Can HR out Crazy a Crazy Employee?

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In HR we run into employees all the time that do “Crazy” pretty dang good!  I’m always interested in how we work around crazy.  Almost never do we just fire crazy and get rid of it, we tend to keep it around. In fact, we tend to try and fix crazy.

I’m not talking about legitimate mental illness. I’m talking about employees who are perfectly “fine” but act crazy for a number of reasons: attention, they love drama, they love pushing buttons, they love being in the middle of shit, you know, work crazy.   We see it every day in our organizations.

I’ve found something that works really well for me in dealing with crazy.  Do crazy, better than the employee does crazy. Sounds crazy right?!  Here’s how it works.

Crazy employees have power because they act crazy, and no one wants to jump into their crazy storm.  So, people just stay silent, try to stay away, change subjects, ignore, etc.  These are all great mechanisms to stay out of the crazy storm.  Unfortunately, this just feeds the crazy storm and helps turn it into a crazy hurricane!  You see, crazy employees hear silence  and silence to them is agreement. Now, they’ve got justification for their crazy storm because in their mind no one told them they disagree, so that must mean they agree!

You can’t reason with crazy.

So, how do you stop crazy?  You do crazy better than they do crazy.  But you do crazy under control. You fight a crazy storm with a crazy calm.  But, let’s be clear, you still need to go crazy.  Let me give you an example:

Crazy Employee:  “My boss is out to get me!  Yesterday he told Jill “great job” and he didn’t tell me great job.  I think he’s sleeping with Jill – you need to investigate.  Also, Jill might be stealing – you didn’t hear that from me, but she just bought a new car and we make the same amount, I think – what does she make? – anyway I can’t afford a new car!” 

Me: “You know what?  I want to thank you for giving me this information – I’m pulling in your boss right now and we are going to have this out!  Just sit here while I call him in – we are going to blast him!”

Crazy Employee: “Hey! Wait! Don’t call him in while I’m here – he’ll know it’s me that told you.”

Me: “Yeah – but to fire him I’m going to need you to testify at the trial. Once I fire him for sleeping with Jill, he’ll want to fight it – happens all the time – no big deal – we got him!  You’ll do fine on the witness stand.”

Crazy Employee: “Um, I don’t want to do that – just forget it”

Crazy doesn’t like to go public in front of others. Crazy works best one-on-one behind closed doors where there aren’t witnesses.  You can stop crazy very quickly by going public and asking them to be crazy in front of others.  I’ve found that if I can do crazy behind closed doors better than crazy can do crazy, it tends to snap crazy back into semi-reality.  Plus, it’s fun to act crazy sometimes, as long as it’s behind closed doors!

1 Sign That Shows Google Now Controls HR

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It was just a matter of time. The company that vows to do know evil, would eventually take over the function that is the most hated in the world.  Don’t get me wrong, Google didn’t come into your organization and start giving your employees performance reviews, yet.  What Google does is much more stealth.

Remember back in April of this year (2015)? Laszlo Bock, the head of HR for Google, released his book “Work Rules!” He then went on a national book tour and was famously interviewed, everywhere, telling anyone who would listen that you don’t need a college degree to work at Google. In fact, Google has found that your college GPA and transcripts to be ‘worthless’ in terms of making a quality hire.

We all kind of chuckled.  Well, there goes Google, being Google again.

Let’s fast forward to today. Jobvite recently released their 2015 Recruiter Nation Survey.  It’s always an interesting read, with great data and metrics, but one metric stood out, to me, above all others:

“57% of Organizations now report that GPAs are unimportant.”

Do you see what just happened?

If Jobvite would have asked organizations and recruiters in January of this year, this same question, prior to Laszlo’s announcement, how do you think this number would be different?  I’m telling you the number would have been around 5% or less!

GPA are unimportant. Really?

Here’s what Google, I mean Laszlo, forgot to tell everyone about why Google can hire people who have never gone to college.  THEY HIRE FREAKING GENIUSES THAT HAVE BEEN CODING IN THEIR PARENTS BASEMENTS SINCE THEY WERE 12! These kids don’t need college. College would bore them. They know more than the professors teaching them. Google gets to hire the top 1% of people, not just college grads.

You won’t get these geniuses, who don’t need to go to college.  You get half-baked nitwits who need college, a good spanking, a few years to grow up and probably deep therapy.  You are not Google.

Yet, here we are, and you are answering Jobvite’s survey questions and acting like your Google.  Thank you Google.  Thank you for setting HR back a decade.  For not telling the full story, just swaying opinion by making bold statements.  We now get a generation of workers who think they can just jump off their Xbox and into a job paying six figures.  That’s really helpful.  You’re brilliant Laszlo.

Check out Jobvite’s 2015 Recruiter Nation Survey, it’s good stuff, even the stuff that Google brainwashed you to answer.

T3 – EmployUs (@EmployUsApp)

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This week on T3 I take a look at the free mobile hiring App EmployUs.  EmployUs has developed a platform (currently still in Beta) that offers cash rewards for connecting companies with successful job applicants. If you recommend an acquaintance for a job, you’ll cash in on the referral bonus if your candidate makes the cut.

EmployUs is being called the “Uber of Recruitment” for what many are considering a disruption to the normal recruitment industry standard practices.  EmployUs is trying to put the power of agency recruitment directly in the hands of those hiring, and cutting the middle man, by leveraging the social networks of not only your employees, but anyone who might have an interest in referring talent your way.

It’s simple. It’s clean. It might be a little naive, but I think they could really grab some traction from some employers who are willing to be on the cutting edge of talent attraction.  Right now the platform is completely open.  I tend to believe that will scare away some corporate talent acquisition shops, but already Citrix and Redhat are investing and using the platform!

How does it work?

Company signs up for the App and posts jobs.  Referrers, sign up for the App, and refer people.  It’s a closed loop private App, so only those signed up can see the jobs and refer.  Companies using the are obviously encouraged to invite their employees to join.  This also could be problematic, because when an employee joins EmployUs, it’s not just joining as part of your company, they now can see all jobs for all employers on the App.  So, you’re inviting your own employees to the App in hopes of them referring their friends, family and contacts to your jobs, but they’ll also see jobs they could apply themselves to other employers.

Their early numbers show that about 20% of those being referred are being hired.  That’s a big number.  The average referral bonuses being offered are anywhere from $500-$10,000, a far cry from contingent headhunting fees, and a nice way to run your internal referral program for your own organization.  EmployUs does get  paid a portion of the referral bonus. We’re all capitalist. So, it’s free to use the App, but they’re going to get paid somehow.

I like the idea.  I would like to see EmployUs add a little functionality that would allow employers to keep it 100% inhouse to begin with, before opening it up to anyone, in terms of accepting candidates.  I do think this platform could launch an entire industry of “Mommy Recruiters” (Stay at Home parents who want to recruit and use this platform to ‘refer’ candidates and collect the referral bonuses).  Which is another interesting idea that might come out of this.

Check them out. EmployUs has a unique idea, that I think can be a valuable tool to your talent attraction strategy.

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 space and I wanted to educate myself and share what I find.  If you want to be on T3 – send me a note.

What is your Organizational Expiration Date?

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We got home from vacation recently and like most families we were foraging through the cupboards and refrigerator to make dinner our first night back home.  I poured some milk for my son, and he asked me “is that milk alright?” Like somehow I hadn’t considered its feelings, but he mostly meant was it still good.

Sure the expiration date had passed a day, or so, prior, but I did the Dad smell test, and that milk was more than alright!  He wasn’t in agreement, so our “alright” milk took a trip to never-gonna-get-drank-land down the sink.  Expiration dates on food are great. They help us understand when something goes bad, protects us from ourselves and what we think is good and bad, which can be subjective.

All this makes me think that we should have expiration dates on our employees!

It was recently rumored that Detroit Tigers Manager, Brad Ausmus, is probably going to get fired after this season.  He was a popular hire two years ago and led the Tigers to the playoff.  This year, though, the Tigers have not met expectations, with a team filled with high price talent.

So, why has his expiration date come up?  It’s all about expectations.  Once you gain success, it’s not good enough to maintain that success or, G*d forbid go backwards, you have to keep getting more successful.  The only way Ausmus get’s more successful is to win the World Series, which is tough to do.

There are a number of other reasons people should have expiration dates with organizations; these include:

  • Chronic Average:   This is for the people who just never really do anything- they just exist in your organization.  After a while, they need to just go exist at another organization.
  • Convicted Idiot: This is the person who makes certain bad decision, so bad, that their expiration with your organization must come up. Think, hitting on the bosses wife at the holiday party, or worse!  Probably can’t legally terminate them, but they need to go someplace else.
  • 1997 Top Salesman/woman:   This happens way to much – yeah, you were top sales person a decade ago, either get the trophy back or give another organization your attitude!  We tend to keep them around because we are hoping they’ll regain their top form – but they don’t – let them expire.
  • My Boss Is Dummer than Me: An organization can take only so many of these, for only so long – Ok, you win, go be smarter than us someplace else.
  • No Admins Left To Sleep With: I’m hoping the title of this one explains it as well – otherwise you might have reached your HR expiration date at your organization!

Marines say Inclusive Combat Units are Lower Performing

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Not surprisingly, no one in the HR/Talent community is talking about a major study released by the Marines last week that shows all male combat units perform better than mixed male and female combat units. More from Time:

The results of study speak to the dangers of the Golem effect. Research has shown that when less is expected of a specific group, less is exactly what they will achieve. For decades, women in the Marine Corps have been subject to lower performance standards, starting at recruit training. The passive acceptance of second-rate results for women flies in the face of the mythical characterization of the Marine Corps as the most elite of all of the services.

Although female recruits have historically underperformed in every quantifiable category at boot camp, the Marine Corps has never acknowledged this to be a fundamental obstacle to the success and credibility of female Marines. Ultimately, the impact of lowered expectations for female performance at boot camp were reflected across the spectrum of the study’s results.

A Marine Corps mantra is “Every Marine a rifleman.” However, until last year, female recruits achieved an initial qualification rate on the rifle range between 68% and 72%, compared to male averages between 85% and 93%. It became normal for up to a third of every cohort of female recruits to require remediation on the rifle range or be recycled in training.

So, does this have workplace application?

I think it does speak to the lowering selection standards amongst different groups of people you have coming into your organization. It also speaks to the concept of Inclusion and what importance your organization puts on Inclusion for your success.  The results of the Marine’s study is not surprising. They lowered standards for female recruits, continued to lower standards through training, then measured them against all male units which had higher standards.  The mixed groups would almost always fail under these circumstances.

It’s also not surprising that in a combat setting inclusive groups would perform lower than exclusive groups.  Combat units thrive when they act as one, not independent.  Inclusion doesn’t help this concept, it hinders it. You will find the same thing in manufacturing environments, call centers, etc.

Inclusion doesn’t make every workplace environment perform better.  In some workplaces, increased inclusion will actually bring down overall performance.

The larger issue with the Marine study, though, is that the Marines lowered incoming standards for females, which ultimately led to lower performance in the mixed groups.  More from Marine Lieutenant Colonel, Kate Germano: 

“The gender normed physical fitness test allows women to settle for mediocrity while their male peers are held to more stringent standards including dead-hang pull ups and a faster three-mile run requirement. Considering these disparities, it should not be a surprise that men would outperform the women in the study, nor should the female lower extremity injury rate be considered startling.

The Marine Corps force integration plan summary touts the fact that the recruiting force has seen a 4.5% increase in female enlistments since 2008. But does an increase of women in the Marine Corps really equate to talent management if the women are simply expected to do less? No matter how many women there are in the Marine Corps, if low expectations for performance are maintained, women will never measure up to their male counterparts in any capacity, much less the field of infantry.”

I’m wondering how many HR & Talent Pros are facing something similar in their own workplaces.  With the push to make all workplaces more inclusive, regardless of the results, I tend to believe there are probably more, but few willing to go as public as the Marine Corp did in this study!

Don’t confuse this issue. This isn’t male vs. female. This is a false belief that all environments perform better by being inclusive, which isn’t the case. Especially, if you’re going to hold the inclusive group to lower standards!

The Undercover Job Start

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I’ve had quite a few friends start new positions in this past year.  It’s exciting to see so many people get great opportunities after living through the recession!

One common thing happens to all of these folks. It goes something like this:

1.  Social announcement that they got a new position!  Yay! Congrats! When do you start?! We all know the drill.

2. Actual announcement on the first day they start the job.  This happens in a number of forms, social, press release, etc. This is Day 1 on the job, they don’t even know which bathroom they should be using based on their position, and Bam!, you’ve been announced to the world you’re open for business in your new role.

3. Everyone in the world is contacting you on your first day for a variety of reasons. Some will want to just congratulate you. Some will want to pimp your for business. Some will want dirt on why you left the last place. All will want time you don’t have because YOU JUST STARTED A NEW JOB AND YOU DON’T EVEN KNOW WHERE THE BATHROOM IS!!!

4. You spend the first week trying to find the bathroom.

5. By week #2, you found the bathroom, your email works on your smartphone, and your new company is already beginning to discount your ideas and opinions. Welcome to the show kid, it moves pretty fast!

That’s why I think you should do away with the current job announcement practices, and do something else.  Here’s my new Sackett Job Announcement Plan for Success (like a Trump policy, but it works):

1. Day 1, will now be called Day A.

2. Day A – E, will be your first days of employment, but no one will actually be told that you started.

3. Day 1 (which is really day 6) will happen on the first day of week #2.  Now, you’re actually ready to announce your new position, and take on the coming storm of emails, phone calls, tweets, etc.

Better, right?

We can call it the Undercover Job Start.  You’ve started, but let’s keep it on the down-low until I find the bathroom and stuff.  It’s like the same job start, but without all the stress.

They do this in the restaurant industry when they open a new restaurant. They ‘soft’ open a week before the actual Grand Opening.  People trickle in. It gives the staff a chance to work out the kinks and fix stuff without having a full restaurant to deal with.  That’s how you want to start your job!

How to Gently Crush Your Employee’s Dreams!

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I get the feeling that many of your employees feel that HR Pros are Dream Crushers!  It’s the main reason almost everyone hates HR, right?

I don’t actually buy into this theory, but there are some valid things we do in HR that don’t help our reputation.  Here’s how we crush dreams on a daily basis:

  1. We don’t allow our employees to develop.  Let’s first start with the concept of development vs. training.  You giving job training is not development. While it might help the employee get better at the job they have, it’s not exactly personal or professional development. Development is very individualized.
  2. We don’t listen or act on your employees ideas.  I get to go in and work with companies a lot and almost always the employees already know what needs to be done, but leadership isn’t listening to them.  So, I’m not really brought in to tell them something they don’t know, I’m brought in to them their employees are smart and you should start listening to them!
  3. We don’t allow our employees to dream about the future. This is really difficult for most organizations.  We won’t promise an employee where they’ll be in 1 or 2 or 3 years, because we believe if we can’t deliver it, it worse than not giving them anything to begin with.  Actually, that’s a false premise.  Allowing your employees to dream about the future and giving them something to shoot for, will give them hope. Hopeful employees stay around and work hard.
  4. We micromanage the work, not the result.  I don’t care how you get there, just get me there.  We have been taught for way too long to ‘manage’ people. This means we tell them how to do the job exactly, instead of letting do the job in a way that works best for them, and holding them accountable to the result, not the path. This not only crushes your employees dreams, it crushes their soul.

I think it would be funny to see someone has that as a title in HR: Dream Crusher, VP of Crushing Dreams, Chief Dream Crusher!  Sad, but funny.

What are you doing with your employees today?

T3 – CareerBuilder’s Talentstream Technologies

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This week on T3 I take a look at the Pre-hire technology suite by CareerBuilder called Talentstream Technologies.  Last week at CareerBuilder’s Empower conference, they launched a fully integrated suite of pre-hire recruitment services which you probably knew separately as CB1, Broadbean, Talent Network, RecruitmentEdge, EMSI, etc.

For those who haven’t been keeping up with CareerBuilder, they made a very conscience pivot a few years ago to move in a big way into the Talent Acquisition software business, a natural progression that aligns well with their job board business.  Wise decision, and quite frankly, they are killing it on the software side! The launch of TalentStream just solidifies that CareerBuilder will be a major player in the TA technology race for years to come.

So, what is Talentstream? Talentstream Technologies bring together high-powered sourcing tools, massive job distribution, automatic CRM, easy candidate workflow and powerful recruitment analytics, all under one integrated platform. For those customers who still only need some aspects of TalentStream, you can still get the individual technologies you need without buying the full package.

Talentsteam has three main aspects: Recruitment Software, Sourcing Technology and Recruitment Analytics.  It’s your ATS, Recruitment Automation and Business Intelligent tools all built into one.  It can replace your current ATS, or work with your ATS.  I think most companies who want to use TalentStream will eventually drop their current ATS and use the full product suite of TalentStream, they integration is to nice not to take advantage of it.

5 Things I really like about Talentstream Technologies:

  1. Talentstream Engage is an awesome re-engagement technology that does what we all say we want in Talent Acquisition which is how do we connect with all those great candidates who wanted us six or twelve months ago, but we didn’t need them at the time. Being able to seamlessly re-engage with this talent is paramount for a great TA shop’s effectiveness.
  2. Broadbean Job Distribution and Resume Search let’s you coral all of your job boards into one place. Yep, CareerBuilder has technology that allows you to use Monster, Dice, LI ,etc. all in one place, along side of CB.  One platform. No need to jump around and search three or four different databases! This is life changing for recruiters working in multi-database environments.
  3. The full Recruitment Analytics suite in Talentstream. EMSI college analyst allows you to give deep into your college recruitment and really focus your efforts on those schools giving you the most return, but also tells you which schools you really should be going to based on the talent you need. Broadbean analytics suite pulls in all of your data and gives you great workflow funnels to show your hiring managers exactly what is happening on their search, with great graphics.
  4. The Candidate Sourcing Platform is not only gives you the access to CB’s database of 90 million profiles, but RecruiterEdge has another 400 million passive profiles, and it’s not just IT profiles. CB has profiles on roughly 80% of the licensed Physicians in America! They have profiles on skilled trades, truck drivers, etc.
  5. Ability of hiring managers to give feedback on candidates without having to get into the system.  This is critical for recruitment process success. You need to get quick feedback, and we know managers aren’t going to take the time to live in ‘our’ system and tools. TalentStream gives you the ability to gather feedback from your hiring managers without having them have to log into the system.

CareerBuilder claims to have invested $1 Billion dollars into developing Talentsteam Technologies and I don’t doubt that amount after seeing the product live. This fully moves CB out of the job board play, and into the talent acquisition enterprise technology play. The benefit TalentStream will have over their competition is CB’s strength in job advertising that the other recruitment automation and ATS folks just don’t have.

Check out Talentstream Technologies, it’s well worth a demo.

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 space and I wanted to educate myself and share what I find.  If you want to be on T3 – send me a note.

Sometimes a Job Isn’t Worth It

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Linds Redding, a New Zealand-based art director who worked at BBDO and Saatchi & Saatchi, died last month at 52 from an inoperable esophageal cancer. Turns out Linds didn’t really like his old job and mad hours he spent creating a successful career. Here is what Linds wrote before he died:

“I think you’re all f—— mad. Deranged. So disengaged from reality it’s not even funny. It’s a f—— TV commercial. Nobody gives a s—.

This has come as quite a shock I can tell you. I think, I’ve come to the conclusion that the whole thing was a bit of a con. A scam. An elaborate hoax.

Countless late nights and weekends, holidays, birthdays, school recitals and anniversary dinners were willingly sacrificed at the altar of some intangible but infinitely worthy higher cause. It would all be worth it in the long run…

This was the con. Convincing myself that there was nowhere I’d rather be was just a coping mechanism. I can see that now. It wasn’t really important. Or of any consequence at all really. How could it be. We were just shifting product. Our product, and the clients. Just meeting the quota. Feeding the beast as I called it on my more cynical days.

So was it worth it?

Well of course not. It turns out it was just advertising. There was no higher calling.”

When faced with death, I wonder how many of us will look back on all the time and effort we put into our career and will feel the same?

That all being said, sometimes I think a job might be worth it as well.  Here’s the other side of the coin.  I frequently see articles and blog posts, recently, written by people who have given up their careers to travel the world.  It  all seems so glamorous and adventurous. Until you realize you had a career and job to pay for all those glamorous adventures! From Adweek, “The Couple Who Quit Their Ad Jobs to Travel the World Ended Up Poor and Scrubbing Toilets The uglier side of a year-long creative journey”:

 “You remember Chanel Cartell and Stevo Dirnberger, the South African couple who quit their agency jobs this year to travel the world and document the experience. It sounded like a dream, and the lovely Instagram photos have made it look like one.

But halfway through their year-long odyssey (they’re currently in Athens, having traveled 25,000 kilometers so far), they’ve posted a reality check on their blog—a post titled “Why We Quit Our Jobs In Advertising To Scrub Toilets”—in which they share “the uglier side of our trip.” It turns out that following one’s dream—while working odd jobs in exchange for room and board—involves a lot of dirty work, and more than a few tears.

“The budget is really tight, and we are definitely forced to use creativity (and small pep talks) to solve most of our problems (and the mild crying fits),” Cartell writes. “Don’t let the bank of gorgeous photography fool you. Nuh uh. So far, I think we’ve tallied 135 toilets scrubbed, 250 kilos of cow dung spread, 2 tons of rocks shoveled, 60 meters of pathway laid, 57 beds made, and I cannot even remember how many wine glasses we’ve polished.

“You see, to come from the luxuries we left behind in Johannesburg … we are now on the opposite end of the scale. We’re toilet cleaners, dog poop scoopers, grocery store merchandisers and rock shovelers.”

We work for a reason. Your reasons might be vastly different than my reasons, but we all have reasons. I hope if I look death in the face I won’t regret my choices to work and create a successful career. I’ve missed my fair share of school events and sporting events that my kids have participated in. I’ve missed many of their most joyful and sad moments. Those I already regret. What I won’t regret is that I work to allow my family to have so many of these moments.

I lived poor.  I lived with a single mother who wasn’t quite sure how she was going to pay for dinner that night. I work because I never wanted my family to feel this anxiety.  Sometimes a job is worth it, sometimes it isn’t.  It’s all up to you to decide, though.

Today, Go Fill Someone’s Bucket!

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A few years ago my son got to lead a small part of an assembly at his school.  He was really excited about his part, he got to get up in front of everyone at the end and kind of lead a cheer — you know kids love being loud at school!

I asked him what the assembly was about, and he said, “fillin’ buckets”.  “What?”, was my reply.  He said, “you know, you can say some things that will fill someone’s bucket, or you can say some things that will empty their bucket.”  My reply, “Oh, you mean like making deposits into someone’s emotional bank account.” His reply back,  “No, filling buckets, it has nothing to do with banks.”

Fillin’ Buckets. Simple, yet hard.

Today, I want to make it easy for you to do two things: 1. Fill your own bucket; 2. Fill some buckets.

Here’s a list of things that will help:

1. Surround yourself with positive people. Even if it’s only one person.  Even if it’s only yourself.

2. Connect at a deeper level.  Anyone can talk about the weather or what TV show they watched last night.  Strive to go deeper.

3. Hug someone who doesn’t expect it.

4. Spend a little money on someone else.

5. Take 5 minutes to appreciate all that you have.

6. Eat lunch or dinner outside.

7. Tell one person, you don’t normally talk to, one positive, genuine thing about why you like what they do.

8. Unplug and listen.

One last tip.  Leaders, as many of you are that read this, tend to be bucket fillers, because it’s part of the ‘job’.  Great leaders are genuine in this, but it’s harder than it looks, because many times our employees feel like we might just be doing this because it’s part of our role.  Catch 22.  How do you combat this?  Fill the buckets of those above you.  Leaders rarely get their buckets filled.

Try it, you’ll be amazed at how it makes you feel.  There’s something remarkable that happens when you start filling buckets, you realize it doesn’t matter who it is that you’re filling, it feels good!

What am I doing today?  I’m fillin’ buckets!