Why do we still hate hiring older workers?

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Over two years ago I wrote a post for Halogen’s Talent Space blog titled: The Gray Wave: Why Companies Refuse to Hire Older Workers. It was very popular when it launched and it still gets great traffic because apparently there are a ton of older people Googling things like “why won’t companies hire older people?”

In the past two years, little has changed within organizations when it comes to hiring an aging workforce. A study in 2015 actually showed that recruiters, in a corporate environment, actually had lower call rates to older female candidates, than to younger female candidates.

Why? Why would a corporate recruiter prefer, consciously or subconsciously, to call a younger candidate over an older candidate? Age alone would tell us that the older candidate probably has more experience, thus, probably should be the first one they would call. But that doesn’t happen.

This is happening because this is exactly what organizations want to happen. 

I know. I know. This isn’t “your” organization. You hire old people all the time. It’s all those ‘other’ organizations. Stop it. It’s you. Now, I’ll give you that you’re fighting against centuries of organizational dynamics to change this, but demographics are going to force this upon you whether you like it or not.

Organizationally, we’ve been trained to hire this way. The oldest employees moved up the career ladder to the top of the organization. Below them on the next rung of management are people slightly younger than them. It continues in this fashion until you get to the entry level employees in your organization that is the youngest.

Sure, once in a great wild, a young buck will rise up and leap over a generation or two into leadership. But, for the most part, we march along, waiting our turn, waiting for retirements and death. This sounds very traditional but if you were to run your demographics for age only by position, you would see this very clearly in almost every single organization, industry, and location around the world.

To be fair, organizationally this started because it was experienced based. The carpenter with 20 years of experience is much better, usually than the carpenter with ten years of experience, and the apprentice has even less experience. It made sense hundreds of years ago.

What this means is that you hire younger, because the hiring manager you’re recruiting for wants someone younger than them to manage. Most hiring managers are intimidated by managing someone who is older than they are, for numerous reasons. Very few would ever admit this fact because it’s akin to saying your racist, but if you run the numbers in your organization you’ll see very few older employees being managed by people who are younger than them.

So, how do we change this?

You have to get your leaders to see the problem, agree that it’s a problem, and be a part of changing the problem.

Your organization needs talent. You have hiring managers turning down talent for reasons that make no sense. If you call them out, you burn your relationship. So, this becomes really hard to change at the individual level.

If your organization values experience and hiring an aging workforce, I would begin tracking this by department and publicly posting this for all to see. When I was at Applebee’s we wanted more female leaders and we made this a measure that executives owned and were measured on, and it got changed very quickly. There is no difference here. It’s a simple bias, just like not hiring females.

Hiring managers who refuses to hire older workers has nothing to do with older workers, and everything to do with a hiring manager who can’t see their own bias.

 

Real-World HR – A new eBook from @SHRM

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SHRM recently launched a new eBook to help build more an awareness around what the SHRM competency model looks like in the real world of HR. I’m on pages 36 and 37 sharing my brilliance on how to impact the “Relationship Management” competency, make sure to check it out!

Spoiler alert: I basically tell HR pros it’s a great idea to jump on the corporate jet and fly around the country with your executive team! See simple, straightforward advice!

I don’t talk about the SHRM competency model hardly ever, because quite frankly it’s boring and most people don’t care, but the launch of this book got me to re-look at it and you know what? It’s pretty solid:

  • HR Expertise – You have to have the HR chops if you want to play the game.
  • Business Acumen – Your executives care about this, they want to know you understand the business of what your organization does, more than your HR chops. They figure if you get the business, you’ll be smart enough to figure out the HR stuff.
  • Communication – It’s usually the biggest weakness in most organizations, so if you can kill it here, you can really add some value to your executive team.
  • Consultation – I love this one most of all. You should be the expert in your organization of people. Which means you should be using a consultative approach in helping all of your leaders be better at the people side of their business.
  • Ethical Practice – Someone has to be above the fray and ensure our organizations stay above it as well.
  • Global & Cultural Effectiveness – This one has never been more important as we move to a world economy and our organizations will thrive from a global perspective.
  • Leadership & Navigation – The most successful organizations know where they are going and have strong leaders guiding down this path.
  • Relationship Management – Your employees will do amazing things if you get to know them, and they get to know you. Without this, we are all just commodities.

I’ve given Hank some crap over the years, but I think he and the SHRM got this right. I truly believe that corporate executives want these things from their HR leaders. If we could all master these competencies, the HR profession would have a much different image across the world.

It’s a quick read. Take a look, I really liked the practitioner point of view:

The Damaging Problem of Chasing Satisfaction as a Performance Metric

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I was recently asked to dig into talent acquisition metrics, determining which metrics drive success, which are window dressing, which are just CYA, etc. Two metrics kept coming up from TA leaders are being very important, candidate satisfaction (candidate experience) and hiring manager satisfaction.

I don’t disagree that both of these metrics are important to an effective talent acquisition strategy. You want candidates to be satisfied with the experience they have going through your recruitment process, and you want your hiring managers to be satisfied with the quality of recruitment they get from your team.

The problem happens when you don’t know the point when positive satisfaction turns into negative satisfaction.

A good example is in healthcare. Currently, in the healthcare world, patient satisfaction is a huge deal. Many hospitals are losing their minds to try and figure out how to continue to raise patient satisfaction. You can see the logic. Healthcare is an extremely competitive environment. If a patient isn’t satisfied with their care, they can easily decide to spend those dollars at another healthcare facility. Probably sounds a lot like most of our businesses, doesn’t it? (customer satisfaction, client satisfaction, etc.)

The problem is, nurses and doctors aren’t employed to keep patients satisfied. They’re employed to get patients healthy and save their life. In that process, many times, a patient’s satisfaction is meaningless. The doctor and the nurse are the experts, and before I care about your satisfaction, I care about your wellbeing.

But, as healthcare organizations continue to be run more and more like a business, doctors, and nurses and constantly pressured to put patient satisfaction above wellbeing. As long as Mary loves us, just give her what she wants, even if that isn’t the best treatment.

Now, take this back to candidate satisfaction and hiring manager satisfaction. There’s a tipping point. It’s important that you have a consistent candidate experience that is fair. This will be satisfactory for many candidates, but for some it might not be. As you continue to push resources into increasing satisfaction of those who aren’t, you begin to see a negative return on resources. 100% satisfaction, should never be your goal.

Hiring managers aren’t much different. Most of your hiring managers will be great people to work with and you’ll prove to be a great resource for them in filling their openings. They’ll be satisfied with the job you do. Some will never be satisfied, and many times those who are unsatisfied are usually causing their own dissatisfaction. Again, 100% satisfaction, should never be your goal. Because if it’s obtainable, it’s probably not valuable in this circumstance.

My job in talent acquisition is not to make everyone feel satisfied. My job is to increase the talent in the organization. To do this, it might actually mean I make some folks unsatisfied. That’s okay. I’m the expert in talent acquisition. I need to do what is best for the organization. I’m always unsatisfied with our marketing folks, but guess what, they never asked me if I’m satisfied or not.

Help Me Name My New Podcast

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Every once in a while in life you get really lucky and find a true friend. Back about eight years ago I had that happen in the strangest of circumstances. I was running talent acquisition at Sparrow Health System when I found an HR blog written named The HR Capitalist, written by Kris Dunn.

The dude wrote, exactly like I thought in my head. I had never read a blog before, and truly had no idea what the heck it was. But, I knew I had to reach out to this guy, because he was my brother from another mother. So, I sent him an email. I mean I sent him an email the moment I got done reading the first post I found of his.

Kris emailed me back within minutes, with his phone number, and said, “call me”. Okay, now I’m a bit scared, creeper! So, I called him, because I started the creeping by sending him some fanboy love note. We talked for at least an hour on the phone that day, and soon after I started writing for his Fistful of Talent blog and the rest you can say is history.

So, yeah, we’re sorta BFFs. Our wives get sick of us texting each other at weird times. In 2017, middle-aged men don’t really have ‘friendship-friendships’. You know a lot of guys. You call them your friends but you never really talk about anything real. It’s mostly sports and weather. KD and I get on the phone and we have to schedule ourselves or we’re an hour into the call and haven’t even talked about what the hell we called each other on. That’s rare for dudes.

So, why am I telling you this? I asked my friend, Kris, to start a podcast with me. We figure other people would love to hear our conversations because we think we’re so freaking smart and have the world figured out. Or, maybe they would like to hear our snarky take on everything from pop culture to leadership theory. Anyway, it’s going to be a weekly show. Probably thirty minutes in length (we told each other this, but I can’t remember the last time we actually talked for under thirty minutes).

We want to do a Leadership Podcast. We both have strong recruiting and HR background, but most of our career the stuff we found most interesting was when we got to coach hiring managers to be better leaders. So, we need your help finding a name for this podcast. Here’s what we came up with:

  • Leadershipping with Kris Dunn and Tim Sackett
  • Never Boss Alone with Tim and Kris
  • Ready to Manage with KD and Me

Click on this Link to Vote for the Title you like best! (Or you can also give us your idea for a better name as well on the survey!)

The goal is to make this a leadership based podcast that HR and TA leaders can pass onto their hiring managers and say, “You need this!” or maybe they’ll just say, “I really liked this and thought you might too!” (which is way more politically savvy!)

Thanks for helping Kris and I out. We are looking forward to sharing this with all of you!

 

 

T3 – Smarp @BeSmarp – Connecting Employees with your EB Content

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This week on T3 I take a look at the employee communications application, Smarp. Smarp is a comprehensive communications app that connects employees with the employer’s online content, generating positive brand awareness and exposure by empowering employees to participate in the internal and external communications of the company.

The Smarp app ensures employees are well-informed whether they are at the office or on the go and allows them to improve their own professional brand by helping them position themselves as thought leaders in their fields through the content they share. At its core Smarp is an application that allows an admin (HR, marketing, EB, etc.) to schedule content to be distributed to employees with simple one-click access for them to share the content with their social circles that they decide.

Smarp can easily be used for Employer Branding, but it’s not limited to only HR and Recruiting, all employee communication within the organization can leverage this tool. Smarp is a better way to share and exchange content amongst your employees.

The things I liked most about Smarp: 

– Smarp gives you an easy to use tool that gets your branded (or approved) content into the hands of your employees, then rewards them for consuming and sharing the content with a broader audience.

– Mobile App, with an Admin desktop interface, Smarp also allows your employees to recommend content to be shared across the organization, with specific locations, groups, or departments. This let’s the organization source content that your employees are already consuming and finding value in.

– Smarp has a major gamification element that rewards employees, through a point-based system. Not only are employees rewarded for sharing the content, but they are also rewarded for the quality of the share, thus, the amount of reshares, likes, comments, etc. also count for more points. It’s not only about the quantity they share but about the quality of the share. These points give each employee a “Smarp Score” that is tracked on an organiational leaderboard. Employees then use their “Smarp” points to purchase items you choose, give to charities, etc.

– The Admin dashboard has a great analytics engine integrated that truly gives you the metrics you need to know which content is performing the best, with which groups, etc. It will show you the reach of individual pieces of content, your estimated earned media value (EEMV), and allow you to disable certain share networks you might not want to frequent.

– Internally, Smarp also allows your employees to engage with content and drive collaboration within the organization, while also sharing the content externally, without any of the internal dialogue reaching the outside. I love this feature. It allows you to have dynamic conversations internally, without fear of the public seeing what’s going on behind the curtain.

– Smarp also allows you to share job postings if you have a unique URL for the job posting. Also, if you have an RSS feed to your jobs these will be brought in automatically if you would like that ability for your employees to share these jobs externally and give you the ability to measure this kind of activity.

This application is more likely one that would be used by larger organizations, or more tech-savvy organizations who have an employee base that would embrace this type of activity. Built as an annual license per employee user, organizations will get the most out of this with high user adoption, which can be tricky if you’re not prepared. I was impressed with what Smarp has to offer, not only for HR and Recruiting but how this tool could easily be used across the enterprise for employee communication.

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

This Job Sounds To Good To Be True!

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When I was 18 years old I packed up my 1979 Ford Mustang and drove 20 straight hours from Grand Rapids, MI to Laramie, WY to go to college at the University of Wyoming. My air conditioning didn’t work, the radio didn’t work well and I had a Rand McNally Atlas (look it up kids) to guide my way.

It took me roughly 4 months to blow through every single dollar I had, then I took that same trip back to Michigan to find a job. One college semester done, and I was dead broke, and I didn’t have parents who were going to pay my way to college. I needed to find a job!

When you’re 18 and have completed one semester of college you tend to think you’re pretty freaking smart, or maybe that was just my personality. My mom did buy me a new suit, dress shoes and a Topcoat (again, look it up, kids). She was a boomer who never went to college, was successful and firmly believed you only needed to look the part to get the part.

Well, I looked a part, but I’m not sure what part that was!

I started applying for ‘management’ positions. I mean I had a suit! Not sure what I would wear on day 2, but certainly, that was a secondary issue. No one gave me the time a day. My previous work experience up to this point was running concessions for the world’s largest movie theater, at the time! That didn’t seem to have much pull with anyone, except one company!

I still remember the call! They were impressed with my ‘qualifications’, could I come an interview? Of course! They were looking for “Territory Managers”, people who wanted to make unlimited income. That sounded like me!

I showed up for the interview in my suit, new shoes, and topcoat. I was excited. I was a bit nervous. When I got to the location there were others in the waiting room. I was dressed way better than everyone else, that had to help me right!?

I got called into a small office. I was asked a few questions by a guy who seemed way to excited to be doing his job. But he must have liked me, he offered me the job, on the spot! Thanks for the suit, Mom!

He then asked if I could start right away? Well, of course, just show me to my office and I’ll get right to work managing that territory of mine!

He then took me to a much larger room where there were chairs against the wall, probably 40, and the entire rest of the room was open. About 30 of the chairs were filled, most by the less-dressed folks, I already discounted in the waiting room. Apparently, they also got hired.

The guy who hired me came in next to ‘congratulate’ us on this great opportunity on selling home cleaning systems to the American public, something the American public desperately needed to pay $1200 for. This would be the best value buy of their lives, and we were lucky enough to be able to offer it to them!

I just got roped into selling vacuums door to door.

For the next 4 hours we were trained on how to sell these vacuums, showed how to get into the homes of the buyer. I got down on my hands and knees in my new suit and broke apart the vacuum home cleaning system to show the ‘Miss’s of the house’ how easy it was to use.

At around 1 pm they unlocked the doors and let us leave the building to get something to eat. I drove home. Called my former boss at the theater and asked if I could come back to work. He said yes. I then began saving to go back to the University of Wyoming to get my degree.

99.9% of the time, the job that sounds to good to be true, is.

Dear Timmy: How Do I Get Into Talent Acquisition?

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I get asked a ton of questions via email. Some are from college students who ask a variety of things. Here’s a recent one:

Dear Timmy,

I’m a college student majoring in communications (editor’s note: why do college kids major in communications? Like 80% of college kids want to major in communications. You know there aren’t real jobs in communications, right!?) and I’m looking to get into human resources, more specifically I would like to work in talent acquisition.  What suggestions, or steps, do you suggest to help me get a position in corporate talent acquisition?

Thanks,

Communication major because apparently I’m an idiot (just kidding, she didn’t sign it that way!)

Here is my response:

If you want to get into straight HR you’ll need to graduate with a degree in HR. As I don’t know of an organization that hires entry level HR pros with non-HR degrees. If you want to get into talent acquisition follow these steps –

Step 1 – Graduate

Step 2– Apply for ‘agency’ entry level recruiting roles.

Step 3 – Do your time in the agency world, at least a year, maybe a bit more.

Step 4 – Apply for corporate Talent Acquisition openings

Here’s my reasoning for the steps above.

In talent acquisition no one cares which college degree you have, they only care that you can recruit. The reality is they shouldn’t even care if you go to college, but most corporate recruiter jobs will require it. Corporate TA departments rarely hire entry level recruiters because they don’t have the knowledge, processes, and capacity to train recruiters, which is why you need to get experience on the agency side of recruiting.

Agency recruiting is known to be very cut-throat and high burnout rate, but I’m only talking about a year or so. Anyone can handle that, and it will give you valuable experience. You might like agency recruiting and you can make a ton of money, but it’s high stress. Corporate TA is mid-level money, with no growth, but virtually no stress in comparison.

Once you get your experience in the agency world, even only a year, you’ll actually be considered pretty valuable on the corporate side of TA. Think of your agency time as your TA internship. You know there’s an endpoint, then you get into the job you want.

When interviewing for agency positions you should never mention that your goal is to get into corporate TA. They won’t hire you if they feel you’re just going to leave. Also, when you interview, most agency folks are only looking to hire two things: high energy, highly money motivated. So, drink three Red Bulls before you interview, and talk constantly about how much money you want to make. You’ll get hired by 99% of the agencies that interview you.

I might be joking a little, but only a little, that’s fairly close to reality. I mean agencies are also known to hire pretty people, so it wouldn’t hurt to be good looking.

 

The Biggest HR and TA Questions for 2017

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I guess ‘biggest’ really depends on where your organization is with your HR and TA practices. My biggest might not be your biggest! I taking a run at this from the 30,000-foot view, not ground level.

2017 will for sure be a challenging year for both HR and TA leaders. With a new administration that is eager, to say the least, to make policy changes, both functions will be looked to for answers on how to deal with all of this, plus you have your normal day job to handle as well!

Here some of the biggest questions HR and TA will have to answer in 2017:

1. What will a repeal of Obamacare, in its current form, do to your benefit plan? If we’ve learned anything from Trump, it’s he doesn’t like Obamacare. So, you can pretty much guarantee that we’ll see changes to the Affordable Care Act. Which changes we’ll all have to wait and see!

2. How do we keep our talent from leaving us? It used to be, how do we keep our ‘best’ talent from leaving us? But, let’s face it, you have so many employees leaving now this isn’t about putting your finger in the dyke, this is about building a new damn! Retention will be one of the hottest topics in 2017, and probably 2018, 2019,…

3. What policies do you need to add, change or get rid of to make your organization better?  We always think about improvement in terms of adding, but in 2017 your greatest accomplishment might be to delete a policy or two that no longer have a positive impact in your organization. We added so many things during the recession that no longer make sense, but in HR and TA we hate deleting policies!

4. How do we fix Millennials? He didn’t say what I just think he said, did he? You need to watch this video by Simon Sinek. He thinks corporations need to fix millennials. His reasoning is solid. Corporations have the most to lose by broken millennials, they also have the most to gain. So, get ready to ramp up your development programs like never before, but these won’t be the same types of soft skill development programs from two decades ago! Millennials are broken. We can blame their crappy parents, at least that’s what Simon does.

5. How do we attract talent to our organizations? You don’t have to ping pong tables and free beer to attract great talent, but you do have to market to prospective candidates that you want them! This means that the post and pray strategy that 90% of organizations use, no longer will work (not that it ever worked). If I’m you, I have a serious conversation with my executive team about bringing marketing into help talent acquisition do some things differently. Yeah, you still need to sell whatever it is you sell, but if you don’t have talent to run the company, you won’t need marketing.

What are your biggest HR and TA questions for 2017?

What Are Your Rules for Engaging Your Employees After Hours?

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On January 1, 2017, it became ‘legal’ for French workers to ignore online communications from their employer when those communications were sent during non-work hours. Meaning if your normal work day was 9 am to 6 pm, any communication sent outside of those times can legally be ignored and the employer has no recourse:

With the implementation of this law, the country aims to tackle the problem of the so-called ‘always-on’ work culture by giving employees the ‘right to disconnect.’

While the new law stipulates that employers sort out viable ways to avoid the intrusion of work matters into the private lives of employees, for now the ‘right to disconnect’ foresees no penalties for companies that fail to reach such agreement with workers.

In such cases, employers will be required to “publish a charter that would make explicit the demands on, and rights of, employees out-of-hours,”

While this is currently only the law in France, we know eventually we’ll see this type of legislation begin to creep into many other countries as well. Currently, most American companies have more of an ‘always on’ concept of work communication response culture. Meaning, if I send you a note, whenever I send you a note, I expect a reply when you see it.

Of course, there are organizations and leaders who have taken the opposite stance on this, but those are really few and far between. Those organizations understand the importance of balance between work and your personal life. The problem comes into play as we give our employees more and more flexibility in their work schedule, we also expect more flexibility in how we communicate with them as employers.

That’s the one issue I see with the French law. The French are still working under a very traditional style of work. You go to an office. You do work. You go home. In America, and many other countries, that type of work culture is no longer the norm. So much flexibility has been added into employees working schedule that traditional communication rules of when and how become very difficult to manage, and quite frankly even employees wouldn’t want those rule.

So, should you have after-hours work communication rules? If so, what should those rules be? Here are mine:

1. Salaried employees, with flexibility in their schedule, in leadership roles, need to be available 24/7/365. You might disagree with this, but at a certain level in organizations, you are always available. The one caveat to this is when you have something personal, or an emergency issue, and have set up a communication plan where another leader is covering for you and taking on your responsibility.

2.  Sales pros and leaders must respond to clients in an expected manner when there is a client issue. “Expected” then becomes a negotiated stance with your clients. So, if your clients expects an immediate reply, you should reply immediately. If you’ve negotiated twenty-four hours, then you reply within twenty-four hours. The point being, negotiate communication expectations up front, not when there’s a problem for the first time!

3. Employees are expected to communicate to their leaders about a known issue that could have a drastic impact the organization immediately. After-hours, during work hours, anytime. Salaried, hourly, temporary, etc. If there’s a problem, let someone know. I don’t hold you responsible for taking care of it, but I do hold you responsible for letting someone know.

4. Don’t be a hero. If you’re at your daughter’s school play, don’t leave to answer a phone call just because you see it’s a work number. Let it go to voicemail and return the call, if needed, after the play is done. Don’t return an email message immediately on Saturday night of something that can easily wait until Monday morning. Just because someone else decided to work on Saturday evening doesn’t mean you are expected to work Saturday evening. It might just be that time worked well for them.

5. Don’t expect others to have your bad habits. Just because you love responding to email at 3 am does not mean others will love doing the same thing, and you believing they should makes you look like a terrorist.

What are your after-hours work communication rules?

T3 – The HR and TA Technology I Reviewed in 2016!

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In 2017, I’ll be starting my 4th year of reviewing HR and TA technology solutions (hat tip to my friend William Tincup for getting me started on this path, and hat tip to the OG of reviewing HR and TA Tech, Steve Boese, okay, Joel Cheeseman will probably say he’s the OG, but you get the point).

I started doing this for my development. The initial plan was to do one, one-hour demo each month. Twelve hours and twelve demos per year to begin to make myself feel a little more tech savvy in the HR space. That quickly turned into doing one per week. In reality, I probably demo about one hundred pieces of new technology each year (most at conferences where I can knock out a ton at once), but I don’t write about many.

My reviews are not meant to be critical reviews. A product I might love, you might think is a piece of crap. That’s because we live in different circumstances. My reviews were meant to educate readers on what’s available out in the market across the HR and TA tech space. From there, you can decide if a demo of that solution is right for you or not.

Most people love this as a self-development idea but hate the fact that they feel if they demo, they’ll be ‘sold’ to by these companies. I don’t have this issue. I tell them upfront, I want a demo, I’m not buying, but I heard some good stuff about you and want to see. Don’t put me in your CRM, or I’ll hate you forever! It works pretty good!

Here are the products and links to the technology solutions I reviewed in 2016:

– Modern Survey 

– Smashfly

– SwitchApp

– Beamery

– Benevate

– Halogen & Jobvite partnership

– Universum

– Recruitee 

– Boon 

– ViziRecruiter & GoSizzle

– Brilent 

– Joberate

– Textio 

– Whil 

– Ratedly

– day100

– Pilot 

– Namely 

– WeVue

– SocialTalent 

– TextRecruit

– Health Fair Connections

– Handshake

– Fitbit

– InvestiPro 

– eTeki

– Slack & Growbot

– Envoy (formerly VisaNow)

– Lever 

If you would like to be reviewed for T3 in 2017, please reach out to me at timsackett@comcast.net. It’s pretty simple. We set up a demo, I ask questions, I give you some feedback, I write about you (or sometimes I don’t if I think it won’t be helpful to the readers). I think, so far, it’s worked out pretty well for both parties. I’ve gotten great development, and the tech companies get some free publicity!