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!

Is Talent Acquisition Wasting Your Hiring Manager’s Time?

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I had a conversation the other day with a corporate HR Director and we were talking recruiters, corporate recruiters.  My friend had a dilemma, a classic corporate recruiting scenario. The problem is she has recruiters who are doing a decent job, but they won’t get out from behind their desk and get out into the organization and get face-to-face feedback from the hiring managers. But, here is the real reason:  the recruiters feel like they are “wasting” the hiring manager’s time.

“So,” she asked, “How do I get them out to build these relationships?”

Great question, but she asked the wrong question (was partially my answer).  Her problem isn’t that her recruiters aren’t building the relationships face-to-face with managers. The problem is they feel they are “wasting” someone’s time.

They don’t value or understand the value they are providing to the hiring manager. If they did, it sounds like they wouldn’t have a problem with visiting with the hiring managers.  It’s a classic leadership fail, solving a symptom instead of solving the actual problem.

I don’t think that this is rare, recruiters feeling like they are wasting hiring managers time. It happens constantly at the corporate level.  Once you train your recruiters (and hiring managers) on the value the recruiters are providing, you see much less resistance of the recruiters feeling comfortable getting in front of hiring managers to get feedback on candidates, and actually making a decision.  This moves your process along much quicker.

What value do recruiters provide?  Well, that seems like a really stupid question, but there aren’t stupid questions (just stupid people who ask questions).  Here are few that will help your corporate recruiters understand their real value to hiring managers:

  • Corporate recruiters are the talent pipeline for a hiring manager. (or should be!)
  • Corporate recruiters can be the conduit for hiring managers to increase or better the talent within their department.
  • Corporate recruiters are a partner to the hiring managers in assessing talent.
  • Corporate recruiters are a strategist for the hiring managers group succession planning
  • Corporate recruiters are your hiring managers first line of performance management (setting expectations before someone even comes in the door)
  • Corporate recruiters are tacticians of organizational culture.

So, the next time you hear a recruiter tell you “I don’t want to waste their time.” Don’t go off on them and tell them to “just go out there and build the relationship”. Educate them on why they aren’t wasting their time. Then do an assessment for yourself to determine are they adding value or are they just wasting time. All recruiters are not created equal and some waste time, and it’s your job as a leader to find ones add value.

A critical component to all of this is building an expectation of your hiring managers of what they should expect from your recruiters.  They should expect value. They should expect a recruiter who is a pro, and who is going to help them maneuver the organizational landscape and politics of hiring. They should expect a recruiter is going to deliver to them better talent than they already have. They should expect a partner, someone who is looking out for the best interest of the hiring managers department.

Ultimately, what they should expect is someone who won’t waste their time!

The 5 Hiring Managers You Never Want to Work With

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I tend to read a lot about the type of manager you want to work for and with. It got me thinking, what about the 5 Hiring Managers You Don’t Want!? Not only for performance reviews but for interviews, development planning, discipline, etc. In HR we are constantly dealing with every type of hiring manager you can imagine but I came up with the top 5 I hate dealing with:

1. The Up-And-Out:  You know this person, usually happens in larger organizations, at some point they were given a manager/director/VP title because they were the last one standing.  As the talent took off in the organization to better positions with your competition, they kept moving up based mostly on the fact they had been around longer.  But in the end, they lack talent, lack motivation, aren’t respected, and usually way over their head.  They’ve been promoted past their ability and are now just waiting to be fired or retire.

2. The Nana-Nana-Boo-Boo I’m Better Than You:  This the person who became a manager because they were probably the best at what ever function they were in, but lack leadership skills, so their leadership philosophy is to continue to show their staff that they are still better than their team by showing them up constantly and publicly.  A huge piece of this stems from lack of self confidence and they feel they have to continue to show their bosses why they put them in charge, to begin with because they “get” this stuff and no one else does.

3. The Classic Politician:  This is Captain Ass-Kisser (which was my first title for this hiring manager but I didn’t want to offend anyone) and Captain Fence Sitter.  This is the hiring manager that will never take a stand, never be controversial and never put themselves in a position where they will protect their team. Basically, these are 85% of hiring managers at the Fortune 500 (hey don’t get mad at me I didn’t come up with the stat! Okay, I did but it seems about right, right?).

4. The Super Model:  Have you ever noticed that most leaders are “pretty” people? Not only that, but they’re Tall. Abnormally tall and pretty on average, like there’s some conspiracy against short, ugly people.  Look around at your leadership team and you’ll see 3 things: the average heigth is above the national average, they don’t have adult acne, and they have good hair.  There actually have been academic studies done on this concept. People want their leaders like they want their celebrities, good looking and tall.  Now this doesn’t make them less qualified, but it doesn’t make them more qualified either. And yes, I’m short with red hair and only my youngest son thinks I’m good looking and that’s only because he still fears I’ll shut off his iPhone.

5. The Tony Robbins-Stephen Covey-Wayne Dyer-Dr. Seuss:  This one drives me completely insane! It’s the manager who reads leadership books constantly and only speaks in leadership-quotes-I’ve-read-in-books speak.  You know, it’s gotta be a win-win, sharpen your saw, focus on our hedgehog, get that fly wheel going kinda day! These are the people that don’t have an original thought in their head but think their mashup of all the latest leadership crap somehow is an original master piece of their own.

So, hit me in the comments, which leader persona do you hate!?

T3 – CareerBuilder – Talent Discovery (@CBforEmployers)

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This week on T3 I review the new talent platform launched by CareerBuilder called Talent Discovery. The launch of Talent Discovery by CareerBuilder is basically taking all of CB’s products and aligning them in one all-in-one platform, but also adding in the integration with your own ATS.

There are other products on the market that are calling a part of this ‘talent re-discovery’, what CB has done is taken this technology and built it into their suite of products they already had. Talent Discovery will not only show you talent in CB’s resume database and their open web sourcing tool, but it will also pull in your entire ATS database and use that data as well to show you your true landscape of talent.

This new platform will also let you sync your CareerBuilder candidates directly into your ATS as well, giving you a much more robust and easier way to pull in those candidates as well.

Leveraging the latest in machine learning, Talent Discovery automatically matches relevant candidates in an employer’s private or public databases to their posted jobs. This includes CareerBuilder’s 45 million resumes and 150 million candidate profiles. The technology understands the searches recruiters are running and candidates they are viewing and looks at various signals from job seekers based on their activity to zero in on candidates who are the most likely to respond.

What I like about CB’s Talent Discovery:

– Integrating with your ATS and uncovering candidates more easily who have already applied and said they want to work for you is a giant advantage. If you’re already using CB, this is a no-brainer to utilize.

– Recruiters can easily create and send fully branded, customizable and responsive emails to an entire audience of potential candidates with various calls to action – and with all communications conveniently handled through the system. After emails are sent, recruiters can see, in real-time, which candidates interacted with the email and then view each candidate’s resume and contact information within one click so they can follow up.

-The platform provides an in-depth breakdown of the active supply and demand for a given position and average compensation ranges, indicating how difficult or easy it will be to fill the role and the best places to find the talent.

-Leveraging the latest in machine learning, Talent Discovery automatically matches relevant candidates in an employer’s private or public databases to their posted jobs.

This is a pretty robust addition to CB’s lineup of products, that actually simplifies everything under one roof. This makes a ton of sense for both CB and it’s users. Bringing both your own ATS database and your public resume databases into one platform to be able to be nurtured in one workflow is just the way it should be.

(FYI – I’m a CB shop in my own company, and I haven’t used Talent Discovery as of yet, but when I do I will update everyone on what I see, to how it actually works!)

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