Most of Your Dream Won’t Come True…

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…but some will.

That’s what it’s all about. We don’t live and work and struggle to reach every single dream. That’s impossible. We do all of this for the chance we might actually get the chance to see some of our dreams come true. Maybe even just one. I guess it depends on what kind of a dreamer you are.

I dream of great cookies (okay, not all my dreams are big, but they’re all mine!). I had some once in small local hoagie place in Omaha, NE. The best cookies I’ve ever had. I think the secret ingredient was crack because I could never get enough of them.

Okay, that was a small dream. But I got to experience it! And, it was glorious! It’s been more than ten years since I’ve had those cookies and I still remember them!

 Some dreams we have are giant and most likely won’t come true. I have a dream to coach the LA Lakers. It’s a dream. I’ve done almost nothing to fulfill this dream but dream about it and watch a lot of NBA games and coach my sons in rec league games. This dream, probably won’t come true.

 I’ve dreamed about my boys going to college. I started saving money for this when they were babies, and still save today. We pushed them constantly to get good grades and put their studies first. We made them go to bed at a decent time, even when they complained. We made them eat good food when they wanted junk, so they would have energy at school to learn. We sat with them and helped them fill out applications.

We made them eat good food when they wanted junk, so they would have energy at school to learn. We made sure homework was done before free time took place. We sat with them and helped them fill out applications.

 I have two boys in college and one well on his way. I worked for this dream, for a long time, in many ways.

 You see we all have dreams. Some just happen. Some will never happen. Some you have to work your ass off to make happen.

 Most of your dream won’t come true, but some will.

Would You Facebook Live Your Interview?

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A few weeks ago, after an NFL playoff game, a wide receiver from the Pittsburg Steelers, Antonio Brown, Facebook Lived his coaches post-game talk to the team. That kind of talk is almost always a private conversation between the coach and the players.

Beyond the concept of betrayal between player and coach, this entire thing got me thinking about how our world has changed in what society views and private vs. public. My parent’s generation is extremely private. You don’t talk about money, political beliefs, religion, love life, family, your job, etc., with anyone outside your immediate family, and maybe not even them!

My generation was a little less, we would speak our political beliefs, talk opening about relationships, etc. The most recent generation to enter the workforce seemingly will talk about anything publicly! Somedays it seems like nothing is off limits within the walls of the office, this was not always the case.

Antonio Brown’s Facebook Live broadcast of this private moment got me to think about how long is it until we see someone broadcast an interview live!? This is truly a private moment between candidate and hiring manager. A time that both could look awesome or like a total fool.

There might be value for both sides to broadcast an interview live.

From a candidate perspective, you could show yourself in a very good light. If you nail the interview, not only do you have proof but now others also can see this and might want to hire you. If you bomb, having a video of this to analyze might be the best thing to help you get better at interviewing.

From an employer perspective, having a live broadcast of an interview might be a bonanza of publicity from an employer branding standpoint. We already know if would take a unique organization to be willing to do this, and every organization is trying to find ways to set themselves apart from their competition for talent. It would also be a great record for employment law purposes to prove you were compliant during an interview (or vice verse).

It’s easy to pick apart this idea and see both good things and bad. I suspect most HR and TA pros would see more bad than good, which is why I like it! If the majority only see negative, you can use this to your advantage.

The reality is, if you do what you should do, you have nothing to worry about and only could really use this to your advantage. If you suck and you don’t trust your hiring managers, this isn’t for you! That’s most of us, by the way!

It’s something to think about. I don’t see us, as a society, going backward as it relates to privacy. Every day another privacy barrier is broken. My question is, how long until we begin broadcasting live from the interview room?

I’m not an “Us” or a “Them”

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Politics are ruining my friendships. Look, I don’t really want to know what you care about, because most of us care about crazy shit that others don’t understand, or can’t understand. You getting me to understand your crazy, probably isn’t a good thing!

I have true friends who are pro-life. I love these friends. I don’t understand how they can’t understand my pro-choice stance, but they don’t. They can’t understand how I can be a baby killer. I’m not, but we all have our positions. We’ve been able to have a great friendship in spite of this one difference.

Maybe there should be a difference of belief scoreboard. Only having one difference of belief is fine, we can still be close friends, even two or three. Once you get to four, you begin to be a person I don’t want to hang with. Once you get to six, maybe you turn into a horrible person I would rather see dead. I’m not quite sure at the math, but I’m sure we could come up with a system.

I want to be friends with all kinds of people, but recently it seems like all kinds of people don’t want to be friends with me because I don’t believe in their crazy, to the exact specifications they want me to believe.  I see their points. I respect their points. But, I’m not flying their flag. So, apparently, that makes me part of the evil empire.

I like puppies. I fly that flag, for sure! I love babies. All babies. White, brown, yellow, any color baby is alright with me. I’m definitely pro puppy and pro baby. I like gin and tonics. Marry whomever you please, I support that. Single moms, I was raised by one, that’s the toughest gig on the planet. I’m not a church-goer, but I’m not an Athiest. I like the Spartans, probably too much. I like money. I hate giving money to people who don’t deserve it or appreciate it. I’m definitely, pro-money. I like helping people. I try and do that as much as I can.

I’m not a ‘them’. I’m also not an ‘us’. I’m more of a ‘we’.

Both the Democrats and Republicans are extremely happy we are all going ‘us’ and ‘them’. By doing this we keep both parties in power. The last thing they want is that we become a ‘we’. The establishment has ‘us’ exactly where they like to have us. Against each other. That gives them the most power. If we find a middle ‘we’, you’ll really see some shit happen!

The reality is, our current government is fine with the other party winning. All that does is give their own party more power for the next four years. Until they come back into power. Then the cycle repeats. Don’t you think if one side had it ‘right’, I mean really ‘right’, they would keep winning each year? But neither do. So, we yo-yo back and forth. Feeling passion one cycle, beat down the next, on top again the next.

Morals matter, well about once every four years, then we go back to forgetting morals matter. Walking by homeless like they’re not there. Laughing a comics tell crude jokes but she’s a woman so it’s okay to say those things. Letting our government drop tens of thousands of drone-bombs on people different from us, killing anyone in our way of a $1.99 gallon of gas.

I know this sounds naive, but I just want my friends back. I want to be able to have a conversation that isn’t filled with hatred and absolutes. I didn’t vote for him because he’s a bad person. I didn’t vote for her because she was an awful liar. I voted for someone I thought was different than the establishment because I truly want a change that benefits us all.

I’m stuck in the middle right now wanting to be a “we”, but surrounded by “us’s” and “them’s”.

 

 

Ugh! I Did a Video Interview and I Sucked! @Hirevue Edition

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First, let me say I’m a giant advocate for video interviewing. I think it’s brilliant and I absolutely love the technology and truly believe it’s only a matter of time until every single pre-screen organizations do are most likely done via video.

All that being said, I had never done a video interview, personally, until a few weeks ago.

No, I’m not looking for another job! I got asked to apply for a Board position with the new organization the Association of Talent Acquisition Professionals (ATAP). Being someone who probably spends too much time advocating for TA Pros, I couldn’t say no.

Part of the interview process was doing a video interview because the committee selecting the board members were located all over the world. Having candidates do a video interview would make it more effective from a time and cost perspective, plus this is for a TA Pro association. If we don’t use TA tech, how can we lead others in these efforts!?

Thankfully, Hirevue donated the use of their software to the selection committee to help with this process. I’ve known Hirevue for years when they were just a small up-and-coming vendor in a small 10X10 booth in the back of the vendor hall at SHRM national! The first time I saw the technology, I was a fan. I’ve demoed them a number times as they’ve improved and grown the system beyond just video interviewing. I don’t think there’s an analyst in HR or TA that has shown Hirevue more love than I!

So, doing a video interview with Hirevue should have been super easy for me!

I wanted to write about this because it wasn’t super easy for me. I sucked! It’s hard. It’s awkward. And, I still think it’s brilliant!

What you don’t get about video interviewing, unless you actually do one for real (real, meaning you actually want what you’re interviewing for, not some fake demo interview to see how it works) is that it’s hard talking to a camera and getting no facial or body language cues from your interviewers!

Normally, when you interview, you get asked a question and you start talking. Based on the non-verbal clues you get from those interviewing you, you continually auto-adjust. Your tone. The length of your answer. Your tempo. Etc. When you answer a question to the camera, you get none of this, and it’s a heck of a lot more difficult than you think!

I was even given the questions beforehand so I could prepare my answers, which might have made it worse since then you feel like you should memorize your answers. Regardless, the entire thing comes off like a bad monolog by a D-level actor!

This is important to talk about because I think if your organization is going to use video interviewing, you need to put every single one of your hiring managers, and yourself, through one of these interviews, then allow everyone to watch each other! You and your team need this perspective to understand, what you see on video might not be the best representation of that individual.

While younger generations will probably be more comfortable videoing themselves, we still have a great number in the workforce that will come across awkward. Hiring managers using this technology have to understand this, not everyone will rock the video interview.

I will say, using the Hirevue platform was super simple and easy, anyone could do it. It’s almost too easy!

For the record, I got the position. You are now looking at, err reading, about the next Board member to the Association for Talent Acquisition Professionals. So, apparently, I sucked a little less than some other folks! But, I’m super excited, along with the other board members, to begin growing and working with ATAP! I can’t tell you how long I’ve desired and hoped for an association like SHRM, but for Talent Acquisition.

Check us out and join! My goal is that organizations around the world will seek out ATAP members when they look to hire great TA Pros and Leaders for their openings.

Here’s how to JOIN the Association of Talent Acquisition Professionals!

T3 – GoCo (@GoCoio) – Zenefits-like with a Better HRIS platform

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This week on T3 I take a look at the Zenefits-like HR software solution GoCo. GoCo is an all-in-one HR, Benefits and Payroll software platform that you can use completely free. Why can you use it for free? Because like Zenefits, there’s a ton of money to be made by managing your employee’s benefit program!

So, Zenefits started this industry. Basically, we’ll give you free software if you allow us to manage your benefits. GoCo one-upped the game by doing virtually the same thing, but building a better HRIS platform for you to use! What this means is if you really aren’t married to your benefits broker for some reason, you can get some great value out of an organization like GoCo.

I think this type of system is perfect for SMB organizations, and those HR shops of One, or two, who are asked to wear a thousand hats and given virtually zero budget to do it with. That’s a lot of HR pros out there right now! But, the GoCo HRIS platform is also much better than most mid-sized organizations are using as well!

What I liked about GoCo?

– Very robust HRIS suite that is fully mobile optimized, full employee self-serve dashboard, digital onboarding, allows multiple locations and states with unique onboarding for each and 24/7 access to benefits advisors.

– Performance Management – unlike most in this space PM is a luxury and GoCo does a great job with providing a real-time feedback mechanism where employees can respond to their supervisors feedback, managers can keep private notes, schedule their one-on-one meetings, and it also can integrate with Slack.

– Time off and tracking with customized built-in rules and policies, automated approval with supervisors via email that links back to payroll, and employees request through their own dashboard.

– Payroll fully integrated with the likes of Paylocity, Gusto, ADP, etc. Make all of your changes, additions, and corrections within GoCo and everything gets pushed to your provider automatically.

– Document management – send any new or updated docs to employees and GoCo notifies and tracks all required actions and the admin dashboard will easily show who is not compliant.

– Total workforce tracking – use temporary or contract employees? GoCo tracks all of these resources as well, which is unique for almost any system. This makes it super simple for HR to track your full workforce in one system.

I’m a little surprised that more organizations have jumped on board to free HRIS software like GoCo, but much of it has to do with the belief you don’t get anything for free. In reality, most of us have no idea how much money is actually being made by our insurance brokers! Zenefits opened our eyes to this, and GoCo seems to have taken it to the next level.

Using this type of organization doesn’t increase your insurance costs. But your brokers will make you believe you’ll get worse service and increased costs. For the most part, I haven’t heard this feedback coming from the user community. Most actually love it, because they finally have real HR software to help them manage their workforce. Well worth a demo, if you’re in this demographic.

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

It’s Tim Sackett Day: Celebrating Lisa Rosendahl

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January 23, 2012, my friends made that day forever be known as Tim Sackett Day!  By January 23, 2013, those same friends thought I couldn’t take another day of celebration and honor, and decided to honor another individual but still call it Tim Sackett Day!

Tim Sackett Day is about honoring a person in the HR or TA world who probably doesn’t get the attention and respect they deserve. I could easily argue that’s 99% of HR and TA pros! So, this is our way to highlight a few great people along the way.

This year, 2017, we are honoring Lisa Rosendahl!

For me, Lisa is the perfect candidate for Tim Sackett Day! Former U.S. Army Officier, current acting Associate Director for the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs responsible for HR, along with a heck of a lot of other stuff. Lisa is also a writer at heart, and you can read her stuff on her blog at LisaRosendahl.com, where she writes about HR and Leadership. 

Lisa is an active advocate for HR in Minnesota and beyond. One of the original Women of HR writers, wife, mother and overall just a better person than most of us will ever be.

The best part of all of this is Lisa is like you. Or, better, you can be like Lisa. She’s awesome because she made the decision to get involved, to be passionate about her profession. She has the education and the experience, but mostly she made the decision to volunteer, get involved, and surround herself with like-minded people.

Please take a moment today to get to know Lisa a little better. Reach out to her and connect. Congratulate her on being named the 2017 recipient of the famous Tim Sackett Day honoree! (You can get her on the Twitters as well @LisaRosendahl!)

The One Fix to Talent Acquisition You’re Too Afraid to Implement

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There’s a ton of reasons we are afraid of stuff. I was never scared of the dark, but for some stupid reasons, I’m scared of bees. I know that I’m not going to die from a bee. I’ve been stung. It hurts, you get over it. Yet, I hate when a bee is buzzing around me!

I think most people are afraid to be ‘found out’ professionally. To have it discovered that we aren’t as good as we think we are. Every function has hickeys. Things we really don’t want others in the company to see or know about. They aren’t career ending things, still, they are things we aren’t proud about.

In talent acquisition, we lose great talent at points in our recruiting process. It happens way more than it should, for a number of reasons. If you were to truly dig into the exact reason of why each person was lost, it wouldn’t be something most TA departments would be proud of.

Visier recently released their annual Hiring Manager survey. It’s full of great information, one stat that hit me in the gut was this:

What this is really saying is that talent acquisition isn’t giving this information to the hiring manager, or more likely, your hiring managers don’t believe the B.S. you’re selling them on the reasons why!

The majority of TA departments, when asked why a good candidate is lost during the process will come up with candidate problem reasons. The candidate backed out, it was too far to drive. They got an offer from another company and couldn’t wait. It wasn’t the position they truly wanted. Etc.

All of which might be legitimate, but we forget, many times the hiring managers get a different side.  Usually, hiring managers know people, who know people, etc. and the ‘real’ reason will get back to them. It then becomes, “well, Mark was getting the run around from your TA team about his plane ticket costing too much, and he felt like it just wasn’t worth dealing with this at this level”, or “the Recruiter took three days to call Mary back to schedule the interview time and by then she decided to take the other offer”.

The reality is, the majority of TA leaders don’t want to know the ‘real’ reason because it reflects poorly on their team, and on them. That doesn’t feel good! Uncovering the brutal truth is painful and many times embarrassing.

Want to fix your TA department? Find out why candidates truly left your hiring process. If that’s your focus, you’ll quickly have your priorities of what to fix, change, and improve upon.

How do you do this? First, you don’t allow your recruiting team to ask the question. The answers you’ll get back will be ‘massaged’ to make TA look great and make the hiring managers look bad, or at the very least blame anyone else except yourself. Third-party this out, or find a neutral party within the organization that can make these inquiries and report back the results. This is key.

The best leaders want to know the truth. Not their version of the truth, but the real truth. Unfortunately, the truth might be the scariest thing you’ll ever face.

The Joe Biden Employee Appreciation Award

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I’m sure by now most of you have seen President Obama give Joe Biden the Presidential Medal of Freedom. It was very moving, no matter which side of the aisle you sit:

Let’s face it, being the Vice President of the United States is a thankless job. You don’t really get credit for anything besides being a good wingman, which Joe seemed to be to Obama throughout their entire time together in Washington.

So, President Obama did what he could to show his appreciation, and Joe responded emotionally like I think most people would expect. It’s a huge honor receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Isn’t really all any of our employees want? No, not the Medal of Freedom, to be appreciated for the work you do. To be recognized by your supervisor in the best way you can, publicly, letting everyone know, “hey, Joe’s a great guy, he gave it his all, all the time, and I that truly matters to me”.

Being appreciated is so powerful, yet, so underutilized.

Why?

Because you can’t fake appreciation. I mean you can, but everyone knows, especially the person receiving fake appreciation. Real appreciation is emotional. It’s connected. You can feel it.

You have a bunch of really hard working people in your organization. Not all of your employees, but still a bunch that deserve this level of appreciation. The key is that they get it from the person who actually appreciates them for real. They might not all act like Joe receiving his medal, but don’t be surprised if they do.

Appreciation is the holy grail of engagement.

I Love the Buzz of a Recruiting Team in Full Motion!

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On a Tuesday night recently I stayed late at the office, took my laptop and sat out in our recruiting bullpen. Hearing everyone at once on calls, talking to candidates, selling, recruiting, is like music to me. There’s an energy you can feel, and so can everyone else that’s in the middle of it!

If you do one thing to make your recruiting team better this week, schedule a full team calling party! It doesn’t have to be at night. For agencies, that’s the best time, but I know most corporate TA leaders would struggle to make this happen.

Bring your team together and give them time to prepare, source, etc. Let them know from 10 am to noon, we are all going to call candidates all at the same time. No sourcing, no setting up interviews, no following up with hiring managers, no working on projects. Just one thing, dialing and talking.

Make a contest out of it. The recruiter who makes the most calls in this time will get a prize, or the person who talks to the most people will win. You can play around with different ways to incentivize this behavior.

It’s an amazing feeling having the entire team doing that one activity, together, that is the core of all that you do. The nervous energy, the elevated voices, the positivity is infectious! I can guarantee you that if you do once, you’ll want to do it again.

It’s too easy for us to sit there at our desk and send emails. Source on the internet. Do all that work we do, but not that one thing we all need to do more of and that’s one-on-one conversations with candidates. That’s how you make more hires. That’s how you decrease days to fill. That’s how you increase your hiring manager satisfaction. That’s how you increase candidate satisfaction.

At our core, this is what we are. Recruiters find people, talk to people, and connect people. Most of this can only be done with live conversations. Do yourself a favor and give this a try!

T3 – @Appcast_io – Talent Attraction is the New Talent Acquisition

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Yo, gang – I’m doing this webinar this week. Check me out!

Discover why talent acquisition is being laid to rest, giving rise to a new game in town: talent attraction.

Thursday, January 19th | 2:00 PM ET

This free webinar present simple strategies to start ‘attracting’ talent to your organization.

You’ll learn:

  • What current processes are broken in most traditional talent acquisition practices?
  • How to get your organization on board with one consistent version of your employment brand.
  • Core concepts of industry leading employee referral programs and innovative ideas surrounding implementing such programs.
  • How organizations are using employee ‘story-telling’ to market and share their employment brand within their industry.

Register now!

This is a concept I brought to Appcast because I think moving forward organizations should be more concerned with attracting talent than acquiring talent. Those are two very different concepts, yet most organizations still work in practices to acquire versus attract.

Should be a great conversation with some new ideas for you to begin using right away in your recruiting departments.