When Talent Gets Tight, People Break the Rules

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So, let me get this straight, high school basketball players are getting paid to go to certain schools? Yeah, I think we’ve known that for like at least twenty, plus years now!

You know the saying where there is smoke, there is fire? Well, the NCAA and big-time college athletics have been burning for decades! Now, instead of the NCAA putting your school on probation for breaking the rules, the FBI is putting your butt in prison!

My good friend, Kris Dunn, was once a college basketball player, and then an assistant coach at the NCAA Division 1 level. He has often told me that most dangerous job in America is an assistant coach in the NCAA because it’s the assistant coaches who take the fall for the head coach. The head coach knows exactly what’s going on, but has the assistants do all the dirty work!

What is happening in NCAA athletics is like a small microcosm of what is happening across all recruiting.

There are very few NCAA coaching jobs. There is a huge pool of talent for those jobs. Thus, being successful is critical in keeping your job. Being successful in athletics is one part coaching and about ten parts having great athletes! All of this is a recipe for disaster.

Each one of these kids is a potential lottery ticket for a number of people. Their parents and guardians. Their high school and club coaches. All sorts of people on the edges who could make money off of them. So, rules get bent, broken, and destroyed! To ensure the talent you need gets to your organization.

In the ‘real’ world of recruiting talent to your organization, things haven’t necessarily gotten as bad is it is with big-time college athletics. Still, we all have stories of some very unscrupulous things happening to lure talent away from one organization to another.

Let’s be clear. It takes at least two parties to tango.

The person making the ‘hiring’ decision has to be willing to do bad stuff. The person willing to ‘accept’ the offer has to be willing to do bad stuff. When you get at least two parties together willing to do bad stuff, bad stuff is going to happen. That’s how the world works. Bad people, do bad things.

It’s extremely hard to stay on the moral high ground when it seems like everyone around you is getting things you’re not.

I’ve never asked someone to break a contract to come work for me. I hope I never will. Still, there are those out there in many industries justifying why you should break a contract you signed and agreed to, to come work for their organization. As our unemployment rate gets smaller this pressure to deliver talent gets higher.

“Yeah, but Tim, employment contracts are bad, they keep people from working at better jobs.” Sorry, did I miss something? You mean someone ‘forced’ you to sign that contract that you agreed to, completely? Yeah, that didn’t happen. You’re just justifying your bad behavior.

Bad people willing to do and ask others to do bad things is a bad combination.

What if you and your competitors recruited talent together?

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Think about most U.S. cities. What do they have in common? I travel all over the U.S. and to be honest, it’s all starting to look a lot alike!

Every city has a mall or three. At these malls, you’ll find the same restaurants. Chilis, Olive Garden, Applebee’s, Bravo, steak places, some random Japanese hibachi place, etc. Usually, down from the mal, you’ll find a Home Depot. Across the street from Home Depot, you’ll find a Lowes. Down from those are the car dealerships.

Sound like your city!?

Our cities are set up like this because it works. Putting all of these competitive places close together works for the consumer. They like all the choices close together.

Talent really isn’t much different.

If I’m a nurse, I want to be close hospitals. The more hospitals the better. That way if my job at one hospital isn’t working out, I don’t have to commute all the way across town to another hospital. If I’m in IT having a bunch of tech companies in the same area is desirable for the same reason.

What we don’t find, normally, are employers working together to solve their talent issues. A cook at one restaurant might be begging for more hours, but we never think about sharing that cook with the restaurant next door. We force the talent to go figure this out on their own.

Traditionally, I think career fairs thought they were doing this. Bring all the employers to one location and then all the talent can come and pick who they want to work with. It’s a start, but this isn’t really organizations working together to bring in more and better talent.

A modern-day equivalent to the traditional career fair might be cities working to ‘attract’ talent to their cities from places like Silicone Valley. In recent years, Minneapolis has been working to position themselves as a Midwest IT hub, so local and state government dollars have been working to get workers from other cities to come to Minneapolis.

What I’m talking about is what if two companies came together to share their talent databases for the benefit of both? Could it work? What would get in the way?

I think it could work. I think the organizations involved would be some forward-thinking leadership, some tight rules of engagement, and a very new way of thinking about collaboration.

So often we make a hire of someone we know if talented, but it doesn’t work out for a number of reasons, many times those reasons are self-inflicted by the organization. What if you could ‘move’ that talent to your ‘talent partner’ organization for a fresh start, and vice versa?

I love times when talent is tight because it forces us to start thinking about different solutions and ways of doing things. We all have talent in our databases that we aren’t using and might never use, but someone else might have exactly what we need in their database.

Instead, we sit on our unused, expensive inventory of candidates and do nothing. That doesn’t seem like a smart business practice…

7 Secrets Only HR Pros Know!

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I was reading an article the other evening over at Huffington Post, Welcome to the Club: What only Moms know (Why was I reading this I hear some of my dude HR guy pros asking themselves? Let’s face it I’m 40ish and woman are still mostly a mystery to me, so I try and find out their secrets! Plus I hate being left in the dark on this parenting thing, so “I need the info” as Dr. Evil would say.)  I don’t want to spoil the article, but suffice to say, either I’m very in touch with the feminine side of parenting, or what they were sharing really wasn’t the “real” secrets Moms know!

The article did get me to thinking about secrets and how in HR we seem to always have a few that we are either ask to keep by others or just the ones we share in this great fraternity of HR.  Here are some of the HR secrets that I thought of:

1. Who in the organization is on the way out.  (Sometimes many people know of individuals who are on the way out, but usually, HR has a good pulse on everyone)

2. Who in the organization is probably on the way up, and not because they deserve it. (Every leader has an attraction to an employee or two, for a number of reasons, and those folks usually find their way into roles that they don’t deserve.)

3. How much money you’ll get on your next raise.  (Oh, yes we do. But keep working hard anyway, we don’t want it to seem like it’s predetermined)

4. The information of why certain departments tend to get more (resources, staff, etc.) than others – but we can’t you – it would cause organizational chaos!  (I hate to tell you this, but it usually has nothing to do with department performance and everything to do with your department leader – or should I say lack thereof)

5. What you’re going to get for your annual bonus – usually 6-12 months before you get it. (hey, this stuff has to be budgeted)

6. What changes will happen to your benefits – again – usually 4-8 months before it hits you.

7. Who in your company is most likely to go postal on you.  (But we can’t tell you for HIPAA reasons – sorry – but if you sit next to Ted you might want to invest in a bulletproof vest)

I’m sure there are a number of others, but many aren’t unique to just HR.  I was thinking of putting down: We cook the books on our metrics, but guess what? So does every other department!  Let’s face it, in a political corporate structure that relies on metrics to obtain budgeted resources, the numbers aren’t always going to be clean!

I like HR because we tend to have “big” secrets and are called upon to keep those secrets.  It’s probably the biggest failure I see with new HR pros – they tend to try and create organizational friendships by sharing “the secrets” -and it always ends up blowing up on them.

HR has secrets, you knew it and just I confirmed it for you.  Now let’s move on because I not telling you any of the specifics! (besides the Ted thing)

Should the NFL Players Stick to Playing Football?

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I didn’t watch much NFL football this weekend, but I certainly heard about every single one of those players who made the decision to stand or kneel during the national anthem!

One thing I’ve heard from a lot of people is that football players (and celebrities in general) should stick to playing football, and stay out of politics. This is usually told to me by someone who is not a politician, but giving me all of their political commentaries!

Freedom of speech is one of the fundamental pillars of our nation.

You may or may not support a Football player not standing for the national anthem. It doesn’t really matter. They have a stage and they’re going to use it in a way they see fit. If you don’t like it, stop watching football. It’s silly we pay millions of dollars to men to play a game, to begin with, and idolize them for playing kid’s game (see what I did there with my commentary!).

We’re the idiots, not them. They’re just using the stage we’ve given them.

What I don’t like is this concept that people should stick to doing what they know. We were all idiots at most stuff at some point in our lives. Someone we gained knowledge of something, and within that thing, we felt like we were no longer idiots.

We added to those things, and soon we had a number of things we could speak on and not be sound like an idiot.

If an NFL player wants to talk politics, or social injustice, or whatever, good. That’s what America is truly all about, deciding what you no longer want to be an idiot about, and changing it. I was an idiot when it came to technology. I studied. I asked for help. I got involved. I now feel like I’m way less an idiot when it comes to technology.

That NFL player who wants to get involved is no different. Some might just be starting. Good for them! Some might be further along. Some might never have any interest in any of this. Also, good for them.

I believe America is the greatest country on the planet. I love it here. Some might not, and want to make it even better. I totally understand that. I love America, but it’s not perfect, and we have some big room for improvement.

Should NFL players demonstrate their political and social views on the field? Should your employees at your place of work? We are all having to grapple with these issues, and one thing is clear, this will not be going away anytime soon, or will it go away easily and quietly.

For me, I don’t take my political or social views from celebrities. I take my political and social views from people who have put the time into truly understanding what these issues are from all sides. That actually might be a football player, it might be a politician, it might a teacher, it might be my postal carrier. That’s my America.

Leaders are just Interpreters of BullSh*t! #HRTechConf

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I was on the phone yesterday with George Larocque who is an HR advisor to HR technology companies worldwide. George also does some consulting with companies on selecting HR technology, research, etc. He’s one of the few people in the industry that I listen to, primarily because I know he knows his stuff and isn’t trying to sell me something! Check him out!

George described what he did as being an interpreter between HR and Talent leaders, and HR Technology vendors. The vendors tend to talk about stuff that practitioners could care less about. “We’re mobile first!” Really!? We don’t care, just show me how it works on mobile. George can speak HR and Talent, and he can speak HR technology, so he’s perfect to ‘interpret’!

He got me thinking about that concept. I loved how he described his role, and I feel like many times when I speaking at a conference and talking HR tech, I’m doing the same thing. I taking in all these buzzwords and concepts, and then just breaking them down in a way that real, in the trenches HR leaders and TA leaders can then easily understand what the heck all of it means.

I think Leaders, in general, do a lot of interpreting as well!

They mostly have to interpret the bullsh*t our c-suite is selling, into real actionable stuff for all of us in the trenches doing the work each day! The best leaders I ever worked for could take all of this crap and repackage it in a way that made sense to me and my peers, so we knew what direction we were actually going, and what needed to be done.

Let’s face it, the best CEOs in the world are really good at this as well, but far too often you don’t work for one of the best! You work for someone peddling bullsh*t. The problem with the bullsh*t language is it’s really hard to understand because there are no straightforward meanings for the bullsh*t words and phrases.

Leaders who are great bullsh*t interpreters have the ability to hear the bullsh*t words, know the bullsh*tters motivations, and piece together what is actually being said. Then, they will take this interpretation back to the people and rephrase it in a way where we don’t try and kill the bullsh*tter!

I like it. I like believing that I can interpret most bullsh*t as a leader. Thanks, George! If you’re going to be out at the HR Technology Conference, you can find both George and I filtering through mountains of bullsh*t! Come find us!

The Next Great HR Technology Company? #HRTechConf

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It’s my favorite time of year when ‘the’ HR Technology Conference is right around the corner and I’m getting all my meetings set up, and getting ready for my panel on “Building the Perfect TA Tech Stack”.

One of the really awesome things that HR Tech has added is a competition where we all get to vote on who we believe will be the next great HR Technology company. The 2017 finalist for this award are:

From this list over 5,000 people voted to get the final four that will present on stage at the conference in October. Those are:

PapayaGlobal

Beamery

Best Money Moves

Blueboard

The winner will be named on Tuesday, October 10th at the “Voice”-style presentation from 3:45-4:45 pm PT. Congratulations to all the finalist, just being named is a huge honor!

I’ve been to each of these shows the past couple of years and it’s an awesome way to be able to show the attendees what you have in a really short condensed way. It’s like a cross between a mini-demo and commercial, with HR technology experts on stage asking insightful questions.

For me it’s one of the most exciting presentations of the entire show (well, besides mine!). Also, these are 4 companies that I will be doing a demo with and writing about on my T3 series for sure!

 

Do you pay your employees more for referring Diverse candidates?

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I know a ton of HR Pros right now who have been charged by their organizations to go out and “Diversify” their workforce.  By “Diversify”, I’m not talking about diversity of thought, but to recruit a more diverse workforce in terms of ethnic, gender and racial diversity.

Clearly, by bringing in more individuals from underrepresented groups in your workforce, you’ll expand the “thought diversification”, but for those HR Pros in the trenches and sitting in conference rooms with executives behind closed doors, diversification of thought isn’t the issue being discussed.

So, I have some assumptions I want to lay out before I go any further:

1. Referred employees make the best hires. (Workforce studies frequently list employee referrals as the highest quality hires across all industries and positions)

2. ERPs (Employee Referral Programs) are the major tool used to get employee referrals by HR Pros.

3. A diverse workforce will perform better in most circumstances, then I homogeneous workforce will.

4. Diversity departments, if you’re lucky enough, or big enough, to have one in your organization, traditionally tend to do a weak job at “recruiting” diversity candidates (there more concerned about getting the Cinco De Mayo Taco Bar scheduled, etc.)

Now, keeping in mind the above assumptions, what do you think is the best way to recruit diversity candidates to your organization?

I’ve yet to find a company willing to go as far as to “Pay More” for a black engineer referral vs. a white engineer referral. Can you imagine how that would play out in your organization!?  But behind the scenes in HR Department across the world, this exact thing is happening in a number of ways.

First, what is your cost of hire for diverse candidates versus non-diverse candidates? Do you even measure that? Why not?  I’ll tell you why, is very hard to justify why you are paying two, three and even four times more for a diversity candidate, with the same skill sets, versus a non-diverse candidate in most technical and medical recruiting environments.  Second, how many diversity recruitment events do you go to versus non-specific diversity recruitment events?  In organizations who are really pushing diversification of workforce, I find that this figure is usually 2 to 1.

So, you will easily spend more resources of your organization to become more diversified, but you won’t reward your employees for helping you to reach your goals?  I find this somewhat ironic. You will pay Joe, one of your best engineers, $2000 for any referral, but you are unwilling to pay him $4000 for referring his black engineer friends from his former company.

Yet, you’ll go out and spend $50,000 attending diversity recruiting job fairs and events all over the country trying to get the same person.  When you know the best investment of your resources would be to put up a poster in your hallways saying “Wanted Black Engineers $4000 Reward!”.

Here’s why you don’t do this.

Most organizations do a terrible job at communicating the importance of having a diverse workforce, and that to get to an ideal state, sometimes it means the organization might have to hire a female, or an Asian, or an African American, or a Hispanic, over a similarly qualified white male to ensure the organization is reaching their highest potential.

Workgroup performance by diversity is easily measured and reported to employees, to demonstrate diversity successes, but we rarely do it, to help us explain why we do what we are doing in talent selection.  What do we need to do? Stop treating our employees like they won’t get it, start educating them beyond the politically correct version of Diversity and start educating them on the performance increases we get with diversity.  Then it might not seem so unheard of to pay more to an employee for referring a diverse candidate!

So, you take pride in your diversity hiring efforts, but you’re just unwilling to properly reward for it…

 

Being a Fair Leader Won’t Get You Promoted!

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Look out HR Leaders this one is going to sting a little – from The Harvard Business Review:

“In management, fairness is a virtue. Numerous academic studies have shown that the most effective leaders are generally those who give employees a voice, treat them with dignity and consistency, and base decisions on accurate and complete information.

But there’s a hidden cost to this behavior. We’ve found that although fair managers earn respect, they’re seen as less powerful than other managers—less in control of resources, less able to reward and punish—and that may hurt their odds of attaining certain key, contentious leadership roles.”

Wow, that really flies in the face of all that we’ve been taught by our HR Heroes, doesn’t it!   Well, not exactly, just because treating employees fairly and with respect might not get you promoted, it doesn’t make it the wrong thing to do.  That’s a hard pill to swallow though, right?

How many times in your career have you looked at someone who was promoted and said to yourself “how the hell did they get promoted!?”  It’s usually the leader who is pushing people around, and no one likes, and the CEO taps them on the shoulder for the next VP role.  Some more from the HBR article:

“We’ve long wondered why managers don’t always behave fairly because doing so would clearly benefit their organizations: Studies show that the success of change initiatives depends largely on fair implementation. Our research suggests an answer. Managers see respect and power as two mutually exclusive avenues to influence, and many choose the latter.  Although this appears to be the more rational choice, it’s not always the correct one—and it poses big risks for organizations.” 

Do you know why managers choose “Power” over “Respect” as a leadership style?  It’s easier!  I mean way EASIER!  Positional power makes your job so much easier to move things through organizations and get things done, but you burn a lot of bridges and relationships on that path.

Getting things accomplished through mutual respect and influence can take time, but ultimately is more rewarding.  Time tends to be the big factor with this, though.  In today’s organizations we frequently feel pushed by time to get things done – Now – and that “now” tends not to work well with “respect”.   More from HBR:

“Companies can benefit from placing more value on fairness when assessing managerial performance. Our early follow-up research suggests that managers whose style is based on respect can gain power. Their path upward may be difficult, but it’s one worth taking, for their company’s sake as well as their own.”

Thus, this is the key! Want to build Great leaders in your organization? Give them this time to get things done through leading with a style based in respect.  Want to get something done tomorrow, and not care about how your employees are getting treated?  Let positional power rule the day, and be comfortable with your leaders throwing their weight around the office to get things done.

Let’s face it, this isn’t an all or nothing exclusive thing.  We need our leaders to do both – treat employees with respect, and get results quickly.  That’s why we have HR!  That is a tough thing to accomplish, but HR Pros can help leaders accomplish this task.

Everyone has their own rules. These are mine. The Sackett Rules!

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I’m heading back from South Africa today, so I’m re-posting a blog post I wrote six years ago. The day I wrote it I was at SHRM with Matt Stollak and Matt Charney, who gave me the motivation for this! It’s fun looking back on some old posts and reminding myself of some of these.

I think we all have rules, our own set of rules, but rarely do we let others know, which is why it’s so hard dealing with people. If we just knew everyone’s rules, we would probably all get along just fine!

Here are my rules:

The Sackett Rules

1. Don’t call in sick on Mondays or Fridays – no one believes you. (My staff knows this one well)

2. Everyone has a price, it’s a recruiters job to figure that out.  Never take “I’m not interested” as a reason. You just haven’t found out the price where they would be interested. (I don’t want to shovel cow manure, but if you pay me enough, well, heck, where’s the shovel?)

3. It only costs a little more to go, first class.  (My Grandpa use to say this, then my Mom, now me. It’s about doing things right.)

4. People won’t remember what you said, but they’ll remember how you made them feel. (That’s why I bring great snacks to meetings, and try and have a funny story!)

5. Always be nice to Moms with young kids. (Their day is always much harder than mine.)

6. There’s always a reason to kick an old man down the steps, just don’t do it. (via Chris Rock – this just makes me laugh)

7. Don’t cross the streams. (from Ghostbusters: I use this one with my youngest son, it makes him laugh, and he’s never seen the original movie)

8. No touching of the hair or face. (Ron Burgundy in Anchorman: my wife will laugh at this. I don’t like people touching my almost gone hair and I had Lasik surgery years ago and don’t like anyone touching my face, and I don’t like bees!)

9. Don’t be a victim. (Yeah, you pretty much control what happens to you, I have very little patience for people who play the victim.)

10. If you are scrubbing the kitchen floor in your boxer shorts, don’t do it with the shades to the sliding glass door open, while your neighbors behind you are having your other neighbors over for drinks on the back deck. (enough said I believe)

What are your rules, that you wish everyone would know? Hit me in the comments!

It’s Better to Make a Wrong Decision Fast

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For those that don’t know I played and coached volleyball for a great deal of my life.  Being from Michigan I can tell you that is rare (being a male) and I got called “gay” more than once while fundraising to make money to pay for traveling nationally for major tournaments (I think the actual phrases were more like “don’t girls only play volleyball”, etc. Welcome to the rust belt).

Anyway, one piece of my coaching stuck with me (we used with our middle blockers) that I also have used into my adult life and I use it still today:

It’s better to make a wrong decision fast, then make the right decision to slow.

Why?  In volleyball,  when you go to block you have to make split second decisions. You have 3 options: block middle, block right side hitter, or block left side hitter.  You rely on your instincts, you rely on communication from your teammates and you survey the situation (where is the pass coming from, where is the setter, how far off the net is the setter, etc.), then you make a decision.

The problem most middle blockers have at a young age is they want to be up on every block. They want to make the right decision every time, but by doing this, they rarely make it to block any position because they are frozen with indecision.  I taught my middles to decide quickly and then do it. Do it 110%!  Go to which ever spot you decided to block and block and even if the ball went to another position!

Why?  Some positive things happen by you making the wrong decision quickly. For starters it allows your teammates to make adjustments they need to make to try and get the best possible outcome. Believe me your back row players know you made the wrong decision because they’re staring down the hitter with only one blocker! BUT, it also allows them to know how to try and defend that.

If you’re late, and you have a hole in the middle of the block and now they have to guess where to go. Fill the hole, cover the line, take the cross, etc.  It becomes a guessing game. One which you rarely win. What happens if you make the right decision to slow?  About 99% of the time, what was going to happen, already happened. You didn’t make the decision, it was made for you. I like being in control, so this isn’t an option I like.

So what? What the heck does this have anything to do with you becoming a better leader?

Fast Company has a wonderful article on this concept called: Why Keeping Your Options Open is Really, Really Bad Idea – from the article:

Why does keeping our options open make us less happy? Because once we make a final, no-turning-back decision, the psychological immune system kicks in. This is how psychologists like Gilbert refer to the mind’s uncanny ability to make us feel good about our decisions. Once we’ve committed to a course of action, we stop thinking about alternatives. Or, if we do bother to think about them, we think about how lousy they are compared to our clearly superior and awesome choice.

Most of us have had to make a choice between two colleges, or job offers, or apartments. You may have had to choose which candidate to hire for a job, or which vendor your company would engage for a project. When you were making your decision, it was probably a tough one–every option had significant pros and cons. But after you made that decision, did you ever wonder how you could have even considered the now obviously inferior alternative?…

When you keep your options open, however, you can’t stop thinking about the downside–because you’re still trying to figure out if you made the right choice. The psychological immune system doesn’t kick in, and you’re left feeling less happy about whatever choice you end up making.

This brings us to the other problem with reversible decisions–new research shows that they don’t just rob you of happiness, they also lead to poorer performance.

I tend to run into this with younger workers who want to make the right choice, fearing “death” or some other less desirable outcome if they make the wrong choice.  They tend to defer decision making to their boss or a peer instead of making it themselves, thus giving away the chance for superior performance.

When in reality, all I want is for them to make any choice, and we’ll live with the outcome.  I hire great people, so I’m sure they’ll make very wise, research driven decisions, and even then, sometimes they’ll fail.  I’m willing to live with that.  If it’s fast! Because that allows us to adjust and find a way to make it right.

Two things at play in this concept: 1. Fast action; 2. Failure is an option, that we can live with.  Give me those two things, and I’ll show you an organization that is on the move and that can block pretty well!