What Are You Doing With Your 30,000 Days?

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I had something happen to me recently that was really just one more reminder that life can change in an instant.  It seems like life has a way of trying to shake us awake and bring your focus back to what’s really important when we start to focus on things that really aren’t that important.

Here’s the deal.  If we are lucky we each have about 30,000 days to live.  (I’ll wait, go ahead and do the math…) Welcome back. 30,000 days seems like a lot of days.  The thing is that 30,000 number is really the best case scenario.  Many will not make it to 30,000, and those that do, I can’t tell you those 30,000+ days will be your best days.

So, what are you doing with your 30,000 days?

I won’t say I’ve wasted 16,000 already because I’ve done some pretty remarkable things.  I’ve got a great wife. Three great kids. That awesome puppy in my arms.  A solid career.  It’s taken all of those 16,000 days to get to this point.

Here’s what I’ve learned to this point in my 30,000 days:

– I’ve stopped valuing how valuable each day is.  I mean, I value all that I have and my life, but it gets lost on the daily basis of life.  I get the big picture, small picture overtakes it constantly.

– I don’t enjoy the things I enjoy, enough.  I have enjoyment, but if I only have 30,000 days, I should be enjoying those things more.

– I don’t spend enough time with those I love.  In the end, I won’t cry over not being able to work another minute.  I will cry over not having another second with those I love.

My guess is many of us will have the three things above in common.  Many of us are in this race of life.  Until we realize we are just racing to the end. At which point, you’ll go, oh wait a freaking minute, I don’t want to win this race!  Go ahead, I’ll catch up later!

This doesn’t mean I want to sell off all my worldly possession and walk the earth like Caine from Kung Fu (look it up Millenials).  I don’t.  I like my stuff!  It helps me enjoy my life.  I like my work.  I like to play more than work (my guess is that’s 99.9% of the world!).  This isn’t about balance.  30,000 days doesn’t care about your stupid balance.  It’s a clock, and it’s ticking.

In my 30,000 days, I want to leave the world a better place than when I arrived.  To each of us, that means something different.  One person might want to care for sick kids. One might want to change our environment. One might want to help homeless. I’ve decided I want to leave the world 3 young men who will create a legacy of their own.  Three men who will take my vision one step further and help to leave the world a little better as well.  If I spend my 30,000 days being the best Dad possible, I think I’ll feel content that I spend my 30,000 days pretty well.

What are you going to do with what’s left of your 30,000 days?

Trump Can’t Stop Immigrant Hiring!

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Before Trump was hired, err, voted in as President. I was asked to respond to this question:

What impact do you think Trump will have on immigrant hiring? 

My response was probably a bit more positive at that point, pre-Trump than it is now, but I still remain bullish on immigrant hiring. Why? Because it’s what America actually wants! I still believe that any President wants what is best for America. How they get there might be drastically different, but Trump is very similar to many Presidents we have.

Even his recent Executive Order to “Buy American, Hire American” (My grandparents who retired from GM would love this, BTW!) has little if any impact on actual H1-B hiring. H1-B hiring is broken, and random, and needs major overall, everyone can agree on that! Not hiring immigrants is just ignorant and uninformed.

Trump is easily swayed by high public opinion. He cares about what people think of him. No, really! He actually does, probably more than any other President we’ve ever had. What he doesn’t care about is crazy folks yelling on the fringes. He cares about being ‘popular’. American businesses need immigrant workers. If he gives this to them, he’ll be popular with people he views as peers in many ways.

CareerBuilder released a study today showing 33% of American companies plan on hiring immigrant workers, which is virtually unchanged from this time last year. Also, the American public doesn’t view immigrant hiring as a challenge to their livelihood. A whopping 90% feel like immigrant hiring has no impact on their career possibilities. That’s a giant number!

If you put all the psychology and data together, I think we’ll get to a place in America and the hiring of immigrants that makes more sense than what we have now. A lottery system? That’s what we pin our hopes on for American companies!? No one in business thinks this system is good. Trump is all about, well, that changes daily, but let’s say he’s a little more consistent on what American businesses want.

I can foresee, for good or bad I’m not sure, a tiered system of immigrant hiring. The Visa system really has already created this. Professional workers get preference over service level, unskilled immigrant workers. I can see this widening as this is what Trump voters are really worried about. They aren’t worried about the Software Engineer or Doctor coming into America, they’re worried about that cook at Applebee’s, the immigrant on the manufacturing line, etc.

We know the reality, most American workers don’t want those jobs anyway, but they feel that having an immigrant take those jobs is somehow holding them back. The real issue is American companies offshoring high paid manufacturing jobs, not highly skilled professionals coming into the states. Again, the CareerBuilder study backs up this assertion, “I’m not worried about an immigrant taking my job” because immigrants don’t take normal American jobs, they take the jobs on the fringes – high-end and low-end.

You need to be a part of a Professional Tribe

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One of the things I speak about when presenting to HR pros is there need to become part of the ‘Tribe’.  Meaning, if you want to have your seat at the table, you want to gain influence with your leadership team, you need to become part of that tribe.  How do you do that? Well, every tribe is different, you need to figure that out. There is no magical answer, but my guess is they have or do something in common. Find out what that is, and slowly work yourself into that tribe!

HR people struggle with this concept.

“Tim, I just want to do my job and go home!”  Okay.  Then stop bitching that you’re not getting any respect from your executives.  You’re choosing not to be part of that tribe.  Tribes take care of themselves.

You see, most HR pros place themselves on a professional island.  Just Tom Hanks in Cast Away, they’re all by themselves, plus maybe there own little ‘Wilson’ comfort toy picked up at a SHRM conference, a Monster stuffed animal, a Careerbuilder ‘recruiter’ doll, you know the ones!

I have a really, really cool tribe.  In fact, I have many tribes.  First and foremost of have my family.  My HRU tribe is next.  I probably spend more time with them, then my real family on a daily basis!  I also have a number of other personal tribes around youth sports, neighborhood, etc.

My FOT tribe is professionally very cool and satisfying. It’s a group of HR and Talent bloggers who are super smart and snarky, and they make me laugh every day.  I support this tribe and they support me.  They make my professional world better.  They help make me get excited about what I do, and how I do it.  They challenge me to be better. There are many subsets of that tribe, like the 8 Man Rotation tribe, the greater HR blogger tribe, etc.

Tribes are important.

HR and Talent Acquisition pros need to take down their locked HR office doors. Take them right off the hinges.  Get out and start getting involved with professional tribes.  Start in your own organization first.  Do you support a department or client group?  Get into that tribe, now!  Go to lunch with them. Go for drinks after work on Friday.  Bake cookies and bring them to the tribes.  All tribes like to eat and drink! Never underestimate the importance of being a part of that tribe.

I hear from HR pros who tell me all the time, “Tim, ‘they’ just won’t listen to me. How do I get them to listen?”  My first question is to ask them what relationship they have with whoever isn’t listening. That answer is usually, none, or next to none.  They aren’t part of that tribe. That’s the real problem.

I’m not saying it’s easy to break into every tribe. It might not be, but that shouldn’t stop you from trying.  Also, you can create your own professional tribes.  There are so many people just like you that just want to be a part of a tribe.  Go find them! Start a tribe.  You’ll be better for it.

Some of my Tribe and I will be at SHRM Talent next week speaking and hanging out. If you’re going reach out to me and let’s connect! Maybe you’ll become a part of my tribe!

T3 – Google Jumps Into the ATS Market

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So, Google announced last week that it is getting ready to launch an applicant tracking/job posting technology called Google Hire. Google already has a number of smaller technology companies in beta, but the so far very little has leaked out from anyone on the experience and capabilities.

Google does have an initial splash page up allowing people to log in, but you can only log in if you’re actually one of those beta users. Speculation right out of the gate was that Google would allow employers to see your search history, which Google quickly went public and debunked, but it makes you wonder how something so crazy even got out?

DramaFever is one of those initial beta Google Hire customers. When you go to apply for a job on their site it throws you into the Google Hire workflow and you get a hint of what the candidate experience will be using Google Hire as your ATS. Very clean, almost generic job posting:

The apply is also quick, easy, and generic as well:

Once you apply, you get an email verification link sent to you to continue on in the process. This is the same process and design so far for all the Google Hire beta users.

So, why would Google want to get into the ATS business?

They probably don’t. What they really want is to get into the Indeed business of collecting cash for posting your jobs and collecting candidates! Google Hire then becomes their engine to making this happen.

Google made news last year when they announced the Google Could Jobs API. For 99.9% of HR and TA Pros/Leaders, this was a none event announcement. For industry insiders, it was Google saying, just wait, we’re working on some things but we need this big foundational block put into place first!

In a very simple sense, Google Jobs API allows organizations to deliver a much more robust job search for candidates. CareerBuilder was one of the initial organizations to test this out and they are still in testing. Google hopes to be able to allow anyone to use it, opening the door to all kinds of niche job boards, etc.

Basically, we all think of Indeed as being the biggest Job Posting aggregator on the planet. In reality, it’s Google, but Google just never went out and built the framework to allow job seekers to easy search for jobs on Google versus going to places like Indeed, LinkedIn, CareerBuilder, etc.

All of that will be changing. We are not sure how, just yet, but Google Hire gives us some indication that Google might be going after some of those billions that companies like Indeed are making off employers, for delivering job seekers an inferior job search product to what Google is claiming to have.

Such and interesting space! Can’t wait to see where this goes.

Learn how to give the best IT interviews on the planet!

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Tomorrow (Tuesday, April 18th at 2 pm ET) I’ll be talking IT Interviewing on a Recruiting Daily webinar sponsored by eTeki – Register Here! Most organizations suck at interviewing IT talent. I think there’s a better way!
It takes tech expertise to properly gauge tech competencies and experience and let’s face it most recruiters fall short in their capacity toTim Sackett eTeki
interview for the nuances of these specialized IT roles. You and I know this, but hiring managers struggle to understand why Talent Pros will never really be able to tell them if someone is a great coder or not!
Attend this webinar and I will show you a number of things you can start doing immediately to increase your ROI! Plus, you’ll hear from real talent leaders in the field who have already put a number of these ideas into place and hear about the success and struggles they had in launching this process.

Learning Objectives:

  1. Learn five ways successful companies are doing technical interviews differently to choose great talent.
  2. Design a technical interview process that attracts talent, and learn the things that turn off technical talent in an interview.
  3. Develop an interview strategy for technical talent that will increase your hiring manager satisfaction.

 

This webinar is designed to show any Recruiter and Recruiting leader (Corporate, Agency, RPO) a better way to interview technical talent, increase hiring manager/client satisfaction, and increase the influence and expertise your team brings to your organization.

The New Definition of “Passive Candidate”

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Okay, we get it, Mrs. Hiring Manager, you want passive candidates!!! We’ll get right no that…

Passive candidates are the holy grail of candidates, right? Untouched, virgin, pure as the driven snow, fresh meat that has yet to be soiled by the dirty hands of another recruiter. If I could find a way to mainline passive candidates right into my system I’d be the best recruiting junkie on the planet!

Do you even lift bro? I mean, do we even know what the hell a passive candidate even is anymore?

The Passive Candidate Definition from ten years ago:

“A Passive Candidates is someone who is being considered for a position but is not actively searching for a job.”

So, are we buying this today?

If so, it seems like we then need to define “actively searching”. The only candidates I know who are ‘actively searching’ for jobs are candidates out of work, working in a job that isn’t their chosen career (Communications grad from B-level university, selling cell phones in a strip mall), or about to be fired from their current position.

If those are the actively searching candidates, that makes almost everyone else Passive! I don’t think our definition of Passive Candidate matches that of our hiring managers current definition of passive candidate! I think they would say anyone who is searching for a job, passively or actively, is not really passive.

So, why do we see this differently? Well, this is a bit of marketing that TA played on the hiring manager to fill positions. “Hey, Tim is a great ‘passive’ candidate, I found him on LinkedIn, he didn’t even ‘apply’ to our job! You have to interview him!” The ‘he didn’t even apply’ is like crack for hiring managers, who now believe you found Tim locked away in a vault at your competitors that has never seen the light of day.

The reality is a bit less sexy! Tim has been on LinkedIn for three years trying to get out of dead end company he’s been working for, but Tim sucks at networking and finding jobs, so he is just waiting around to be trolled by a recruiter, and he applies to jobs every week, just hasn’t applied to your job!

Let’s be honest with each other. If someone has posted a resume online, err, professional profile, they’re on the market! They might not be actively applying to jobs on a daily basis, but we all know they’re open for business. Someone can’t be passive that has a presence on any of the job boards (Monster, CareerBuilder, Indeed, LinkedIn, Dice, Zip, etc.).  They also can’t be passive if they actively applying to jobs, but just haven’t applied to your job!

So, the new definition of Passive Candidate should probably be:

“A Passive Candidate is someone you find through various methods who is not on the job market in any way.”

That means you might contact someone in your ATS database who applied for a job with you three years ago, but they are currently happily employed and totally off the job market radar. That’s a Passive Candidate. The referral your employee gave you for a former coworker that you can’t find anything online, and they tell you they’re not looking for a job. That’s a Passive Candidate.

A passive candidate isn’t someone you found who just hasn’t happened to think about applying to your job, yet. They actually might be the most active candidate on the planet, who you just happen to run into.

We know a truly passive candidate when we speak to one. They’re a bit nervous. A bit surprised. A bit flattered. You can tell they’re not used to talking to recruiters and feel guilty talking to you. This is the person you’re hiring managers are asking for when they say they want a passive candidate.

This isn’t to say passive candidates are better. That’s an entire another post, but let’s not act like we are providing passive candidates when we aren’t.

The Single Greatest Metric in the History of Talent Acquisition!

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“0.00” or “Zero”

I’ll let you decide how you want to display it, both ways work.

Oh, what is this measuring? Check this out:

The number of candidates, in the past twenty years that I’ve hired, that were willing to accept a job without first having a phone call with someone at the organization I worked for. 

That number is:    0   

I’m guessing your number is fairly close to my number! If fact, this is a universal metric between all types of talent acquisition professionals (Corporate, Agency, RPO). Across all industries and all levels of hiring, hourly, salary, temporary, 1099, seasonal, etc.

Let me ask you a couple of questions:

1. Would you be willing to accept a job without first speaking with someone about this job?

2. Would you be willing to accept a job interview without first speaking to someone about the position, details, etc.?

My guess is almost 100% will say “No” for number one, but some would actually say “Yes” to number 2. Okay, I’ll buy some of you would go to an interview before ever speaking to anyone live about a job. I don’t think it’s many, but I’ll give you some people just want a job and a text or email communication is good enough for them. I’ll also assume the quality of those people will be questionable.

The fact is there is an extremely high correlation between speaking to a candidate ‘live’ on the phone or in person, and their willingness to continue through your process of hiring. Like a .99 correlation!

Another fact, then, would be that the recruiters in your environment (corporate, agency, RPO) who actually make the most phone calls will have the most candidates willing to engage your organization in your hiring process.

Final fact, in every recruiting environment I’ve worked (corporate and agency) the recruiters who connected with the most candidates over the phone, filled the most positions. Every. Single. Environment.

It’s not Rocket Science people! It’s actually Psychology.

If you don’t pick up the phone, you don’t find candidates willing to follow through with your hiring process.

Don’t over think this. Put yourself in the shoes of your candidates. Would you be willing to accept a job without first speaking to someone at the company offering you a job?

0.00!

 

The Secret Sauce to Landing Your Dream Job? Apply Less!

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Robert Combs over at Fast Company had a brilliant article recently, and if you’re in Recruiting or HR, it’s a must read! If you’re looking for a job, it’s also a must read!

Here was Robert’s concept. A.I. (robots) are running the world. It’s the biggest innovation to come into recruiting since Big Data (wait, didn’t we always have data…). If robots can run the apply process and find you where ever you are, Robert thought, why not use a robot to apply to jobs for him. Let the robots fight it out!

So, that’s what he did, he built a robot to go out and find jobs he would want, apply to those jobs, and then even follow up! He applied to hundreds of jobs in minutes! It got a bit out of control:

So I started slowly casting about for new challenges, initially by applying (perhaps naively) to openings at well-known tech companies like Google, Slack, Facebook, and Squarespace.

Two things quickly became clear to me:

  1. I’m up against leaders in their field, so my resume doesn’t always jump to the top of the pile.
  2. Robots read every application.

The robots are “applicant tracking systems” (ATS), commonly used tools for sorting job applications. They automatically filter out candidates based on keywords, skills, former employers, years of experience, schools attended, and the like.

As soon as I realized I was going up against robots, I decided to turn the tables–and built my own….I fired it up I accidentally applied to about 1,300 jobs in the Midwest during the time it took me to get a cup of coffee across the street. I live in New York City and had no plans to relocate, so I quickly shut it down until I could release a new version.

After several iterations and a few embarrassing hiccups, I settled on version 5.0, which applied to 538 jobs over about a three-month period.

So, what did Robert find out? Here were his biggest learnings:

1. Even your ATS robots suck at giving responses! Around 70% of his applications never got a response!

2. Only 4% of 538 jobs he applied for, got a personal email response from a recruiter.

3. Only about 6% of your hires come from people applying to your career site.

Robert found out what most of us in the business already know. Applying to jobs, doesn’t actually work. Yet, we spend so much time, energy, and resources building these great tech stacks and apply processes for just his!

So, what works?

Turns out about 85% of jobs are filled by good old fashion networking. You know someone, who knows someone, who has a friend, who’s cousin works in the department you really want to work for.

“Out-of-the-box hires rarely happen through LinkedIn (or any job board, career site) applications. They happen when someone influential meets a really interesting person and says, ‘Let’s create a position for you.’”

I disagree somewhat with the above quote. I’ve worked in large corporate TA shops, we just didn’t run around all willy-nilly creating jobs for really cool, smart people! We did many times find really great people and then stick them into a job we already had open, and usually the reason we found the person was someone who knew the job was open referred the person to us.

My advice to job seekers is always the same. Stop applying to jobs, start networking with every person you have a possible shred of connection with and let them know you’re looking for a position, what position you prefer, what position you would take, and where in the world you would work.

Every minute you spend networking is a thousand times better than every minute you spend online applying for jobs. Robert just proved this!

T3 – @GlintInc – Introducing Narrative Intelligence

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Last week I had this idea about how A.I.’s real value would be in HR and not in Recruiting. Most A.I. technology right now in the market is focused on TA and it’s easy to see the productivity and efficiency gains from A.I. in the TA space. It’s not as to see the same advantages in HR, but my theory is, very soon, we’ll see the advantages as A.I.

It’s not as to see the same advantages in HR, but my theory is, very soon, we’ll see the advantages of A.I. using Natural Language Processing (NLP) in analyzing your employee’s unstructured communication data. What?! Big brother will start listening to everything being said and then give you predictions on what might happen, and what you should probably do about it.

After I wrote that post the folks at Glint saw it and send a message saying, “Hey, we’re basically doing that now with Narrative Intelligence!” If you don’t know Glint, they are an enterprise level (1,000 employees and above) People Success Platform. Basically, Glint’s technology helps organizations drive higher levels of employee engagement through prescriptive analytics.

Ton’s of Reader’s Digest Word Power words in today’s post. “Prescriptive Analytics” = giving you advice on next steps based on what the data is telling you will probably happen. So, engagement is trending lower in your sales team, here is an action plan for the Sales Manager to do to help turn that trend around. Pretty cool stuff. Not only does Glint help you raise engagement, but they are also helping you develop your managers into better leaders.

The real reason for today’s post was to talk about Glint’s Narrative Intelligence which is a new product in their platform. Narrative Intelligence basically pulls the ‘real’ story out of what’s going on in your organization by analyzing the unstructured data comments from your employee surveys. This comment data gives you a much richer picture of what truly is going in your organization.

Glint’s NI then takes this unstructured data and puts it through their natural language processing engine, specifically designed for employee feedback data, and presents you with this awesome story around what your employees are actually talking about. From this data, you can then begin to write that next chapter of the story, whereas in most organizations now, we just wait around to see what happens in the next episode!

What I really like about Glint’s technology is it’s one more example of how technology is helping HR shape itself into a strategic partner of our organizations. To know what’s happening in your organization is one level. To link what’s happening to specific actions that will have a positive impact is strategic. It’s what our leaders have wanted from HR forever and it’s now a reality.

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

The Realities of Using a Full-Fledged Modern Day Talent Acquisition Platform

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I’m in a pretty cool place in life right now. Great job, great family, every day I get to work and talk with awesome, smart people, every week I get to see the most awesome technology on the planet. Like the t-shirt says, “Life is Good!”

If you’re a TA leader for a big shop, I’m guessing my life is better than yours! Why do I know this? Because the technology you’re being asked to use has completely passed you by on the side of the highway!

Remember that first time when you’re Mom or Dad asked you to ‘fix’ the clock on the VCR? It was simple, but they had no idea on how to set the VCR clock, so it would blink “12:00” for weeks until you decided to fix it. Most TA leaders, right now today, are looking at that clock on the VCR blinking!

The reality of using a full-fledged modern day Talent Acquisition Platform is:

– You’re not ready for it.

– It’s like you’ll be taught how to walk all over again.

– It’s like you’ll be learning a new language.

– It will be the single most valuable thing you’ll ever do in your TA career.

– You’ll be forced to teach your entire leadership something completely new.

– Most vendors selling these solutions, don’t have the capability to actually teach you and your team how to effectively use it.

– You and your team aren’t ready to unlearn all of your broken, bad habits to use it effectively.

– You’re going to have to admit to yourself and others, you really don’t know what you’re doing.

That last one is hard. Because we do know what we’re doing, damn it! But, this is where you have to remember the blinking VCR clock. You don’t, but you can learn!

A full end to end TA platform will change the way you, your team, and your organization actually attract, recruit, and onboard talent. Gone, completely, will be Post and Pray. So, will be those employees who think this is what recruiting is.

It’s not overly difficult to learn these new skills. It is uncomfortable because it’s a BIG change from what you’re actually doing today and calling it recruiting. You’re not recruiting. You’re administering a recruiting process. Those are different things. Your organization actually needs you, desperately, to attract, retain, and develop great talent.

Any monkey can collect resumes and pass them onto a hiring manager. In fact, you don’t even have to pay an admin $12 per hour to do that, I can find you an A.I. bot that can do that for pennies on the dollar.

The really, really cool part about this is you’ll completely change your career path by doing this! Once you implement and transform your organization’s recruiting practices using technology, you’ll have other organizations lined up at your door begging you to do the same for them!

The real reality is you have a choice to make. Fix the blinking clock, or keep ignoring it. What kind of TA leader are you?