Quiet quitting is all the rage, and I’m here for all of it! Keep quietly quitting. Quietly quit more, faster, better! I hope it works out just like you hope it will!
Have a great super relaxing weekend, you quiet quitters!
The popular startup competition will take place during the upcoming HR Technology Conference, happening September 13 – 16, 2022, at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas. I’m super proud to once again be of the judges selected by LRP Media Group and the HR Technology Conference for this year’s Pitchfest. It is my favorite event of the year!!
This year, 33 companies will compete during the three preliminary rounds, each with five minutes to present and two to three minutes to answer questions from the judges. Based on a combination of votes from the audience and the judges, the total score earned by each company in the preliminary rounds will determine which six advance to the finals.
On Thursday, September 15, at 10 a.m. PT, the Pitchfest final will name one winner to receive the grand prize of $25,000 and exhibit space at the 2023 HR Technology Conference. A second-place winner will get $5,000. Prize money for the winners will be donated by Randstad Innovation Fund, Randstad’s strategic corporate venture fund.
Listed in alphabetical order, these are the companies selected to participate in the 2022 Pitchfest:
1. AtlasJobs
2. Dalia (Frontline Recruiting Tech)
3. EasyLlama (Sexual Harassment Compliance)
4. Educe Software (Talent Management Tech)
5. Extraview (Interview Tech)
6. Findem (Sourcing Tech)
7. Finwello Inc. (Financial Wellness)
8. Gift Better Co. (Employee Appreciation)
9. Illoominus Software, Inc (DEI Analytics Tech)
10. Inclusively (Workforce Inclusion)
11. ishield.ai (Diversity Communication Tech)
12. JobSync (Recruiting Automation Tech)
13. Largely (Talent Marketplace)
14. Lumina (Job Advertising Tech)
15. Manager360
16. ModernLoop (Recruiting Opersations Tech)
17. PivotCX (Recruiting Communications Tech)
18. Pointr (Position Tracking Tech)
19. Praisidio (Talent Retention)
20. Probotalent, LLC (Reference Assessment Solution)
21. Pulse – Automatic Status (Slack Status solution)
22. Ramped (Upskilling)
23. ReturnSafe (Hybrid Work Experience Tech)
24. Rise (Core HCM)
25. SmartRank (Candidate Screening)
26. Soundbite Inc. (Employee Engagement Tech)
27. SPOTLYFE (Employee Engagement Tech)
28. Sunny Day Fund (Financial Wellbeing Tech)
29. TaTiO (Applicant Attraction Solution)
30. TeamSense (Text-based Hourly Worker Comms Tech)
31. ThinkSight (People Analytics Tech)
32. Translator, Inc. (DEI Learning Platform)
33. uMap™ (Talent Management Tech)
**You’ll notice two of the 33 don’t have links – that’s because I couldn’t find them based on their name! That’s a great Startup lesson.**
So, how do you use this list? Start clicking through and see who they are and what they do! What I find is that many of these startups have amazing technology, and they are looking to get users to prove their concept, so that means you can probably get great tech at a great price!! Plus, many times, be at the forefront of an HR Technology movement.
That starts with a demo! I promise, they are painless, and you will learn some cool stuff, give it a try! Challenge yourself to do one new demo a quarter. Keep on top of the technology that is shaping our industry into the future!
The HR Technology Conference is right around the corner, September 13-16, in Las Vegas, and today, they announced the winners of this year’s Top HR Products! I will be attending this year’s conference, and I will be a judge at HR Technology Conference’s startup competition, The Pitchfest, which runs throughout the event.
Here are the winners of the 2022 Top HR Products:
ADP Intelligent Self-Service
ADP Intelligent Self-Service anticipates, solves and reduces employee issues before becoming a problem. Combining artificial intelligence, deep HCM knowledge and intuitive experiences, ADP Intelligent Self-Service proactively nudges employees to resolve potential issues.
Compa
Compa is offer-management software to help talent teams make smarter offers and gain real-time market data. When recruiters use Compa, they can skip spreadsheets and automate workflows to find pay guidelines, navigate pay conversations and build custom offers that get approved quickly.
Eightfold Job Intelligence Engine
The Eightfold Job Intelligence Engine provides an AI-powered foundation for role definitions that dynamically learns from internal and external talent insights. By replacing archaic and ineffective job descriptions with centrally defined roles, the tool combines AI, automation and human expertise for better decision-making.
Gloat Workforce Intelligence
For many organizations, workforce strategy is often encumbered by fragmented systems and manual processes that make it difficult to meet the demands of increasingly agile talent and business needs. With this in mind, Gloat built the Workforce Intelligence suite to solve the challenges of accessing scalable skills, jobs and talent insight, empowering organizations to understand and adapt to market needs.
iCIMS Marketing Automation
Amplify sourcing and engagement efforts with sophisticated lead scoring and conditional, behavior-based campaign personalization to address the toughest talent and recruiting challenges. iCIMS Marketing Automation redefines recruitment marketing by helping recruiting teams adapt to the age of the candidate.
Joyous
Joyous is an app that unlocks the expertise in large workforces to solve strategic challenges. It works in four steps: it breaks a big challenge down into small conversation starters; reaches out to a cohort of the workforce who will have the knowledge needed; routes their responses to subject matter experts and leaders who turn it into conversations, asking for clarification or offering support; and finally, AI analyzes all those conversations to identify the actionable themes that will make the biggest impact.
Oracle ME
Oracle ME is a complete employee experience platform designed to elevate employees’ growth, connections and ability to thrive in the new ways of work and workplaces today. Part of Oracle Cloud HCM, Oracle ME enables organizations to deliver personalized experiences to every worker based on their unique characteristics and situations. .
Paradox Animated Assessments
Paradox has built the fastest, mobile-first assessment on the market, requiring just 90 seconds to complete and boasting a 95% completion rate. By using animated images rather than words, candidates provide accurate information in a fraction of the time, reducing candidate drop-off and increasing satisfaction.
Plum Leadership Potential
Plum Leadership Potential enables organizations to identify high-potential talent using proven science combined with scalable technology. By leveraging the results of Plum’s single assessment, organizations can instantly measure leadership potential in every employee, ensuring each member of the workforce is equitably considered for their aptitude.
PTO Genius
PTO Genius helps organizations transform the employee experience and boost profitability by unleashing the power of PTO. The AI-powered software helps optimize and automate time off to uncover hidden opportunities to decrease burnout, improve employee wellness and reduce churn.
ServiceNow Manager Hub
Manager Hub delivers a purpose-built destination for people leaders to stay informed and engaged with their teams by leveraging personalized resources to guide their leadership journey. Managers can view a summary of team insights and action items for employee journeys, daily team stats, important dates, tasks and requests.
Talview Interview Insights
Talview Interview Insights maximizes the effectiveness of the Interview. The AI-powered solution works by analyzing conversations and behaviors to assess the candidate and the interviewer, helping organizations continuously improve the quality of interviewing.
Workday Scheduling and Labor Optimization
Workday Scheduling and Labor Optimization is an intelligent, worker-first scheduling solution that leverages artificial intelligence to match labor demand with worker qualifications, availability and preferences to optimize schedules for both workers and the business automatically. By analyzing data across the organization, Workday Scheduling and Labor Optimization helps managers and operations leaders optimize schedules to meet both the labor demands of the business and numerous business parameters—such as labor regulations—and worker scheduling preferences.
There will be over 600 HR Technology vendors at this year’s conference! These products definitely stood out as a few of the must-see technology advances across the HR tech stack. For me, The HR Technology Conference is one of the conferences I will not miss on an annual basis in our industry. Having a great understanding of HR Technology and the impact it has on running a successful business is a must-have skill every HR leader must have in our current environment.
There’s an interactive questioning technique called The 5 Whys. The theory is that if you continue to ask ‘why’ enough times, you’ll get to the root cause of every issue.
Oh, so he might not be a bad performer. He just has an opportunity area that we might be able to help him out with – getting projects across the finish line. And we’ve taught him to behave in this manner.
I don’t know if you have to use to 5 whys each time. I do think you have to ask at least three whys to get past the emotion of any decision. We tend to make most decisions with some element of emotion. Getting to the third why will get the emotion out in the open. That is important in any decision-making process.
Does this technique seem a little ‘parental’? It does, which is why you probably don’t want to make a habit of using this technique too often. It is definitely a tool, though, that can be very effective for a leader to use from time to time.
“Well, one person was a referral from an executive, so we hired without really checking references. One hire totally aced our pre-employment testing but had a sketchy work history but tested off the charts. One was a knockout in the interview, marginal testing, and just didn’t pan out.”
So, do we really need to change our hiring process? Or should we just start following our hiring process?
3 Whys takes the emotion out of any decision-making process. It gets out everyone’s inner issues about the problem. We tend to lead with a crisis statement that will lead to action. If we take action based on incomplete information, we will unnecessarily start doing things that we might not need to do or make changes that really don’t make sense to the organization.
Next time you are facing a tough decision, start asking ‘Why’ and see where it leads you. You might be surprised where you’ll end up!
If I have learned anything at all in my HR/Recruiting career, it’s that everyone has an opinion on what makes a good hire. If you ask 100 people to give you one thing they focus on when deciding between candidates, you’ll get 100 different answers!
I’ve got some of my own. They might be slightly different than yours, but I know mine will work! So, if you want to make some better selections, take note, my young Padawans:
1. Crinkled up money. Male or female, if you pull money out of your pocket or purse and it’s crinkled up, you’ll be a bad hire! There is something fundamentally wrong with people who can’t keep their cash straight. The challenge you have is how do you get a candidate to show you this? Ask to copy their driver’s license or something like that!
2. Males with more selfies on their Instagram than all other photos. I don’t even have to explain this (also, don’t go do a count on my IG!).
3. Slow walkers. If you don’t have some pep in your step, at least for the interview, you’re going to be a drag as an employee.
4. My Last Employer was so Awesome! Yeah, that’s great. We aren’t them. Let’s put a little focus back on what we got going on right here, sparky. Putting too much emphasis on a job you love during the interview is annoying. We get it. It was a good gig. You f*ck’d it up and can’t let go. Now we’ll have to listen about it for the next nine months until we fire you.
5. Complaining or being Rude to waitstaff. I like taking candidates to lunch or dinner, just to see how they treat other people. I want servant leaders, not assholes, working for me. The meal interview is a great selection tool to weed out bad people.
What are your signs not to make an offer? Share in the comments!
I’m keynoting the HRM Tech Asia conference in 2023, and as part of that, HRM Magazine did an interview with me for their Aug/Sept Magazine. The idea is we all want to offer flexibility. Our employees and candidates are demanding flexibility, but building a solid culture across all of these work environments is very complex!
Here’s some of what I had to say:
You can read the full article by clicking here!
If you know me, you know I love talking about beauty and attractiveness and the impact it has on work! We like to think that how you look has nothing to do with how you perform. Ugly people are told that from birth! “It doesn’t matter how you look, Timmy. You can still be great!”
Academically, that actually does prove out very well, in study after study. In fact, it’s kind of the opposite, and it might be the biggest thing no one talks about at work. This week the newest beauty study hit the street titled, “Student beauty and grades under in-person and remote teaching.”
Okay, I know you’re saying this says student, not employ, so it doesn’t count! Bare with me…
First, this is a legit study, not some vendor survey thing. This was done by a legit PhD at a legit university.
What does the study say?
Why does this matter to remote work?
If we know there is a beauty premium in human behavior when judging the performance of students, how hard is it really for us to believe our supervisors and managers also don’t have a beauty premium when it comes to determining work performance? I would argue that there is very little difference between the two judging activities.
This means as many of our jobs switch to remote, we now have an issue with women having their performance judged harsher than men when working in a remote environment because they will no longer get any beauty premium. Again, this only works with beautiful people. The ugly ones were already getting judged more harshly.
We love to believe that remote work favors females for a number of reasons. Saving time on the commute, easier to arrange care for kids and those they might be responsible for, etc. But now we have this issue!
The work beauty premium is real, and it’s not!
The beauty premium is measurable and has been proven in a number of studies. When judging people, we find it more difficult to judge pretty people harshly but easier to beat down ugly people. It’s not real because it’s totally an unconscious bias that even when we know it’s a problem, we ignore it and keep promoting pretty people over maybe higher performing people who aren’t as pretty.
I just find all of this so fascinating! Two-fold, one in that I’m not what any study would find as traditionally “beautiful” from the male standpoint, and that over a long period of time, centuries, genetically, this actually plays out across all cultures. While one culture might like light skin, tall, slender, and those people will have a beauty premium. Another culture might prefer dark, short, chubby people, and that beauty premium plays itself out.
I just need to find the one culture that likes gingers!
I’m hosting DisruptHR Lansing 2.0 on September 28th at the Lansing Brewing Company in downtown Lansing.
What is DisruptHR Lansing?
DisruptHR events are held in over 150 cities worldwide. It’s a two-hour event with 12-14 speakers, and each speaker only talks for 5-minutes! Big ideas in a short time brought to you in a unique format. Each speaker gets 20 slides, each slide automatically moves every 15 seconds, and the math tells me that’s 5 minutes! It’s HR Nerd Super Fun!
This year we are excited to be partnering with the Greater Lansing SHRM chapter for this event. We expect a sell-out as seating is limited to around 150 – you can get your tickets now to save your spot:
Each ticket comes with drinks and appetizers. There will also be some exciting raffle prizes, like Coach bags and much more!
Here is a link to the DisruptHR Lansing 1.0 talks from 2021! It was a very fun night!
Call for Speakers is Open!
We need speakers for this event!
Why should you speak at DisruptHR Lansing?
We look to provide an inclusive and diverse set of speakers on all topics around HR, people, and leadership. I’m specifically looking to add some GenZ (18-26-year-old) speakers to the agenda this year. So, if you know of anyone – have them apply! We also love the Millennials, GenX, and Boomers as well! It’s just really hard to find GenZ speakers in HR!
DisruptHR Lansing is only successful if we have great volunteer speakers! It’s a great environment to try out speaking of an idea you’re passionate about!
Sponsors!
If you’re interested in sponsoring this event, please contact me directly at sackett.tim@hrutech.com for sponsorship details. Each sponsor will get a table at the event, a full list of attendees, and be able to give out raffle prizes.
Do you know what it felt like the last time you fell in love?
I mean, real love?
The kind of love where you talk 42 times per day, in between text and Facebook messages, and feel physical pain from being apart? Ok, maybe for some, it’s been a while, and you didn’t have the texts or Facebook! But, you remember those times when you really didn’t think about anything else or even imagine not seeing the other person the next day, hell, the next hour. Falling “in” love is one of the best parts of love; it doesn’t last that long, and you never get it back.
I hear people all the time say, “I love my job,” and I never used to pay much attention; in fact, I’ve said it myself. The reality is that I don’t love my job. I mean, I like it a whole lot, but I love my wife, I love my kids, and I love Diet Mt. Dew at 7 am on a Monday morning. The important things in life! But my job? I’m not sure about that one. As an HR Pro, I’m supposed to work to get my employees to “love” their jobs. Love.
Want to know the difference between like and love? The next time your significant other tells you, “I love you!” just say in return, “Yeah, I like you as well!” Then get ready for an argument!
Let me go all Dr. Phil on you for a second. Do you know why most relationships fail? No, it’s not cheating. No, it’s not the drugs and/or alcohol. No, it’s not money. No, it’s not that he stops caring. No, it’s not your parents. Ok, stop it. I’ll just tell you!
Relationships fail because expectations aren’t met. It seems logical knowing what we know about how people fall in love and lose their minds. Once that calms down, the real work begins. So, if you expect love to be the love of the first 4-6 months of a relationship, you’re going to be disappointed a whole bunch over and over.
Jobs aren’t much different.
You get a new job, and it’s usually really good! People listen to your opinion. You seem smarter. Hell, you seem better looking (primarily because people are sick of looking at their older co-workers). Everything seems better in a new job. Then you have your one-year anniversary, and you come to find out you’re just like the other idiots you’re working with.
This is when falling in love with your job really begins. When you know about all the stuff, the company hid in the closet. The past employees they think are better and smarter than you, the good old days when they made more money, etc. Now is when you have to put some work into making it work.
I see people all the time moving around to different employers and never seeming to be satisfied. They’re searching. Not for a better job or a better company. They’re searching for that feeling that will last. But it never will, not without them working for it.
The best love has to be worked for. Passion is easy and fleeting. Love is hard to sustain and has to be worked on, but it can last forever.
It started out a couple of years ago as “Broetry” a writing trend where mostly men did what I like to call “Hustle Porn” on LinkedIn. Some wannabe tech dude leaning on the hood of an expensive sports car telling you to work as hard as him and you can get the fancy sports car as well.
Mostly young, attractive, social media influencer types have quickly turned hustle porn/broetry into something I’m sure we even have a name for yet! Maybe it’s “Empathy Porn” or “Positive Porn” I’m sure one of these folks will come up with a great title! This LinkedIn viral content has a definite flavor and structure to it. It’s so similar in its style that it’s actually funny once you’re able to identify it.
Whatever it is, it’s not professional content, which I think the vast majority of folks come to LinkedIn for, but you also can’t argue the successful viral nature of this type of content! It’s so popular you start to question why people actually come to LinkedIn! Are we sure it’s a professional networking site?!
This isn’t a LinkedIn bashing post. I love LinkedIn. I use it every day. I don’t like this new type of viral LinkedIn content that basically delivers zero value to anyone except the creator, whom I’m guessing is at a level of narcissism that is incomprehensible!
What does the LinkedIn Algorithm love in a piece of content?
These posts are getting hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of interactions in some cases! Thousands of comments.
Will all of this interaction and comments, you must think, “Tim, you’re just a hater. These people must be sharing some amazingly valuable content!” No. They mostly share personal stories, most I’m sure are made up, that has a narrative of overcoming and succeeding, lifting yourself up and succeeding. Failing and then succeeding, etc.
One of the best I’ve seen at creating this content is Cat Philip. Most likely, you’ve seen her content as the LinkedIn Algo loves Cat! Why? Well, she’s a young twenty-something who’s just trying to make it in the business world as a woman, but people keep judging her, but she’s not going to allow that to stop her! I mean, at least that’s pretty much every post, along with a selfie!
No judgment. Cat is killing it on LinkedIn. Her business is social media, and she’s good at it. It’s just not the content I thought I would ever see on LinkedIn. She is far from the only one, there are now millions of LinkedIn users doing this content in different ways, but the structure is almost always the same! I saw a Dad do one on his young daughter and her struggle, same exact format, same viral spin with the algorithm.
Another commonality of these viral positive porn posts is that almost always, they are done by someone in the “business.” The business of making or wanting to make viral content. Some sort of marketing person, influencer, speaker, author, bullshit life coach, someone selling essential oils, etc. It’s not about truly selling the “story” it’s about selling themselves. And it’s really effective if you want to make a viral post!
Can a normal person create a LinkedIn Viral post?
Yes! Because I made one up, and it worked!
So, this post was up for less than 24 hours, and I deleted it because I had so many friends in real life who know me who were making such nice, awesome comments about me as a person! And it was all fake! I didn’t want to embarrass anyone, I was just testing the algorithm!
I mean, a Homeless Puppy with One-eye! You can’t make that up! Well, yes. Yes, you can make it up, actually!
What did I learn about my little LinkedIn Viral Algorithm Test?
I was speaking at an HR conference, and I was telling some people this story and how I created it. Across the board, 100% of people all immediately recognized the content I was describing, and all didn’t like it. But, many also admitted to interacting with this type of content because we all actually love a positive, uplifting story! We also love when people bare their souls, even if it is a bit weird to do in a professional setting.
I get frustrated because really great professional content gets lost in this type of algorithm environment. People I follow and respect share some great stuff, and instead, the algorithm feeds me homeless one-eyed puppies because everyone else, apparently, wants homeless puppies!
FWIW – to the audience who interacted with my test and thought I was some amazing person, I apologize! I mean, I am amazing, but I’m not a homeless one-eyed puppy amazing!