparing for retirement! Yep, that’s right kids, the Millennials are aging!

Pentegra recently released there 2018 Millennial Benefit Report (because isn’t that what every Benefit Analyst/Mgr needs in their HR shop a report that only focuses on one part of your workforce!) and they found the Millennials are concerned with some things I don’t think most of us would expect:

– 401K and retirement savings were the #1 benefit concern amongst Millennials! (Did you expect that?)

– #2 concern? Health Insurance (expected) tied with Pensions (Um, what!? What Millennial is expecting a pension?)

– HR Pros ranked Telecommuting and Flex-time as important benefits for Millennials, even though, those didn’t make the top 5 for what Millennials actually ranked as important benefits. (Disconnect alert!)

HR pros also believe Millennials are basically idiots when it comes to understanding their health insurance benefits. News alert! We are all idiots when it comes to understanding our health insurance benefits because insurance companies make it extremely complex in hopes we won’t actually pay attention when they bill us for stuff they shouldn’t.

So, I’m on a rampage to get executives to stop calling young people “Millennials”. Millennials are old people now! They only care about their 401K, a pension plan, and if their health insurance will cover their hip replacements!

By the way, how can “Pension” be the #2 concern of Millennials? Of really anyone under the age of 70 at this point in our society!? Almost no organizations are giving out pensions anymore. In fact, I would bet that if you asked 100 Millennials to define “Pension” less than 10% could do it. I bet 100% of GenZ couldn’t do it!

I question any study that says it’s about Millenials and Benefits and lists pensions as a concern!

This brings up a really good point about the studies we keep wanting to show to our executive teams as valid data to make decisions. Most ‘studies’ you are getting from a vendor, aren’t really validated studies, but simple marketing materials designed to get you interested in the products and services they are pimping.

I don’t even know what Pentegra sells, but if I had to bet one of my kids on it, I’m guessing they’re selling retirement products to organizations. Without even knowing anything about them! Was I right?! Of course, I was!

So, what do you think? Are Millennials really concerned with 401Ks and Pensions? My guess is they’re probably more concerned with buying a house and raising their kids. That will lead to concerns about based pay, health insurance, and college savings. Does retirement come up, eventually? Sure it does. But, for most, it’s not #1.

 

Are You In a Rush to be Offended?

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I was on a webinar recently and the speaker kept adding “she” and “he”every time they tried to say something like, “‘he’ would have to fill out that form” and then quickly go “or ‘she’ I know we have to be correct in HR”. In my mind, I was like okay, I get it, the word we use matter.

When I write, I frequently purposely change gender to try and be more gender-inclusive in my writing, knowing I’ll always by habit write from a more male dominant voice.

If we go back to the webinar example above, I’m sure you’ve seen and heard the same, but what really stuck with me, probably because he kept doing this so often, was me waiting for a comment to come across in the question box saying something like “well, you know there are more gender identities than male and female!”

Yep. There are. But, is this really the place to point this out. Clearly, the dude speaking was having a hard with just two and making sure we knew he cared equally about ‘both’ genders.

Years ago Salon had a great article about comedians struggling with how ‘politically correct’ the audiences were becoming. Here’s a quote from Jim Norton:

“Western culture has become a “tireless brigade of social-justice warriors” and that “Being outraged and upset and feeling bullied or offended are not only things we enjoy, they’re also things we have become thoroughly addicted to. When we can’t purposefully get our feelings hurt by a comedian, we usually find another, albeit less satisfying, source of indignation… I choose to believe that we are addicted to the rush of being offended, the idea of it, rather than believing we have become a nation of emasculated children whose only defense against an abyss of emotional agony is a trigger warning.”

We live in an offensive world, especially right now.

Every day media blasts every offensive phrase uttered by politicians, professional athletes, celebrities, etc. We see our employees and leaders say and write offensive things that in another time would probably have been ignored, but now we have platforms to call out the offense.

I think we hope that in our rush to be offended we will stop the offensive behavior, or at the very least get one person to stop their offensive behavior. We hope that by doing this we’ll ‘raise’ the level of conversation around these issues.

My fear is that we aren’t raising the level of conversation, but shutting it down. In our rush to be offended, we aren’t seeking first to understand, we are first attacking and who cares about what happens after that. I think we need to be careful with our employees and our workplace cultures to correct inappropriate behavior every single time it happens and do it in a way that is lasting for the person who does the offending.

We live in a world of gray. Not black and white. While one employee might be offended, the co-worker standing right next to them might not be at all. Both are wrong, and both are right. Either one attacking the other is never a solution that is sustainable for a positive and inclusive workplace culture.

Welcome to the show kids! This is one of the most difficult issues you’ll deal with in HR. Supporting one employee who is offended, when you know the majority would not be offended. If I had the perfect answer on how to handle this I would share, but I don’t, because each and every one of these situations is unique.

Someone Is Banking on You Being Lazy!

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I work in an industry where I’ve been told for a decade technology is going to take my job. The staffing industry is a half a trillion dollar industry worldwide. The entire industry is built on us banking on the fact that someone in corporate TA is going to be lazy.

Ouch! That should sting a little!

So, I don’t really bank on you being lazy at my company. We do contract work so we are looking to fill contingent roles, not direct hire staffing, which is an industry almost completely built on lazy! For my staffing brothers and sisters out there, I hear you, I know you’re ‘just’ filling in when ‘capacity’ is an issue. (wink, head nod, wink)

There are other industries that bank you us being lazy. The entire diet industry! You’ve got overpriced awful foods, bars, shakes, workout gyms, at home gyms, etc. Because we won’t eat less and move more, because we are “lazy”, we pay a lot for that! Believe me, I pay my fair share! Just because I’m too lazy! Ugh, it’s embarrassing!

Direct hire staffing as an industry could be gone tomorrow if corporate TA just did what they were hired to do. You have an opening, you fill the opening. We aren’t trying to put a woman on the moon! This isn’t rocket science!

But, we don’t fill the opening. In fact, we do just about everything except fill the opening. We post the opening. We meet about the opening. We send whoever applies to the manager of the opening. We meet some more about candidate experience. We have another meeting about employment branding. One more meeting with the manager to see if anything has changed.

That doesn’t sound lazy, does it?

But, deflection of more difficult work is just another form of lazy.

My kid doesn’t want to go out in 90-degree heat and mow the lawn. It’s a hard, hot job. So, they come up with ‘alternative’ work that they have to do that just happens to be inside in the air conditioning.

As TA Leaders, we have to understand how are others are banking on us being lazy, and then make adjustments to stop lazy. So, how do you do that?

Well, I wrote an entire book on the subject – The Talent Fix – which is coming out in April – but until you can get it, here are some tips:

  1. Have clearly defined measurable activity goals set for each member of your TA team.
  2. Make those measures transparent so everyone can see them every day.
  3. Have performance conversations immediately when measures aren’t met.
  4. Course correct as measures need to be adjusted to meet the needs of the business.
  5. Rinse, repeat.

1 -5 above is like page 37 of the book. So, you can imagine what the rest of the 300+ pages will be like! 😉

If you follow the five steps above about half of your team will quit in 90 days. That’s a good thing, those idiots didn’t want to recruit, to begin with, they just wanted that fat corporate check and Taco Tuesdays. They were being lazy and it was costing your corporate bottom line.

The talent acquisition function is not a charity case. I think in the history of HR we’ve done some corporate charity where we let people keep collecting money even though they were costing us money. They weren’t giving back the value we needed for what we were paying. Great leaders stop this from happening.

Great leaders understand that there are people in the world that are banking on us being lazy.