@AnythingOverIce takes over The Project at #SHRM16 – Day 2

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I couldn’t be at SHRM National this year so I sent my roving reporter, HR Pro, and friend, Chris Bailey! BTW – He’s also the Director of PwC’s HR Practice in the Caribbean. Chris will be giving you daily updates from D.C. and filling you in on all things #SHRM16! (P.S. – We could name this series “Selfies of Chris Around D.C.!) 

Monday SHRM – 4 keys things a futurist wants you to do with your business that will make it ready for 2020…. Plus some other cool tidbits…

Ok, so Sunday finished off with rooftop drinks at the Washington Hotel see pic, which was epic and it’s why we come to conferences to check out the view! Seriously Washington is a cool city being a brit I’m used to small winding roads and living in the Cayman islands I get a few beaches etc… so to see a city function as well as it does and have buildings on a scale that makes my small island feel tiny is pretty cool. Anyways Tim wants me to write about conference type stuff rather than a Bailey travel blog which would probably be way more interesting but NSFW, so let’s just say rooftop drink watching the Cav’s take their first major titles in 50+ years resulted in a sore head this morning. BTW I’m a Heat fan but you gotta love the game!  

 So I typed the below on my iPhone whilst sat in another faceless ballroom a bit bored before this session kicks off – I’m trying a bit of an experiment this year – I’m going to pop in and out of a few sessions at a time to see what nuggets of information I can glean in 10 minutes of listening. However if the speaker is particularly engaging or telling me something mind blowing I may stick around… So first session 10:45am “t minus 90 days until the election” no idea what it’s about 😉 so 10 mins starts now…. Can Mike Aiken get us off to a good start….this day in 1975 jaws was released…interesting tit-bit…then speakers worst nightmare slides don’t work! Can Mike battle on without slides   Not really attention lost so moved on out! Only nugget gained was the jaws thing…. Went straight into Steve Gilliland enjoy the ride mega session (@stevegspeaks) now I have seen Steve talk before and he is funny and a pro but I was mainly interested in whether he had updated his material, actually yes, new jokes new stories and some key messages that apply to all not just our HR folk….

Laugh listen learn – if you’re laughing your listening so I can hopefully teach you something

A closed mouth gathers no feet – know when to shut up! Love this quote and have not heard it before and it’s so true. Practice this… Only say something that will result in something positive!

Don’t forget why you do what you do – we all get wrapped up in tech, strategy, diversity, that we forget why what we do matters take a step back.

Three really simple messages that we all already know but told with humor that had me laughing right till the end…oops only fleeted once good on you Steve!

So, post the lunch box delight that seems to send the SHRM masses into a frenzy I’m back in a different ballroom listening to some smooth 90’s hits while I wait for Scott Hamilton to rock my world teaching me how he is able to see into the future (see Tim’s blog on which speaker are you) this guy is most certainly a futurist and he has a room of easily 1000 people to preach to! Scott’s talk 2020 transformation – next practices in HR…

Hold tight….

OK, so Scott is impressive probably why they gave him a mega session, obviously knows his subject and started out by giving some interesting facts such as Mercedes-Benz now have over 65 models as they shoot for even more different clients and are actively targeting the over 65 market…. According to Scott, Kodak turned down entering the digital market way back when as they didn’t want to cannibalize their own business….and similarly blockbuster also said no to online streaming of films two years before Netflix entered the market… all decision were made because leadership was unable to change its mindset.  Enter Scots formula for helping an organization use these HR practices to be the competitive companies of 2020.

1.        Eliminate: Which Policies and practices can you eliminate that your industry has long competed on? –Cirque du Soleil eliminated Star performers, Animal shows, Aisle Concession sales and multiple show arena’s

2.        Raise: Which practices/policies/benefits should be raised well above the industry standard? Again in the case of Cirque – Unique venues (Vegas etc..)

3.        Reduce: Which practices/policies should be reduced well below industry standard? For Cirque this was – Family audience to target Adult entertainment, Fun, and Humour, Thrill and danger

4.        Create – Which policies and practices should be created that the industry never offered – a potentially disruptive approve – for Cirque this was, Theme, Refined environment, multiple productions, Artistic music and dance.

·        For Cirque Du Soleil this created a $2.4bn business!

I really liked these coupled with Dump your HR baggage! Generate Practices that challenge the status quo, Target your areas to start divergent and convergent thinking (there is a whole other blog on this one!).

So to finish, he had the audience shout out some cool games changers here are just a few that you might want to consider:

·        Remove Job titles

·        Create Awesome workspaces

·        Pay off student loans of employees who remain with you over time

·        Think Tanking

Now I really like the think tanking idea simply take your teams once a quarter for 20 mins and think new sh!t up but actually try and create project plans to deliver on the new stuff.

So I didn’t leave Scott’s session, he held my attention, some good takeaways which hopefully I have succinctly placed above. If you want to look him up he is the Chief Exec of NextWorks on twitter as @enpforums.

T3 – @Textio – Words + Data = Magic

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This week on T3 I review the HR technology play named Textio. Textio is a platform that optimizes your job ads and candidate emails in seconds so you can hire better candidates faster.

Textio shows you how your job listings and candidate emails will perform before you’ve even posted them. Will the role be popular among qualified job seekers? Will it fill quickly? How gender-biased is it? Our predictive models give you analytics and feedback right as you’re typing.

Textio is like a very smart word processor. You type, edit, format, copy, and paste, just like you would in any other word processor. You’ll know how to use it immediately. But Textio does something else: as you edit, it predicts how successful your job listing or candidate email is going to be and helps you make it better.

Textio analyzed job text and outcomes data using listings from tens of thousands of companies. They look at which jobs fill the most quickly and generate the most applicant interest. Where companies choose to share additional data with Textio, they also consider candidate demographics and how many among a job’s applicants are strong enough to get called back.

5 Things I really liked about Textio: 

1. Textio gives you a ‘score’ of the document you’re working on. They’ve been able to reduce time to fill by 20% when you get your job posting to 90, on a 100 point scale! That’s a huge drop in time to fill, for doing nothing more than using better (mathematically proven) language to describe your openings!

2. Textio instantly highlights your document and gives you better options to make your job postings and emails perform better from a candidate’s standpoint. They can also assist in making your job postings are not more male or female oriented based on the language you use. The platform will help you ensure you are demographically inclusive.

3. The big win is in job postings, but HR and TA can use this in all communications and documents. Even executives can use it to help their communications!

4. Textio helps point out some written language biases we all have. Not only does it help improve your communications, it helps you uncover some biases you probably don’t even know you have in your writing style. Excellent personal and professional development tool.

5. Built in machine learning works across your entire team to help build consistency in your communications and job postings, as well as the ability to share with each other.

Textio is just loaded with data that helps your organization better communicate. Their data shows that we all like bullets! Okay, I know you knew that, but did you know the sweet spot for bulleted content in your job postings is 1/3?! Probably not, or that if you have no bullets, men will rarely engage with your job postings? Or, if you have more than 50%, you’re less likely to get women?  I have your interest now! It’s cool stuff!

14-day free trial to check out whether or not this would be helpful for you, an annual subscription is really reasonable. It would be worth one license in your shop just to get your job postings better! Check Textio out, definitely worth a look, I was really impressed.

@AnythingOverIce Takes Over The Project at #SHRM16

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I couldn’t be at SHRM National this year so I sent my roving reporter, HR Pro, and friend, Chris Bailey! Chris will be giving you daily updates from D.C. and filling you in on all things #SHRM16! 

So I’m not sure if its day 1 or 2 of #SHRM16? Can Sunday really be the first day of a conference? You see there was a brunch, there were mimosas and then we gave the barman his choice of cocktails to make us this was before the opening remarks of the illustrious Hank el Presidente of SHRM and he was quickly followed by Alan Mulally former CEO of Boeing and Ford and Mike Rowe from the TV program dirty jobs…. Then the expo opened where they serve beer, then I met up with HR Royalty Jennifer McClure and regal although not royal (as she hasn’t performed in Cayman) Mary Faulkner who subsequently lost her glasses and found them again. You can follow her story on twitter @mfaulkner43 it’s a page turner.

Anyways what I took away from Alan and Mike – Alan was a typical statesperson, CEO like in his delivery and whilst on point he didn’t shatter the earth with his reveals most of which has already been read about. I am not taking away from his accomplishments as they are fantastic and as Mike said, “Gee thanks, SHRM I have to follow that guy!”

Well, I for one am glad he did and wish he would run for president! I didn’t expect much from a guy who does the jobs no one wants or really know about on TV but that was the whole point – the are x million people unemployed in America and a bunch of these jobs who are always hiring! He also pointed out that we are disconnected from Millennials as we don’t challenge them by saying – “this jobs not for you” make them want it. He was articulate knowledgeable and now someone I would have on my love to have round for dinner list. I loved the connection with mainstream jobs, shine a light on the people in your organization that you forget. They do the jobs no one else wants, we all have them. Recognize them because should they leave they are almost irreplaceable!

So in all a good opening for SHRM16 lots of energy and a good buzz about the place – See also a roving video interview with Jen McClure and Mary Faulkner more to follow on Mary & Jens exploits throughout the conference…

As for me, you can follow me on Twitter @anythingoverice or www.anythingoverice.com

Cheers, Tim wish you were here!

Candidates Actually Want Human Interaction!

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TA Leaders and Executives, this is the dirty little secret that your Recruiters and the Talent Acquisition Technology industry does not want you to know!  Candidates actually prefer to have human interaction when searching and applying for a job. From a study done by ASA:

“Three of the top five ways job seekers land a job are “high touch,” according to the survey findings. Word of mouth is the most popular means (43%)—followed by job board websites and employer websites (both at 30%). Contacts or acquaintances with prospective employers (30%) and staffing and recruiting companies (25%) also rank high as resources that led to job offers.

Three in four (77%) actually prefer human interaction when searching for a job, according to the ASA Workforce Monitor.“

Recruiters and TA Tech are in bed together to pull the wool over your eyes!  TA Tech wants to sell you automation! Recruiters don’t want to pick up the phone! Put those two groups together and it’s one big circle jerk about to use only technology solutions to recruit and never pick up another phone as long they live!

Seriously! 3 out 4 candidates prefer to have a human contact them and tell them about the job you have open. I bet if you sent out an informal survey to your recruiting team, right now – today, the response from your recruiters would be that they believe only 25% or less actually would prefer a call!

That’s a huge disconnect, and should be very telling about the talent on your team!

So, how do you get your recruiters back on the phone?

1. Measure the amount of outgoing calls by person and post it publicly for all to see. You don’t even have to say one thing about it, the calls will automatically increase! True recruiters hate being on the bottom of any scoreboard!

2. Have fun with it! Run contest and provide incentives for more outgoing calls by your recruiters. For recruiters who grew up in a world where they thought they could just email and message their way to success, the phone is scary! Some will need a kind push!

3. Group call parties. Take one hour of the day and plan for every single recruiter to be on the phones at the same time. Make sure they prepare by sourcing ahead of time and have a number of candidates to reach out to. They should have at least 25-40 to call. Most calls will go to voicemail, if they’re lucky they’ll actually talk to a few people. It will be the fastest hour of their day or week! When everyone is doing this at the same time, you get great energy from the group and it seems less scary!

An average recruiter with 25 openings on their desk should be talking live to around 75-100 people each week on the phone. What I find when I first go into a new shop and measure this, the real number is more like 15-25!  It’s shockingly low! How are you going to fill 25 openings by talking to 25 people per week!? You won’t. That’s why your TA shop is failing.

I love TA Tech! I love TA Tech more than almost anyone I know. What I also know is that all great recruiters spend more time on the phone on average than weaker recruiters. It’s so simple, yet most of us fail as TA leaders not recognizing this.

 

The 8 Man Rotation – 2015 Season – HR & Sports!

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So, about seven years ago some HR nerds and basketball junkies thought it would be a good idea to take all of our sports-related blog posts and throw them into a book. The 8 Man Rotation ebook was born. Since that time, each year, the professor Matt Stollack after finishing grading all of his finals, digs through our blogs and compiles the annual book. The 2015 Season is the sixth version of the

The 2015 Season is the sixth version of the 8 Man Rotation, where Steve Boese, Kris Dunn, Lance Haun, Matt Stollack and I get to fill our need to write about sports and tell you how it’s just like HR! We love this stuff! Check it out:

5 Instagram Filters That Will Make HR Better at Recruiting!

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You know it’s true—you’re a great HR Pro, but you don’t really like to recruit. That’s okay, because you’re good at a million other things your company values.

But here’s the thing: A recent Deloitte report outlined the need for HR Pros to grow their skills beyond what our functional area is traditionally known for. CEOs and division heads are expecting different things from HR, and one of those areas of need is… you guessed it… Talent Acquisition/Recruiting.

(Cue the lighting, adjust the crop and apply the filter—BAM. Insta-recruiter. There’s nothing that an Instagram filter can’t transform!)

The Fistful of Talent crew is back with the following webinar, “Instagramming HR: 5 Filters HR Pros Can Use To Transform Into Better Recruiters“ (sponsored by the good folks at Jobvite). Join Dawn Burke and Kris Dunn on June 29th at 2pm EST, and they’ll hit you with the following goodies:

–A review of why leaders report the need for HR re-skilling and why recruiting rises to the top of the list for HR pros and generalists at all levels.

–Data on how talent acquisition is a key component to achieving results in the modern workforce—including areas that HR Pros love to talk about (employee engagement, retention, etc).

–A breakdown of how recruiting has become more challenging in the last 5-10 years, and why the methods HR Pros have traditionally used to recruit aren’t as effective today.

–5 key strategies that HR Pros can embrace to modernize their approach to recruiting, get better results for their organizations and be viewed as high potential by the leaders they serve. We’ll go over those strategies and tell you how to get started with each of them.

The HR Pros at FOT know you work hard and are good at what you do. You don’t have to love recruiting as an HR Pro; you just have to be good enough at it to ensure it doesn’t hurt your career. With a little editing and the perfect lighting (Nashville, amIright?) you can bring out your inner recruiter in no time.

Click here to join us for “Instagramming HR: 5 Filters HR Pros Can Use To Transform Into Better Recruiters“ on June 29th at 2pm EST, and we’ll show how to ramp up your recruiting game without giving up the things you love to do as an HR Pro!!

REGISTER TODAY!

A very special episode of T3 – Why Microsoft Overpaid for LinkedIn

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This week on Saved by the Bell…

Remember those ‘very special’ episodes of your favorite TV shows growing up?  When they took a break from their normal sitcom canned laughs to talk about something serious, like smoking in the bathroom, kissing at the school dance, or cheating on a test!

This week on T3 I’ll give you my take on the biggest news to come out of HR/Talent Technology in a long time! Microsoft’s purchase of LinkedIn sent shock waves across the industry this week. LinkedIn is HR Tech’s favorite punching bag because quite frankly their one of the few super success stories in HR Tech.

Microsoft paid $196 dollar per share for LinkedIn, a massive 50% premium as compared to LinkedIn’s closing price on Friday of $131. That’s the biggest question, why so much?

There is a ton of speculation and we’ll all have fun over the next months and years guessing what Microsoft will do with LinkedIn.  History hasn’t been kind to these types of large takeovers. At the beginning, Microsoft has said they’ll let LinkedIn continue to run LinkedIn. We all know that won’t last forever and sometime next year expect to see massive reorganization and layoffs at LinkedIn! That’s just business. When you pay $26.2 Billion for a company, you expect some returns and quickly!

Here’s what we actually know, LinkedIn is in a very unique position in the market, unlike anyone else! Even though 2/3’s of their entire revenue comes from job board type activities (they call them talent solutions), employers still haven’t lost their minds when their employees decide to go on LinkedIn. “It’s only for professional networking!” Yeah, that played well, like five years ago, but now the cat is out of the bag. LinkedIn is full job board 2.0!

I’m not hating! They’re in a brilliant position and one that Microsoft finally found a way to leverage with Office 365. Can you imagine the synergies between the two products? If Office 365 automatically puts the user into a version of LinkedIn, entire organizations will become part of this giant network.  If every Office 365 user gets some free premium access to LinkedIn the number of monthly users will skyrocket. We could just go on and on with possible things they could do, all of which will make talent acquisition departments more dependent on using LinkedIn.

Quite frankly I’m surprised it took this long for a major player in the tech space to understand LinkedIn’s unique position within the market. No organization wants their employees on Monster, CareerBuilder, Dice or Indeed. None of them care if their employees are on LinkedIn?!? It boggles the mind that HR and Talent executives don’t get this!

On top of this 60% of LinkedIn’s traffic is coming through mobile, another big win for Microsoft when purchasing what is becoming a full blown social network in LinkedIn. It will be interesting to see how Facebook and Google react. I’ve said all along Facebook could end LinkedIn instantly if it decided to jump into this space. Microsoft might have just kicked a sleeping bear. Facebook has more users, more frequency, and more data. All of which could lead it to open up it’s own ‘professional network’.

Microsoft overpaid for LinkedIn because they have a plan on leveraging LinkedIn’s unique position.  Will it work? I don’t know, but it’s going to be fun watching!

HR Isn’t Rocket Science!

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I hear one thing over and over from people who read my stuff or see my presentations:

“It’s not rocket science.”

I take that as a compliment.  I’m not trying to ‘wow’ anyone with my big brain.  I’ve never been known for being the big brain type.  I’m the common sense, straight forward type.  HR and Recruiting, to me, shouldn’t be hard and complex.  It should be simple and easy to understand.

That’s the problem.

Too many HR and Talent Pros want to make it seem like ‘our’ jobs are very complex and difficult.  This is very natural, every profession does this.  If HR is easy, you won’t be valued highly by leadership.  So, let’s make it hard.  The last thing anyone wants to do is come out and say, “Hey! A monkey to do my job, but keep paying $80K!”   It’s very difficult culturally to come clean and say, “You know what?  This stuff isn’t hard.  It’s work.  We have a lot to do.  But, if we do what we know we have to do, we’ll solve this!”

But that’s HR and Talent Acquisition. It’s work.  Many times it’s a lot of work!  But we aren’t trying to solve the human genome!  We are trying to administer some processes, get our employees better, find ways to keep them engaged and happy, and find more folks who want to become a part of what we are doing.  Not overly hard.  It’s not rocket science.

I think the complexity in HR and Recruiting comes into play with ‘us’ not being aligned with what our leadership truly wants.  Many times we flat out guess what we think they want out of HR. Sometimes we assume what they want, and try and do that. Very rarely do we actually find out exactly what they expect, and just deliver that.

There are a number of reasons for this.  First, we might not agree with what our leadership wants or expects from HR.  So, we give them what we want and expect from HR.  This never works well, but is tried often!  Second, our leadership changes what the want and expect, as they see better ways to HR and Recruiting.  Change is a bitch.  It’s more of a bitch when it’s happening to you.  Third, we might not have the experience to deliver what is wanted or needed.  So, you get what we can give you.

This seems to be why delivering great HR and Talent Acquisition becomes rocket science.  Simply, we can’t have basic communication with our leadership and some self-insight on our capabilities of what we can actually deliver.   Couple this with most people’s unwillingness to ask for help, because they fear others will look down on them for not knowing, and you’ve hit the HR rocket science grand slam!

HR isn’t hard. Recruiting isn’t hard.  Dealing with expectations, and our own insecurities, that’s hard!

The One Way to be Successful at Recruiting

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Eight years or so ago I started seriously writing for the first time in my life. The only other times I ever wrote in my life were school papers, a journal that my high school English teacher, Ms. Kemp, made me write in each day and love letters to my wife before we were married and email was not yet widely used and phone calls cost too much!

My good friend Kris Dunn got me to write for Fistful of Talent. He and Jessica Lee, who was the editor at the time, gave me the Friday slot at FOT. It was my job to write something snarky and fun, a piece people would read on a Friday, chuckle and know the week is almost over. That gig turned into this gig, which turned into me writing every single day, now going on five-plus years.

In all of this writing, I discovered what a lot of people discover in becoming successful. If you want to be successful at anything, you need to do it! You need to do it a lot! You need to do it every day.

I still write stuff that is crap. I make errors all the time. But, my writing has improved. Once in a while, I actually write something I think is pretty good!

That’s the secret to becoming really good at recruiting. You need to do it all the time!  I see HR Pros who try and recruit every once in a while. They suck at it and they’ll never be good at it because they don’t do it all the time. You can’t pick up a pencil and be instantly good at writing. You can’t pick up a phone and be instantly good at recruiting.

To be good at recruiting you must recruit every day.  You must always be on.  Everyone you meet. Everyone you talk to. Everyone becomes a potential part of your recruiting pipeline. Maybe as a candidate, or a lead, or a referral, etc. You don’t recruit, then turn it off and not recruit. You recruit always.

I’m, now, constantly writing. I rarely go a day when I don’t email myself ideas about something I want to write about. I think like a writer. How can I take this situation and write about it? My friends, family, and coworkers tease me about it (‘Don’t write about this!’ ‘You’re going to write about this aren’t you?’).  I’m always on.

If you truly want to be successful in anything in life you need to do that thing, always. I see recruiters constantly miss opportunities to recruit. To ask the question that would lead them to their next great hire. To pick up the phone and make one more call before they leave for the day. To take a chance and reach out to someone who they don’t think will be interested, but just maybe they will be interested.

Being good at anything is hard. It’s really hard if you want to be good by not doing it.