The Talent Acquisition Trends You Need to Focus on for 2018!

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Hey gang!

My buddy, Kris Dunn, and I will be leading a free webinar tomorrow talking about the talent acquisition trends you should be focusing on in 2018 that will have the fastest and most lasting impact to your talent strategy success.

Artificial intelligence, Google for Jobs and other hot topics are dominating conversations across the recruitment industry. But at the end of the day, do they really impact your business?

With new recruitment trends popping up all the time, you need to know which ones are worth getting behind — and which fleeting ones you can afford to ignore. Most importantly, you need to be able to cut through the noise and align your business around strategies that will position you firmly ahead of your competition in 2018 and beyond.

Talent acquisition experts Tim Sackett and Kris Dunn will join CareerBuilder’s Scott Helmes to address these issues and more in a new CareerBuilder webinar, “AI, Google for Jobs & More: Talent Acquisition Trends You Need to Focus on in 2018 (And Buzzwords to Ignore)” at 1 p.m. EST on Tuesday, Dec. 5th. (That’s tomorrow!) 

You will walk away with:

  • Tips on how to position your business to have the best staffing and recruiting year ever in 2018
  • Insights on key talent acquisition and staffing trends — and how they will impact your business
  • Strategies to be more efficient and productive so you can show 2018 who’s boss

Register Now

Come join the conversation and start off 2018 on a great path of recruiting success! 

Your Male Employees Are Running Scared!

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Ugh, I don’t even know if I want to write about this, but I just got back from the Recruiting Trends and Talent Tech Conference, and this one subject dominated most of my conversations in one way or another.

First, don’t think I’m looking for compassion for men. As a gender, we’ve dug our own hole pretty deep over the years. Let’s face it, many of us men can be super creepy at times, and unless you’re totally disconnected, we’ve been seeing this play out very publicly recently.

One thing is very certain in my eyes, dudes are paying attention to what is happening around sexual harassment, and probably for the first time in our history!

That’s a good thing. The stories I’m hearing from female friends and peers about dudes that I know is sickening. And, I’m the dude who goes to every conference and pulls some unsuspecting lady on stage and hugs her publicly! Thankfully, I wrote the workplace hugging rules, so it’s only semi-creepy when I do this!

Like everything that happens in our society it usually comes with both good and bad outcomes. An outcome of being more aware of how males act towards females is hopefully more appropriate, professional behavior in all interactions between the sexes. It won’t stop. Let’s face it, some dudes are born super creepy, and they’ll continue to be super creepy.

A negative outcome of this awareness is good dudes being scared to act normally because of what might be perceived as some pervy behavior. I’ll give you an example. I was at dinner with a large group at the Recruiting Trends conference this past week and we were all staying in different hotels.

One of the females in our group was at a hotel by herself, it was dark, and in ‘normal’ times, 100% of the time I would have walked her back to her hotel on a dark night, in the city. 100%. I didn’t.

I was scared of the perception this woman would have of me, thinking I was trying to come on to her. I was scared what other females in the group might think of me being so ‘presumptive’ that this female needed me to ‘help’ her get safely back to her hotel.

I apologized to this lady the next day. As a man, raised by women, I was embarrassed that I let what is happening in the media change my views of who I am. I should have done the ‘right’ thing and walked her to her hotel so she wasn’t alone.

The next day I spoke to both men and women about this, together, and the group understood, but also said, “hey, Tim, but you’re not creepy’. Great, but how do I know? How do others know? How does one woman define creepy from another?

All of this bad behavior by men coming out publicly is good for the world, but don’t think it doesn’t come with major cultural change as well.  Chivalry can be viewed as wanted and unwanted, and if there is a 1% chance I think it might be unwanted, I’m out! I can not take that professional risk!

Men are running scared in your workforce right now. Much of that fear, for some, is very warranted. They should be scared based on how they’ve been awful. Some of it is an unintended consequence of making society better as a whole.

I guess if you want me to walk you back to your hotel in 2018 I would appreciate you asking me instead of me offering, so I know for sure I’m not being creepy!

Hit me in the comments. What other things are males doing that we probably view as ‘helpful’ that ladies are viewing as ‘creepy’?

4 Things Great Recruiters Do Every Day!

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I’ve hired over one hundred recruiters in my career.  Not a ton, but a pretty good sample size.  I’ve had some of those hires go on to become great Talent Acquisition pros, as well as some who have completely bombed in the profession.  It’s not an easy profession to be successful at, but I’ve seen some basic things that the most successful recruiters, I know, do every single thing day:

  1. Daily motivation. Great recruiters are self-motivated by nature, but the best ones still find ways to give themselves that extra little kick every day. It might be one client or job order they decide they will close on that day. It might be an activity number they challenge themselves with for the day.  It might just be re-centring on a larger overall goal they are chasing and what they’re doing in that day will mean to reach that goal.
  1. Critical of their own work. The best recruiters I’ve worked with own their orders, candidates, interviews, etc. There is no blame.  An interview is a no-show, they own it.  They can look inward and go, next time I won’t have this happen because I’m going to do that one more thing to ensure it’s successful.
  1. They step up. Hey, guys, we have a really critical position that just came open from a hiring manager, who wants it? The best recruiters always step up and want to work those high profile openings.  They want the challenge, and they are comfortable with the pressure.  They also step up with their ideas on how the organization can get better, and share freely.
  1. Daily focus. Successful recruiters can focus in and finish, every day. It’s so easy in recruiting to get pulled in a hundred different directions.  The most successful people stay focused on the job at hand and don’t allow the ‘noise’ to take them off their plan.  They find ways to lock themselves in and keep going until they reach their outcome.

HR and Recruiting both have the same main daily issue we face, we turn ourselves into firefighters.  We run from made up emergency to made up emergency.  It feeds our need to feel like we accomplished something today and became a saviour.

The most successful recruiters are no different.  They get the opportunity to be firefighters, just like we all do, but they make a conscious decision not to allow themselves to slide down the pole. How can you make yourself more successful today?

T3 – Which Applicant Tracking System (ATS) is the best?

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I’ve said this a number of times, but it’s the question that never goes away. It’s the single most asked question I get in person, online, through email and messaging. There hasn’t been a week go by in the past two years where I’m not asked in some form this question!

The question comes in a number of variations:

  • Which ATS do you use?
  • Which ATS should we use?
  • Which ATS is the best?

I get it! Talent Acquisition is finally moving from awkward teen to young adult. It’s time we stop driving the hand-me-down beater and buy our first new car! We don’t want to make a bad choice and buy a lemon, and unfortunately, Consumer’s Report has yet to give us a list of the ATS “Best Buys”.

This is one reason I love Ongig’s, and Rob Kelly’s continued research and analysis of the Applicant Tracking market. This past week Ongig released their 2017 version of The Top Applicant Tracking Systems Annual Report. I love this report because there’s nothing else like it on the planet! I also like it because the ATS vendors try and tear it apart, which tells me it’s probably fairly accurate!

If it wasn’t good, they would make fun it and laugh it off. We see that frequently with these types of reports that are built on bad data, but this report hits them differently, and most find some value out of what it’s saying. I’ll say, that the 2017 report is far in away the best one that Rob and Ongig have put out!

The data comes from over 3,000 employers from SMB to Enterprise, so a great sample size.

Here are some highlights from the report:

– There are hundreds of ATSs on the market, but Ongig found about 99 ATSs make up almost 100% of the market.

“Homegrown” is not the name of an ATS (although you could now get some great SEO if you changed your ATS name to “Homegrown”!) it means a company built their own, or they’re using MS Excel, etc.

– Depending on how many job open at one time, there’s a popular ATS for your size:

  • 1000+ job openings (Enterprise) – Taleo, IBM Kenexa and iCims are the top three (TalentStream by CareerBuilder is one that pops up here with a good chunk of market share that I would think would surprise people – built in the last two years, TalentStream is more advanced from a technology perspective than most of the big boys)
  • 999 to 250 (Large) – Taleo, IBM Kenexa, and iCims
  • 249 to 100 (Mid to Large) – Taleo, iCims, and Kenexa are the top three, but #4 you begin to see Jobvite.
  • 99 – 25 (Mid)  – Taleo, Jobvite, and Greenhouse. I’ll say if you have under 100 job openings at any one time there is no reason you should be using Taleo!
  • 24-10 (SMB) – Greenhouse, Taleo, Lever and SmartRecruiters.
  • 0-9 (Small) – SmartRecruiters, Greenhouse, Lever.

– Fastest Growing ATSs might be a better gauge at what ATSs you should be demoing! Those are (in order): Greenhouse, SmartRecruiters, WorkDay, and Lever. I’ll say WorkDay gets in under ‘fastest’ growing, but only because they convert their HRIS clients over to the recruiting product.

– The top ATS market for staffing agencies is: Bullhorn, PC Recruiter, BrightMove, CATS ATS, Crelate, and Compas. The problem here is most are built for direct-hire staffing and not contingent staffing which is growing fast and will continue. The contingent market is different in that they need an ATS that also flows into a pay-bill backend which no one has figured out well how to have great ATS technology and solid backend pay-bill.

– Tons of organizations every year which from one ATS to another. You see companies going from Taleo to Workday, iCims to Taleo, Taleo to iCims, Jobvite to Greenhouse, etc. What I find in most of these situations is the leader who implemented the original system has left and the new leader wants something they’re familiar with or just something ‘new’. Rarely are they actually upgrading to an ATS that is noticeably better?

Go check out the full report over at Ongig.

So, which ATS is the best? That is completely dependent on you and your needs. If you really want to know what I think, send me a note and I’ll give you an opinion based on a few things like the size of your organization and what your needs are.

Are You Struggling to be Happy at Work?

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In 1942 Viktor Frankl, a prominent Jewish psychiatrist, was taken to a Nazi concentration camp with his wife and parents.  Three years later, when his camp was liberated, his pregnant wife and parents had already been killed by the Nazis. He survived and in 1946 went on to write the book, “Man’s Search For Meaning“.  In this great book, Frankl writes:

“It is the very pursuit of happiness that thwarts happiness.”

What Frankl knew was that you can’t make happiness out of something outside yourself.  Riding the Waverunner doesn’t make you happy. You decide to be happy while doing that activity, but you could as easily decide to be angry or sad while doing this activity (although Daniel Tosh would disagree!).  Frankl also wrote in Man’s Search for Meaning, “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing, the last of the human freedoms — to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”

I get asked frequently by HR Pros about how they can make their employees or workplace happier.  I want to tell them about Frankl’s research and what he learned in the concentration camps.  I want to tell them that you can’t make your employees happy.  They have to decide they want to be happy, first. But, I don’t, people don’t want to hear the truth.

Coming up with ‘things’ isn’t going to make your employees happy. You might provide free lunch, which some will really like, but it also might make someone struggling with their weight, very depressed.  You might give extra time off and most of your employees will love it, but those who define themselves by their work will find this a burden.

Ultimately, I think people tend to swing a certain way on the emotional scale.  Some are usually happier than others.  Some relish in being angry or depressed, it’s their comfort zone.  They don’t know how to be any other way.  Instead of working to ‘make’ people happy, spend your time selecting happy people to come work for you.

In the middle of a concentration camp, the most horrific experiences imaginable, Frankl witnessed people who made the decision to be happy. Maybe they were happy to have one more day on earth. Maybe they were happy because, like Frankl, they discovered that the Nazis could take everything from them except their mind.

Provide the best work environment that you can.  Continue to try and make it better with the resources you have.  Give meaning to the work and the things you do.  Every organization has this, no matter what you do at your company.  Don’t pursue happiness, it’s a fleeting emotion that is impossible to maintain.  Pursue being the best organization you can be.  It doesn’t mean you have to be someone you’re not.  Just be ‘you’, and find others that like ‘you.’

A Trump Thanksgiving: 5 Things To Talk About Over Dinner

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Oh boy! Are you ready for this? First big holiday get together since Trump has had some major time in office and now you’re getting together with Mom, Dad, Aunt Sally, Crazy Uncle Lou, your super radical liberal brother-in-law Roger who voted four times for Hillary, Grandpa Fred who only wears clothing with the American flag on it, cousin Bonnie who will wear her “Still Feeling the Bern” sweatshirt.

Thanksgiving 2017 is set to be the most political Thanksgiving dinner in recent memory, and it just might make many families rethink whether or not the Chanukkah, Christmas, Kwanza holiday will even happen! Trump is a hot button on all sides, there’s no way around it. People love him. People hate him. The one thing for sure is everyone has an opinion!

Getting together with family you haven’t seen since last Thanksgiving or holiday season is hard enough each year without adding additional gas to the fire! So, I’m here to help guide you with some other topics to talk about during your Thanksgiving holiday dinner. The key to great holiday conversations is to make sure you’re talking about stuff that isn’t controversial.

Here are some great holiday day conversation topics to keep you and your family and friends off the Trump topic:

1. Talk about your kid’s accomplishments!  Nothing family loves more than Uncle Tom talking about how great a football season Tommy Jr. had! Especially when Tom’s sister, Peggy’s kid is fat, in the band, and has asthma. Just wait until you get an hour of how Tommy Jr. will also lead his basketball team in scoring and rebounding. Once Peggy brings up academic accomplishments and third-place showing at the state band competition, the entire family will be so grateful for all of these high young achievers in the family. Just don’t bring up Uncle Tom’s daughter who got knocked up last year.

2. Talk about the Hollywood Sexual Harassment cases! Nothing like talking about creepy sexual harassment stories of famous people when Uncle Charlie is sitting at the table and still can’t go within 500 yards of an elementary school. I like to play the game “Who’s Next” where everyone at the table has to say who do they think will be the next aging creepy Hollywood star who will be outed (oh, sorry, Kevin).

3. How the Turkey was cooked this year! After Tommy, Sr. got second-degree burns from the Turkey fryer two years ago, the family has been experimenting. Last year was the cheesecloth turkey, this year was the turkey bag. Grandma still thinks her old roaster does it best. But, hey, you’re going to get a solid fifteen minutes of turkey cooking conversation by just saying the way that wasn’t used this year, is the best way. Aunt Betty might start crying, but just put a little extra gravy on it and ask “what’s up with the mash potatoes?”

4. Directions!  So, Dad which way to did you come down this year? Did you take Highway 10 or did you come the back roads? You know they opened up the new overpass on county road 17 this year. Took it last Friday and it cut five minutes off! Men talk for thirty minutes about directions, you just need to keep bringing up locations and how you go there. Nothing dudes like talking about more than how they can get somewhere faster than someone else!

5. Health issues. When families get together it’s like the worst episode ever of The Doctors! The best part is watching relatives one-up each other on who’s dying faster. It’s a real competition in many families. Uncle Paul got a case of the Gout! Oh, really, well Aunt Jane has Shingles! You don’t say, I had that in the spring before my Cancer flared up. I’m not sure what it is about families and health issues, but everyone loves being the most unhealthy at holiday time!

I have to be honest. I won’t be using any of these topics. I like to look at who’s attending and then make a determination at who is most likely to lose their minds and on which side of the Trump debate. Then, right after grace is said, I’ll throw that grenade in the middle of the table and sit back and enjoy the show!

Nothing says Thanksgiving like Uncle Mark blowing a gasket at why the hell that wall isn’t built yet!

Have a great Thanksgiving, my friends! 🙂

T3 – Google for Jobs Doesn’t Care if Employers Like Them or Not!

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Okay, first let me say, I love Google for Jobs, mostly. Please, Google, don’t end my online life or anything! Remember, Don’t Be Evil! Okay, I know it’s now “Do the Right Thing!”

So, Google for Jobs (GFJ) was started with the best intentions to help candidates find jobs easier. Simple. Candidates want to know where the job is located. Cool! GFJ says to put the ‘exact’ address in your job posting. Okay. Candidates want to know how much a job pays. Cool! GFJ says to put the salary range of your job into your job posting. Got it.

Candidates want to apply for a job with one click. Okay, I’m not sure how I’m going to make that happen with this dinosaur of an ATS I’m running, but gosh darn it, we’ll find a way GFJ! Done!

Candidates want to work for companies with excellent reputations. Oh, okay. So, now we have to worry about and manage our online reputation on sites like Glassdoor, etc. Ugh, okay. But what about people who are lying on these sites? GFJ doesn’t care, candidates want this, so it’s going into the algorithm.

Okay Google, I’ll do it. I’ll do it because I want your candidate traffic. I’ll jump through your hoops, just like we used to make candidates jump through our hoops. You win almighty and powerful Google!

Wait, what? You, GFJ, want to allow Candidates to now choose how they apply for a job via a drop-down list of places that are all showing the same job? Now, wait just a god damn minute Google! So, a candidate finds my job on Google for Jobs that was listed there by CareerBuilder, but you will let that candidate apply to the job by just selecting “Monster” or “Career Page” or some other site which they didn’t find the job from?

Yeah, that’s happening, folks. Google for Jobs just discovered a major way to screw up your “Source of Hire” metrics! You might be investing major dollars in a certain site(s) to post your jobs. Google will scrap and find those jobs. If they’re duplicate, it will list the job that most highly fits its algorithm, but then it gives the choice of how to apply back to the candidate.

That sounds nice and everything, but it majorly screws up actual Source of Hire metrics for employers. If your job postings on CareerBuilder are working great, you want to see that candidate come through CareerBuilder, or whatever site the candidate actually found the job from. Here’s why. Candidates always think that applying for a job on the company’s career site somehow gives them a magical leg up on getting hired.

It’s not true, but we love to think it actually works. Google thinks this gives candidates choice to apply on the site that’s easiest for them to apply, but in reality, all that will happen is we’ll all see “Source of Hire – Company Career Page” shoot through the roof and think somehow we’ve really gotten a better at our career site hires!

You haven’t. It’s just Google screwing with your metrics, and not in a good way for any one – candidate or employer.

If ‘perceived’ applicants go up via company career page, you will invest less in other sources, but those are fake metrics! If you invest less in posting in other places, the chances a candidate will find your job will lessen. By Google making this change, they are actually hurting candidates in their ability to easily find your job. Not to mention hurting other vendors in the space for no real reason.

Do the right thing, Google!

Google for Jobs is designed to help candidates. This one change doesn’t help candidates or employers, it hurts both. I’m not sure how that’s good for anyone involved in the industry of job search. Companies actually need to know where candidates are really finding their jobs. Great, they found it on Google, but where did Google find it? That’s actually really important to how we fund our job marketing!

Also, Google please don’t hurt me. This is just one man’s opinion. I’m not even a big man. I have really small hands, and no one even reads this blog. I’ll take it down if you want!

Wait, what!? You want me to actually work…

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I took this job because you guys have a rocking careers website…

I took this job because of your awesome culture…

I took this job because your employees wear whatever they want…

I took this job because you serve unlimited gourmet coffee, all day…

I took this job because you give unlimited time off…

I took this job because you offered me more than anyone else…

I took this job because you have the coolest office with a ping pong table…

I took this job because you take your staff to Vegas each year…

I took this job because I don’t have to pay anything for my benefits…

I took this job because you buy beer and pizza on Thursday’s after work…

I took this job because you allow me to bring my dog with me…

I took this job because so I could work from home in my pajamas…

I took this job because of the free dry cleaning service…

I took this job because everyone is on the same level…

I took this job because, oh wait, you have to do work here…

Is not being anonymous on Glassdoor really a bad thing?

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If you didn’t see it this week Glassdoor got some bad news from the U.S. Court of Appeals:

Glassdoor, an online job-rating site, must unmask anonymous users who posted damaging reviews about a company under investigation, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco ruled Wednesday.

A federal grand jury in Arizona served the Mill Valley company with a subpoena in March, demanding the names and IP addresses of reviewers who wrote on the site that a Department of Veterans Affairs contractor was committing fraud.

 The unnamed company, which administers two veterans health care programs, is under investigation by the federal government for “alleged fraud and abuse.” In court documents, the federal government maintained that there is no other way for it to identify the employees who claim the company was committing the fraud.

Glassdoor, which allows people to post anonymous comments about what it’s like to work at a company, said that unmasking the reviewers would violate its users’ First Amendment rights. But in the Wednesday decision, the court said Glassdoor reviewers have a “limited right to speak anonymously.”

Turns out you can’t go online and destroy someone’s reputation without being held accountable! That’s a very good thing for employers who have for years argued that employees, past employees and people who have never worked there but might have ulterior motives to bash a company online, shouldn’t be allowed to do and say whatever they want without recourse.

You can’t run into a theater and yell ‘fire’! You can’t go online and say a company is committing fraud and not expect to back up those allegations and stand behind them.

My question: Why are we even listening to anonymous feedback, to begin with?

If you had your annual performance review and it was given to you, but you had no idea who it was coming from, would you really listen? “Hey, Tim, we just let anyone in the company make some comments about your performance, hope you like it!” You would totally discredit anything that was said you didn’t agree with because you have no idea where it’s coming from.

Employee reputation sites, like Glassdoor, are basically doing the same thing. Now, if someone put their name and title behind those comments, we all would actually listen to those words with a much more credible ear. Would less people leave comments if they knew it wouldn’t be anonymous? Yes. Would it make the feedback less valuable? No.

I’m a big fan of believing in what someone says when they put their name and personal reputation to the words they want to share. I’m much less of a fan when someone wants to hide behind being anonymous to give me that same feedback.

Okay, I get it, people are fearful of retribution if they say something negative. Can you imagine how that would look if you said something negative and your organization fired you?! That would be even a bigger slam to the organization’s reputation.

One issue I see with anonymous reputations sites moving forward is the whole Google for Jobs schema. GFJ has said that a company’s reputation matters, so they will now include your ‘reputation’ into their algorithm in ranking your jobs. Which means anonymous feedback is going to impact how well your jobs perform on Google’s search results. That sucks!

Do you really want some ex-employee who sucked and got fired, impacting your Google for Jobs search results!? Heck no! It makes no sense that any organization thinks that is a good thing. I say take away anonymity on reputation sites and then hold me accountable to my reputation. Right now, the current system is too flawed in allowing misinformation to be public.

So, I know I’m taking a minority stance on this issue, but tell me why you believe employer reputation sites should allow anonymous reviews?

She Said/He Said is Becoming Even More Problematic for HR!

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“I was harassed!”, said an employee.

What do you do?

The media would have everyone believe that we support this statement and believe this person 100%. It’s very in vogue right now to support claims of harassment 100% without hearing the other side of this story.

Here’s what I know in HR. If I investigated 1000 sexual harassment claims (and I’m probably close to that in my HR career!) about 997 of those claims are completely true! That’s almost 100%, but not exactly 100%, and that’s a problem for HR!

Let’s face it, from the beginning of Human Resources, She Said/He Said has been one of the hardest things for organizations to investigate and get a true story. Very rarely do you get a ‘smoking gun’ in she said/he said allegations. At best, what you get is one side claiming another party is guilty, and the other party claiming it just isn’t like it’s being told.

I think what’s even more problematic is the American legal system of innocent until proven guilty. Right now in America in terms of sexual harassment, you are guilty and we don’t care if you can prove yourself innocent, which you probably can’t because neither side can actually prove guilt or innocence in many of these cases. It’s she said/he said.

What’s more problematic for HR is that these cases change lives in a very major way. If one party is found to be guilty, most likely they’re losing their job and it will be a giant black mark on their ability to get another job. If one party is not found guilty, you have an employee who doesn’t feel supported and probably others in the organization that figure it’s not worth bringing future claims forward.

The world is getting to see famous people go down for bad behavior right now. Most of which is completely legitimate, a tiny portion of which is not. The world is getting a peek behind the HR curtain in what we’ve been trying to deal with for decades, and it’s not pretty or clean. It’s complicated and messy, and it’s really hard to make the correct decision when all you have to go on is one story over another story.

It’s key as HR professionals that we do what is needed to give each employee the benefit of the doubt and investigate to find the truth. To not let positions of power influence our duty and our ethics, and we are brave enough within our organizations to put our careers on the line to do the right thing.

Yes, brave. I had a leader who loved to say, “If you rake shit, it’s going to stink”. In she said/he said cases you’re going to be raking a lot of shit, and it’s going to stink. It takes bravery to see something that is not right and won’t be a popular decision in an organization and do the right thing, but that’s the gig, that’s the profession.

Welcome to the show kids! It’s a tough job, but our employees, all employees, need us as advocates!