Hiring Means Your Organization Failed

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Henry Ward, the CEO of eShares, wrote a post on Medium recently on How to Hire.  It’s a great piece from an executive point of view regarding the concept of talent acquisition.  Basically, Henry feels that if your organization needs to go out and hire external talent, you’ve failed as an organization:

“Hiring means we failed to execute and need help. First, let me quell a misconception. Hiring is not a consequence of success. Revenue and customers are. Hiring is a consequence of our failure to create enough leverage (see eShares 101) to grow on our own. It means we need outside help. The perfect business is a computer plugged into the internet. Starting with me, every human thereafter is overhead. And we are increasing overhead by 50%.

I want to repeat this point. We are increasing overhead by 50% because we failed to execute. It is not something to be proud of. It is humbling to go back to the labor market, hat-in-hand, asking for help…”

Want to know why your executives don’t respect HR?  Read above.  Executives think about the business differently than we do in HR and Talent Acquisition. I’m 100% sure any head of TA would believe hiring, because of business growth, equals success, not failure.

Even if you take out Henry’s example of the perfect business model being a computer plugged into the internet, he could still argue that any organization that can’t self-sustain its own growth of labor is a failure. Think about it from a training and development point of view. You hire entry level candidates and train and develop them into every part of your organization. You have a succession plan. If everything works perfectly, you never hire ‘talent’ from the outside. You just hire new, clean, entry level bodies, and create your own clone army!

Okay, at this point we still need to use outside bodies. I would guess at some point Google will create real, live human clones, then the process could be completely self-contained.

So, how does Henry Ward hire at eShares?  Here is his hiring philosophy:

  1. Hire for Strength vs Lack of Weakness
  2. Hire for Trajectory vs Experience
  3. Hire Doers vs Tellers
  4. Hire Learners vs Experts
  5. Hire Different vs Similar
  6. Always pass on ego

Pretty solid. Some of it might depend on your industry, company, etc. I’m not a huge believer in always hiring for difference. Difference causes conflict. In some organizations that is great. In some organizations that is catastrophic. Just as similar, group think, etc. is bad in many cases, it’s perfect in some cases.

Give his article a read, he goes into detail on each step with an explanation.  One of the best executive written pieces I’ve read on hiring.

Genius is Born

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It’s an argument as old as time. Is genius born or can genius be made?

I’m squarely on the genius is born camp. True genius we don’t even understand. Einstein, Mozart, Prince, Bobby Fischer, Da Vinci, etc.

I was watching 60 Minutes this weekend because I’m old, white and love Anderson Cooper. Anderson introduced us to another great example of genius:

Click here for the full 60-minute interview of Joey Alexander. 

I don’t care what Malcolm Gladwell would say, no amount of hours of practice will get you to this!

Joey was born a musical genius. He can hear something. His brain interprets the sounds. He can play it back, perfectly. Then, this is where the real genius lies, he can make it something completely new, unique, better.

I’m fascinated by this.  By the concept of geniuses altogether.

I think we probably have more geniuses around us than we know, but we work to make them fit. Fit into a role. Fit into our culture. Just fit into a pattern of normalcy that we find comforting.

Joey doesn’t fit. Thankfully.

T3 – The Complete List of 2015 HR and Talent Tech Companies Reviewed!

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I put a lot of work into reviewing a host of great HR and Talent Technology companies throughout the year. It’s something that I really love to do, and it’s has taught me so much, I can’t even tell you!

Here is the complete list of companies that I ‘officially’ reviewed in 2015:

January:

QueSocial: A social talent acquisition tool that will help you with your TA content strategy.

Avature: One of the hottest Recruitment Marketing technology platforms on the market.

Jibe: A very cool mobile recruiting and analytics solution.

February:

TalkPush: A technology that automates your normal phone screening of candidates.

NAS Recruitment Innovation: Recruitment marketing and advertising platform that helps you attract more talent.

OrgVue: HR Business Intelligence tool, one of the most powerful tools I demo’d all year!

LeoForce: Recruiting robotics software to take your sourcing to the next level.

March:

BrandAmper: Employment branding solution that utilizes the voice of your people to build your brand.

Talemetry: Recruiting marketing and automation software, one of the hottest segments in HR tech in 2015.

HarQen: Recruiting efficiency tools that help your TA shop get more done with less.

HoneIt: Digital interview platform that helps job seekers.

April:

PapirFly: Employment branding software that helps ensure consistency of your brand worldwide.

Gr8People: All in one recruitment platform solution. ATS, assessment, marketing, analytics, onboarding, etc.

Workshape: A tool that will describe your jobs in a new non-textual way, helping you hire better for organizational fit.

May:

iRevu: Micro-feedback performance management mobile real-time tool.

Breezy.HR: ATS light, Breezy is to recruitment technology what BambooHR is to HR technology.

Greenhouse.io: New ATS player for the SMB space that has partnered with some of the best recruitment technology on the planet.

June:

CoPilot: A reinvention of self-serve relocation management technology, that’s pretty sweet.

ZipRecruiter: Online job distribution and job board that took the U.S. by storm in 2015.

RecruiterSidekick: Add-on tool to your ATS that helps you mine the great talent hidden in your ATS.

PeopleDoc: Top document management and HR service delivery software on the planet, helping HR shops become more efficient.

July:

Hirabl: Specialized staffing vendor software that helps staffing companies catch missing revenue.

RocketLawyer: Online service helping your employees deal with all their personal legal needs. (Editor note: I personally made my own will using this service!)

LifeGuides: Job description type reviews by your employees to help candidates determine if this job and organization is for them.

HRCloud: HR system of record designed for the SMB market that has a very cool and modern feel.

August:

LearnKit: Custom e-learning agency that actually produces employee e-learning that isn’t cheesy.

Hyphen: Hyphen is a mobile app that allows employees to communicate anonymously, but within a company parameter.

Glassdoor Employer Center: The employer side of company review site Glassdoor and all the great tools available to employers.

September:

Betterific: A crowdsourcing, communication platform that allows employees to present and share ideas.

TalentStream Technologies: CareerBuilder’s new entry into pre-hire recruitment technology space that is very powerful.

EmployUs: A mobile app that offers employees money for giving you referrals to hire.

PaySavvy: Fully integrated payroll, HR, and time management for mid-sized companies in Canada. An alternative to ADP.

October:

Microsoft Excel: Like it or not, about 70% of in HR and TA still use Excel as a technology we rely on every day.

Halogen Software: Simply the best performance software platform on the market.

ElevatedCareers: A new career site by eHarmony that leverages their date matching technology to find you great talent.

Phenom People: The newest entrant to the Talent Relationship Marketing (TRM) technology market, that helps companies from visitor to candidate on your career site.

November:

Anthology;: Formerly Poachable, they are replacement to the traditional job placement and headhunted candidate services. 

UlitPro: One of the major HCM providers that is anchored by great customer service.

December:

Lever: A new ATS to the market that is born from CRM. Positioned to be a major player in the ATS market.

Clinch: Recruitment marketing and automation software that just might have more functionality than any of the players in the space.

StandOut: One of the newest players in performance management built on Marcus Buckingham’s philosophy of focusing on employees strengths.

Can’t wait to continue this series into 2016 and keep bringing you the latest and greatest in HR and Talent technology that is on the market!

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 – send me a note.

How Much Did Your Dreams Cost?

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It’s the holidays, do yourself a favor and go out and download or Redbox the movie “Up In the Air“.  It’s a great movie for HR pros. One of the best scenes is this one (below) between George Clooney and J.K. Simmons:

Enjoy your time off, if you have it. Either way, answer me this, how much did you get paid to give up your dreams?

I got paid $20,000.  That’s how much I get paid, salary, for my first Recruiting job right out of college.

I wanted to be a college volleyball coach.  I was good at it. I loved doing it. I found my wife because of it.

$20,000.

It seems silly, now, looking back on it.  $20,000 is nothing.  My life has worked out wonderfully, but it’s a lesson I’ll pass along to my kids. Dreams are wasted on the young.  Don’t give up your chance when you are young. All too soon, you’ll reach a stage in life where your dreams won’t seem that important any longer.

We are told that the key to a happy work life is to find a job you love, and you’ll never ‘work’ another day as long as you live. About .01% of people actually find jobs they truly love. The rest of the 99.9% work jobs that are fine, but not love. You only fall in love with a job when you follow your dreams.

It’s not 100%. Sometimes your dreams end up sucking. Don’t get down about that. Many, many people suck at their dreams. That’s life. You’re allowed to change your dreams.  Just don’t wait too long to do it!

The Best Talent Expects Tougher Interviews

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I was reminded this week about the importance of tough interviews and their importance!

My friend has been interviewing at a number of good companies for high-level jobs. He’s going to be a great hire for someone, he’s a top notch talent. Great resume, experience, education and personality. He’s a five-tool player, A level talent!

He was debriefing me on some of his interviews and one thing struck me as soon as he said it. He was talking about one interview in particular and why he was interested in the company. Basically, he was interested in the company because they gave him the most challenging interview!

It was his determination that if a company was going to be that challenging in an interview, it was a place he would like to work. It was the toughest interview he has been on, and as a top talent, it seemed they were doing more to ensure they were only hiring top talent, and that made him feel like it was the right place for him!

A few things about this interview:

1. It was a long interview.

2. They didn’t force him to interview with 15 people over 8 stages.

3. They asked tough, challenging questions, they only someone who really knew their stuff, and worked at that level, would be able to answer!

The problem with saying tough interviews are better is too many HR Pros believe ‘more’ interviewing, is tough interviewing. More doesn’t equal tough, it equals more. There is a huge difference!

Tough, difficult interviews are ones where the questions asked would challenge the knowledge and skill of the person asked. Many times we end up not asking anything challenging in interviews because are spending all of our time just ‘talking’ the candidate into the job. In this instance we end up hiring the person who had the best interaction with us, maybe not the best candidate.

Top talent likes to be challenged. It’s the reason they’re top talent! If you don’t challenge them, most will not accept your offer, because they won’t view your organization as a great fit.

So, how do you challenge top talent and recruit top talent at the same time?

It’s your recruiters job to recruit and close. It’s the hiring managers job to challenge the heck out of the talent you put in front of them, then tell you which is the best. Part of the recruiters job is to ‘warn’ the candidates, that they will be challenged in this interview like none they ever have been a part of. This alone will help weed out those who aren’t up for the challenge!

Top talent wants you to want them, but they also want to know they’re going to a great organization that will challenge them and make them better!

T3 – StandOut by The Marcus Buckingham Company @StandOutTMBC

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This week on T3 I review the engagement and performance management platform StandOut.  StandOut was the product created by The Marcus Buckingham Company (TMBC), to further his work and research on helping organizations become world-class. For anyone who has read Marcus’s books or heard him speak, you can imagine this technology is very important to him.

If you’re like me, and like what Marcus has to say in regards to engagement and performance, the philosophy about why and how StandOut was created becomes an easy sell. StandOut was built around the concept of leadership and coaching, specifically around what is it that the best leaders, across industry do, and how do you get your own leaders to emulate this behavior.

The StandOut platform is a comprehensive engagement and performance management suite designed around the interaction between your team leaders and team members, not around HR.  I see more and more HR technology going down this path. If you want high user adoption, design the software for the end-user. Makes sense. With performance management, HR is not the end-user, your team leaders are the end user.

StandOut’s feedback philosophy is designed around a quick ‘pulse’ concept. The process should only take a few minutes each week to complete. It’s not task management, but more of a sharing of priorities, getting everyone on the same page quickly and going about the work at hand. Social recognition is built within the platform as well with ShoutOuts amongst the team members.

5 Things I really like about StandOut: 

1. Engagement Pulse is built around quick and easy questions that are nationally benchmarked, and also give your Team Leaders real in the moment coaching suggestions to drive great conversations with their team members, specifically around their needs.

2. Performance Pulse gives you a great view of the organizational as a whole and allows you to drill down via each team. Ultimately, organizations still need a way to compare the performance of their employees, and this does an excellent job. All the data is also weighted across the organization so it gets calibrated accordingly, so you don’t have one team always ranked higher because that team lead is an easier rater, etc.

3. ShoutOuts. Social recognition is huge, and having a system that encourages this, and tracks this is great.  This can also help those team leaders who want to do more recognition, but get caught up in the daily grind and they just forget to do it. ShoutOuts helps establish great habits by your team leads that drives positive engagement.

4. Engagement dashboard is a great tool that allows you to see who is leading your most engaged teams, but also who and how you need to help with those teams that aren’t as engaged as the rest.

5. The entire platform philosophy is built around how do we leverage our employees strengths, which you could assume being its a product of TMBC. Still, this sets it apart from many performance management platforms on the market.

StandOut is well worth taking a look at and a demo if you’re in the market for engagement and/or performance management software. It’s quite new and they have a ton more on the roadmap they are looking to add.  The team they have in place to is top notch, so I expect to see more great stuff from StandOut in the future.

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 – send me a note.

The Next Generation Just Named Itself! #NicknamingYourselfIsStupid

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Have you ever had a nickname you didn’t want?  You were in the third grade and crapped your pants and some dumb kid called you ‘Stinky’ and it stuck, for life! The rest of your life you got to go around being called ‘Stinky’ and having to explain this to people.

I think most people in those situations try to create a new nickname!  “Hey, guys, just call me Dice! I was at summer camp and all the guys there called me “Dice”! We played this game with dice and I was really great at it, anyway, it stuck. So, you guys can call me Dice, I’m cool with it.” Okay, Stinky, we got you!

There’s only one rule in nicknames. That rule? You can’t make your own nickname!

To my surprise the great folks at MTV decided it would be a great idea for the kids over at GenZ, that generation under the Millennials, to just come up with their own generational nickname.  The MTV crew actually surveyed thousands of high school kids from across the country to determine what they would prefer to have their ‘generation’ called.

Say hello to The Founders!

Why the founders?  Well, apparently this next generation has attached itself the Silicon Valley culture of founding companies.  Not they have really actually done this, but it’s what they identify with, so why not act like you started this whole dot com, startup thingy.

What do we really know about these Founders? A few things for sure, that I think will help organizations understand this next generation entering the workforce:

1. They were raised during the Great Recession. Not since the Great Depression, have so many kids witnessed parents and adults close to them lose so many jobs and struggle financially. This will impact their work ethic, the importance of keeping a job, etc. Think the opposite of how Millennials view work! The Founders probably have more in common with the Greatest Generation, than the Millennials.

2. They have never not had a Smartphone. This will impact how they do their work, how they socialize and how they communicate. The Millennials had flip phones to start!

3. The media has bombarded them with unrealistic views of what work looks like.  Google is an outlier, not the norm. Yet, they tend to believe it’s the norm because the ‘Googlized’ work environment gets so much publicity. 99% of work environments do not look like Google. This will cause some ‘hey, I didn’t expect this’ moments for a ton of kids in their first jobs.

I hate naming generations. Millennials, Founders, Gen-X… They’re kids.  They won’t know their ass from a hole in the ground, and you’ll have to teach them most everything they’ll need to know about your company and your jobs, because our educational system continues give them real-world skills to compete.

Call them whatever you want.  Entry level always seems to fit best.

How President Obama Would Build a Team.

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One of my favorite writers is Bill Simmons of Grantland fame.  Recently, Bill got the chance to interview President Obama for GQ Magazine. Bill is traditionally a sports writer, huge NBA fan, but also does a ton of pop culture pieces as well. So, why not the President!?

The article is great. A good read for sure. One thing I took out of it was how President Obama explains how he builds a team around him. It came when Bill asked him who he would take a call from of he was out to dinner with his wife, Michelle. A tricky situation for all husbands! My wife is the most important person in my life, BUT sometimes you have to take that call!

From the GQ article:

“Malia and Sasha. [laughs] And maybe my mother-in-law. My national security adviser, Susan Rice, and Denis McDonough, my chief of staff. Those are the only people whose call I would take during a date night with Michelle. But the entire White House is full of people who have enormous responsibilities. You can’t do this by yourself. The principle of team building in the White House is really no different than the principle of team building anywhere, on a sports team or a well-run business. Do they put team ahead of themselves? Do you make sure all the pieces fit together? Because just having the best athletes, if they’re knocking heads and nobody’s doing rebounding and everybody wants the ball, it isn’t always going to work.”

It’s the essence of leadership, right?

Surround yourself with great talent that is willing to work as a team for the greater good of the whole organization. Sounds so easy, but it’s so freaking hard to get right!

We tend to overly believe in just getting the best talent, but too often the team with the best talent fails.  Too many organizations do not put enough time into the concept of the pieces fitting together, but that is the secret sauce of great leaders.  The talent doesn’t have to be the best. Usually, the space between the best and very good is so small you wouldn’t be able to tell anyway!

The one thing you must get right is whether or not the talent you have, fits together and works together. The final step, once they all fit together and work together is getting them to works together towards that overarching organizational goal. Another tough thing to consistently make happen. Some teams love working together, but can’t complete the task of reaching the organizational goal.

President Obama gets it. It’s probably the reason he got elected for two terms. Any leadership position has very little to do with what you know, and everything to do with the team you are able to put around you. That team will define your leadership success.

How To Fall In Love With Your Job. Just. Do. This.

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A psychologist, Arthur Aron, came up with a way to get to strangers to fall in love with each other.  His research is fascinatingly simple!  It basically comes down to having the two people sit down facing each other, then methodically going through and asking and answering a set of 36 increasingly more intense personal questions.  This experience gets the individuals to understand each other a highly personal level.

Here are some of the questions:

They start somewhat easy:

4. What would constitute a “perfect” day for you?

5. When did you last sing to yourself? To someone else?

9. For what in your life do you feel most grateful?

begin to increase in intensity:

17. What is your most treasured memory?

18. What is your most terrible memory?

19. If you knew that in one year you would die suddenly, would you change anything about the way you are now living? Why?

and continue down an emotional path:

30. When did you last cry in front of another person? By yourself?

33. If you were to die this evening with no opportunity to communicate with anyone, what would you most regret not having told someone? Why haven’t you told them yet?

36. Share a personal problem and ask your partner’s advice on how he or she might handle it. Also, ask your partner to reflect back to you how you seem to be feeling about the problem you have chosen.

The science behind this study, is if you can honestly answer all 36 questions with this other person, you will probably share more with this one person, and them with you, then you have ever shared with any one person in your life!

So, how do you get someone to fall in love with their job?

Modify the technique and questions between an employee and their direct supervisor. The questions don’t have to all be asked at one time. Strategically, using these questions to drive frank discussions between employee and supervisor over time will get both to truly value and understand each other.

You can imagine how some of these questions would look:

1. Tell me about the job you loved the most and why?

2. What part of this job do you love doing? Hate doing?

3. Who has had the most influence in your life, to this point, and what do they do for you on a daily, weekly, monthly basis?

Here’s the deal, though. It takes two to fall in love! Your managers/leaders have to become as vulnerable as the employee. Turns out HR has very little to do with getting employees to fall in love with their job.  Having strong, understanding relationships at work, have more impact than some silly HR program. But, HR could help develop this employee/leader process!

Crazy. Real conversations with employees. Truly getting to know them. Makes a difference. This isn’t your parents leadership model!

Check out all 36 questions. They could make for some really dynamic ‘date night’ conversations!

A Farewell Tour for an HR Pro

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If you didn’t see it, one of the all-time greats of the NBA, Kobe Bryant, recently announced he was going to retire. Kobe is a personal favorite of mine, because, besides Jordan, he might be the most competitive player I’ve ever seen play.  If you played against Kobe, he hated you. If you played with Kobe, he put up with you! I love me some Black Mamba!

So, Kobe is now on his city by city farewell tour.  This happens in sports all the time for the great ones.  We got to see it last year with Yankee great Derek Jeter.  It’s always the same thing. Each city/team tries to outdo each other with giving gifts and paying tribute to the all-time great player.  Everyone plays nice. Hugs (I like that part). Gifts. Don’t guard me too close so I can make a few plays for the fans to remember me by! You know the drill!

When a HR Manager decides to retire, we never get a farewell tour.  I think we should!  Here’s what an average HR Manager Farewell Tour would look like:

Week #1 – Your benefits vendor invites you out to Applebee’s for a free lunch. Go ahead get the appetizer, the sirloin, and the strawberry lemonade! Heck, throw in a brownie bite. Yeah, in might go over your $25 limit, but this is your tour, no one is going to care you took $28, not $25!

Week #2 – Your HRMS vendor wants to drop off a little something to congratulate you. Looks like a bottle of wine!  (Pro tip: I would ask if it’s alcohol on the front side, then meet them in the parking lot!)

Week #3 – Your EAP vendor dropped off bagels from Panera, with three kinds of cream cheese! Way over $25, but you’re really sharing with the group, so you can divide that out. Pretty safe! (Pro Tip: On your farewell tour, make sure to bring in a toaster into the office, if you don’t already have one – some will always drop off bagels!)

Week #4 – CareerBuilder just wants to send you a little something to say thanks! Also, who’s taking over for you?  CB swag is always great. Pick through the box for the good stuff first, then throw the rest in the break room. It will be gone in no time! (Pro tip: if you spend a bunch with your job board vendor – like $25K+ – you can turn this into a lunch!)

Week #5 – Your ATS vendor called to wish you luck. You just happen to drop the ‘hint’ you can’t wait to go to more movies! It’s a passion of yours! You love going to the theater, but it’s so darn expensive! Theater gift card will be coming soon in the mail!

Week #6 – It’s the employee cake and ice cream social event.  You have to throw this one in, even though, you’ll be the one ordering your own cake and ice cream! It’s your party, make sure you get the cake you want, and not that cheap crap you order for all the other employees who retire!

Week #7 – Save this one for last! It’s time to call on your staffing vendor! Staffing vendors are an easy steak dinner and drinks kind of night. You do this last because you don’t want to come back to the office and look anyone in the eye after this night. Staffing folks can party, and still believe that if they get you drunk you’ll tell them all your secrets. The secret is, we don’t have any!

The bigger the organization the longer you can stretch out this tour since you probably have more vendors. It’s your tour, do with it what you will. Just remember, you earned it!