CareerBuilder Empower 15 Live Stream Wednesday Sept. 10th!

Posted on by
Reply

Next week Wednesday, September 10th, CareerBuilder has asked me to Host their Live Stream of Empower 15!

That’s right, someone made the brilliant decision to put me on LIVE. Lights, camera, action!  To bring to you all the cool stuff happening at Empower!

The Live Stream will start at 8am CST and go all day until 5pm CST (that’s 9am for you East Coasters – and way too early for those on the left coast!).  My friend Laurie Ruettimann will be joining me to kick it off in the morning, then I’ll be bringing you many other great HR and Talent Pros/Celebs throughout the day. Click on the link above for Wednesday’s lineup of great presenters!

Click below to get to Live Stream feed:

Empower 15 Live Stream

What is Empower?

DISCOVER. ELEVATE. INSPIRE.

The act of connecting employers and job seekers to make meaningful matches has changed dramatically over the past 20 years. And new economic, digital, and social trends have introduced an entirely new set of challenges. We’re giving you a front row seat to share the journey as we look back and, more importantly, ahead to the next 20. Join CareerBuilder and 1000+ other leaders for the talent acquisition event of the year where we’ll identify opportunities to continue to move the industry forward and work together to make recruitment easier and more effective.

Empower is Talent Acquisition’s version of all those cool HR conferences your HR peers get to go to, but they aren’t really designed for true Talent Acquisition leaders!

Top 10 Ways To Use Glassdoor For Good (not Evil)

Posted on by
Reply

Let’s face it. HR pros have a long history of being uncomfortable with sites like Glassdoor.com. After all, the only people that use Glassdoor.com and sites like it are disgruntled ex-employees that you fired, right?

Wrong. It was wrong 5 years ago, and it’s horribly wrong today. Rather than view these types of sites as a threat, smart HR and Recruiting pros are learning how to use the reputation/rating sites to manage their employment brand, connect with candidates and make better hires.

The days of the employment brand strategy with scripted photos, smiling faces (just the right amount of diversity!) and PDFs are over.

That’s why we’re going deep on reputation sites like Glassdoor in the September version of the FOT Webinar entitled, Top 10 Ways To Use Glassdoor For Good (Not Evil). Join Kris Dunn and Tim Sackett from Fistful of Talent on 9/17 at 2pm Eastern, and we’ll hit you with the following:

– How the the yelp-ification of America—the trend towards consumer-based reviews in almost every area of our economy—is changing the way employees and candidates think about job search and employer brands. It’s second nature for your employees to rate a restaurant, a book or a movie online. That means that employees of all types (not just the ones who want to complain) are more willing than ever to participate in your brand through user review.

– We’ll cover the 5 Biggest Myths about company reputation sites like Glassdoor and tell you which ones are completely BS and which ones you actually perpetuate by not fully engaging on sites like Glassdoor. We’ll hit the usual suspects here: “The only comments are from the bad employees”  and “The salary data out there isn’t factual,” and tell you why things have changed. More importantly, we’ll cover how you actually may make the myths a reality by not fully engaging on reputation sites.  Think about that last sentence: You’ve got to be in the game to influence the game.

– Last but not least, we’ll give you a 10-step playbook on how to engage on reputation sites and become more of a Marketer as an HR/Recruiting Pro.  It’s true—you wouldn’t have read this far if you didn’t want to learn more about how to use reputation sites like Glassdoor to maximize your company and your career. We’ll help you get started.

The outside world now has a huge say in how your company/employment brand is perceived, whether you engage or not. FOT thinks you should engage.  Join us for Top 10 Ways To Use Glassdoor For Good (Not Evil) on 9/17 at 2pm Eastern and we’ll show you how.

(FOT Note: Glassdoor is sponsoring this FOT webinar. We’re happy to have them as a sponsor and, true to their commitment to transparency, they’re letting us talk about the myths and a lot of other realities HR and Recruiting pros have experienced related to Glassdoor—without restriction. That type of balance makes them a great partner.  Join us and we promise you’ll get a balanced view—no sales pitch—as well as an insider’s guide to how to use sites like Glassdoor to become a better marketer as an HR/Recruiting pro.)

Fill out the form below to register today!

The Top 20 Branded HR and Talent Pros: Meet Arie Ball from Sodexo

Posted on by
2

Let’s face it – Fearful of the spotlight and conservative to a fault, HR pros generally aren’t the best examples to look towards when it comes to professional branding. Kris Dunn (Kinetix RPO, The HR Capitalist) and Tim Sackett (HRU Technical Resources, TimSackett.com) think that needs to change.  That’s why they created this series – The Top 20 Branded HR Pros(sponsored by the team at Glassdoor).

KD and Tim searched the globe for HR Pros who used the tools at their disposal (writing, speaking, social and more) to brand themselves in the HR space, but limited the results to actual practitioners in the areas of HR, Recruiting and Talent Management.  No consultants, no vendors. They found out well-branded HR pros who are actual practitioners are hard to find.  

Tim and KD are running the Top 20 they found here on the HR Capitalist and at TimSackett.com.  No rankings, just inclusion in the list and some notes on why.  There are at least 20 well-branded HR Pros in the world.  These are their stories. 

________________________________________

I’m not really sure where Employment Branding started, who the first company was, etc. What I know is one person pushed Employment Branding over the edge and made it cool!  That person was Arie Ball, the Vice President of Talent Acquisition at Sodexo.  That is one major reason Arie was selected to the list of the Top 20 Branded HR and Talent Pros in the world!

Sodexo isn’t sexy.  There is nothing about their jobs that are sexy. But, Arie and her team found a way to make Sodexo sexy as an employment brand! She showed all these other companies how to do it, when no one knew how to do it! Arie took over TA for Sodexo eleven years ago, and started doing things no one in the industry was doing from a branding perspective.

Here is Arie Ball’s player card:

Glassdoor Top 20 - ARIE BALL

 

 

Arie is a great writer and contributes frequently to Sodexo’s career blog and has over 3500 followers on LinkedIn publishing platform.  She, also, might be the most quoted Talent Pro in the world around employment branding!

On the speaking circuit at HR and TA conferences Arie is a star. She’s done just about every one you can imagine, because everyone wanted to know the Sodexo story.

Where Arie might be tops of all the Top 20 on our list is as a Brand Ambassador.  I think more people know the Sodexo name because of Arie than any other single thing the Sodexo marketing folks could have ever done! She was the first to have all of her team add the Sodexo logo to the social profile pics. Which seems small now, but it branded each of them as Sodexo brand ambassadors. Almost everyone followed her lead across all industries!

Arie also was one of the first corporate HR/Talent Pros to show us all how to use Twitter for talent acquisition.  It’s part science, part art, mixing in great content, jobs and just enough personal to make people want to connect and interact. Over 8,000 followers and over 8,000 tweets, Arie is one of the few TA executives who is real and active on Twitter.

Arie and her team have a great LinkedIn presence. While the majority of her team’s hires will never come off of a site like LinkedIn, the company is huge and their ability to leverage the LI platform as a sourcing tool for their professional is very impressive.

I do have to say Arie has yet to personally leverage Instagram for her personal or professional branding. She has over a hundred followers, but zero posts!  Which makes you wonder, who are the hundred folks who wanted to follow her with no pics! I’m sure she’ll kill it with this platform as well, just give her a little time.

Congratulations Arie on your selection to Glassdoor’s Top 20 Branded HR and Talent Pros.  You have taught us all so much on how to brand ourselves and our organizations. The industry thanks you!

——————————————————–

The Top 20 Branded HR Pros is brought to you by Glassdoor, who invites you to attend the Annual Glassdoor Employer Branding Summit on September 25th, where a stellar speaker lineup of industry experts and thought leaders exploring the intersection of employer branding and talent acquisition, the candidate experience and employee engagement. 

Tickets are sold out, but wait!  You can attend the livestream online featuring studio coverage with Kris Dunn and Tim Sackett by registering here (click to register).  Fun and games are sure to be a part of that coverage.

What if a drug could save your career? Would you take it?

Posted on by
4

It seems like daily we are bombarded by stories coming out in the media of professional athletes who are caught taking performance enhancing drugs.  They risk their entire career by taking these drugs and getting caught. This week and next NFL teams will cut down their rosters, and many players will lose the one job they’ve worked their entire life for.

I’ve often wondered if I was in that position, being a professional athlete making millions, would I take PEDs to sustain or grow my career?  I can’t initially say I wouldn’t.  I’m always thankful for not having been put in that situation. I’m extremely competitive; I’m not sure I would have the will power not to take PEDs if I thought I was failing.

Slate had a great piece a while back about a former professional football player, Nate Jackson of the Denver Broncos.  Nate was a tight end and was cut from the roster after 6 years and turned to PEDs to get back:

“I sit down in my locker for the last time. It was always a bit out of sorts, full of clothes and shoes and tape and gloves, notebooks and letters and gifts. Do I even want these cleats? These gloves? These memories? Yes. I fill up my box. Six years as a Denver Bronco. Six more than most people can say. Still feels like a failure, though. So this is how the end feels? Standing in an empty locker room with a box in my hand? Yep. Now leave.”

That’s it, right?  It’s the fear of losing all that you have.  It doesn’t matter if you’re rich or poor, fear of losing what you have is a powerful adversary.

I’ve seen a grown man, with a wife and children, and a strong member of his church, sit in down in front of me and lie to my face, because of this fear.  You don’t have to be a professional athlete.

I completely understand this fear, and why athletes do PEDs.  So, I’ll ask you the question, if tomorrow you had a choice, lose your job or take a drug that will save your job, would you do it?

Hit me in the comments.  I have a feeling many people will say they wouldn’t.  I’ll let you know right now, based on my experiences, I’ll be skeptical.

Saying you wouldn’t tells me potentially two things about you:

  1. You don’t have fear of losing your job because you have another source income (I run into a lot of women who ‘become’ consultants and talk about how you have to ‘do what you love’, all the while having a husband who is paying the bills);
  2. You lack self-insight and/or haven’t ever experienced this fear of loss.

I guess, in a round about way, I answered my own question about what I might do facing the end.  Fear sucks – remember that HR Pros.

T3 – @Betterific

Posted on by
Reply

This week on T3 I’m taking a look at the innovation management platform, Betterific!  Betterific is a crowdsourcing, communication platform that allows employees to present and share ideas, and those within the company to communicate on each others ideas.  It can also be used as an idea generation tool for those in your organization looking for new ideas and innovation to what you already do.

Let me give you an example of how this could be giant!

I worked at Applebee’s (which is true, but the rest is for example purposes!).  We had thousands of restaurants world-wide.  In a franchise environment, the more consistency and continuity you can get from location to location, the more profitable your company will be. When you go into an Applebee’s in Time Square, you expect the same great burger, hot fries and cold beer, as you would get in Albuquerque. If it’s not, it hurts the whole brand, because people don’t know what to expect.

Applebee’s isn’t selling mastery cuisine.  They’re selling great burgers, hot fries and cold beer. They’re selling safe, middle of the road, we know what to expect, it’s going to be a good meal at a decent price.  What you find when you have two thousand restaurants is that some locations find better ways of doing things that the corporate office didn’t know.  The problem is their is no good way to share these ideas and innovations in a franchise environment, or even over so many locations.

Then comes a technology like Betterific.  Betterific’s platform allows locations, employees, the corporate office, etc. to share ideas amongst each other, and it also allows a manager, a certain location, the corporate headquarters to go out in search of the best way to do current stuff, or even new ideas they’re thinking about doing.  Now, instead of leveraging some data from a handful of ‘test’ locations, you get to leverage the knowledge of your entire company!

To me, this is what Betterific is all about, Best Practice sharing at it’s finest, in real time!  When I was at Applebee’s we encouraged best practice sharing, but many times it would take months or years before we could spread this across two thousand locations. What if we could have done it in a week or hours!?

Betterific also employees some gamification aspects which rewards the users for being active in the platform, the quality of ideas, etc. Let’s encourage everyone to use it, but also let’s encourage quality usage as well.  Many times in communication platforms like this, you’ll see a few people hog the conversation. The gamification component rewards those super-users, but also encourages them to share quality information, not just everything.

There is also a follow up mechanism which shows all those using the system what is happening with the knowledge and advice being share. Is the thread closed? Is it something we are considering in the future? Is it something we are going to act on now?  This feedback loop is critical to keep your employees involved and sharing on an ongoing basis.

It’s quick and simple to get started.  You don’t have get IT involved. This is something HR can roll out and test pretty easily with your operations team, or start a leadership exchange, etc. You could even test it within your own department to see how it works. Take a look and give it a quick demo, might be something to really help you energize your employees into sharing great ideas and feedback with each other.

The Top 20 Branded HR and Talent Pros: Meet Joel Peterson from Goshow Architects

Posted on by
Reply

Let’s face it – Fearful of the spotlight and conservative to a fault, HR pros generally aren’t the best examples to look towards when it comes to professional branding. Kris Dunn (Kinetix RPO, The HR Capitalist) and Tim Sackett (HRU Technical Resources, TimSackett.com) think that needs to change.  That’s why they created this series – The Top 20 Branded HR Pros(sponsored by the team at Glassdoor).

KD and Tim searched the globe for HR Pros who used the tools at their disposal (writing, speaking, social and more) to brand themselves in the HR space, but limited the results to actual practitioners in the areas of HR, Recruiting and Talent Management.  No consultants, no vendors. They found out well-branded HR pros who are actual practitioners are hard to find.  

Tim and KD are running the Top 20 they found here on the HR Capitalist and at TimSackett.com.  No rankings, just inclusion in the list and some notes on why.  There are at least 20 well-branded HR Pros in the world.  These are their stories. 

________________________________________

 

One of the coolest things about working with Glassdoor on the Top 20 Branded HR and Talent Pros has been I get to meet and introduce you to some pretty great people.  Today is no exception to that!  Joel Peterson is our next great pro on the Top 20 Branded HR and Talent Pros!  Joel is the Director of HR for Goshow Architects the largest woman-owned architectural firm in New York City.

Joel is the Social Media Director for the New York State Council of SHRM and Master’s graduate in Acting!  What? Acting? Yeah, that makes him perfect for working in HR!  Here is Joel’s player’s card:

Glassdoor Top 20 - JOEL PETERSON

 

Joel’s player card is solid across everything!  He’s like a five-tool baseball player, he doesn’t have a weakness when it comes to branding himself as an HR professional. As a writer Joel started a very blog series on SHRM called Life as a HRDEPT1, to help others like him that were running HR as a department of one. Joel was also on the SHRM National blogging team this summer in Las Vegas.

As a speaker Joel is involved with local and state level SHRM meetings, various industry events and his own little video project called #AuthenticLife, check it out:

Joel is what we like to call Twitter famous, Tweeting over 23,000 times!  You can connect with him on Twitter at @Joelyoh. What does he tweet about? All the stuff that makes HR cool, if that’s possible! Plus, he gets involved with a ton of the twitter chats around various HR topics. Like many of our Top 20, Joel has found out how to leverage the power of LinkedIn.  He has close to a thousand followers following his posts on LI, where he cross promotes his SHRM series HRDEPT1.

Joel is one of the bigger users of Instagram in our Top 20 list with over 600 followers and almost 800 posts.  Joel utilizes Instagram to share and promote one of his passions outside of HR, the Special Olympics, where he was on the technology team supporting the World Special Olympics in LA this past summer.

Congratulations Joel on making the Glassdoor’s Top 20 Branded HR and Talent Pros in the world!  Make sure you connect with Joel, you shouldn’t have a hard time finding him!

——————————————————–

The Top 20 Branded HR Pros is brought to you by Glassdoor, who invites you to attend the Annual Glassdoor Employer Branding Summit on September 25th, where a stellar speaker lineup of industry experts and thought leaders exploring the intersection of employer branding and talent acquisition, the candidate experience and employee engagement. 

Tickets are sold out, but wait!  You can attend the livestream online featuring studio coverage with Kris Dunn and Tim Sackett by registering here (click to register).  Fun and games are sure to be a part of that coverage.

It’s Not Amazon, It’s You

Posted on by
2

So, about know the media/opinion machine news cycle has run its course on Amazon.  The initial story broke from the New York Times and Amazon was EVIL!  For two days we got to listen to comments and opinions about how awful Amazon is.  The folks at Walmart were happy for a few days as they got pushed off the ‘worst employer in retail’ category for a while!

But, as the cycle moves forward, we all know what happens next. The Amazon machine kicks in and we get to hear about all those people who LOVE Amazon, and what a great place it is to work.  By day five, the Onion starts making funny headlines and the cycle is over.  The media outlets go back to making fun of Trump!

It used to take longer for the cycle to run.  It’s so fast now, because our attention span is about 13 seconds and we are on to the next thing to get all worked up about.

What’s the reality of this situation?

There is nothing wrong with Amazon.

Amazon doesn’t lie and try to hide who they are.  In fact, in their employment branding they basically try and talk you out of working there.  They say this place is going to be really hard to work at and you will have the highest expectations you’ve ever had placed upon you. Go away! Don’t apply! You aren’t good enough!

It’s like that kid who applies to Harvard because he’s the smartest kid in his school, only to realize upon arriving there are actually smarter people than him, way smarter.  In fact, he went from being the smartest in his high school, to the dumbest at Harvard. Welcome to the show. Life is going to hurt for a while.

Amazon, from what we are hearing, is a bitch to work at.  Super, unreasonably high expectations.  Co-workers and bosses telling you your ideas suck (which they probably do, but no one ever had the guts to tell you). Oh, and you can’t go home every day at 4:30pm.  The trade off is you get to work on cool stuff, with high levels of responsibility, alongside people who will push you farther in your career than you thought was possible.

But, Tim, I want all that, and I want to only work forty hours and not get yelled at and get a trophy for showing up most days.

Yeah, maybe you need to get yourself a government job, this gig isn’t for you.

You see Amazon isn’t the problem.  You are the problem.  You thought you could handle this insane environment and you can’t. That isn’t Amazon’s fault, they didn’t trick you.  They told you that you couldn’t handle it and you decided to try it anyway.  You failed. That’s okay, many will. There are still really good employers and jobs for you at companies with a culture that will fit you better. Go find that.

There isn’t ‘one’ great way to run a company.  If you don’t like how Amazon is running their company, than stop buying their products, and don’t apply for their jobs. No one is making you.  Our reality is we would rather buy cheap crap off Amazon, than make a real change.  Again, that’s a ‘you’ problem, not an Amazon problem.

The Top 10 Words You Should Never Use in Your LinkedIn Profile

Posted on by
3

I love Fast Company magazine from about five years ago.  Their writers pushed the envelope and challenged me in almost every article to rethink business and leadership. I couldn’t wait for the next copy to come out.

Recently, they’ve fallen off a ton on the quality side.  I blame their need to deliver daily content versus month content. When you have thirty days to put out limited content, you can make it really good. When you do daily content, some will be good, some will be complete crap.

Case in point, Fast Company recently posted an article titled “The 10 Words You Should Never Use In Your LinkedIn Profile” written by Stephanie Vozza.  It’s not really Fast Companies best work. It’s boring. It’s vanilla. They could have done so much better with this!

Here are the ten words Fast Company says you shouldn’t use on your LinkedIn profile:

LinkedIn Top Ten Global Buzzwords for 2014

  1. Motivated
  2. Passionate
  3. Creative
  4. Driven
  5. Extensive experience
  6. Responsible
  7. Strategic
  8. Track record
  9. Organizational
  10. Expert

These are all based on Vozza’s assumption that you shouldn’t use the same words as everyone else if you want your profile to standout. Not bad advice, but it’s not classic Fast Company advice.  It’s not edgy, or snarky, or fun.  It didn’t challenge me to think differently!

The “real” list of 10 Words You Should Never Use in Your LinkedIn Profile:

  1. Parole
  2. Moist
  3. Gingivitis
  4. Erection
  5. Maverick
  6. Disgruntled
  7. Horney
  8. Manscaping
  9. Purge
  10. Juicy

Honorable Mentions:  Any gross medical type terms – pus, mucous, ooze, cyst.  Ginormous. Retarded.  Nugget.

See!  My list is much better!  That is the list that Fast Company would have put out five years ago!

If you use Fast Company’s list, sure no one will notice your profile, but you can still get a job, and people will want to connect with you.  If you use words on my list, there’s not a chance you’ll get a job or connections.  Well, you might get connections, but probably not the ones you really want!

So, how do you make your LinkedIn profile stand out?

  • Have a pretty/handsome picture of yourself.
  • Don’t write your profile like you’re a used car salesman.
  • Tell people about yourself in real terms.
  • Let your personality come through, but make it the best side of your personality.

Here’s the deal. There is no secret sauce in building your profile because LinkedIn has become so diverse in its user base.  You need to write your profile for the type of person and company you want to connect with.  If you want to work for a big traditional, conservative company, you might want to tone down the profile to fit.  If you want to work for some cool, hip, new startup, you better not sound like your want to work for IBM.

Organizations tend to hire what they see in the mirror.  You need to look like they look. Not physically, but in your words and actions.

The Top 20 Branded HR and Talent Pros: Meet Stacy Williamson from ESPN

Posted on by
Reply

Let’s face it – Fearful of the spotlight and conservative to a fault, HR pros generally aren’t the best examples to look towards when it comes to professional branding. Kris Dunn (Kinetix RPO, The HR Capitalist) and Tim Sackett (HRU Technical Resources, TimSackett.com) think that needs to change.  That’s why they created this series – The Top 20 Branded HR Pros(sponsored by the team at Glassdoor).

KD and Tim searched the globe for HR Pros who used the tools at their disposal (writing, speaking, social and more) to brand themselves in the HR space, but limited the results to actual practitioners in the areas of HR, Recruiting and Talent Management.  No consultants, no vendors. They found out well-branded HR pros who are actual practitioners are hard to find.  

Tim and KD are running the Top 20 they found here on the HR Capitalist and at TimSackett.com.  No rankings, just inclusion in the list and some notes on why.  There are at least 20 well-branded HR Pros in the world.  These are their stories. 

________________________________________

I’m super excited to introduce you to Stacy Williamson!  When Kris and I originally broke down the Top 20 list I personally asked to profile Stacy because I was intrigued about her working for ESPN and how cool that must be.  What I found was Stacy standups on her own, with or without ESPN, which is a testament to how well she has branded herself, and, ultimately, that is what this recognition is all about!

Stacy is a Senior Technical Recruiter with ESPN where she has spent 15 years with the network in various roles within Talent Acquisition. A Virginia Tech Alum with an MBA, she clearly has the functional chops within the industry.  Here is Stacy’s Player Card:

Glassdoor Top 20 - Stacy Williamson

 

Stacy is Twitter Famous!  Going by the handle @RecruiterStacy, she has over 27,000 followers and over 20,000 tweets! Stacy is a twitter machine. What does she tweet about? It’s a mix of ESPN Careers, Star Wars, sports, candidate advice and overall industry content for the masses.  Her Instagram is similar in content, with a lean towards a little more family love!

Which brings me to another huge positive, and really another testament to her great decision making, Stacy married a Sparty!  One of the cool things Kris and I get to do on this project is stalk peoples social profiles to learn more about them and how they’ve branded themselves, which is where I got to discover Stacy’s and I connection to Michigan State!  The universe was looking out for me on this one for sure!

Stacy is what Jason Seiden coined as “Profersonal“.  She lives one life. She is a mom of twin boys, a top notch recruiter in the trenches and a fan of Star Wars.  She does personal branding like it’s meant to be.  Here is who I am. Take me, or leave me!  She does all of this in a way that makes her employer proud to have her, her family proud to claim her, all the while being the person she wants to be!

 

On the professional front Stacy has a great LinkedIn presence.  In fact, her LinkedIn profile could be used as a model for other HR and Talent Pros trying to do a better job at branding themselves.  Stacy has great links, within the profile, back to ESPN generated content of which she is a part of, that presents her in a way that highlights and brand and herself.  Take note HR and Talent Pros, you need some high quality video on your profile!

As a brand ambassador, Stacy exemplifies what organizations would hope all of their employees would strive for.  That is always a fine line when it comes to branding yourself and leveraging your organization’s brand together.  Again, Stacy does this as good as anyone we looked at in the Top 20. This isn’t easy when you work for a strong brand, like ESPN.  Many people in this position tend to ride the coat tails of the brand too much, and lose their own identity and Stacy has a great balance.

Stacy’s speaking and writing opportunities are mostly tied to brand related events and various panels, at this point, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see her getting some more opportunities on this front!  Like me, I think a lot of people would love to hear her stories and behind the scenes action of working at ESPN in Talent Acquisition.  Also, she has built in content on how to build your personal brand and employment brand with a huge organizational brand, which a lot of people would love to learn.

 

I had to ask Stacy who was the most famous athlete she has met do to her position at ESPN.  She’s met a ton, but she her fondest memory is meeting Robin Roberts.  Here it is in Stacy’s words:

“I’ve met many famous athletes and coaches; with each encounter serving as a reminder of how cool it to work at ESPN. However, my fondest memory is when I had the honor of meeting Robin Roberts during her time as a SportsCenter anchor. The poise and authenticity she has shown throughout her career remains an inspiration. Her courage to remain positive through her battle with breast cancer and myelodysplastic syndrome, while being a light to others in similar situations, makes her truly remarkable.” 

Well said, Stacy! Congratulations as well to you on making the Top 20 Brand HR and Talent Pros!

——————————————————–

The Top 20 Branded HR Pros is brought to you by Glassdoor, who invites you to attend the Annual Glassdoor Employer Branding Summit on September 25th, where a stellar speaker lineup of industry experts and thought leaders exploring the intersection of employer branding and talent acquisition, the candidate experience and employee engagement. 

Tickets are sold out, but wait!  You can attend the livestream online featuring studio coverage with Kris Dunn and Tim Sackett by registering here (click to register).  Fun and games are sure to be a part of that coverage.

Positivity: The New Red Flag in Hiring

Posted on by
1

I’m trained as an HR pro to pick up on ‘red flags’ in interviewing, in employee behavior, potential turnover risks, etc. Sometimes those red flags are really obvious.  I tease my staff all the time, but missing time on Mondays and Fridays, unexcused time, is a red flag.  It says something about how you feel about work, that you want to extend your weekend. It’s subtle, but in my experience it doesn’t play out well.

My new red flag is Positivity.

First, I’ll admit to you that I’m a mostly positive person.  My normal gauge is set to “things will probably work out in the end”.  I try to be realistic, without thinking the sky is going to fall when something doesn’t go my way.  Life has been pretty good to me. My glass is over half full, and when it’s not, I believe I can find a way to fill it up.

What I don’t buy is the people who are so positive they seem to be telling themselves they’re positive.  I tend to believe if you’re positive, you don’t need to say you outlook is positive, people will hear it and see it in your daily interactions.  Those are the people you get drawn to. They are truly positive people who enjoy the life they’ve created for themselves.

There is another kind of positive person.  This is the person who needs to keep reminding themselves and anyone around them they’re positive. This positive scares me. This positive is a red flag for me.  This type of positive makes me believe you are actually fairly negative, but trying to turn yourself into positive.

Now, I don’t necessarily think that’s bad, someone wanting to change from negative to positive.  I applaud the effort. I also know that most people are hardwired to lean one way.  It’s your personality, and that’s really hard to change long term.

My friend, Kris Dunn, loves to ask applicants about what work experience in their life they enjoyed the most, and which one did they dislike the most. Each tell you something about the person.  A truly positive person will have a hard time finding a place they truly disliked, but they’ll speak a ton about what they really liked. A truly negative person will do the opposite. They’ll go on and on about what they dislike, but move on quickly with their answer about what they like.

Basically, you can fake positivity, and it’s common amongst candidates.  The problem is, you can’t fake it for long, and even if they can fake it, fake positivity can get down right annoying!

I think it’s important to remember that opposite of Positive Thinking isn’t Negative Thinking. It’s Possible Thinking. I want to hire people who are realistic about what is possible. Blind positivity doesn’t last and usually leads to a big fall.  I don’t need the drama in my work environment. Who would have ever thought that positivity would be a hiring red flag!