Through the Eyes of the Hiring Manager

Posted on April 26, 2019 by Tim Sackett

On Wednesday I was sitting on The Talent Fix Book Club webcast with one of my Recruiting Managers, Zach Jensen, and Zach made the comment that great recruiters do something a bit different, they look at applications and resumes through “the eyes of the hiring manager”. It’s a brilliant piece of advice, but what does it mean!?

New, or lesser experienced, recruiters look at candidates like a checklist:

Do they meet the minimum qualifications? Check.
Can they work when we need them to work? Check.
Will they fit the compensation band we have for the position? Check.
Are they interested in our company? Check.

Get enough checks and you send this candidate over to the hiring manager.

The hiring manager receives this candidate and immediately looks at this person completely different from the recruiter who was checking boxes. The hiring manager will look at the candidate and immediately think, can this person do the job I have, and do it well? Will this person fit into my team? Do I think I can manage this person? Will this person be challenged by my position, or will they be bored? Is this person better than me or someone on my team? Does this person make me/us better? Etc.

Great recruiters have enough of a relationship with their hiring managers that they are less concerned with checking boxes, and more concerned about these questions that are in the hiring manager’s head. They want to have those answers, so when the hiring manager asks, “What do you think?” What they will respond with is not checked boxes, but strategic explanations that help the hiring manager make a decision.

It’s a transition we usually see happen around year 3 with our recruiters. Checking boxes isn’t all bad, it’s how we all start. The reality is we don’t know much, so we have to go on something. Some, though, never make the transition. They just think recruiting is about checking boxes.

It’s the one reason I’m not concerned about ‘technology’ taking my job, and why the best recruiters I speak with aren’t concerned either. In fact, they welcome it. Technology will eliminate box checkers. A.I. can check boxes faster and better than you or I. A.I. can’t get into the head of a hiring manager and know what she really needs for her team. I can. Zach can.

Great recruiting happens when you build relationships with your hiring managers where they trust you know what they are really looking for. How do you get that? Mostly time and consistency. Keep showing up. Show them you have some interest in helping them improve their talent. Be persistently annoying. Rinse. Repeat.

Leadership Isn’t Raised on Promises

Posted on April 25, 2019 by Tim Sackett

I’ve had a lot of conversations with c-suite leaders recently who are concerned they do not have their next generation of leaders on their team. Let’s be clear, they have people on their team, but they do not believe those people are the future or at least they don’t believe they’re anywhere near becoming the future.

The folks in position are all well-meaning enough. I mean they want to be leaders and many believe they probably are leaders. They make all the leadership promises. That’s probably the first indication they aren’t ready. This is what their c-suite is feeling and hearing.

You see, leadership isn’t raised on promises…Leadership is raised on execution and outcomes.

Give me someone who can execute and I believe I can teach them to lead. Too often I think we look for leaders in the way we look for friends. Is this a person I and others would want to hang out with? Is this a person I can trust? Is this person nice? Do I get along with this person, and do others get along with this person? Would I follow this person?

I don’t need my leaders to be my friend. I need my leaders to get sh*t done. Can you get sh*t done without pissing off every single person around you, becomes a key element, right? There’s a balance. Sometimes I think we’ve gone too far on one side of that balance, and it’s not the execution side!

So, you want to be a leader?

Great, awesome, wow! Get sh*t done! The recipe is pretty clear and most fail:

Clearly communicate what needs to get done.
Find out why that will happen or won’t happen. Fix that stuff.
Gain agreement of when and how this stuff will get done.
Help move roadblocks and excuses out of the way.
Follow up. Follow up. Follow up.
Accountability.
Stuff got done.

In my experience the best leaders never made promises, they just got stuff done. The promise leaders tended to go away at some point. Turns out most organizations don’t need promises, they need stuff to get done.

Career Confessions of Gen Z: An Interview with Johnny Campbell of Social Talent

Posted on April 24, 2019 by Tim Sackett

A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to speak with, and conduct a short interview with, the CEO and Co-Founder of SocialTalent, Johnny Campbell. SocialTalent is an online training platform where recruiters, sourcers, and recruitment marketers alike can become true business partners by way of bite-sized videos.

I’m a daily-user and huge advocate of SocialTalent, so I reached out to Johnny the second I found out that he was a featured speaker at SHRM Talent this year. I got to watch his presentation twice, and both times, I looked around the room as people scrambled to record every word and capture every slide he presented.

This was initially going to be Q&A type of interview and as time went on, I realized I just wanted to hear what he wanted to share with me, about anything. I left the conversation with both a profound sense of inspiration, along with a better understanding of my own mind.

(Answers are paraphrased but reflect exact responses. Direct quotes will be in quotations.)

1. How did SocialTalent come about?

Answer: SocialTalent was made by design but became by accident. Believe it or not, it started as a hedge. About a year in, we were doing things differently and we knew it was effective. It was just a matter of time ‘til everyone started doing it. We were amongst the first in the space and we were faced with the question, “Is this actually scalable, or do we teach people how to do it?”. SocialTalent would give in-person presentations and at a conference someone said it should be digital.

2. How do you partner with the best of the best for SocialTalent content?

Answer: I’ve always had a knack for patterns. I was figuring all of this out and felt the need to share, so I started blogging. I had eyes on my content early on, which led to meeting with guys like Dean Da Costa, Bill Boorman, and others. We have a sort of “Spotify-model”, in that we have the space for the most knowledgeable people in our space to share their ideas digitally. So there are royalties that come with that – it works great.

3. How do you decide what’s important? And how do you stay on top of producing new and relevant content?

Answer: We test EVERYTHING. We also ask our customers for suggestion on what our platform is missing. We do mapping exercises that layout everything about the recruiting process and then decide how we can make an impact in each of those steps.

4. How do you show the impact of sourcing matter to a very traditional recruiting team?

Answer: The reality is, leadership doesn’t care about the technical work you can do as a sourcer – despite how impressive it really is. It all boils down to the unexpected insights and presentation of your data. How can you present your data to make it matter to leadership, a hiring manager, recruitment marketers, etc? Don’t share the process, share the answers.

5. (BONUS) Does Bill Boorman really always wear a hat?

Answer: I have not seen Bill without a hat in 9 years – at conferences, meetings, everywhere. He has an array of them too!

Although the purpose of this interview was to learn more about the coming of SocialTalent, we were able to have a casual conversation. The highlight of the conversation you may ask? It was when Johnny, mid-sentence, said the following:

“You’ve got the best name in the world for a sourcer… like the best [expletive] name!”

It’s safe to say I’ll be keeping my eye out for the next moves from Mr. Campbell and the SocialTalent team. For those who have yet to check out SocialTalent for yourself or your teams, you oughta hop on the platform, or else you’re missing out!

Hunter Casperson — Self-proclaimed “Sourcing Nerd” — Is from Southern California, where he spent lots of time outdoors and in turn, loves nature. Hunter attended UC Berkeley where he studied Math & Psychology for three years before joining Quicken. His all-time favorite thing to do is beat-box, where he has consecutively ranked amongst the Top 10 in the United States over the past 3 years (under the name Huntybeats)!

Career Confessions from Gen Z: Welcome to the Workforce!

Posted on April 24, 2019 by Tim Sackett

Within the next month, several college students will be graduating and entering the workforce. This post is targeted towards you.

First of all, if you’re about to graduate and haven’t found a job yet, don’t freak out. It’s hard to land a full-time position before you graduate. Many businesses are looking to get employees in right away and may be turned off by the fact that you can’t start until after graduation. If you find a good company and they really want you, they will hold the job for you.

Landing your first full-time position after graduation is also difficult because you don’t have much experience yet. However, you are graduating at a great time. The economy is good, and companies are short on employees.

Secondly, working a full-time job is so much different than college. You’ve been in school for at least the last 15 years, but sitting at a desk for eight plus hours a day is very different.

While you were in school you sat in class most of the day and then came home to do homework at night. When you start out in an entry-level job, you will probably not have to bring work home every night or on the weekends. Sure, this may happen occasionally, but it won’t be as constant as homework was in school.

With this being said, you will probably have more free time in the evenings, but being at work all day is mentally, physically, and emotionally exhausting so you may not be up for doing much with your additional free time.

I consider myself an extrovert, but by the end of the day I don’t want to interact with people anymore because that is what I spent the last eight hours doing. When you are at work you have to constantly be “on” because the phone will ring, or someone could walk into your office at any point and you need to be prepared.

While in school you were also always surrounded by people your age. This is not the case when you first enter the workforce. Since our generation is just entering the workforce, finding coworkers our age is few and far between.

All of my coworkers are married and have kids, but I’ve gotten used to hearing stories about their kids and enjoy it. Having friends at work is great, but it’s also important to have friends outside of work too in order to separate yourself from work sometimes.

For those of you about to graduate from college, congratulations! Welcome to the real world. It is time to start “adulting!”

Mallory Armbrustmacher graduated from Grand Valley State University in 2017 with a BA in Human Resource Management. She is an HR Generalist with the State of Michigan, Talent and Economic Development Department Human Resource Office, where she coordinates ADA Reasonable Accommodations and Ergonomic Assessments. In addition, she takes the lead on various special projects, conducts new employee orientations, processes payroll, and assists in labor relations, classifications, and selection. She is currently studying for the SHRM-CP exam, but also loves spending time with her family and friends, playing games, and cooking.

Are You A Coach in HR?

Posted on April 23, 2019 by Tim Sackett

I read an article in The New Yorker, probably the best article I’ve read in a while, on the importance of “Coaching” by Atul Gawande. Atul is a writer and a surgeon, smart and creative – I should hate him, but he’s so freaking brilliant! From the article:

The concept of a coach is slippery. Coaches are not teachers, but they teach. They’re not your boss—in professional tennis, golf, and skating, the athlete hires and fires the coach—but they can be bossy. They don’t even have to be good at the sport. The famous Olympic gymnastics coach Bela Karolyi couldn’t do a split if his life depended on it. Mainly, they observe, they judge, and they guide.

As an HR Pro, I’ve always believed that HR has the ability to act as “coaches” across all vestiges of our organizations. The problem we run into is this, “You can’t coach me! You don’t know the first thing about Marketing, or Operations, or Accounting.” You’re right, good thing I’m not “teaching” you that! That’s why we hired you. Having a coaching culture in your organization starts during the selection process. Are you hiring people who are open to being coached?

Would Candidates Pay for Interview Feedback?

Posted on April 22, 2019 by Tim Sackett

I get my ideas in the shower. I have a busy life, so it seems like my downtime is that solid 5 to 10 minutes I get in the shower. I usually shower twice a day—once first thing in the morning, then before I go to bed. That’s 10 to 20 minutes daily to think and clean. I like going to bed clean. I like waking up with a shower. You’re welcome. You now know my daily cleaning habits. Thanks for stopping by today!

I’m not sure why ideas come to me. My wife says I’m not completely “right.” I get weird things that come into my head, at weird times. This morning I decided to stop fighting the candidate experience freaks (those people that think candidate experience actually matters, which it doesn’t as much as they think) and finally help them solve their problem. You won, freaks. But I damn well better get a lifetime achievement award at the next Candidate Experience Awards!

Here’s your solution: Charge candidates a fee to get feedback on their interviews.

<Drops mic, walks off stage, give me my award.>

Yeah, that’s what I just said. Let me give you the details; apparently, a couple of you just spit out your coffee.

Candidates want great feedback on their interviews, desperately. When someone really wants something, that certain thing becomes very valuable. HR shops in organizations have the ability to deliver this very valuable thing, but they don’t have the resources to do it well. By well, I mean really well: making that feedback personable, meaningful, and developmental.

Are you willing to spend 15 minutes debriefing a candidate after an interview… a candidate you don’t want? Of course not. What if that candidate paid you $10 for that feedback? That’s $40 per hour you could make just debriefing candidates. Couldn’t you go out and hire a sharp HR pro for like $30 per hour to do this job?

Yeah, that’s why I deserve awards. My ideas are groundbreaking. It’s a big burden to carry around.

Think of this as an airline. Airlines figured out that certain people are willing to pay an extra $25 to get on the plane first, or to be first in line. This is all you’re doing. You’re not taking advantage of anyone; you’re just offering a first-class candidate experience for those willing to pay for it. For those unwilling to pay for first class, they’ll get your coach experience. They’ll get a form letter that says thanks, no thanks, here’s a 10% off coupon on your next use of our service, or whatever you do to make that candidate experience seem special.

A first-class candidate experience for $10. Do you think candidates would pay for that? You’re damn straight they would! Big companies would actually have to establish departments for this! Goldman Sachs, give me a call, I’ll come set this up for you! GM, Ford and Chrysler, I’m like an hour away, let’s talk, I can come down any day next week.

It’s easy to dismiss a crazy idea that some guy came up with in the shower—until your competition starts doing it, it becomes the industry norm, or an HR Tech company builds the app and starts selling this a service. My Poppi (that’s what I called my Grandfather) always use to say, “Tim, it only costs a little more to go, first class.” People like first-class treatment. People want first-class treatment. People will pay for first-class treatment.

Would you pay for great interview feedback, so great it could be considered personal development? How much?

Is work fun?

Posted on April 19, 2019 by Tim Sackett

What do you think? Is work fun?

It’s really the question that keeps getting asked when we talk about the future of work, and employee experience, and employee engagement, etc. Do you believe that your work is “fun”?

Fun?

That’s the first problem, we really have to define what fun is. I mean if we are doing this all official HR-like, right!?! Let’s over-process and over-think this! What is fun? Is a scale for all of us. Is doing an employee file audit fun? Maybe not for you, but you know some of us like to get freaky, so no judgement on what you call fun!

Tyler Cowen has a new book coming out titled “Big Business” and in one section he asks this question: Is work fun? Here’s part of that section from the book:

To oversimplify by only a bit, they have to pay you to do it. And that suggests work is not in every way fun. Furthermore, for most people work is the main way that they interact with business on a daily basis, which means that business is associated with the activities that take some of the fun out of our lives. Bits of fun are drained on a very regular basis, often five days a week, but the paychecks arrive less frequently in most cases and often by the less visible means of direct deposit. So the stresses and tedium of the work are for many people more vivid than the wages they earn. And that in sum is one reason business is not entirely popular with the American public—or, indeed, with the public elsewhere in the world. Business is like the parent who tells you that you can’t have everything you want all the time.

Some recent studies and surveys illustrate the potential burden of work. Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman and economist Alan Krueger measure our “daily affective experiences” by having people wear beepers that go off at irregular intervals, at which time the people record what they are doing and their feelings. You can think of this as a technique for measuring moods. But the researchers ask about more than just the subjects’ feelings at a given point in time; they also ask how happy people are with various aspects of their lives. The study thus considers both momentary pleasure and the overall feeling of satisfaction from a life well spent, because happiness isn’t just a single thing with a unidimensional scale. For this study, the researchers recruited 909 employed women with an average age of thirty-eight and an average household income of $54,700.

And what did the researchers find? The highest-rated activities, from most favored to less favored, were intimate relations, socializing, relaxing, and prayer/worship/meditation. In the middle of the list were watching TV, preparing food, and talking on the phone, among other mundane activities. The bottom five were childcare, computer/email/ internet, housework, working, and—dead last—commuting.

So working is next to last in terms of producing a positive mood, and that is sad news. But that doesn’t mean we don’t like work; it only means we like other things better. And in fact, when you drill down, the ratio of people who have positive feelings about work to those who have negative feelings is just over 3.5 to 1. (That’s not as good as the 5.10 to 0.36 positive-to-negative ratio for intimate relations, but sex always was going to beat out work anyway.)

I love the concept of because we get ‘paid’ to work, that in of itself tells you that work isn’t fun, because in almost all cases people don’t get paid to do things that are ‘fun’. No one is getting paid to take vacations to Disney World. No one is getting paid to sit on the beach and sip frozen cocktails with zero responsibilities.

Now, I know a lot of people who get paid to do some fun stuff as part of their job, but that’s a small portion of their job, not their complete job.

I think for most of us, there are some aspects of our jobs that are fun. It’s a balance between some truly fun stuff and some stuff we are just getting paid to do, which if given a choice we would not choose to do if we weren’t being paid.

Does this then lead us down a path as leaders and HR pros to how do we add little bits of fun into work?

I think it’s something to test in our workplaces. Not forced fun. That’s the opposite of fun. But true, in the moments bits of fun. That’s the hard part, right? How do we free our leaders, or teach them, to have fun with their teams in the moment? If we figure that out, that probably unlocks a ton of positive outcomes for our employees and our organizations!

If Your Company has a Chief Happiness Officer you Should Rethink Your Career Path!

Posted on April 18, 2019 by Tim Sackett

In the past three weeks, I’ve been pitched by some well-meaning PR person about a story on how Google, Salesforce, Zappos, Airbnb, etc., have “Chief Happiness Officers” and how important they are to corporate success. Or at least, how “Happiness” as a measure is important to corporate success.

I’ve been pitched this idea four times, primarily so I would talk about their client, Snappy, which apparently is a chatbot of some kind that asks your employee questions to probably gauge their happiness or something, and in turn, you can then turn to your Chief Happiness Officer to fix the happy that is broken. (BTW – look for my new book in 2020 – “Fix the Happy!”)

Snappy might be some awesome tech, but I don’t like the pitch. I think that pitch is broken, for the real world. The real world is not Google and Zappos. Those are unicorns. Real companies have real issues and making their entitled employees happy is not one of those real issues.

I want to punch every Chief Happiness Officer in the smiling face!

Seriously, how completely warped do you have to be to think you actually bring happiness to another human being, let alone an entire company of human beings!?!

Will Smith is my Chief Happiness Officer:

Turns out CHO’s don’t make employees happy. Employees make themselves happy. No amount of money, or time off, or Taco Tuesdays, or standup desks or seven flavors of Kombucha in the employee cafe, will make a person happy. Happiness is an emotion controlled by the individual, no matter the environment they’re in.

There are great stories of prisoners at Auschwitz that chose love and happiness in the darkest hours and circumstances that anyone could imagine. There are people who win $500M lotteries that blow their head off because of how depressed they are. A CHO can’t change that.

Chief Happiness Officers are what happens to organizations when leadership gets out of control. When we stop actually leading and managing the business, and we ‘become’ leaders. When we start believing our own bullsh*t to a level where we think we actually control the emotions of our employees.

Look, I get it. I also want to drink the Kool-aid and believe in Santa Claus. Wouldn’t that be a wonderful, fantasy-filled life?! But that is life. 99.99% of us have to work to pay bills. Within that, we can choose to be happy, or miserable, or somewhere in between and that actually might have many times in the same day. No one person is going to make me happy or miserable unless I make that choice to allow that to happen.

There you go. That’s my take. Chief Life Officer, out.

Career Confessions of Gen Z: Three Golden Culture Rules During Organisational Growth

Posted on April 17, 2019 by Tim Sackett

During periods of growth in your organisation, maintaining your corporate culture and values can be one of the most challenging, yet rewarding, obstacles you could hurdle.

Watching a business take off in front you can be an awe-inspiring. As companies grow, lots of things start happening. If you’re building or reinforcing a water-tight corporate culture, it can be hard to know where you should be focusing your energy and time.

If you can do the following three things you’ll be setting yourself up for the next level.

UNDERSTAND YOU’RE IN IT FOR THE LONG-HAUL

This first rule is quite simple: acknowledge this is a long-term play. During times of growth it may be difficult to scale your investment into corporate culture. The ultimate corporate financial performance that comes from company values and culture done right can be a tempting revenue stream to dip into and misallocate elsewhere.

You have to stay disciplined (especially in the early days) and understand that your foundational culture and values are what got you to where you are. With the right scaling of investment with growth, it’s what will continue to take you to the next level.

GRIT THROUGH GROWING PAINS

The second rule of maintaining company culture during periods of growth is being at peace with the unavoidable changes that take place. If you’re anything like me, and you’re proud of your company culture, you’ll be trying your damned hardest to maintain it.

You’ll want to preserve those same values and feelings that came with being smaller. Your natural instinct will for sure be to impart your passion for the culture into every employee on the books.

However, if you can’t accept that not everyone is going to love it as much as you do, day in and day out, you’ll be fighting an uphill battle. Work with, not against, the idea that your employees will never love it as much as you do. Take your satisfaction from those who love it 80% or 60% or even just a fraction as much as you do and you’ll be winning.

DON’T GO AT IT ALONE

If you’re at the helm, don’t try to maintain your corporate culture by yourself. There will be times when it’s better to let your team to step up. Identify a small number of influential leaders who are most aligned and invested in the cultural vision.

By allowing these ambassadors to build the culture and also engage with their peers autonomously, changing faces aren’t left behind and instead become catalysts for positive evolution.

There’s so many different routes your organisation can take, but if you work with these three golden rules you can make great things happen.

Josh Milton-Edwards is a fledgling HR professional mad about all things culture, engagement and wellbeing. I work for an award winning best-practice culture department based in the UK. Soaking up every last bit of the experience before completing my HRM degree in 2019/20. Aiming high and can’t wait to see what more opportunities arise for the taking!

Career Confessions of Gen Z – The Bass Player

Posted on April 17, 2019 by Tim Sackett

Have you seen the movie Almost Famous? It’s a great movie but I’ve always struggled with watching the movie’s fictitious band, Stillwater, head towards disaster as they come to grips with fame.

The infighting of the band members is unnerving. The guitarist has a charisma that sets him apart from his band mates, and the lead singer is pissed that he isn’t recognized as the “front man”. There are a few other members of the band as well, but they don’t matter in the grand scheme. Long-term success of the band hinges on the tumultuous relationship between the guitarist and singer.

A while ago, I had the fortune of meeting three impressive individuals at a conference. These individuals are positioned incredibly well to bring a much needed, and very disruptive, product to an industry. They had great chemistry as a team and gave a well-polished elevator pitch as a three piece.

As I watched them woo a string of investors, I was trying to figure out the characteristics that made this team particularly impressive. Then, it hit me as I was having a sidebar with two of the members.

We were talking about the role each member played. In the midst of the explanation, one of the members excitedly blurted out that they were like the bass player of the “band”. The other member contested, saying that it was in fact themself that played the role of bass player. Some friendly jabs were thrown, and that’s when it hit me.

This band of innovators will continue be successful together because they were arguing about which member was the bass player. Not because they didn’t want to be the bass player, but because they were humble enough to each feel and understand that the bass player played as integral a role as the front person.

Seriously, who the hell wants to be the bass player?

Don’t get me wrong, I love all things music, and as a result, tremendously respect the role of the bass player.

If you’d like to geek out with me for a moment – a few favs among so many others include: John Paul Jones, Flea, Krist Novoselic, Sting, anything relative to reggae or jazz – but I digress. Bass players drive the song, and nothing can replace an iconic bass line.

Despite this, I’d argue we don’t always recognize them. As it translates into business, we often overlook the value individuals bring to the collaborative process of a project. Even if we tell ourselves we’re team players, and for most part exemplify it, it’s easy to slip into the trap of putting our own progress and recognition before team success.

All of this to say, it just wasn’t the case in what I experienced at the conference. I continued to watch this band take down question after question from investors. They had the upper hand.

Just like a break in the concert where each band member is highlighted and shows off their chops with a solo, each member took the leading role when it was their time during the Q&A, and then quietly slipped back into a supporting role as the next member rose to the occasion.

No Stillwater fate for these guys. I can’t wait to see what they do in the coming months. How about yourself – are you content being the bass player for your “band”?

Quintin Meek a talent consultant at Pillar Technology (part of Accenture Industry X.0). Also an active member of Detroit’s startup and tech community. Every day is something new and challenging, and I am learning more than ever before. I’m finding that I’ve become a lifelong student, and I’m excited to see how that continues to shape the road ahead.

The Tim Sackett Project

TA & HR Expert, Dad, Backup Point Guard on my over 40 men's team