Career Confessions from Gen-Z: Go Spend Some Time Abroad!

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Your favorite Gen-Z blogger has returned to the States! After a tumultuous day of traveling (I won’t bore you with the details), I returned on Tuesday night from my 6 week study abroad trip to Spain. My trip to Spain was the best timesof my life filled with so many cool new experiences all over the country, including a lot of new foods, shopping, and SO MUCH GELATO.

Ever since I started college, I knew that studying abroad was something that I definitely wanted to do. I didn’t necessarily know where I wanted to go, but I knew that I needed to go. Gotta travel while you’re young! Everyone always says that studying abroad will give you a whole new perspective to how you see the world, and I always thought that they were just being a little dramatic. Now, I have to agree with them and I have a new outlook.

Here in the United States, we tend to isolate ourselves. I’m not trying to make a political commentary, I understand it; the US is huge and we’re pretty far from the vast majority of other countries in the world. But by doing this, we are casting a portrayal of uncertainty to other cultures. We tend to know very little about other places and their people, especially if we have no personal attachment to that place.

By going abroad and communicating with people from a different culture, I was able to see that they’re not all that different from us. I was able to connect with these people that live thousands of miles away from me and form a bond with them. They may live their lives so differently (I mean, who likes eating dinner at 10), but we’re all out here just trying to live our lives as best as we can.

This trip has taught me that it is absolutely essential to expose yourself to different cultures, especially at a young age. Traveling is expensive and it can seem impossible for some people to spend time abroad, but I believe that exposing yourself to new cultures can teach you so much more than many classes can. It is rare that you will only ever interact with people from your culture, especially in the melting pot that is the USA. By having experience communicating and connecting with others from around the world, it will be easier to work with and relate to these people that you may interact with in your jobs, school, or wherever else.

I have learned so many lessons from Spain, but most importantly I have gained an appreciation for the world. There is so much amazing stuff out there that we don’t get to see and we may never get to see! It’s important that we encourage everyone to go out and have cool experiences all over the world. By fostering a global appreciation of other cultures, we could solve a ton of problems. So, @myparents, please start taking me on you vacations!

Also, I will be starting my first internship and full time job on Monday! If you have any advice for me or things that you’d like to hear about in upcoming blog posts, leave a comment!

Compliance vs. Contribution – What Kind of HR Pro Are You? #SHRM18

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I spoke at SHRM National yesterday. I have to say I love the SHRMies! I never feel out of place at a SHRM conference. The pros that come are like most of us. We are trying to get better. We aren’t perfect. We really want to do great work. We have challenges.

There is one thing, though, I can point to that seems to separate those SHRM HR pros who are moving quickly into modern HR, and those who are not.

It really can be boiled down to Compliance vs. Contribution.

Everyone in HR is concerned about compliance. It’s part of the gig. Those who ignore compliance do not have a long career in HR.

Compliance-focused HR is also a trap.

I’ve said this my entire career, that it’s not HR’s job to eliminate risk. It is HR’s job to mitigate and advise of risk.

Bad HR tries to eliminate risk, so much so, that it many times turns into threats. The treats sound like this:

“Jim, you can’t do that because we’ll get sued!” 

“Mary, you can’t ask your team to do that because it’s against policy!” 

“Pat, if you decide to take this direction we’ll have to get legal involved!” 

This is HR trying to eliminate risk. This is bad HR.

Here’s how HR contributes to the success of an organization while mitigating and advising of risk:

“Jim, I understand what it is you want to do. There’s some risk, let’s be clear about this. If ‘we’ go this direction, we have to be prepared for “X”. Knowing this, how do you want to move forward?”

“Mary, I definitely hear what you need from your team. There are some complications because we have some policies in place. It doesn’t mean we can break or change those policies but puts us at some risk in the future. How about instead we try this…”

“Pat, I’m a little uncomfortable going the route you want to take. I think it would be best for ‘us’ to get some insight from legal and see if they might have a less risky way for us to proceed.”

Compliance vs. Contribution is really just a change in language and communication. One will get most of your team to want to work with you and keep you in the loop. The other will shut off your team from wanting to interact with you, and actually increasing the likelihood they get themselves and the organization in trouble.

I love my SHRMies who are looking to contribute. I desperately want to turn on a light for my SHRM brothers and sisters who are so compliance focused they are missing a great opportunity to contribute the greater good of the organization!

Never stop trying to raise the profession.

The Talent Fix – My new SHRM Produced book is now available to purchase! If your organization is having trouble hiring, this is a must buy! 

Talent Fix Review: My mom says it’s her favorite book that I’ve written!!! (I’ve only written one book!)

Purchase The Talent Fix now! 

Your Weekly Dose of HR Tech: @ClaraLabs – Book More Interviews #SHRM18

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Today on The Weekly Dose I review the unique interview scheduling technology, Clara. Clara Labs uses an intelligent automation software platform and actual humans to ensure you get more interviews booked with the candidates you want.

What makes a great technology? It’s simplicity.

Scheduling an interview is overly tough. It’s a pain the ass, but it’s not intellectually difficult to figure out! Clara Labs figured out a way to take HR and Talent Acquisition out of the middle of this process, without candidates feeling like they’ve lost contact with your organization and/or your HR/TA Team.

I think most HR Tech companies on the market would call “Clara” A.I., but Clara Labs stays away from this popular jargon to not over complicate a very simplistic idea and process that everyone involved with scheduling interviews love – HR/TA, Candidates and Hiring Managers.

So, how does it work?

Basically, Clara works through your normal email communication channel. All you do is “CC” Clara in your email exchange, just like you would a Recruiting Operations/Admin-type person who would normally become your middle person to set this up.

Once you cc Clara, she takes over on both sides and schedules an interview with the candidate and the hiring manager. And does so using Natural Language Processes that makes everyone feel like it’s a real person doing the work.

You can simply say in the email:

“Hey! Tim, we would love to have you come in and meet with Mary and interview for the position. I”m going to have Clara set this up for us. Can’t wait to meet you in person!”

Clara then takes over and communicates back and forth with all parties finding a common time that works for everyone and even follows up as the meeting gets close to remind all parties.

Here’s where Clara is unique. If something happens that is out of the ordinary and the “Clara” can’t figure this out, a real human jumps into the process, as “Clara”, and takes over, so nothing ever falls through the cracks.

Sometimes setting up interviews gets complicated, or a candidate starts requesting or asking things during this process. It’s important for great candidate experience that these things are handled appropriately, and Clara Labs makes sure “a human is in the loop” when necessary!

I’m in love with simple tech that just works! Clara Labs actually used Clara to set up my demo and schedule a time with me and it really seemed like I was dealing with a real person and not a bot!

If your team is getting bogged down by being the ‘middle’ person in getting interviews set up, or if you’re the type of TA shop that has pushed this onto your hiring managers to set up, this is a great tool to help them! Before adding another person onto your Recruiting Ops team, this would be a great way to increase capacity on your team or pennies on the dollar!

Another great TA Tech you should be setting up a demo to see! If you are doing mass volume interviewing this would be a lifesaver!

The Weekly Dose – is a weekly series here at The Project to educate and inform everyone who stops by on a daily/weekly basis on some great recruiting and sourcing technologies that are on the market.  None of the companies who I highlight are paying me for this promotion.  There are so many really cool things going on in the tech space and I wanted to educate myself and share what I find.  If you want to be on The Weekly Dose – just send me a note – timsackett@comcast.net

Want help with your HR & TA Tech company – send me a message about my HR Tech Advisory Board experience.

#SHRM18 – Johnny Taylor is the Exciting Leader HR has Needed!

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I’ve been a SHRM member since 2001. Over that entire time, I have never been excited about the leadership of my professional organization in HR. It’s not that SHRM didn’t have good, solid leaders, but they were never people who inspired me in my profession.

At the SHRM National Conference this year in Chicago, Johnny Taylor, SHRM’s new CEO, will take the stage and many in attendance will get to meet the man for the very first time. I think you’re going to be impressed!

Now, this isn’t my first experience with Johnny. I first ran into Johnny about 8 or 10 years ago when he was an HR leader and doing the speaking circuit. I had never met him. He gets on stage and kills! I had to go on after, which is never a good feeling. In my mind, I was like, “this dude is going to be famous!” I’m not sure CEO of SHRM is famous, but he’s done alright for himself!

The podcast link below is from Joey Price’s Business, Life, & Coffee pod where he got Johnny to sit down with him and really open up about the HR profession like no other SHRM leader I’ve ever listened to. In terms of what Johnny (remember, the CEO of SHRM) thinks would be his ‘ideal’ HR professional, he had four attributes:

  1. P&L knowledge and responsibility, with Business Operations background.
  2. Experience managing people, with a high degree of empathy.
  3. Keen understanding of the legal landscape
  4. Strong sense of culture

Do you see anything on that list of an ideal HR pro that speaks to ‘functional’ expertise?

Johnny is the CEO the SHRM membership needs at this point in the history of our profession. Business savvy, great communicator, an HR leader who you easily see running your company. Not running HR, running your company.

Kudos to Joey Price for getting a great interview! Kudos to Johnny for opening up and letting the SHRM membership see who he’s all about. I’ll be cheering him on as a SHRM member and hope he’s wildly successful.

No pressure, Johnny! I’m sure you’ll kill at national!

The Talent Fix – My new SHRM Produced book is now available to purchase! If your organization is having trouble hiring, this is a must buy! 

Talent Fix Review: My mom says it’s her favorite book that I’ve written!!! (I’ve only written one book!)

Purchase The Talent Fix now! 

Career Confessions from Gen-Z: My Dad is the Greatest!

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I bet you didn’t expect a post from me on a Monday! Well here I am, with an extra post just to celebrate the creator of the Tim Sackett Project, the “foremost expert on workplace hugging”, HR microcelebrity, or otherwise known was my father. Many of you know my Dad from his witty blog posts or his presentations at HR conferences. While my Dad may be a fantastic writer and public speaker, he has a lot of cool, sometimes very strange, and special qualities/talents that I thought I would share!

  1. No one can make a better Valentine’s Day box. My brothers and I would have the coolest boxes every year growing up
  2. He is an expert griller and lawn mower#justdadthings
  3. He is really good at deciphering baseball signs and play calling signals from other teams’ coaches
  4. He can coach just about any sport and will make sure every kid not only improves, but has a super fun time
  5. He is one of the single most caring people in the world. He will go to the end of the Earth to help any person that he cares about
  6. He is really good at finding cool shoes, jackets etc, sending them to me, and then buying them for himself
  7. He can yell louder than most people at the referees at MSU basketball/football games
  8. He can give real and helpful advice for any situation. I wouldn’t have been able to make some extremely hard decisions these past years if it weren’t for his support
  9. He is able to come up with a wildly inappropriate joke/slogan/title for any possible situation
  10. He is the most hard working person in the world. You think you’re hustling, but my Dad is probably hustling harder!
  11. He can find a nickname for any single person
  12. He is an expert dog walker and can speak dog talk like no other
  13. He can find his way anywhere. I swear he has a GPS system in his brain. You could drop him in the middle of any city, and he’d find his way
  14. He is able to find the light and positivity in any situation. There are very few days where I haven’t seen my Dad smiling and laughing
  15. He is the most loving person I know. He loves a lot and unconditionally

As many of you know, my Dad is the greatest. He can write, run a successful business, make a pretty great family (in my opinion), basically he can do it all! There is nothing that I could do to ever repay him for all that he’s done for me, but I thought that I would just make his try and display amazingness for others to appreciate. Happy Father’s Day Dad! I love you so much.

-Cam

“We Can’t Find Talent!” Stop it! You sound dumb! #SHRM18

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So, I’m going to be speaking at SHRM National next week on Monday at 10:45am. The title of my talk is “What Your CEO Wishes HR & TA Would Start Doing!”

One of the things our CEO wishes we would start doing is finding them some talent! But, we tell them it’s “hard” to find talent. It’s not hard to find talent…

It’s hard to talk talent into coming to work for you when you virtually have no differentiating factors from any other job or company in your market.

I hate it when a CEO says, “We ‘only’ hire the best talent!”

No, you don’t! Stop it! You sound like an idiot!

You hire the talent that applies for your jobs at the time they are open that is willing to accept your average pay, your average benefits, your average hiring managers, your average work environment, and your average career ladder.

Does that sound like something the ‘best’ talent in the world is looking for?

The crazy part is we all actually do have something special in our organizations. What is it? How the hell should I know, it’s your organization, not mine! That’s for you to discover! Or make it up, no one really checks that closely to see if you’re actually telling the truth. Perception is the reality!

If you tell people you’re great, most will actually believe it if you put enough marketing and shine behind it!

See you in Chicago SHRMies!

The Talent Fix – My new SHRM Produced book is now available to purchase! If your organization is having trouble hiring, this is a must buy! 

Talent Fix Review: My mom says it’s her favorite book that I’ve written!!! (I’ve only written one book!)

Purchase The Talent Fix now! 

What do Americans Really Think About Labor Unions?

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So, if you’re in HR, like me, you’re probably sitting back waiting with anticipation for the Supreme Court of the United States to deliver a very important ruling around labor unions in the case Janus vs. AFSCME. It’s a case challenging the practice of public sector unions charging “agency fees” to employees who decline to join the union but who still benefit from the deals it bargains. The fees are typically similar to, but a bit lower than, union dues.

I’ve long said, on this blog, I think labor unions, in America, are virtually useless and ineffective for modern workers. I say this because in modern American hiring practices if you’re a bad employer with bad employment practices, you won’t get talent (hourly or salary) and you’ll go into death a spiral as a company.

Workers today, don’t need protection like they once did in America. But, that’s just my stupid opinion, and as soon as I say that someone always sends me an article or tells me of some bad company or industry where workers still do need protections. I get it! It’s not all or nothing, but you can’t tell me that unions today or doing the same work of the unions of our grandparents and great-grandparents!

Because of this Janus case, APM Research did a recent study to find out what Americans really think about this issue of should an employee be forced to pay union dues, or at least their fair share, or like the 28 states already have laws on the books, should employees be Right-for-Work which allows them to decide if they pay dues or not to work in those jobs?

Here’s what APM Research find? 

-Americans are evenly split in their preference for “fair share” (mandating some dues of all union workers) as opposed to “right-to-work” (where each worker covered by union contract may opt out of paying dues) policy regarding unionization.

– Democrats are in support of “fair share” more often, and Republicans are in support of “right to work” more often. No surprise!

– Surprisingly, lower educated workers (those you would think would be in support of unions) actually are more in support of right-to-work. Why? Probably because lower educated workers tend to make less money and if you make $15 per hour, a union taking “$X” out of that small $15 per hour doesn’t feel good at all! Basically, low-income workers, who are under a union contract, don’t see enough value in those dues to see it worth their while in paying.

– “Fair Share” is favored by about 60 percent of those who have direct union experience themselves or through a household member, and those living in North Eastern states. So, those with actual union experience more often see value in paying those dues.

– Stronger unions are preferred by at least two-thirds of women. Which clearly speaks to the historic employment injustices that most women still feel today.

– A majority of Americans (62%) indicate that “stronger” unions would be better for the country; only one-quarter indicate a preference for “weaker” unions.

Like with any study, you have to look at the sample. APM asked 1,000 American adults, so not huge, but it should be enough to representable, but we don’t know the demographic data behind the sample.

The crazy part about all of this is only 12% of full-time workers in America are covered by unions! So, if you ask 1,000 workers about unions, only 120 of them are even in union jobs. So, we, as Americans, have very strong views about unions, positive and negative, without much experience in actually working in or with unions in our careers.

Keep an eye out for the Janus decision! I’m sure the HR world will light up with opinions on what it means for the future work environment for millions of workers nationwide.

Career Confessions from Gen Z: If You’re Being Talked About, No Matter What, It’s Probably Good!?

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A hot topic on social media this week has been IHOP’s recent announcement of a temporary name change to IHOb, or International House of Burgers, in an attempt to increase sales for lunch and dinner. While I don’t particularly know of anyone that really loves IHOP, many of my peers have taken to social media, especially Twitter, to voice their opposition to IHOP’s decision. Many people are saying that it was a dumb branding move and IHOP should stick to pancakes, or that if IHOP wanted to make a change to its menu, it should’ve done something else.

While I may not have a fond view of IHOP (who wants to go to a chain breakfast place anyway??), I still think IHOP did something right here: millions of people are now talking about them. I mean here I am writing a damn blog post about them! It’s interesting as someone who is studying advertising to see something like this happen first hand. This really solidifies the notion that there is no such thing as bad publicity.

One thing that I have noticed about my generation is that we love to talk about things we hate. This may be true of everyone, but I’ve noticed it a lot amongst my peers. Rather than talk about things that we enjoy, Gen-Zer’s LOVE to go on and on about things they despise. For example, there was a video from Dr. Phil that got popular last year where a teenage girl, named Danielle Bregoli, got angry with the audience and said: “catch me outside, how bout dat”.

This video blew up and has created a career for this 15-year-old as a rapper (apparently) and an internet personality. Many people have voiced their negative opinions about this girl, but she always seems to stay relevant and does something that keeps her name in the conversation. Although many people voice their negative feelings towards her, they’re still talking about her!

This post has been as a result of me figuring out something: to be popular among young people, you don’t have to be well-liked.

I don’t know if IHOP’s sales are going to increase from this marketing campaign, but their name is in the conversation. If that was IHOP’s goal, they achieved it! I have found that more often than not, something that is disliked is going to be mentioned online before something that is well liked. Although I hate this, it’s just a matter of life! People love complaining!

So if you want to become popular amongst the youth, maybe hire a girl to throw a fit on national TV or change your name to something stupid. Just do anything that we will love to hate.

 

This post was written by Cameron Sackett (not Tim) – you can probably tell because it lacks grammatical errors!

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

Your Weekly Dose of HR Tech: @AltruLabs – Humanize Your Employment Brand

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Today on The Weekly Dose I review the employment branding technology Altru Labs. Altru Labs is an employment branding platform that will transform the way you create content, market your company’s employer brand and personalize the candidate experience.

How?

That’s the cool part! Mostly through your own employees, like a brand ambassador program, but different!

It’s kind of like Quora for your own company. Quora basically is a platform where people ask questions, and people who know answers will answer back. Altru Labs, through video, lets candidates ask questions and your employees answer using Altru’s simple mobile video app.

These videos are then embedded into your career site and searchable, so candidates can come onto your career site and discover almost anything they want about you, your jobs, your culture, etc.

On the talent acquisition side of Altru Labs, you have a great dashboard where you can actually funnel certain questions to certain employees who you think will be great at answering. Candidates can also pull all answers for a certain employee to see all of their content.

On the content side, you can share your employee videos on your career site, directly on a job description posting in your ATS, or through direct social promotion of your recruiters and employee ambassadors.

What I like about Altru Labs:

– Mobile-first design so you are using the power of every smartphone each of your employees is carrying with them as a potential employment branding distribution tool through short-range video.

– While it’s designed, originally, for recruiting talent, this is a mobile video sharing platform that can be used across your enterprise in L&D, HR, inter-team communications and knowledge share, etc. The usage is almost unlimited because of the ease of use and ability to search and share content.

– This truly gives you a tool to highlight your best employee advocates in a way candidates will love. Want to know what it’s really like to work at your company, at that location, in that position, for that manager? Yeah, that specific!!!

Very new technology on the market that has the potential to grow very quickly. Some very large brands, with employment marketing and branding teams, are already testing. The pricing model is currently designed for TA, but soon you’ll see this evolve as organizations will see other uses across the enterprise.

If you are looking to really energize your employment brand and/or employee ambassador program this is a must demo!

The Weekly Dose – is a weekly series here at The Project to educate and inform everyone who stops by on a daily/weekly basis on some great recruiting and sourcing technologies that are on the market.  None of the companies who I highlight are paying me for this promotion.  There are so many really cool things going on in the tech space and I wanted to educate myself and share what I find.  If you want to be on The Weekly Dose – just send me a note – timsackett@comcast.net

Want help with your HR & TA Tech company – send me a message about my HR Tech Advisory Board experience.

I wanted to be Anthony Bourdain.

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I didn’t anticipate that Anthony Bourdain’s suicide last week would have any impact on me. I loved watching his show. I love to cook, but I don’t consider myself a foodie. I love to travel, but I don’t consider myself worldly.

Anthony allowed me to be a foodie and worldly from the comfort of my own home, but even that wasn’t what I really loved about watching his show. He had this quality that I envied. The quality where you would find yourself saying, “when I grow up, I want to be like him”, except I’m grown and I still want to be like him.

Anthony went to some great places in the world, and he went to some shit holes. What I loved about Anthony was no matter where he went, he found beauty. Usually, the beauty he found was in the people he met. A simple meal, great conversation, moments. That was the true beauty of his show.

He was able to show me what was really important in life. Not that I didn’t know, but it’s rare for a personality to do it in such a way where you felt like you were sitting at the table with him. In fact, you felt at any time he could be at your table and the show would work just as well.

It didn’t have to be some exotic, out of the way, locale. When he came to Detroit, he said he wanted to be from Detroit. Come on! No one really wants to be from Detroit! Anthony did. He was a rare creature that wanted to be from everywhere because he saw the beauty in everywhere.

It wasn’t naïve. He also saw the shit. He saw the awfulness, which made him appreciate the beauty in all places. That’s what I envied most I think. It’s easy to beauty in beautiful places, it’s hard to see beauty in the worst places.

In the end, we don’t get enough of the moments that Anthony was creating. Some good food, some great company, with real conversations where we listen to the beauty and the pain. Where we take the time to have a two-hour meal and just enjoy each other.

Years ago, one of my most favorite people in the world past away, Leo Buscaglia (the Love Doctor). It was another death that impacted me more than I thought it would. I just knew I would desperately miss him.

An interesting thing happened, though, in that I didn’t miss him. I carried him with me. When I re-read his books, I heard his voice reading them to me. I could watch his talks on YouTube. I have a feeling I won’t miss Anthony as much as I think, because I’ll watch endless re-runs of his show, and it will feel like he’s still here with me.

I’m happy to have found Anthony Bourdain, along with millions of others. My life is better for having known him, even if he didn’t know me. He taught me how to be a better traveler. A better person in a small way. I so appreciate this.

I mourn for his friends and family that knew him intimately. For his daughter, that will spend a lifetime wondering why, and never being able to find an answer. I hope his death will save others, and maybe inspire all of us to sit down with friends more often and break bread and share a glass.

Regardless, I still want to be Anthony Bourdain…