The ‘Can’t Buy Me Love’ Internship Program!

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I’m a kid of the 80’s! Breakfast Club, Ferris Bueller, Pretty in Pink, St. Elmos.

There was one other movie from that era that stuck with me called “Can’t Buy Me Love”, starring a very young Mc Dreamy, Patrick Dempsey, and a very young, Amanda Peterson. Of course this was a favorite of mine because well let’s just I indentified with the main character!

Quick story line – Patrick Dempsey plays a nerd-type, nobody in high school who just wants to be one of the popular kids. Basically, the same plot line for every teen movie ever. He mows lawns and saves all of this money. He asks Amanda Peterson’s cheerleader character to be his girlfriend and he’ll pay her, believing that’s all it will take to make him popular.

She does it. She does the makeover on him. It works. It works too well. She really falls for him. He gets cocky. His world falls apart. He gets the girl in the end! God, I miss the 80’s!!!

The concept of ‘buying’ popularity is both brilliant and stupid. In high school, popularity is a valuable currency. If you have it, it’s awesome. If you don’t have it, you want it, but it’s not something that is very transferable. The key is association! If you’re in with the popular crowd or the right people or person, you can catch their popularity exhaust.

So, what’s the “Can’t Buy Me Love” Internship Program? 

Here’s what I’m thinking. If I was a college student, right now in the world, I would pay the right person, at the right company, to be their intern for the summer!

Stay with me.

Two kids graduate from a B-level college, both with a degree in business, both will similar GPAs. Kid #1 did summer internships with local organizations, mid-sized companies, good brands locally, solid stuff, nice resume. Kid #2 also did summer internships, but her internships were with Apple, Amazon, and Google.

Which kid are you going to hire? Which kid will get a job faster? Which kid will get the better offer?

Kid #2 – will get better everything!

So, it would be to the advantage of every kid to get the best internships possible! But, we know getting the best internships possible are super competitive and hard to get.

Next question: What is an internship, really?

An internship is an experience someone obtains that will help them obtain the next experience. That internship is basically validated by the organization, and more specifically, by the person who manages the intern.

How much would it cost me to get a manager/director/vice president at a major brand to let me ‘shadow’ them for the summer? $2,000? $5,000? Let’s say it’s for 10 weeks, and I’ll do anything this person wants me to do to help them, and I’ll show up every day and stay as long as they want.

Whatever it would cost, that money would be coming back to me 10X or 20X over my career when I hit the market looking for a job with “Giant Brand Experience” on my resume as an intern, with a reference from my ‘internship’ supervisor to back it up.

The “Can’t Buy Me Love” Internship Program!

But, instead of can’t buy me love, it’s really I Can Buy Me A Great Resume! Don’t hate the game, love the hustle! It comes down to how much are you willing to invest in your future? You were willing to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on that education. Don’t you think it’s worth a few thousand dollars more to separate your resume from the pack?

Food for thought, kids.

The Talent Fix – My new 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!)

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Career Confession of Gen Z: Flexible Work Hours Are Key to Recruiting Gen Z

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You may notice that I mention my Mom in a lot of my posts because I have the best Mom in the world. It’s just a fact. She has an agreement with my Dad that he’s not allowed to talk about her in his posts without permission, but I don’t have that agreement so, sorry Mom!

One thing that my Mom has always been super big on is sleep. Ever since my brothers and I were little, she made sure we got more than the recommended amount and now I can’t survive without 7-8 hours of sleep a night!

One thing that I have noticed during my time abroad here in Spain and during my time in Japan (I was in an exchange program in middle school) is that sleep is not as important here.  My 6-year-old host sister gets about 8 hours of sleep every night where I would get 11-12 when I was her age. My host parents maybe get 4 or 5. There is just a different culture around sleep in other countries.

Another thing that has stuck out to me is the late start times in Spain. The streets are usually dead before 9 a.m. and most shops don’t open until 10 or 11. People go out to bars and clubs at 1 or 2 and stay out until 4 or 5 and then, get up for work the next day!

Something that I enjoy about college is that you get to make your schedule around what times fit best for your own personal preferences. For me, I learn best in the mid-morning to mid-afternoon, but many of my friends learn best at night.

This is another thing where I don’t know which system is better. I don’t know if America’s “early bird gets the worm” is necessarily better than Spain’s later start times, but I do know that every person is different. Something that is really important to me is sleep and I know that in my 20s, I don’t want to have to go to bed at 9 or 10 pm in order to get the amount of sleep I need because my job starts super early in the morning.

This brings up something that I know I will look for in a job when I get out along with many of my fellow Gen-Z’ers: flexible start and end times.

I think it’s important to allow your employees to work at the times that are best for them. I have seen flex time discussed as a benefit for people with families but it also benefits those people that don’t work best in a traditional “9-5” setting. Maybe 11-7 works best for those night owls. I know that there is no part of me that will ever want to work a 7-3 like some people do. (Editor Dad note: Don’t you love how Cam believes ‘working’ 8 hours is 9-5, and now 8-5 with an hour lunch!)

Right before I wrote this post, I called my Mom to talk about how many hours of sleep we got as kids. When I told her what I was writing about, the first thing she said is “well Dad has his meetings first thing in the morning, so he can’t always let people do that”. I get it. I get that it doesn’t work for every company and every situation, but I think that flexibility is important to implement in as many ways as possible.

Let your employees get enough sleep and do their best work by allowing them some flexibility to sleep and work at the times that are best for them. So, if you want your Gen-Z employees to be competent the day after the Super Bowl or the Game of Thrones finale, it’s a good idea to let them sleep in a little bit. 

 

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.

Sometimes “Proof” is just another word for letting people suffer!

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I’m a formally trained and educated human resource professional. I’m a leader in my organization. I understand risk really well.

What I see far too often, and it seems like it’s happening more frequently, not less, in organizations are we (HR pros and leaders) are looking for defining proof before we are willing to do something about something that is wrong.

Malcolm Gladwell on this podcast Revisionist History said this quote:

“Sometimes “Proof” is just another word for letting people suffer.”

Think about that for a moment.

Many times we know something is going on is wrong, but we don’t have ‘proof’. We don’t have real proof of this wrongdoing, but we know with every part of our being that someone is being wronged. So, we do nothing. We let people suffer because we lack proof.

Proof is what most HR pros and leaders will hang their hat on. A great HR pro and leader won’t do anything without proof! We are trained and educated to have proof. Without proof, legally, we put ourselves in a risky position.

Here is my challenge to you.

Stop letting people suffer due to lack of proof. You have employees who are suffering and you are hiding behind lack of proof as a reason and it’s wrong.

Yes, you don’t have proof, and, yes, this might come back and bite you, but at some point, we have a foundational requirement to help others who are suffering, even if it gets us in trouble.

I’m willing to be fired for trying to do the right thing. I’m not willing to work in a career that allows people to suffer because I can’t ‘prove’ something. Hundreds of athletes get molested by a doctor because we don’t have proof. A hiring manager is racist but we don’t have proof. A co-worker is harassing another employee but we don’t have proof. Your CEO is a misogynist but you don’t have proof.

Sometimes “proof” is just another word for letting people suffer…

Who is suffering in your organization today?

Your Weekly Dose of HR Tech: @Job_Adx Smarter Programmatic Job Ad Spend

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Today on The Weekly Dose I review the programmatic job ad platform JobAdx. JobAdx is one of a handful of new platforms on the market that talent acquisition teams can utilize to run their own digital job advertising.

So, first I probably need to explain a little about what the heck is ‘programmatic’ advertising.“Programmatic” ad buying typically refers to the use of software to purchase digital advertising, as opposed to the traditional process that involves RFPs, human negotiations, and manual insertion orders. It’s using machines to buy ads, basically.

Traditionally, you probably did very little with your own job advertising. You might have actually did some old school newspaper advertising, posted your jobs on job boards, or more than likely you used an agency, who charges a fee/premium, who would advertise your ads on various sites.

JobAdX is an advanced digital advertising technology with Pay Per Applicant model. Instead of running ads where you pay-per-click (each time someone clicks on your ad), this new programmatic technology actually only charges you for those who apply. So, ultimately, this pay-per-applicant will be more expensive than pay-per-click on a per event basis, but cheaper overall because you’re only paying for what you want, applicants.

So, what the heck does it really do? 

That’s really the big question, isn’t it! Basically, a programmatic ad platform puts your job ad in front of candidates where they are all over the internet. Traditionally, you would put one ad on one site (a professional association site, let’s say). Some potential candidates might go to that site, but many would not. But, almost all potential candidates are somewhere on the internet searching and doing things.

The programmatic ad technology finds the individuals you are looking for and puts the ad, in real-time, in front of them at whatever site they happen to be at. A great example is buying shoes. I love shoes. I bought 3 pairs of shoes this week! So, I go to a site to look at shoes. I find a pair I like, but I know my wife will kill me if I buy one more pair of shoes!

So, I leave that site and go to another site like Facebook. And what do you know there is an ad for those same stupid shoes on Facebook! How did Facebook know!?! Facebook didn’t know, the programmatic ad engine did know! Welcome to the future of job advertising!

A nurse has certain behaviors when searching online that will tell the technology, most likely this person in a nurse, which then allows the programmatic job ad platform (JobAdx) to put your nurse job opening in front of this person multiple times, across multiple sites, not just traditional job search sites.

What I like about JobAdx:

– Programmatic job advertising should be used by every TA shop, regardless of your number of hires, especially if you’re struggling to get results via traditional means. The JobAdx platform is simple to use and allows you to control your spend and budget with an “auto-pilot” feature to make it somewhat idiot-proof (which I definitely need!).

– The JobAdx platform has a great dashboard for you to actually see which jobs are performing really well, and which ones are not performing, so you can increase your spend on those you need, and decrease or stop completely on the jobs you no longer need traffic on.

– Advanced technology within JobAdx will ensure that once a candidate applies that candidate will stop seeing your job ads, which is a much better candidate experience.

– There is frequency capping within JobAdx as well, which is basically an automatic set of rules which will stop showing your job ad to a person after so many times. The theory is once someone sees your ad, let’s say six times, they’ve shown you they aren’t interested, so let’s not show them that same ad again, but go show it to others.

The goal of the JobAdx is to empower employers to advertise jobs more dynamically using the power of Real-Time Job Delivery. I’m completely enthralled by the technology and I truly believe every TA shop should be testing programmatic in their own shops. Go check out JobAdx and get a demo, then put a few hundred or thousand dollars you spend on traditional advertising and try it using programmatic.

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’m in Indeed Jail! Help me!!! #FreeTimSackett

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Do you remember when getting stuck in LinkedIn Jail was all the rage!? I do! It was awful! There you were stuck on the outside looking in not being able to use a valuable tool you used every day to help you do your job.

I’m in Indeed Jail!

It’s somewhat like being in LinkedIn Jail, but different. When you got put into LinkedIn Jail, LinkedIn decided that that right thing to do was to let us know why we were in jail, and then, specifically, how do you get yourself out of LinkedIn Jail. Seems like a good business strategy.

How does Indeed get you all of those great candidates?

The Indeed model built a decade ago was freaking brilliant! Basically, the idea was scrap all the jobs from all the career sites so candidates will have one place to go to search for jobs. No one understood Google SEO at the time, so they scraped the jobs, then bought all the SEO and owned the space.

So, any candidate who was searching for a job on Google the first thing that would come up, always, was an Indeed link. They trained entire generations to search for jobs by going to Indeed. Brilliant!

Now, Google came along eventually and woke up to this and said, “Hey, wait, candidates are searching on Google for things like “Jobs near me” and we are sending them to Indeed for things that aren’t even what they are truly looking for. We can do this better!” Hello, Google for Jobs!

Google for Jobs decided “candidates are the most important thing”. Your Indeed sales rep will tell you this as well, although, they didn’t ever say this until Google for Jobs came along! So, Google changes the game, stops indexing Indeed (which is like a death sentence to companies that rely on Google search traffic), and says we can deliver a better job search for candidates.

So, Indeed is basically a dead man walking, but they have this window of time when we still have the entire world trained to go to Indeed and not Google. So, how do you take advantage of this phenomenon? INDEED JAIL!!! Cut off the non-suspecting companies of their free traffic and charge them money before they realize they don’t really need to do this because Google will give them the traffic they need.

So, what’s Indeed Jail?

Indeed Jail is when Indeed makes the decision to stop scrapping your career site and posting your jobs on Indeed. Almost every company at some point in the past decade has enjoyed a lot of free, organic traffic from having their job posting on Indeed. It was an AWESOME business strategy. It basically followed LinkedIn’s strategy, who followed basic drug dealing strategy.

Get people hooked on your product, then take it away and make them pay if they want it. I don’t say that to be mean! It freaking works really, really well! LinkedIn is a multi-Billion dollar company that got bought by Microsoft.

Indeed Jail is when Indeed stops giving you those free hits! Now, they just don’t take it away for no reason. My reason to be cut off, I was told, was because of a magical, mythical division within Indeed called “Search Quality”. My Indeed Rep didn’t shut me off, no! It was “Search Quality” who shut me off, and my Indeed Rep has absolutely nothing to do with Search Quality. In fact, they run almost as a separate company, locked away in an undisclosed, secret location!

My “Search Quality” issue was I’m a staffing company. An example of my issue is we work with a major employer to fill contract positions, not a position they would hire direct. The company gave us a job description for the contract position, which was basically the exact same JD they use to hire direct. Because the direct employer has priority at Indeed, and my posting was ‘too similar” my ‘search quality’ was bad.

Okay, I’m in Jail, Ouch, that hurts! Help me fix it! 

Let me say, I’m paying and have paid money to Indeed for various products, so it’s not like I’m not a customer. So, when you ask someone you’re paying for help, you expect help. But Indeed has no interest in helping you fix your search quality issue because that would mean you would get the product for free again!

I would love to tell you this is a staffing industry only issue, but it’s not. Little by little, and I have specific examples, corporate Talent Acquisition is also getting hit with ‘search quality’ issues and losing their free traffic from Indeed.

How can that be!?

Believe me, the corporate TA leaders I’m talking to are wondering the same thing. In one example, an Ohio-based employer is hiring hundreds of sales-related positions per year. They don’t use any staffing or RPO vendors, all the work is done in-house for direct positions. They have a big growth initiative so they went from maybe 50 openings to 200 openings, and Indeed cut them off! Because of ‘search quality’, and again, their rep would/could not help them.

I have a feeling this isn’t going to end well for Indeed. Right now they’re flying high! Going to hire thousands of more employees, which makes complete sense, because if you shut everyone off of free traffic, you’ll have a lot of TA pros panicking and buying Indeed products. At least until they discover it continues to cost more for less and less traffic as Google no longer indexes Indeed.

I’ve sent emails to the highest reaches of Indeed, pleading for help, and the only response I got back was from my rep offering to sell me more products!

I explained that I want this to be positive! Show me how to fix me, and I’ll show others how to fix themselves! Along the way, it’s a win/win since the more we understand about the Indeed products and services and feel like a vendor is truly helping us, we (as an industry) will support them!

Crickets!!! Crickets, I say, Chris Hyams!!!

So, what should you do to NOT get yourself in Indeed Jail?  

1. Never pay one dime to Indeed!!!

  • So one thing that has been pretty consistent with everyone I’ve spoken to that got put into Indeed Jail is that they were all (100%) paying customers of Indeed. Almost, like Indeed knew we were willing to pay for traffic, so they put us into jail on purpose! Up until the point of becoming a paid Indeed customer, none of the people I spoke ever had issues with being put in Indeed Jail!

2. Make sure you understand what is ‘bad’ search quality for Indeed. Good luck with this!

3. Enjoy the free traffic while you have it because eventually everyone will be shut off. Drug dealing works because we get addicted. You’re currently addicted to free Indeed traffic. That isn’t a sustainable model for a business.

So, what do you do if you’re already in Indeed Jail? 

1. Understand you’re not alone.

2. Understand that your true reality is you can live without Indeed traffic, and slowly but surely the traffic you get from Google will be greater. So, focus on ensuring your ATS and Jobs are as aligned as possible with the Google Job Schema – it’s super important!

3. Understand if you want more Indeed hits, you better get ready to pay for them from Indeed.

4. Understand Indeed has no vested interested in helping you fix your search quality issue, even if you’re a paid customer because it costs them money.

5. Look at Programmatic Job Advertising tools like: JobAdX, Talroo, Appcast, etc. Increase your posting strategy with sites like ZipRecruiter, CareerBuilder, Monster, LinkedIn, etc.  Invest in your own database with some talent rediscovery tools, use CRM technology, build and nurture your pipelines of talent.

My Offer Still Stands!

Chris Hyams, the President of Indeed, get your team to help fix my stuff and I’ll be your biggest fan in advocating and teaching others how to do right by candidates and by Indeed to make the world a better place. That’s all I ever wanted, for you to just help me. Help a paying customer fix their stuff. But you refused.

#FreeTimSackett

Career Confessions of Gen Z: What Would ‘Siesta’ Look Like in America?

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One of the hardest things for me to get used to during my time abroad is the different schedule. The meals in Spain (and in many other countries) are later, generally, lunch is eaten around 2 and dinner is eaten around 9 or 10. These late eating times are killing me, and I am constantly hungry all morning and late afternoon.

Although I can’t stand the eating schedule, one of my favorite things about Spain so far is the siesta time. If you’ve never heard of it, there is a built-in time after lunch for everyone to rest or take a little nap before they head back to work or do their other afternoon activities. Everyone heads home from work or school, eats a huge meal, and then takes a quick, little nap.

A big cultural difference between Spain and America centers around the schedules and hours that people work. The average American from age 25-54 works about 40 hours a week, while the average Spaniard works about 38.5 hours a week. Although there isn’t a huge difference in this amount, the hours of the day worked is really different. In America, you hear about the “9-5” or as my Dad likes to tell me “now everyone works 8-5”. In Spain, people go to work around 9, come home from about 2-4:30/5 and return to work for another 2 or 3 hours.

In Spain, this break in the middle of the day allows families to spend quality time together in the middle of the day. There were many years of my life where my whole family would maybe have one meal together a week, and my parents made it a priority to eat together as much as possible. There are many important benefits of spending time together as a family, such as building self-esteem and relieving stress.

In a society where depression rates among teens are at an all-time high, I think that a schedule with built-in family time (and nap time!) is a pretty freaking great idea. Every year that I’ve gotten older, I see my family less and less and that sucks! People around my age in Spain get to see their entire family every day!

Now, we can blame my lack of family time on the fact that I live in a different city but I lived at home for the majority of my life and there were many days where I got to see my Dad for maybe 10 minutes. My Dad is pretty great and I want to see him for more than 10 minutes a day! (Editor/Dad note: FYI – I did not add this line!) 

I’m not saying that I think this type of schedule would work in America. This schedule works in Spain because of the culture here, and I don’t believe that this would work well in America, but we can learn a lesson here. In my opinion, sacrificing a little bit of work time to spend time with your family can have some really great benefits. And who doesn’t love a little afternoon nap?!

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.

Do You Work in a HR Center of Excellence?

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Is your HR department the best in the biz? If you answered “yes” you’re probably stretching it – but we know a few HR experts who can actually help you get there! The FOT team is made up of industry pros from multiple top-notch HR shops (with the awards to prove it), and now they want to tell YOU how to be awesome at HR too during our upcoming webinar.

Join us on June 7th at 1 PM ET for our webinar, The FOT Guide to Building an HR Center of Excellence sponsored by Paycor where we will reveal our trade secrets to making your HR shop #Goals by sharing:

– How to build a solid HR team from the ground up that will put you on track to become a Center of Excellence

– The 6 pillars necessary to any HR team’s success, and how you can use each one to propel your organization towards greatness

– 3 key insights that will allow you to move past the foundational HR and put you on a clear path to HR excellence

– A FREE tool that will allow you to pinpoint where your team is at on the journey to becoming an HR Center of Excellence

Kris Dunn and I will lead you through how the FOT team would build out your HR COE from scratch, or from where you are right now no matter how bad you think you might be broken!

FOT believes that every HR shop can be a COE. It’s not easy, but it’s also not like we are trying to launch the Space Shuttle! What you need is the knowledge and the plan, which we will give you!

It all goes down on June 7th at 1 PM ET (Noon CT, and 10 AM PT).

Register today for this Free Webinar

My Wife Approves of this Blog Post! (And we have a rule I can’t write about her!)

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Around Mother’s Day, the PR folks at Salary.com sent me an infographic. (Editor’s Note: please do not take this as an invitation to send me your infographic! I get at least one per day. I know it’s your job to push these onto people in hopes they’ll publish and you’ll get SEO, but most of them are awful. Yes, you’re is awful!) This salary.com piece caught my eye because it listed what a Stay-at-Home Mom should make for a salary!

So, what do you think that amount is!?

For 2018, salary.com figured a stay-at-home Mom should make a salary of $162,581!!!

That’s a nice salary! I will tell you my wife definitely makes that much! Because she takes home 100% of what I take home! 😉 BTW – Mom’s got a $5000 raise from 2017. Pretty nice!

Check out the infographic – it lists Mom’s salary from 2009 ($122,732) to present. I think Mom’s in 2009 were way overpaid by the way!

My wife and I have an agreement, a marriage contract, that I can’t write about her, which I break about 2-3 times per year. I try to break it in the best way possible that makes her look like the Hall of Fame wife and mom she is, and in return puts me in good graces! She says I should write a book on how to be a good husband because I’m 100% a great husband about 60% of the time.

So, I need to break down this $162,581. That’s a big number, but like most compensation figures, it’s just magically made up from bad data and we just end up paying the figure that we have to pay, if we want the talent. Yes, that was a shot a the compensation profession, err, arts, err, black magic…

My wife is worth $162,581 assuming I actually have that much to pay her. Otherwise, she’s probably worth more or less, based on the budget!

Here’s what I, and my 3 boys,  get for my $162,581:

  • Unlimited consultation with every decision and action we take.
  • Expert advice on everything, except technology and anything out of doors.
  • Someone who will fight to the death for your honor, will also putting you in your place.
  • A magical person who somehow gets out every stain.
  • A house so clean people think we must be selling it.
  • An endless supply of boxes on the front porch for places like Amazon, JCrew, Ann Taylor, Banana Republic, Target, etc.
  • Well prepared meals that are both tasty and nutritious, unless it’s been a hard day, then it’s probably pizza.
  • A full rundown and recap of what my family has been up to on social media all day.
  • A fully functioning teacher that knows something about everything. Plus, full editing capabilities on all papers.
  • Exercise coach and in-home Physical Therapist. Untrained Nurse Practitioner, but fully functioning.
  • Pet Therapist, dog walker, Vet assistant.
  • Neighborhood Uber driver and security guard.
  • Other wifely duties I’m contractually obligated not to discuss on this blog or any public forum.

I know I’m missing things. It would impossible to actually list out all of the duties of a stay-at-home mom, because they get asked to do everything!

If my wife goes away from 24 hours, our world falls apart and I quit the job of stay-at-home Dad before she gets far enough away from the house to hear me scream in terror! Stay-at-home moms are the real superheroes in the world.

I’ve been telling this to anyone who will listen for years now, the best hire you will ever make in your business, is to hire a woman who had to stay at home and raise kids for an extended period of time! They actually love coming to work, and they work! It’s like magic!

When a hiring manager tells me they don’t want to interview a woman because she has been at home for 5 years, I punch them in the face and fire them, because they’re an idiot! They have the potential to hire a unicorn! You don’t ever pass up hiring a unicorn!

 

Your Weekly Dose of HR Tech: @TextRecruit Drip Campaigns Really Work!

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Today on the Weekly Dose I review TextRecruit‘s new Drip Campaign feature that my team is actually really using!

So, I don’t talk a lot about my tech stack, because I think it’s a real differentiator when it comes to running a staffing company. In fact, I’m fairly cocky about telling clients I know for a fact, my tech stack is better than theirs, which is why my team can find and attract talent faster than theirs can!

We use TextRecruit.

Why?

Because being able to text candidates, more than one at a time, is critical for recruiting success. Plus, I need a way for my recruiting team to manage multiple text conversations at a time, and a platform that will capture all of those conversations.

So, we have been using TextRecruit with a high rate of success when it comes to getting more reply rates than we could with email, InMail, and phone calls.

So, what are Drip Campaigns using TextRecruit?

Drip Campaigns are a series of automated text messages built to drive deeper engagement with candidates. They help you automate text messages based on whether your candidates respond, and engage them with the right message at the right time.

They work like this:

  • Create the different messages you want to send to your candidates and decide how much time you want between them
  • Once you start your campaign, candidates that respond will stop receiving messages while unresponsive candidates move to the next drip message
  • After the campaign, you can check your analytics to see your response rates

We do a lot of message testing so it might look something like this:

Message #1 – “Hey ‘Candidate name’ it’s Tim from HRU. I’ve got this awesome position we need to talk about. Let me know when you’re available.”

No response.

Message #2 – “”Candidate Name”, it’s Tim again! Here’s the link to that position I texted you about. Contact me back and I can give you more details!” 

Still no response.

Message #3 – “It’s Tim! I’m stalking you! No, really, I really do think you’ll like this position. Just let me know “Yes” or “No” and I’ll stop bugging you about this position.” 

What!? Still no response. Remember, even a response of “No, I’m not interested” is a good response, because now you at least know something about that candidate, and you can respond back with “Okay! Is there something you would be interested in and I’ll make sure I put that note on your profile?”

Message #4 – “Last Chance! I don’t want to assume you’re not interested until I really hear from you. Here’s the link again. Just text me back!” 

We set up the messages. The candidate sees it as a personal text to them, with their name embedded, if you have that as part of the message, and the TextRecruit technology does the rest! Easy to set up and use.

So, what’s the response rate? 

70%! (this is my team’s response rate when using the drip campaign method – I can’t guarantee your results will be the same)

That’s an unreal number for recruiting response! You can send out 4 emails to 100 candidates in a drip campaign and you might get a 15-20% response rate. The cool thing is the technology is running the interactions and letting your recruiters respond to those who are interested.

TA pros and leaders ask me constantly how they can get more candidates. One thing that I know that works, is you need to start communicating with candidates in a mode they will respond to.

Editor’s note: I pay to use TextRecruit as part of my tech stack. Many will assume this is a paid commercial and I don’t pay for the tech. I do. 

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.

Skilled Trades Aren’t Sexy to Gen Z and Millennials!

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Wow! Really!?

Here are some other things that might surprise you:

  • They also don’t hang out on Facebook
  • They like Smartphones and using Snapchat
  • You shouldn’t pee into the wind
  • They think you’re old!

No shit, Sherlock, that younger people don’t find the Skilled Trades sexy!

I’m old. I was listening to NPR on way to work the other day and this well-meaning Gen X dude gets on the radio and says, “the problem we have in skilled trades is that teens don’t find them sexy”.

I’m like, of course, they don’t find the skilled trades sexy. Most don’t even know what the heck ‘skilled trades’ means, and if you show them, they still won’t find them ‘sexy’! Okay, well not ‘sexy’, but they should see what a great, stable job the skilled trades can be.

Um, yeah, no, you understand how young people think, right!?

Stable. Good pay and benefits. Something you can do for forty years and get a good retirement and pension. Are all things that will get young people to run away from whatever it is you’re trying to fool them into doing!

So, how do I get young people interested in the Skilled Trades? 

I don’t!!!

I get 35-year-old people interested in skilled trades!

You know what’s great about 35-year-old people? They can start to see the end. Sure that end is 25+ years out, but they start thinking I need to get my life together and do something that is (wait for it!), stable! Something that pays well and has ‘solid’ benefits. Something I can retire doing!

I don’t need 18-25-year-olds to fill skilled trades jobs. Those kids suck at showing up to work and listening! You know who’s really good at showing up to work and listening? 35-year-olds!

If you go into any retail store, gas station, restaurant, etc. and you say, “Hey, I’ve got a job that I’ll train you to do and you can earn a great living and have great benefits until you retire, and you’ll always have a job”, you’ll be like the Pied Piper leading people to your jobs!

The entire way we (and by “we”, I mean you!) is that you go hire 35-year-old people who have shown you that they are willing to show up to work, do work when they show up, but maybe they actually want to add something to their life that gives them a little more stability.

That 18-25-year-old doesn’t want your boring, stable, well-paying job, in which they must dirty their hands. They still have aspirations someone is going to pay them six figures to do nothing and give them a VP title.

By 35 we’ve had that beaten out of us. We’ve been humping $40K jobs for 15 years and we’ve almost, but not quite, given up on hope. You Mrs. Skilled Trades Job Lady are that beacon of hope!!!

Teens won’t solve the skilled trades shortage in America. That is something that is a waste of time for us to try and solve. “So, you, um, want me to stick my hand in a toilet!? Yeah, isn’t there an app for that?”

The 35-year-old has stuck their hands in worst places than toilets and they’re ready to work their butts off for your great skilled trades job. All they need is some love, some training, and a chance.

Skilled Trades jobs aren’t sexy to young people, but you already know that…