Is Talent Acquisition an Actual Profession? @ATAPGlobal

Posted on October 25, 2017 by Tim Sackett

There’s something going on in recruiting. Can you feel it?

About a year and a half ago I got asked to join a forming board of directions for an organization called the Association of Talent Acquisition Professionals (ATAP). The easiest way to describe ATAP is it’s the SHRM for Recruiters. The other board members hate when I say that!

ATAP doesn’t want to be SHRM. We want to be something a bit different, and we clearly were not formed for HR professionals. Why I make the comparison is because I’ve been in both worlds, HR and Talent Acquisition. Also, I’m a twenty-year proud SHRM member with my SHRM-SCP.

SHRM sees talent acquisition as part of HR. I think those of us in Talent Acquisition see our profession as a completely different function within the organization. One that no longer has a need to be ‘bundled in’ with HR. It’s time we stand on our own.

SHRM and my SHRM certification gave me credibility and other’s outside of HR looked at me as a ‘professional”. I always had those letters behind my name. I knew how hard it was to study for that exam and pass it. No matter where I went in my career, I had those credentials, and I was viewed as an HR professional.

In my recruiting world, we have never had that.

Don’t get me wrong, there have always been silly programs one could take in recruiting and get letters behind your name. But, if we are honest with each other, no one ever really took those letters very seriously. Those programs weren’t really built on a body of knowledge and standards that were validated by a big giant group of recruiting nerds! Most of those programs were just money grabs.

I love talent acquisition. It’s my profession. I want every function in our businesses to view talent acquisition as the profession we know it is. That’s why I stepped up and accepted the ATAP board seat and do volunteer work every week to help grow ATAP and our profession.

My goal is to see ATAP be that one organization in the world that leaders can turn to and know if someone is affiliated with ATAP they are in the ‘profession’ of talent acquisition. I want talent acquisition leaders to look at a recruiter’s resume and see “ATAP” and see that recruiter passed an ATAP exam, and know they are hiring a recruiter who ‘gets it’! Who has proven they know how to recruit.

Talent Acquisition is not a profession right now. Any idiot can call themselves a recruiter. It’s one of the main reasons we have such a bad reputation amongst all professions. ATAP is going to change that for talent acquisition pros worldwide. Are you ready to join with me to make this happen!?

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What the heck is ATAP?!? I get asked this question almost daily. ATAP stands for the Association of Talent Acquisition Professionals. Founded in 2016, ATAP’s mission is to develop a body of unified educational, ethical and measurement standards, advocate on issues that impact those in our profession, and build a global community of inspired and informed professionals. I’m a member! You should be one too – Join Here – use my code to get $5 off your first-year “ATAPDISCTS”!

T3 – @Breezy_HR, err ATS!

Posted on October 24, 2017 by Tim Sackett

This week on T3 we get back to the business to talking technology with the recruiting software platform Breezy HR. First off, Breezy HR has nothing to do with HR, and everything to do with Recruiting.

About 2 1/2 years ago, a lifetime in the technology world, I highlighted Breezy right here on T3! I liked them then, and I like them even more now. Back then I called them recruiting technology ‘light’, kind of like BambooHR for HRIS. And, that was probably fairly accurate. At that time they were an entry-level ATS for SMB.

In the last 2 1/2 years (or 30 months if it’s your baby) Breezy has built a full-blown, full functioning end-to-end recruitment platform for the SMB to Mid-size ATS market, that still has a great price point for those just wanting to start out.

Things I like about Breezy HR:

– Breezy just launched a built-in A.I.-assisted messenger, called “Hello” for recruiters. The bot will engage candidates right away on your site, and let recruiters take over at any point to have real-life conversations with candidates. Great functionality for an ATS at any level.

– Intuitive U.I. that uses a very familiar drag and drop functionality to allow recruiters to easy move candidates through the pipeline.

– The candidate ‘profile’ is one of the better-designed profiles among ATS vendors incorporating social profiles, resume, notes, etc. With the ability to one-click action almost anything you would ever do with a candidate from the profile.

– Built-in video assessments and on-demand interview guides let hiring managers easily become a part of the process in a way that makes sense to them.

– Automated reference checking. What!? Again, another function you just don’t see built into most ATSs.

The Recruiting Platform/ATS market has really picked up its game over the past couple of years. You can find so many good options, but if you’re an SMB or Mid-sized organizations the choices are still fairly slim. Breezy is definitely a platform you need to check out, I was surprised at everything it had embedded into it, and it’s super easy to use!

T3 – Talent Tech Tuesday – 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 T3 – just send me a note – timsackett@comcast.net

You almost never go wrong when hiring pretty people!

Posted on October 23, 2017 by Tim Sackett

What do you think of, in regards to smarts, when I say: “Sexy Blond model type”?

What about: “Strong Athletic Jock?”

What about: “Scrawny nerdy band geek?”

My guess is most people would answer: Dumb, Dumb, Smart – or something to that context.

In HR we call this profiling and make no mistake, profiling is done by almost all of our hiring managers. The problem is everything we might have thought is probably wrong in regards to our expectations of looks and brains. So, why are ugly people smarter?

They’re Not!

Slate published an article that contradicts all of our ugly people are more smart myths and actually shows evidence to the contrary. From the article:

Now there were two findings: First, scientists knew that it was possible to gauge someone’s intelligence just by sizing him up; second, they knew that people tend to assume that beauty and brains go together. So they asked the next question: Could it be that good-looking people really are more intelligent?

Here the data were less clear, but several reviews of the literature have concluded that there is indeed a small, positive relationship between beauty and brains. Most recently, the evolutionary psychologist Satoshi Kanazawa pulled huge datasets from two sources—the National Child Development Study in the United Kingdom (including 17,000 people born in 1958), and the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health in the United States (including 21,000 people born around 1980)—both of which included ratings of physical attractiveness and scores on standard intelligence tests.

When Kanazawa analyzed the numbers, he found the two were related: In the U.K., for example, attractive children have an additional 12.4 points of IQ, on average. The relationship held even when he controlled for family background, race, and body size.

That’s right HR Pros, pretty people are smarter. I can hear hiring managers and creepy executives that only want “cute” secretaries laughing all over the world!

The premise is solid though! If you go back in our history and culture you see how this type of things evolves:

1. Very smart guy gets a great job or starts great company and makes a ton of money

2. Because of success, “smart guy” now has many choices of very pretty females to pursue as a bride.

3. “Smart guy” and “Pretty bride” start a family which results in Pretty-Smart Children. Did you pay attention to basic genetics in biology class?

4. Pretty-Smart Children grow up with all the opportunities that come to smart beautiful families.

5. The cycle repeats.

Now, first, this is a historical thing thus my example of using a male as our “Smart guy” and not “Smart girl”. I’m sure in today’s world this premise has evolved yet again. But we are talking about how we got to this point, not where are we now. Additionally, we are looking at how your organization can hire better.

So, how do you want to hire better employees? That’s easy! Just hire more pretty people!

Trends and Changes in HR and TA Technology: Notes from #HRTechConf @IBMWatsonTalent

Posted on October 20, 2017 by Tim Sackett

Still unpacking so much great information from the HR Technology Conference. I had a chance to sit down with the IBM Watson Team and ‘talk shop’ at HR Tech on video. There are some really good nuggets of information in here! Check it out:

So, I’ll tell you I wasn’t the only one who sat down with IBM, they got a bunch of really smart folks to sit down and talk:

Sara Brennan – the most underrated HR Tech mind on the planet
Jason Averbook – another just brilliant HR Tech brain
John Sumser – a dude I could sit next to and listen for hours, so smart
Kevin Grossman, Shane Gray, Jessica Miller Merrell, etc.

You check them all out on IBM Watson Talent’s YouTube channel.

Recruiters Make a Difference! @Paycor

Posted on October 19, 2017 by Tim Sackett

So, it’s pretty rare that we ever see anything good said about Recruiters, let alone a national ad campaign by a major HR technology company, but low and behold that’s exactly what was recently launched by Paycor – check it out:

(hat tip to Ben Gotkin, ATAP Executive Director, for finding this video.)

So, before the haters come out and rip on a payroll provider having good talent acquisition software, you should probably know that Paycor actually bought Newton Software. Newton is an ATS that is a best of breed top 10 ATS (in my opinion), which is now integrated across the Paycor suite of products.

So, they can back up a commercial that talks about a talent solution in a big way!

What I love about the ad is the choice of Carrie as the recruiter for this company. I would say “Carrie” matches what most people probably think of when they think of your prototypical HR lady at a company. Middle-aged, white woman. I think if you were to ask Recruiters to draw up a model demographic of an actual recruiter, they would not have cast “Carrie” in this roll.

This is why I actually love this commercial because we’re all idiots. “Carrie” actually is the average recruiter in the world. It’s not some twenty-something out of silicon valley carrying a MacBook Pro and Venti half calf mocha with a twist, wearing skinny jeans and an ironic t-shirt. “Carrie” is recruiting in the real world. “Carrie” is the 90%.

The TA Tech industry, for the most part, forgets about “Carrie”. The HR and TA Tech community combined forget about “Carrie”. They focus on “Jackson’s” and “Olivia’s”, and forget about the “Karen’s” and “Judy’s” and “Steve’s” of the world. The reality is HR and Talent aren’t done by twenty-somethings, it’s mostly done by forty-somethings and fifty-somethings.

So, bravo to Paycor’s marketing team to understanding their real user. In a world that always goes for younger and sexier, I love the realness of this ad, and that a recruiter is getting recognized!

Does Your Annual Review Process Include Terminations?

Posted on October 18, 2017 by Tim Sackett

By now most of you probably have had the chance to read the Telsla article where they terminated 400 employees directly after their annual review process. If not, check out the link. Also, my buddy Kris Dunn did a great write up on Tesla’s ‘unique’ culture as well over at the HR Capitalist.(Go Check it Out!)

My take is a bit different from Kris’s. Sure Tesla is a unique culture that has been ultra successful, but I’m wondering from an employee performance point of view, is firing employees during your annual process something that drives a sustainable culture?

Tesla is ultra cool, everyone wants “Tesla” on their resume or in their client list. Does that continue to be the case if you treat employees like this? I’m all for firing bad, underperforming employees, we all need to do this more and quicker. I think we all agree on that.

The question is, do you fire employees during your annual review process?

I’m wondering what the day or week before annual review time looks like at Tesla? Probably a lot of going away lunches and after hour drinks, but for everyone since no one really knows who will get ‘cut’ this time. Can you imagine those lunches!?

“Hey, team, everyone is invited to lunch next Thursday, just because, well, you know, it’s annual review time and we just want to say ‘thanks’ (“Thanks” now meaning “Goodbye” in Tesla speak) for all of your hard work, and, well, again, you just never know when one of us might want to do something else, and, oh gosh, we just never spend enough time together, so let’s break some bread!”

I’m also guessing the Friday after Tesla Annual Performance Review week is one big giant after-party!

Let’s face it, firing anyone during performance evaluation time is an awful way to run that process. You wait around for once a year to do most of your terminations, you’re not doing employee performance well at all!

If you have performance issues, high-performance companies address those issues immediately, work to correct, and if that doesn’t happen, they move to terminate as soon as it’s clear performance will not improve. Or you can wait around for f’ing ‘Death Day’ once a year and add a million times more stress to the process than is ever needed.

But what do I know, I mean it’s Tesla and Tesla knows all. Can’t wait to meet the ‘unicorn’ HR leader from Tesla at next conference I go to explain how brilliant they are for coming up with this nightmare.

HR on my friends.

Everyone Has An Organizational Expiration Date

Posted on October 16, 2017 by Tim Sackett

I was out at the HR Technology Conference last week and I was reminded of a post I ran a few years back. I ran into a ton of friends and colleagues, many that I’ve known for about ten years. These are good, smart people who are successful in the HR and TA industry.

Regardless, many of these folks are working at new companies, or even looking for work. I’m confident all will find what they are looking for, but it also points out a phenomenon that happens all the time which is many of us have organizational expiration dates.

There are a number of other reason people should have expiration dates with organizations, these include:

Chronic Average: This is for the people who just never really do anything, they just exist in your organization. After a while, they need to just go exist at another organization.
Convicted Idiot: This is the person who makes a certain bad decision, so bad, that their expiration with your organization must come up. Think, hitting on the bosses wife at the holiday party, or worse! Probably can’t legally terminate them, but they need to go someplace else.
1997 Top Salesman/woman: This happens way to much, yeah, you were top salesperson a decade ago, either get the trophy back or go give another organization your attitude! We tend to keep them around because we are hoping they’ll regain their top form, but they don’t. We need to just let them expire.
My Boss Is Dummer than Me: An organization can take only so many of these, for only so long. Ok, you win, go be smarter than us someplace else.
No Admins Left To Sleep With: I’m hoping the title of this one explains it as well, otherwise, you might have reached your HR expiration date at your organization!

But, what I’ve learned over the past couple of decades is that there are also some positive reasons of why people have organizational expiration dates:

New CEO is running the show. One day you’re minding your own business, the next day the new CEO fast-forwards your expiration date so she can bring in her own you.
We All Need Some New Magic. Many of us have a limited number of magic tricks. It might be amazing magic, but eventually, even our biggest fans get tired of our magic. But, the great thing is a new organization will love our magic! (Editors note: you can replace ‘magic’ with ‘bullshit’ and this works just the same)
You Stopped Growing. I’ve met some folks who took their organization to some great places, but eventually they reached a point where they stopped growing. Going to a new organization is really the only hope.

Probably the best thing we can hope for professionally is that we will know when our organizational expiration date is up before others know. How do we do that? Work hard on having the best self-insight you can. It might just extend your expiration date.

HR Technology is Outpacing Leadership Skill #HRTechConf

Posted on October 13, 2017 by Tim Sackett

It’s the big HR Technology takeaways 2017!

So, as you’re reading this I’m flying back home from ‘the’ HR Technology Conference. Another great show put on by Steve Boese and the LRP team!

There are so many things I take away from this year’s show and I wanted to share some of the bigger ones:

– HR and TA Technology sophistication are surpassing leadership ability in those functions. That’s a broad statement. There are many great HR and TA leaders out there that understand this tech at a very deep level, and they’re doing amazing things at their organizations. 90% don’t. This is a competency we have to increase!

– Artificial Intelligence will take your job. The A.I. company’s marketing will never tell you this, but you’re an idiot if you don’t understand how this works. A.I. will take away more and more task-level work. If you’re a practitioner that spends most of their day doing task-level work, you’re no longer needed, or not as many of you are needed. The ROI for A.I. is not more profit, it’s expense reduction.

– Technology doesn’t stop to let you breathe and catch up. I’ve been coming to HR Tech for years and the one thing is very consistent, every year the technology advances at an increasing rate. You have to work really hard to try and stay up with it.

– HR and TA Technology salespeople continue to struggle to connect the dots. And I think it’s getting worse! I think the biggest issue is trying to sound too sophisticated, and using too much ‘marketing’ speak to explain how your product can help. For the most part, we (HR and TA) are pretty unsophisticated. Just tell us like it is, show us how it works, and what impact it will make. 90% of us will never want to know how the sausage is made, or even care that you know. We get it. You’re smart. Now help us actually solve a real problem.

– This stuff is really cool! I wish we could break everything down easier so everyone felt more comfortable digging into their HR and TA tech stacks and want to get more involved because it’s pretty awesome to see how this industry is evolving our profession!

– There are good guys and gals selling great solutions who truly care about helping you make your company better. And there are assholes who want to make money and could care less about your success. Search out the good guys. Much of the tech we use is not that awfully different from one competitor to the next, but how much they truly care about the success of your organization can vary widely!

The future of HR and TA Technology is very bright. There are really smart people working on stuff that you can’t even imagine. Our industry will look very different in five years, and most of the direction will be coming from successes in other functions like marketing, sales, operations, supply chain, etc.

Keep demoing. Keep advancing your stack where and when you can. Don’t allow IT to pick what you use. Fight for better technology for your teams and your employees.

The Next Great HR Technology Company! #HRTechConf

Posted on October 11, 2017 by Tim Sackett

Yesterday opened the 20th HR Technology Conference and I attended one of my all-time favorite sessions hosted by Steve Boese called The Next Great HR Technology Company.

The idea is kind of a Voice-like competition where you begin with a number of organizations all competing for the title, once you get down to the final four, each organization has an expert coach. The coaches for this competition were Lance Haun, George LaRocque, Madeline Laurano, and Ben Eubanks.

The four finalist were:

Beamery: A CRM/Recruitment Marketing platform out of the UK. Combining Recruitment CRM and Marketing Automation, Beamery is built to source, attract and engage passive candidates. Very impressive and in my opinion the most polished of the products presented.

Best Money Moves: A Financial Wellness App built to help your employees reduce their financial stress. This one surprised me the most in how functional it can actually be to help real people. What we know if the more stable your employees are in their financial health the longer tenure they have, so great retention tool as well.

Blue Board: Blueboard is the experiential employee rewards and recognition platform for the modern workplace. Memorable, personal and shareable employee rewards. Give your employees experiences ranging from $150 – $25,000! The example they gave was turning an employee into James Bond for a day, jumping out of a plane in a tuxedo, driving an Aston Martin, and learning how to make the perfect martini.

Papaya Global: Papaya integrates your entire workforce and payroll management on a single global platform and connects you to a network of verified local vendors. Specifically built for the small fast-growing global company, this was very impressive as well, especially to those who have ever tried to grow an employee population in multiple countries!

My voting on these four went like this:

Beamery
Papaya Global
Best Money Moves
Blue Board

The thing is, Blue Board won the overall crowd vote, and as soon as they presented I knew they would. It wasn’t about the technology, which is fairly basic, it was the cool factor. Everyone watching the presentation wanted one of those experiences!

So, great learning for all the HR Technology companies out there, and one thing I’ve noticed for years in this space, the best tech doesn’t always win. HR Tech buyers and users are like us all. We buy iPhones, not because the iPhone is best, we buy it because we love the design and it’s cool.

Blue Board has a great story, one everyone wants to be apart of, and it’s an easy sell. We want those experiences, and we want to give our employees those experiences. Is it a great technology? Probably not, but it doesn’t matter because it will flat out sell!

The others will sell as well. That’s what I love about this competition, all involved are winners. Even to make it to the stage means you’re one of the top technologies on the market. If you’re in the market for any of the technologies that presented, these are all well worth your time for a demo!

Building the Perfect TA Tech Stack! #HRTechConf

Posted on October 10, 2017 by Tim Sackett

Arguably the hottest tech at HR Tech will be in the Talent Acquisition space. TA Tech has blown up over the past decade with billions of dollars entering the marketplace in investment. It seems like every single day I’m getting an announcement in my email about the launch of a new TA Tech company.

All of this has caused massive confusion amongst TA leadership in trying to keep it all straight. The common questions are:

What does the tech even do?
Do I need this tech?
Doesn’t my ATS do this?
What is my competition using?
What should we be using to attract more talent?
Etc.!

It’s really just a never-ending list of questions because the TA Tech marketplace has been moving at such a fast pace and the innovation within the space is truly unparalleled in comparison to anything we’ve seen in the overall HR Tech space, ever!

Luckily, the HR Technology Conference is here to help you feel much smarter about the TA Technology space. On Wednesday at 11am PT in the Venetian Ballroom A & B (come early they tell me this will be a standing room only session), a group of brilliant TA leaders and I, will take the stage tackling the dilemma of Building the Perfect TA Tech Stack! The experts on the panel are some of the top TA Tech brains on the planet – Jessica Lee from Marriott, Allyn Bailey from Intel, and Graham Pionkowski from Bazaarvoice (and of course me!).

The session is designed for both TA leaders and practitioners, but also all those TA Vendors trying to sell to us!

Completely vendor agnostic, which is a fancy way to say, we’ll be talking about the TA Tech we love, the TA Tech we use, the TA Tech we wish we could use, and maybe even a few TA Technologies we wish we could punch right in the face!

Our goal is to completely share our own TA Tech Stacks with the audience and have an open dialogue around what’s working and what’s not working. To help us all have a better understanding around the TA Tech that we see is foundational to our success, and what TA Tech we will need in the future to maintain our success.

It might be the most topical session of the entire show! We all need talent in a big way. Most of us will increase our chances to getting that great talent by having the perfect TA Tech Stack!

The Tim Sackett Project

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