Category Archives: Trench HR

HR Manager Position that Pays $364,000! Want it?

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I ran into an age old issue last week, which for some reason hadn’t come up for a very long time, but there he was staring me right in the face, and I still don’t get it!  Here’s the issue, should you post the salary (or your desired salary range based on experience, yadda, yadda…) for the position you are hiring, or not?

My guess is you clicked on this post because you wanted to find out which kind of HR Manager position pays $374K! Well, none, but you clicked, I win! But, while you’re here let’s take a look at the issue at play because it’s a polarizing issue amongst HR Pros.

I say, post the salary right out in front for God and everyone to see.  It will create most interest, which gives you a larger pool of candidates, which gives you better odds at filling your position with the type of talent that fits your organization.  It allows you to eliminate many candidates who won’t accept your job, because you’re too cheap. Sure you’ll get some people who see $98K, and they are making $45K, but they want to make $98K, so they send their resume, hoping.  But we’re smarter than that, plus, maybe Mr. $45K would be a great fit for me for another position, or in 3 more years when I have the same position open.

Posting the salary on a job post creates 137% more candidate traffic, than those posts which don’t list salary, or at least it feels that way to me when I do it that way!  I’m sure my friends at CareerBuilder can probably come up with some more precise figures on this exactly, but I’ll bet my made up math isn’t too far from correct.  It’s common sense. You walk by a store and see “help wanted”, and no one goes in. You walk by the store and you see “Help Wanted $12/hr”, and they have a line out the door asking for applications.

There are only 3 reasons you wouldn’t list the target salary for the position you are hiring for:

1. You know you’re paying below market, and you don’t want to the competition to know, because they’ll cherry pick your best people

2. You can’t find the talent you want, so you’ve increased the salary target, but you aren’t going to increase the salary of the poor suckers already working for you at the lower amount.

3. You don’t know what you’re doing!

Look, I get it, I’ve been there.  You don’t want to list salary because your current employees don’t understand that while the position title is the same, you are “really” looking for someone with more experience.  Or, we just don’t have the budget to raise up everyone already working for us, but we really need some additional talent. Or, we’ve always did it this way, and we want people who are “interested in us” and not money.

Well, let me break it to you gently, you’re an idiot.  People are interested in you because the value equation of what you are offering fits into their current lifestyle!  Otherwise, you could just move forward as a volunteer organization now couldn’t you?!

Do yourself a favor and don’t make recruiting harder than it has to be.  Just tell people what you have to offer. “We’re a great place to work, we have these benefits, they’ll cost you about this much, and we are willing to pay “$X” for this position”, if this is you, we want to speak to you. If it’s not, that’s great to, but check back because we might have something for you in the future.

Also, let me know if you find an HR Manager job that pays $374K. I know the perfect candidate!

Compensation 701 – A Master’s Course

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In terms of one part of your corporate Compensation Philosophy you can be a Pay Follower, a Pay Leader or Market Rate.

You never hear Pay Leaders complain about Turnover…

You always her Pay Followers complain about how Pay Leaders can actually pay that much…

Those who Pay at the Market always talk about how money isn’t that important…

HR and Compensation Pros will always talk about how it’s not about how much someone makes, it’s about the total compensation package.  Ironically, those Best Companies To Work for tend to have the highest total compensation packages and be Pay Leaders.  It’s a vicious cycle to get the best talent.

If your a pay follower you will never have the best talent.  If you pay at market, you will never have the best talent for long.  If you’re a Pay Leader you’ll have the ability to attract the best talent and the resources to hook them, but you still have to have the culture and leadership to keep the long term.

This is everything I know about compensation after 20 years of working in HR.

What have I learned?

I always try and work for Pay Leaders, otherwise you end up chasing your tail a lot within the HR world.

Consider yourself graduated.

HR Worst Enemy

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I’ve been speaking a few local SHRM events and some corporate events and I’m always amazed to hear about all of the Enemies that HR has!  You have employees, and hiring managers, and the EEOC, and employment attorneys, and staffing firms, and insurance firms, and HR software providers – I mean, if I hadn’t been in HR, I would think that everyone is against HR!

It feels like that some days, doesn’t it?

HR’s real worst enemy, though, doesn’t get that without your organizations service or product being successful – no one is successful.

HR’s worst enemy doesn’t get that more hurdles to jump through, means less time for operations to focus on the real business at hand.

HR’s worst enemy doesn’t get that treating everyone the same way, doesn’t create a high performance culture.

HR’s worst enemy doesn’t get that having employees fill out open enrollment paperwork just so you have a document to prove what they filled out, spends more resources then it saves.

HR’s worst enemy doesn’t get that adding 5 additional steps to a process doesn’t make it simpler, it makes it more complex.

HR’s worst enemy doesn’t get that not leaving your department to go out an build relationships in other departments isn’t a good thing.

HR’s worst enemy doesn’t that eliminating all risk isn’t something that is possible – nor should it be a goal.

HR’s worst enemy…is itself.

How To Tell Someone They Suck

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Got a question recently from a newbie HR/Talent Pro about how do you tell someone they just aren’t good enough for the position you have, without hurting their feelings?  Great question, and one that we all run into frequently.  Here’s the story:

“Mr. Jones (I’ve changed the name to protect the guilty) won’t stop bugging me, he emails his resume to me ‘every’ day!”  We know Mr. Jones, because Mr. Jones use to work for us, and it didn’t turn out so well.  Mr. Jones was “laid off” back in the recession when we got rid of our dead wood. Now, Mr. Jones wants to come back for another position we have.  The problem with Mr. Jones isn’t skill related, it’s personality related, he’s annoying.  He was annoying to everyone who ever came into contact with, but his manager never coached him on this.”

So, the BIG question. How do you get Mr. Jones to stop bugging you?  This happens to every single HR/Talent pro I know eventually.

Here are the steps I use:

1. Tell Them!

That’s it, no more steps.

Here’s our problem as HR/Talent Pros, we never want to burn a bridge.  “Well, Tim, you don’t know where he might go, who might hire him, I don’t want to ruin my reputation”  Bullshit.  You’re being conflict avoidant, and if you look at your last performance review, I bet under “opportunities” is probably says something about avoiding conflict or not confronting issues head on.

I had a very good HR mentor once tell me, “it’s best to deliver them that gift, then to allow them to walk around not knowing”.  Once you start being straightforward you’ll be amazed at how many people will say, “No one has ever told me that!”  That’s the problem, no one ever tells them the truth, thus they keep doing the wrong thing, instead of trying to fix what is wrong.

How do you get an annoying candidate to stop bugging you?  You tell them exactly, very specifically, very calmly, with no ill intent, “I want to give you a gift.  You might not see it as a gift right now, but I hope in time you’ll understand it to be a very valuable gift.  I (don’t use “we” or “us” or “the company – you’re avoiding again by using those), I think you have a very bad personality flaw that comes across annoying to me, and from the feedback I have received, to those you work with.  If this does not change, you will probably struggle to find a job and keep a job.”

OUCH! That hurt right?  But, read it again, was there anything mean or untrue in the statement? If this person actually listens to the statement and acts on it, will they be better for it?  You can change the reason for whatever issue the person might have, maybe it’s hygiene, maybe it’s a crazy laugh, who knows, but the basic message stays the same.  You need to change, or I never want to speak to you again.

It’s hard for new HR/Talent pros to understand this, because 99% have been taught to be nice, thoughtful people and not to be rude.  This sounds a bit rude.  In reality, I think it’s rude to string a person along and not care enough about them to actually tell them what is wrong and to help them.  Stop telling candidates your blow off lines and start telling candidates the truth.  At the very least, you’ll have more time on your hands to talk to the candidates you really want to speak to!

The True Value of Working for a Crappy Company

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As some of you may have realized from recent posts (Wanted: People Who Aren’t Stupid), I’ve been interviewing candidates recently for the position of Technical Recruiter working for my company HRU. I love interviewing because each time I interview I think I’ve discovered a better way to do it, or something new I should be looking for, and this most recent round of interviews is no different.

Like most HR/Talent Pros I’m always interested in quality work/co-op/internship experience. Let’s face it, it’s been drilled into us, past performance/actions will predict future performance/actions.  So, we tend to get excited over seeing a candidate that has experience from a great company or competitor and we’re intrigued to know how the other side lives and our inquisitive nature begs us to dig in.

What I’ve found over the past 20 years of interviewing is that while I love talking to people that worked at really great companies, I hire more people that have worked at really bad companies.  You see, while you learn some really good stuff working for great companies, I think people actually learn more working for really crappy companies!

Working at a really great companies gives you an opportunity to work in “Utopia”. You get to see how things are suppose to work, how people are suppose to work together, how it a perfect world it all fits together.  The reality is, we don’t work Utopia (at least the majority of us) we work in organizations that are less than perfect, and some of us actually work in down right horrible companies. Those who work in horrible companies and survive, tend to better hires. They come with battle scars and street smarts.

So, why everyone wants to get out of really bad companies (and I don’t blame them) there is actually a few things you learn from those experiences:

1. Leadership isn’t a necessity to run a profitable company. I’ve seen some very profitable companies that had really bad leadership.   Conversely, I’ve worked for some companies that had great people leaders and failed to make money. Leadership doesn’t equal profits.

2. Great people sometimes work a really crappy companies.  Don’t equate crappy company with crappy talent.  Sometimes you can find some real gems in the dump. I talk with idiots, every day, that work for really great brands. Blind squirrels…

3. Hard work is relative.  I find people who work at really bad companies, tend to appreciate hard work better than those who work a really great companies with great balance.  If all you’ve ever known is long hours and management that doesn’t care you have a family, seeing the other side gives you an appreciation that is immeasurable.

4. Not having the resources to do the job, doesn’t mean you can’t do the job. Working for a crappy company in a crappy job tends to make you more creative, because you probably won’t have what you need to do the job properly, so you find ways.

5. Long lasting peer relationships come through adversity.  You can make life-long work friends at a crappy job who you’ll keep in contact and be able to leverage as you move on in your careers.  And, here’s what each of you will think about the other: “That person can work in the shit!”; “That person is tough and get’s things done”; “That person is someone I want on my team, when I get to build a team”.

We all know the bad companies in our industries and markets.  Don’t discount candidates who have spent time with those companies. We were all at some point needing a job, a first experience, a shot at a promotion or more money, etc., and took a shot at a company we thought we could change or make a difference.  I love people who worked for bad companies, in bad jobs with bad management, because they wear it like a badge of honor!

Do You Pay Your Employees More for Referring Black People?

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I know a ton of HR Pros right now who have been charged by their organizations to go out and “Diversify” their workforce.  By “Diversify”, I’m not talking about diversity of thought, but to recruit a more diverse workforce in terms of ethnic, gender and racial diversity.  Clearly by bringing in more individuals from underrepresented groups in your workforce, you’ll expand the “thought diversification”. But, for those HR Pros in the trenches and sitting in conference rooms with executives behind closed doors, diversification of thought isn’t the issue being discussed.

So, I have some assumptions I want to lay out before I go any further:

1. Referred employees make the best hires. (workforce studies frequently list employee referrals as the highest quality hires across all industries and positions)

2. ERPs (Employee Referral Programs) are the major tool used to get employee referrals by HR Pros.

3. A diverse workforce will perform better in many complex circumstances, then a homogeneous workforce will.

4. Diversity departments, is you’re lucky enough, or big enough, to have one in your organization, traditionally tend to do a weak job at “recruiting” diversity candidates (there more concerned about getting the Cinco De Mayo Taco Bar scheduled, MLK Celebrations, etc.)

Now, keeping in mind the above assumptions, what do you think is the best way to recruit diversity candidates to your organization?

I’ve yet to find a company willing to go as far as to “Pay More” for a black engineer referral vs. a white engineer referral.  Can you imagine how that would play out in your organization!?  But behind the scenes in HR Department across the world, this exact thing is happening in a number of ways.

First, what is your cost of hire for diverse candidates versus non-diverse candidates? Do you even measure that? Why not!?  I’ll tell you why, it’s very hard to justify why you are paying two, three and even four times more for a diversity candidate, with the same skill sets, versus a non-diverse candidate in most technical and medical recruiting environments.  Second, how many diversity recruitment events do you go to versus non-specific diversity recruitment events?  In organizations who are really pushing diversification of workforce, I find that this ratio is usually 2 to 1.

So, you will easily spend more resources of your organization to become more diversified, but you won’t reward your employees for helping you get reach your goals?  I find this somewhat ironic. You will pay Joe, one of your best engineers, $2000 for any referral, but you are unwilling to pay him $4000 for referring his black engineer friends from his former company.  Yet, you’ll go out and spend $50,000 attending diversity recruiting job fairs and events all over the country trying to get the same person, when you know the best investment of your resources would be to put up a poster in your hallways saying “Wanted Black Engineers $4000 Reward!”.

Here’s why you don’t do this.

Most organizations do a terrible job at communicating the importance of having a diverse workforce, and that to get to an ideal state, sometimes it means the organization might have to hire a female, or an Asian, or an African American, or an Hispanic, over a similarly qualified white male, to ensure the organization is reaching their highest potential.   Work group performance by diversity is easily measured and reported to employees, to demonstrate diversity successes, but we rarely do it, to help us explain why we do what we are doing in talent selection.

What do we need to do? Stop treating our employees like they won’t get it, start educating them beyond the politically correct version of Diversity, and start educating them on the performance increases we get with a diversified workforce.  Then it might not seem so unheard of to pay more to an employee for referring a diverse candidate!

 

You Wouldn’t Even Hire Your Own Mom

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I had a conversation recently with a friend about how hard it is to work and be a Mom.  Just to be a clear, I’m not a Mom.  I hire Moms. In fact I love hiring Moms, they work their asses off.

I know this because I was raised by a single mother.

I remember my Mom having to pick where we would go buy our groceries based on how long it had been since she bounced a check at that store. I remember her handing me items off the belt to return because they wouldn’t take her check and we only had enough cash for a few items. I remember pouring water into my bowl of generic Fruit Loops because we didn’t have enough money to buy milk that week.

My Mom started her own business, paid her own mortgage and raised two kids. It wasn’t perfect, but we made it. Those experiences shape a kid for life. It makes you appreciate what you have, when you know you can live with much less.  My Mom got hugely successful after I got out of college and my kids only know her as the grandma that has so much.  I can’t even describe to them the struggle, they have no concept.

I have zero tolerance for hiring managers who don’t want to hire moms because they might have to stay home with a sick kid, or they might want to take an early lunch to catch fifteen minutes of fourth grade play at school during the day.  Both men and women, hiring managers, have told me they don’t like to hire moms.  This doesn’t sit well with me.

The Moms I hire are some of the strongest employees I have.  They come to work, which for many is a refuge of quiet and clean, and do work that is usually less hard than the other jobs they still have to perform that day and night.  They rarely complain, and usually are much better to put issues into perspective and not freak out.

When I look at my own ‘tough’ days I try and remember that most of my day is done, while theres won’t be until their head hits the pillow. Old people and Moms are the most disrespected of the working class.  They are the most underutilized workers of our generation.  A woman takes a few years off to raise a kid and somehow she’s now worthless and has no skills.

I don’t even want to write this post because I feel like I’m giving away a recipe to a secret sauce.  All these national recruiting companies are hiring the youngest, prettiest college grads they can find to work for them, and they mostly fail in the recruiting industry. Moms find this industry rather easy as comparable to what they are use to doing.

The recruiting secret sauce, main ingredient = moms.

Watered Downed Feedback is Killing America

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I said this before, but you don’t want to hear it.  No one cares about what you have to say, unless it’s telling them how good they are.

People can’t handle critical feedback, unless it’s set up in a mechanism where they expect it and desire it.  That’s the crux, hardly anyone has that mechanism and while most people tell you they want critical feedback they don’t have the makeup to handle it.

Here are the types of “critical” feedback people can handle:

“You’re doing a good job, would love it if you could get that big project off the ground. That would really help us out!”

Here’s what you really want to say, critically, but can’t:

“You do good at things I tell you to do, and all basic day to day duties of the job. I need more from this position and from you, and I’m willing to help get you there. I need someone who can take a project from scratch and kill it, without me having to babysit the entire thing. You’re not doing that, and that’s what I really need you to do. Are you willing do that?” 

Same message, right?  You do some stuff good, but one critical aspect of the job is not getting done. The problem is, the first level feedback is given 99.9% of the time, because managers and leaders know if you deliver the second level, that person will be destroyed!

They’ll think you think they suck, and they’ll start looking for a job.  When in reality, you were just trying to give them legitimate feedback. Real feedback. Something that would actually help them reach expectations.

So, how do you get to a point to be able to deliver ‘real’ feedback?

It’s starts with your hiring process. In the interview process you need to set people up to understand that your organization delivers real feedback, and they must be able to accept critical feedback and not crumble.  This is a team, it’s about getting better, not hurt egos.  Half will crumble in the interview, which is a good thing, you don’t want them anyway.

For those that you think have the self-insight enough to handle it, you need to do it before hire. Give them the real feedback from their interview, and see how they reply, how they interact.  This will show you what you can expect from them when they get this level of feedback as an employee.

For the employees already working, you need to start by showing them and giving them examples of what true feedback looks like. You need to coach and train your leaders on how to deliver this, on an ongoing basis.  You then need to have coaches and mentors sit in with all leaders when they begin to deliver this feedback.

Part of your leader training is to show them how to accept feedback from their teams as well. If you want to dish it out, you have to accept it as well. Training and coaching employees on how to ‘manage up’ is key to making this successful. This isn’t about blowing people up. It’s about delivering true feedback to help them get better, and person accepting and receiving this information under that assumption. We want you to be the best you, you can be.

All this takes work and time. The organizations that can do this win the culture war, because all the people working for you will know they won’t get this anywhere else!

Discount Employee

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No, I didn’t make another mistake and mean to title this “Employee Discount”, but you were totally in your right to think I would make a mistake!

We discount our employees.  We do this in a number of ways:

1. Experience.  The ten year employee is always looked at less than a new employee coming in with ten years of experience.

2. Opinions. The long term employee’s opinion gets lost to the new voice, because we’ve heard the old employees opinion before. It doesn’t, necessarily, become less valid, but we treat it as such.

3.  Value.  We tend to pay same level experience internal employees less than we pay someone coming from the outside with the same experience, education, etc. This ‘discount’ is well known in the industry.  Hometown discount. They’ve been here forever. They aren’t going anywhere. Why pay them more competitively?

 There is one more way you are currently discounting your employees, Candidate Experience.

Candidate experience is really sexy right now in HR and Talent Acquisition.  It’s all the buzz! Everyone is concentrating on making their candidate experience better.

You know why?  It’s fuzzy metrics.  While you can get ‘real’ measures and metrics from your Candidate Experience, it’s not really, real.  Candidates want a job from you.  When you ask them about their experience they inflate what they really think because they want a job from you.  When you ask them after the entire experience is over, two things happen, first, they either got the job (in which you’ll get good measures) or second, they didn’t get the job and still want one (in which you’ll get good measures).

We love good measures in HR and Talent Acquisition.

We hate measures that make us work, like employee engagement.  It’s easier and more rewarding to spend money and energy and Candidate Experience, than Employee Engagement. Employee engagement is hard. As soon as we fix the stuff from the last survey, the employee expect more! You know who doesn’t expect more? Candidates.

The ironic part of all of this is the easiest and best way to have great candidate experience is to not have to hire.Spend more resources on Employee Engagement, and you won’t have to spend more resources on Candidate Experience.

Chicken or the egg. Discounted Employees. You are discounting your employees in favor of candidates, and you don’t even realize it.

Better Employee Relocation Design in 4 Easy Steps!

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I have to admit I’ve been one of those HR Pros who has had to design and develop relocation policies a few times in my career.  My philosophy on relocation has changed somewhat over the years. In my career, I’ve accepted positions 4 times in which I went through “professional” relocation for various HR positions in my career.  That fact has more impact on my philosophy of relocation than all other issues combined.

So, Fact #1 on getting a better relocation policy for your company: force those designing the policy to relocate, at least once.  If you haven’t relocated, you can’t design the policy, it’s that simple.

People who haven’t relocated to another state for a job have no idea what impact it has on your life.  It’s not the same as moving to a new house in another part of the city you live in.  For the most part, if you have a significant other and some kids thrown into the mix, it’s probably one of the most stressful events you’ll go through in life.  You get hired, Yeah!  You now have to go show up at the new job, without family, belongings, etc. You’re trying out the new position, culture, etc., all the while your spouse is home trying to run life, now without 50% of her support resources. That person, you, is now living in a hotel or furnished the apartment, eating out each meal, sitting around doing nothing, etc. You’ll only understand if you’ve been through this!

You need to find a new house, but not until the old house is sold, find the right schools, etc., etc.  Oh, and, by the way, you probably have some HR administrator going over your relocation expense reports like they’re a Zapruder Film. Oh, I’m sorry Mr. Sackett, you seem to have spent $1.32 too much on parking at the airport last week. Really!? I haven’t seen my wife and kids for two straight weeks, and we’re talking about $1.32?  DON’T UNDERESTIMATE FACT #1.

I know the talk, lately, about relocation, has been about how difficult it is to get people to relocate because of falling housing values.  Workforce Management’s article Recruiters Get Creative with Relocation in Sluggish Housing Market by Leah Shepherd speaks specifically to this dilemma. Clearly, it’s more expensive to get people to relocate, but I will argue that it isn’t more difficult.  HR folks are classic in confusing expensive and more difficult – finance people don’t have this same issue.  It’s not more difficult to get some to relocate, it’s just more expensive.

Here is where Fact #2 comes in: Never allow your Hiring Managers to get involved with Relocation.

Believe me, they will want to. It’s interesting how people who already work for a company tend to view relocation dollars spent, like the person receiving the relocation is getting a huge bonus!  All of sudden your hiring manager believes they are personally responsible for every penny that is spent.  They aren’t, and you the HR Pro understand this, and that’s why we keep our hiring managers out of the picture.  We need them to have a great first impression of the new person, so take the money out of the picture so they can focus on the fit and skills.

HR/Recruiting Pros are in the business of increasing talent of their organizations, and this fact has to be paramount when discussing the finances of corporate relocation.  This brings us to Fact #3 on how to make your relocation policy better: don’t budget relocation as a single annual amount, budget relocation by the percent of hires you anticipate in having to relocate.

Look, it’s way too easy for finance and executives to look at the HR budget and say, “Wow, $1.5M in relocation budgeted for 2010? You need to cut that by $500K.”  Great, I’ll do that, but tell me which people we won’t be hiring?

Recruiting Pros need to come to the table with market data supporting why relocation is necessary and at which roles and levels.  Cutting relocation isn’t a question about saving money; it’s a question about which talent is less important to the company, because that’s the real cost.  Also, budgeting by hires forces departments and divisions to answer to their talent management strategies, instead of throwing it on HR’s back. Hey, it’s August, and we’ve already spent our Relocation budget for the whole company!  No, Mr. Hiring Manager, it’s August, and we’ve spent your department’s relocation budget. You better talk to Mrs. CEO and tell her why you couldn’t manage your budget.

And lastly, Fact #4 – Don’t come to a Relocation Gunfight with a knife.  Know what the person brings to the table and be able to show the alternatives to hiring that person, but either way show what the impact will be to the organization no matter what decision is made.