Category Archives: Trench HR

Are You ‘Entitled’ To One Mistake?

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Current NBA LA Clippers owner, Donald Sterling, got in a heap of trouble for making racist statements that were caught on tape.  The NBA is going to kick this guy out of being an NBA owner, and it’s probably about time, as he has a history of just being racist.  He doesn’t want to stop owning the Clippers, so now he’s trying to do all he can to save what he can, and possibly still hang on to the team and not be forced to sell.  What is an 80 year old racist NBA owner to do?  Why go on CNN with Anderson Cooper!

Sterling is doing PR to try and get the public on his side, which is a colossal waste of time, but when you’re a billionaire you do silly stuff. Sterling believes we should all forgive him for making one big stupid mistake.  This is his exact quote from the interview:

“Am I entitled to one mistake, am I after 35 years? I mean, I love my league, I love my partners. Am I entitled to one mistake? It’s a terrible mistake, and I’ll never do it again,”

First off, this isn’t Donald Sterling’s first mistake.  He has a history of being a bad guy.   The one mistake argument doesn’t work well for him.  But should it work for anyone? That really is the question for all of this.

Should someone, like one of your employees, get a second chance?

In the HR world this is almost a daily dilemma that is faced.  On one hand you want to say, “Yes!”, shouldn’t everyone get a second chance.  But, as HR Pros know, many times, we don’t give employees a second chance.  Of course, there are reasons of why you wouldn’t give a second chance.  Like the Sterling case, you know of a history of prior bad decisions, coupled with this evidence, you make the call to say, “Nope! No second chance!”

This is what makes HR tough.  I’m not a big believer in the concept of ‘setting precedent’.  Which means basically using a previous example to guide a decision.  HR people (notice I didn’t say Pro) love to use this concept to make tough decisions, easy.  “Well, we fired Jill when she was late three times, so we also have to fire Bill!”  No, you don’t!  Now, you might have some risk, but unless the cases are completely the same, you’re just trying to take the easy way out!  Maybe Jill was late without excuse. Maybe Bill showed evidence of going to extraordinary lengths to make it to work and just couldn’t.  Just because you made one decision one way, doesn’t mean you always have to make it that way.  That’s uninformed and naive.

You get yourself in trouble when you start making decisions differently, for similar circumstances, based on things like gender, race, etc.  That’s when you get yourself into problems.  But if Bill was a much better performer than Jill, should I give him another chance? That’s the decision I need to make with my business partners. But to go and just say “No” we need to fire Bill, doesn’t make a well informed partner.

What about true first time, one mistake, issues?  Does someone ‘deserve’ a second chance?  I tend to believe it’s all based on context.  Mess up a major presentation because you didn’t crunch the data correctly, and we don’t get the sale.  Okay, I’ll give you another chance.  Forget to turn off the power to a machine when you’re finished, and a coworker gets badly injured because of it. You’re fired.  Second chance decisions on contextual.  Donald Sterling didn’t mistakenly become a racist in a conversation once.  He should be done forever. The NBA’s main ’employee’ is predominately African American.  He’s a racist.  I have enough of the context.

 

Wrong Company, Right Interview

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If you’re in the staffing game enough, you’re bound to have strange stuff happen to you.  I’ve had employees die on the job.  I’ve had employees go postal.  I’ve had employees get caught doing almost everything imaginable, but this past week I got a first!  I like firsts. Firsts are like little HR and Talent trophies you get to show off to your HR and Talent peers when you’re out after work sharing war stories!

It seemed like a normal Thursday.  Phones buzzing, recruiters cruitin’, interviews, offers, no-shows.  Call comes in from a client, “Hey, Bill never showed for his interview!” Ugh, I hate no-shows!  In good job times, no-shows increase at alarming rate.  Candidate gets ‘sold’ on a job, then they get buyers remorse and decide instead of being an adult, they’ll just burn a bridge.  We give Bill a call to see why he hates us so.  Bill answers! (that doesn’t usually happen with no-shows, you just have to yell at their voice mail and belittle to a recording) “Bill, I just got a call from InfoGenTech what the hell!  You no-showed. Please tell me one of your kids is seriously injured!”

Then a funny, first time thing, happened.

Bill says, “Well, I went on the interview, but went to the wrong company!”  What!?  Didn’t the wrong company tell you,”Hey dude, you’re stupid and at the wrong company!”  Nope, they didn’t.  This is the D! (Detroit for all you none “D’ers'”!) This company said, “What position are you supposed to interview for?”  Bill goes, “for aprogrammer position”.  Wrong company front desk person, knowing they also need programmers, quickly calls HR and explains Bill’s situation.  Bill gets on the spot interview with wrong company.  Bill never gets the chance to make it to our client’s interview.

Score one for the D.  The war for talent is alive and well in Detroit!

I’ve had candidates get lost and not be able to find where they are going for interviews.  I’ve had candidates show up at wrong locations.  I’ve never had a candidate go to the wrong location and get stolen by the company!

When people ask me how Michigan is doing, how Detroit is doing, I’ll give them this story.  We are so short on talent, we steal interviews.

Recruiting in the D.  Silicon Valley can kiss our ass!

The Organization With the Most Expensive Selection Mistakes is?

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The NFL.  This Thursday that NFL will perform their annual selection process on ESPN, with their annual draft.  Just like you, they have no idea what they’re doing, but act like they figured out the secret sauce to great selection.  The big difference between you and the NFL, their mistakes costs them a lot more money!  Check out this chart from BI on the NFL Draft Guaranteed Contracts:

NFL draft

This chart basically shows you that the best, or highest, first round pick will get about $22 million guaranteed, while the lower third round picks will get $600k in guaranteed money over the life of their contract.

How would you like that level of possible expense in your selection process!?

All that money, all that time, all that research, and the NFL draft is still basically a crap shoot.  The pick people, like you pick people.  “Well, we really like Johnny’s football IQ and he just seems so personable! What the hell, let’s pay him $15M!”

What!?!

“Well, we know his ‘past performance’ in college.  We know all his ‘performance metrics’.  We gave him a personality profile.  We ‘feel’ like he’s a safe bet and potential high performer.”

It’s really not that different from you picking a $50,000 per year sales professional.   Many organizations put as much into their hiring selections, as the NFL puts into picking their draft selections.  Obviously, the NFL has more resources to throw at their process, so they probably have a few more bells and whistles.  But, they have no more success than you.  The ones who do the best, like you, are not only concerned about the ‘big’ hires/selections – your executive hires, their high first and second round draft picks, but put as much research and resources into each hire.  Making a great selection in the 7th round might be as valuable, long term, as making a great first round selection.  Just as you making a great entry level sales hire, might be as valuable, or more, to making a really solid Director level hire.

The learning on all of this?  You can’t take hires off.  There are no ‘throw away’ hires, just as their are no throw away draft picks for great NFL teams.

3 Ways to Kill Comparison Interviews

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I had a great candidate interview yesterday with a client!  This person is completely money!  Close the search, game over.  Just make the offer and pay me.

Then ‘it’ happens.

Client: “Tim, we loved her!  She is perfect!  I can’t believe you guys found her!”

Me: “Awesome. Pay me!”

Client: “Well, the hiring manager would like to just see one more person so she has a comparison, before making an offer.”

Me: “You’re looking for a female Environmental Safety Engineer with an Electrical Engineering background!  I found you the only person on the planet with that profile!  You want another?!”

Client: “Yeah, we just need something to compare her to.”

Me: “Okay, I’ll send over the recruiter who found her and we’ll tell her to talk like an engineer.”

How many times have you had a hiring manager do this to you?  It sucks!  It’s hard to get them to change their mind.  Usually, what happens is it takes you weeks to find another even remotely qualified candidate, as compared to you rock star, and by then your rock star gets pissed off, or cold feet and tells you to go fly a kite!  Opportunity lost!

Comparison Interviews are garbage.  The only way to stop them, is to combat the mindset before the words even come out of the hiring managers mouth.  Here are three things you can do today to stop hiring managers from wanting to do a comparison interview:

1.  Combat the conversation by setting up another interview with another candidate before they even ask, without asking for permission.  “Hey, Jill, we have that really great candidate you liked on paper coming in Wednesday at 1pm, I also set up another candidate for 3pm who was really the next best we could find. I’ll get the paper resume to you before she shows.”

2. Create a higher sense of urgency.  “Jill, you said she’s a rock star, let’s offer now before someone else has a chance to get her before we can.  I know someone of her quality has other options, we can’t look wishy washy on this, if we want talent like this!”

3. Define what ‘great talent’ is before the interview.  Then, when you see ‘great talent’ there is no need for a comparison.  “Jill we hire great talent, that talent by our definition is great talent.  If we find more great talent, we’ll hire that as well.  What do you want me to make the offer at?”

More hires are lost to comparison interview timing, than to counter offers.  We all think we are going to lose a great candidate to counter offers, but the reality is, they don’t happen often, and recruiters have gotten good about preparing candidates for those.  Recruiters aren’t prepared for comparison interviews and the process dragging on for weeks!  The market is quickly changing from where it has been over the past 10 years.  We went almost a decade where hiring managers could take their time and drag out our process. That behavior now costs you the best talent.

Kill the comparison interview mentality now, or it’s going to kill your talent pool!

 

Are you Persuading or Convincing candidates to take your jobs?

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Convince – To cause someone to believe firmly in the truth of something.

Persuade – To cause someone to do something through reasoning or argument.

So, are you persuading or convincing candidates to take a position with your organization?

I think the majority of us try and convince candidates that our job, our organization is the best decision for them.  We have this belief, wrongly, that we don’t want candidates who don’t want us.  So, we shouldn’t ‘push’ them to take our job.  We’ll try and convince them we are a good choice, but ultimately the candidate needs to make that decision.  We do this because its the easiest on us, as Talent and HR Pros, not because it’s the best way.  It’s the most non-confrontational way to offer up our jobs.  We all like non-confrontational.

Persuasion involves a bit more.  The Talent and HR Pro who can persuade candidates to come with them, is much more valuable to their organization.  Persuasion might make you challenge a candidates beliefs, and get them to think about their career, their life, in a new way.  Ultimately, they still might make the choice not to go with you, but you want to make that decision very, very difficult on them.  They should agonize in saying ‘No’ to you.

Persuasion causes a Talent or HR Pros to become a sales person, a marketer.  To persuade means to get a person to ‘do’ something, not believe something.  I don’t want a candidate to believe my job is the best, but decide not to take it anyway.  I want her to take it! To do it!   Most people ‘believe’ that smoking is bad for them, as they put a cancer stick in their mouth and light it up.  Very few stop smoking.  Believing and doing are two very different things.

With candidates, persuasion can become an organizational dynamic, especially in hard to fill roles.  You have to have everyone on board the persuasion bandwagon!  From the hiring manager to executives to the admins who might speak to this candidate only to set up an interview time.  Everyone has to be ready, at all times, to close the candidate. A number of years ago I was offered a role, that I turned down, and the Chief People Officer of that organization called my on Christmas Eve Day to try and change my mind.  He made it very hard for me to turn down the role. He was very persuasive, to the point that I felt like I could be making a bad career decision to not take it.

We are coming into a time in our history where persuading, versus convincing, candidates to come work for you, will become a strategic advantage (it actually always has been an advantage, but this becomes more important as great talent is hard to find).  It should no longer be alright to allow candidates to just make the decision if they like you or not, and you just sit back and wait for that decision.  Your organization needs you to turn up the heat, in a positive way, to get candidates to take your jobs.  Persuasion appeals to emotions and fear and creativity.  People make emotional decisions when changing jobs, not rationale.  Are you feeding them documents and spreadsheets, or stories or glory?

Have I convinced you to change?

Should You Know Your Bosses Salary?

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It’s an age-old question.  Should organizations make their salary information public in-house amongst the employees?  In a era of transparency, it’s really the one thing most people still disagree on.  The higher up the chain you go, unless your in a publicly traded company, than it’s public anyway, the less likely you’re willing to want this data to be public within your organization.  The lower you are in an organization, the more you want this information.

Why?

At its core this notion of wanting to know the salary information of those around you is all about trust.  It really speaks to the human condition, and it’s quite ironic!  The higher you go up in an organization, the less you trust those lower than you.  The lower you are, the more you trust those above you are making the right decisions.  You could argue this. Sure many people at low levels don’t ‘trust’ management.  Yet, they still show up to work each day, and grind it out for $14.23/hr.  Those at the top are making 6,7,8 figure incomes, and jump around from position to position.  Who is more trusting?

Whole Foods company shares salaries of all of their employees within their walls. You can find out the salary of anyone! From Business Insider:

Whole Foods co-CEO John Mackey introduced the policy in 1986, just six years after he co-founded the company. In the book, he explains that his initial goal was to help employees understand why some people were paid more than others. If workers understood what types of performance and achievement earned certain people more money, he figured, perhaps they would be more motivated and successful, too. 

“I’m challenged on salaries all the time,” Mackey explained. “‘How come you are paying this regional president this much, and I’m only making this much?’ I have to say, ‘because that person is more valuable. If you accomplish what this person has accomplished, I’ll pay you that, too.'”

Beyond making compensation data available to all employees, Whole Foods also has its managers post their store’s sales data each day and regional sales data each week. Once a month, Whole Foods sends each store a detailed report on profitability and sales at each of the chain’s locations. In fact, in the late 1990s the widespread availability of so much detailed financial data led the SEC to classify all of the company’s 6,500 employees as “insiders,” according to a 1996 story by Fast Company.

“Oh, Tim, but that only works at a great company like Whole Foods!”  I hear you saying!
Yeah, you’re probably right.  It takes a strong, positive culture to handle this type of information being out in the open.  It takes extremely good leadership to handle the challenges coming in from average and weak performers believing they should get what someone else is getting.  It takes a great Talent Acquisition team to hire the right people who have the maturity to work in an organization that has this much trust in their employees to handle such delicate information.   It takes co-workers trusting one another, that each one is adding value to the corporation, and respecting the value each brings.
So, should you be able to know your bosses salary?  Probably not.

Corporate Recruiters Don’t Fear Agency Recruiters

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Do you believe the title?  It’s common belief, in most Talent and HR circles, that most corporate recruiters fear agency recruiters.  Go ahead and argue if you would like, but it seems a little silly.

The reality is, true recruiting professionals don’t fear amateurs.

It’s like a really great professional Photographer.  They charge money because they offer something someone is willing to pay for.  Professional photographers don’t fear the mom at the soccer game with her $2,000 dollar camera and $5,000 dollar lens.  Who cares that you have the equipment, if you don’t know how to use it!?  Pros don’t fear amateurs.

So, if you are a really good corporate recruiter who knows how to really recruit, agency recruiters don’t scare you, because you know your stuff!  That’s the problem, though, right?  The reason so many people feel the title of this post is true is because we all know so many corporate recruiters, who really don’t know how to recruit.  They aren’t pros, they’re amateurs.  Amateurs fear professionals when it comes to meeting head to head in competition.

The best professionals love it when a talented amateur tries to play at their level.  These types of individuals help to push both parties to do the best work they can.  Or, at least, they should!  A great agency recruiter, should push an average corporate recruiter to want to get better.  An amateur agency recruiter will starve, that’s why you only see amateurs in the agency ranks for a very short period of time.  If they aren’t good, they don’t eat! That is why on average, agency recruiters tend to have more recruiting skills than corporate recruiters.  Agency folks aren’t full salary. How they are compensated forces them to have better skills, on average.

So, how do corporate recruiters ensure they become professionals?  Well, I love Malcom Gladwell, so I’ll steal a little of his 10,000 hour concept.  You must make yourself a true recruiting professional!  You need to invest time and development in yourself, in the recruiting industry, to become a pro.   That means as a corporate recruiter, you focus on recruiting, not becoming an HR Pros. What?!  Most corporate recruiters are corporate recruiters because that’s their path to get into a straight HR position.  Their endgame is not recruiting, it’s HR.  That’s a problem, because they are not fully vested into the recruiting game.  This is an amateur move.

Your reality is, those who get promoted are usually professional at something.  Become a great recruiting pro and the powers-that-be will take notice, and you’ll find yourself in positions you never thought possible.  True professionals don’t worry about promotions, they worry about becoming a better pro at their craft.

The next time you start feeling yourself pushed by an agency recruiter, don’t curse them for what they do, embrace them for what they push you to become — a better recruiter.

 

Reasons To Try Stuff

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Last week I got a chance to speak at the 5th annual Michigan HR Day on Social Recruiting.  The group was great, I had fun, we gave out some Coach Bags and I made some HR ladies uncomfortable.  I don’t actually intend to speak and make anyone uncomfortable, that isn’t a long term plan of speaker success.  But it usually happens to a small number of folks.

Here’s how it normally goes:

1. I talk about how to use a social networking site like Facebook to recruit great talent.  Show them how to do it.  Show them how they can get really specific in who they are searching for by skill, gender, location, company name, Likes, etc. All really good information, and the crowd eats it up! Things are going really well for me.

2. “Um, I have a question?”  Here it comes.  You probably noticed it yourself in the line above. He said ‘gender’ didn’t he? You can’t do that mister!  I’m an HR lady. You can’t do that. Then she pulls out her HR lady badge.

3. I say, “Yeah, you can do that”, and pull out my HR Guy badge.

4. She says, “No you can not!” Like my Mom, but scarier. “If you use a program like The Facebook to recruit, you’re going to have ‘disparate impact‘!”

5. I’m a pro, I’ve been here before. So I start asking questions, like, “Do your hiring managers ever see your candidates?” Yes.  “What the difference if they see them as a candidate or as an interviewee?” Well. “If you have a hiring manager willing to discriminate, that isn’t a Facebook issue, that’s a manager issue, isn’t it?” Yes. “Do you have any set of demographics you would like to have more of in your organization, like female engineers, let’s just day?” Yes. “What are you really worried about when recruiting on Facebook?”  Silence.

We don’t try stuff, because trying stuff could cause change.  When I speak about things people haven’t tried, a very small group, no matter where I am, will immediately try to come up with reasons on why they shouldn’t try it.  Not why they should. Our initial reaction to change is to find reasons to not change.

It really has nothing to do with recruiting on Facebook.  Facebook’s own demographics will show almost a 50/50 gender mix. LinkedIn, admittedly, is heavily male dominated.  Do you recruit on LinkedIn?  Do you see pictures of potential candidates on LinkedIn?  Aren’t you, the HR department, the ones pulling potential candidates, who have been trained not to discriminate when it comes to hiring?  So, what’s really the issue?  You see, it breaks down very quickly.

We aren’t really concerned about disparate impact or being discriminatory, we concerned about this guy asking me to do something I’m not comfortable with.  I just like playing Farmville and watching so funny kitty videos on The Facebook.  Do make me feel like I should have to do work on there as well!

The problem we tend to have in HR is that we don’t find reasons to try stuff.  We are pros at finding reasons not to try stuff.  Find some reasons today to try stuff, you’ll be a better HR Pro because of it.

Tattoo Hiring

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A tattoo is basically forever.

I know, I know, you can get them removed by laser now. But most people don’t go into a tattoo proposition thinking I can’t wait to pay a couple of thousand dollars to get this removed! It’s permanent baby. Like a Sharpie, but better!

Most organizations do Tattoo Hiring.  They believe we are going to hire this person forever.  In fact, go ahead and tattoo the logo on their butt while their in orientation.   But the life cycle of most hires is similar to that of your tattoo you got on Spring Break back in 2001.

Tattoo Hires:

1. Day 1 – it’s a little painful, but your so excited to have the person on board.

2. First couple of weeks – pain has gone away, still doesn’t look right, but you can tell you’re going to love them. And you keep showing the new hire to everyone you see, that has yet to see them.

3. Years 1-3 – Tattoo Hire is awesome. You’re proud of your tattoo hire. People comment on what a great hire.  You couldn’t be more proud of your tattoo hire!

4. Somewhere past year 3 – the first Tattoo Hire went so well, what the heck, time for another Tattoo Hire!  This time we’ll go bigger and better!

5. Into Tattoo Hire #2’s first year – you begin to notice your original Tattoo Hire doesn’t look as good anymore. Isn’t performing as well. You think it might be time to change your original Tattoo Hire.  While Tattoo Hire #2 is more awesome than you can imagine!

6. Time to remove Tattoo Hire #1 – You’ve finally made the decision, Tattoo Hire #1 has to go. It’s going to cost you thousands of dollars to remove, but Tattoo Hire #1 just isn’t what you want anymore.

That’s alright you’ve got Tattoo Hire #2!  I mean what could go wrong, a Tattoo Hire is forever, right?

Organizations that hire with a Tattoo philosophy are bound to fail.  It’s not that you can’t expect, or want, employees to stay with you their entire career.  You can.  The problem we face is when we don’t set up our organizations to support forever hires.  The new tattoo always looks better, because it is usually more defined and brighter and you put more thought into it.  An employee is no different.  You can’t let a more tenured employee fade.  You must keep them vibrant and up to date.  Or, many times you will spend a ton of money replacing them.

 

7 Ways Recruiters Can Reinvent Themselves

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It’s that time of the month!  No, not that time – a better more enjoyable time!  It’s the FOT monthly webinar!   This month FOT will be doing Recruiter Makeovers and giving Recruiters 7 ways they can reinvent themselves as Marketers!  As always it’s FREE and comes with HRCI credit for all those SHRMies.

We know – you’re feeling stale as a recruiter. We get it, that’s why we’re partnering with Jobvite for the May FOT webinar – The Recruiter Makeover – 7 Ways Recruiters Can Reinvent Themselves as Marketers. The world’s full of great products/services that became commodities, and unfortunately, there’s a lot of recruiters in danger of becoming commodities if they don’t change with the times. Odds are you feel the shift under your feet – great candidates are less responsive than ever to average recruiters, which means you have to become a more effective marketer of the brand and opportunities you represent to keep your closing rate high.

If you’re still reading, that means you haven’t been average in the past. Join us for this FOT webinar and we’ll give you the roadmap for a career makeover that includes the following goodies:

—The Ugly “Before” Picture – We’ve all seen the “before” pictures used in makeovers and this one is no different. Using your “average joe/jane” recruiter, we’re going to take a snapshot of the recruiter most in need of our makeover. Brace yourself, because “before” pictures in makeover workups all look like mug/prison shots of Lindsay Lohan, right?

—Trendspotting 101 – We can’t start prescribing the skill equivalent of makeup or liposuction for recruiters until we tell you about the trends that are causing the need for the makeover. Candidates have more options and messages flowing to them than ever before. Whether its the emergence of Indeed, Glassdoor, LinkedIn or the social recruiting scene, recruiting is morphing into marketing. We’ll compare and contrast some of the trends to tell you why recruiters are evolving into marketers even as they keep their core recruiting skills strong.

—7 Ways Recruiters Can Reinvent Themselves As Marketers – Makeover time. We’ll hit you with our list of things you can do to reinvent yourself as a marketer who just happens to recruit for a living. You can do this. Don’t believe the naysayers that will say this is hype. Those people are just trying to keep you average.

—Our Top 5 List of Recruiters Who Have Strong Marketing Game – It’s all empty talk until we give you examples, right? The FOT crew will break down our top 5 list of recruiters who have added the marketing toolkit to their games, complete with emphasis of which of our “7 Ways” list they specialize in. Everyone in the world needs role models – even recruiters. We’ll tell you who to connect with and emulate to become a marketer in the recruiting game.

Evolving your game as a recruiter isn’t easy – it takes thought, expertise and time you don’t have, because you’re busy filling positions. Join us for the May FOT Webinar and we’ll show you how to add marketing chops to your personal recruiting brand so you don’t get left behind.

CLICK HERE IF YOU’RE A SMART TALENT PRO!