THE TOP 20 BRANDED HR & TALENT PROS: Meet Jim D’Amico from Spectrum Health

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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. 

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Jim D’Amico was born to work in Talent Acquisition.  He’s the kind of guy who strikes up conversations with you while you wait in line at Starbucks hoping no one will strike up a conversation with you!  The great part of about Jim, is once he does strike up that conversation, you find out you just had a pretty cool conversation!

Jim is the Director of Talent Acquisition at Spectrum Health in Grand Rapids, MI.  Jim is personally responsible for branding his TA team, “The Best Damn Talent Acquisition Team on the Planet!”  To back up this assertion, ERE voted Spectrum Health the #1 Talent Acquisition team of 2015.  Jim is also the co-Founder of the Michigan Recruiters Conference, held bi-annually across the state to help other corporate TA shops develop into greatness!

Check out Jim’s player card:

Glassdoor Top 20 - Jim D'Amico

 

Jim has 15 years of experience in the Talent Acquisition game, with both domestic and international assignments.  His current role in healthcare supports an employee base of 24,000 and his team will hire over 5,000 in 2015 alone!

Jim’s branding game is anchored around his writing and speaking.  He’s a regular on the ERE speaking circuit, and a frequent contributor to the ERE writing side as well.  Jim also has been active and involved in many local grassroots efforts to support recruiting as a function in the communities he lives.  Most recently with the Michigan Recruiters Conference, but he also has worked on similar projects in West Michigan and Minnesota as well.

Jim is the poster child for being a Brand Ambassador. I mean, seriously, who comes in and names their TA team “The Best Damn TA Team on the Planet!” Jim Does!  That takes a ton of confidence to know that while we might not be ‘that’ yet, we are going to be!  ERE’s award this years solidified the title.

A fun fact about Jim?  He moonlights as a standup Comic!  He also does a ton of volunteer work in around Grand Rapids, MI.  Basically, branding, professionally and personally is who he is.   If you get a chance to catch him on Recruiting/HR speaking circuit make sure you do, he’s well worth it. Otherwise, connect with him on LinkedIn, you can try on Twitter (he’s a not a huge Tweeter), and don’t even try on Instagram!

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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.

 

T3 – The HR Tech Conference

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For T3 today I’m talking about the HR Tech Conference, not an individual piece of HR or Talent Technology.  The HR Tech Conference is held each year in Vegas in October. This year it’s October 18-21 at the Mandalay Bay.  I love this conference!

This year I’ll be attending HR Tech as an HR Tech Insider.  I’m not sure what this means except I’ll be blogging and talking about great HR Tech like I usually do, but maybe I’ll get access to some inside information like thirteen seconds before you get privy to the information as well! Yay, me!

HR Tech is one of the conferences I look forward to each year.  All the big HR and Talent Tech players launch all their new stuff.  All the up and coming HR tech comings come out and unveil what they are working on, and last year HR Tech even added a Startup area so I got introduced to about dozen companies that no one has heard of, that are working on stuff you’ll be using in five years!

It’s like Comic Con for HR nerds that love technology!

Here’s the other thing that HR Tech offers that you won’t get at conferences like SHRM.  You get a ton of of sessions where real HR pros and companies get on stage and talk about their secret sauce!  They talk about what they are using, how they are using it and all the good, bad and ugly it took to get them to this point.  It’s a brilliant format that I think teaches HR leaders what they really need to know.

I will caution HR and Talent Pros.  This conference isn’t for everyone.  I recommend HR Tech to everyone, and last year had some folks attend, on my recommendation and they weren’t very impressed. Why? It’s not SHRM.  They were expecting SHRM and HR Tech is not SHRM.  HR Tech is like the anti-SHRM.  I’m not knocking SHRM. I also like SHRM National, but for different reasons.

The audience at HR Tech is different from SHRM.  HR Tech gets more HR leaders, HRIS pros and organizational IT pros, basically buyers of HR and Talent technology.   The conversations and sessions that take place at HR Tech are definitely more strategic in nature than you’ll get in normal conversations at SHRM.  The other big difference is attendees of HR Tech seem more engaged and excited about HR as a function.

So, I’m again excited to be attending and blogging the latest and greatest HR and Talent Tech that I see.  If you want to go, I have a discount code you can use to receive $150 off your registration: Promo Code: SACKETT  (www.hrtechconference.com/register.html).  The code is good until October 15th!

Hope to see you at the conference!

SHRM National Speaker Feedback!

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Got my/our SHRM National Speaker Evaluation back last week.  It’s always fun to get and look at the comments and how you rated as compared the average.  Kris Dunn and I co-presented at SHRM this year. The session was titled: We’re Bringing Techy Back, and it focused on how to buy HR technology.

Here were are ratings, based on 152 responses:

Item Rated Our Average Rating  All Session Average Ratings
Quality of Information 4.41 4.27
Presenters 4.58 4.32
Too Basic 16 14
About Right 78 82
Too Advanced 1 1
Didn’t notice 4 4
Did They Sell – Yes 2 5
No 98 95

All that is cool.  Pretty good ratings. KD and I were happy with the presentation. Great turnout and high participation.

The great part of the SHRM Presentation evaluation are the Real comments that people leave you.

We got a lot like this (95%): 

– “Love these guys! Fresh, from the heart, solid content. Fun.” 

– “HR Pros need to have this presentation.” 

– “Most informative session I’ve attended. Best presentation so far!” 

– “Best session I’ve been to in years! Tons of practical advice. Very engaging!” 

We got a few like this (1%): 

– “Offensive towards vendors and sales people.”

– “The corny jokes at the beginning could be done without. Humility is a good thing.”

– “Very disappointed – a topic of great interest and the deliver ruined the presentation.”

We got some that made us laugh! 

– “Kris interrupts Tim a lot.” (thanks, to my one fan!)

– “Found that the tech session has paper evaluation forms!” (well…)

– “The guys attempt at being funny affected credibility.” (You’re telling us!)

One of the biggest takeaways was a lot of comments about what people were hoping we would have done more of, namely, tell them exactly what vendor to use, for certain situations. It’s the “what ATS should I buy?” dilemma. Kris and I addressed this because we knew this would be stuff people would want.  The problem is, a great technology for one organization, might be the exact wrong technology for another organization.

With such a diverse crowd at SHRM, it is almost impossible to recommend one HR and Talent vendor over another, if we are being honest about what is the best choice for your organization specifically.

This does bring up a great issue, though, across all the SHRM attendees.

People commented on this because they truly want an unbiased and trustworthy opinion on who they should be looking at, and what they should be buying.  They don’t trust vendors, for the obvious reason the vendor is trying to sell you.  They don’t trust industry analysts because they are all in bed with someone.  They don’t want to pay for consultants.

The HR and Talent industry doesn’t have a Consumer’s Report or Trip Advisor to give HR Pros unbiased advice.  So, they look at people, like Kris and I, as someone who will tell them the truth.  Which we would, and did, for many who stayed after and we had one on one conversations with about their specific issue.

I think SHRM could fill this void with some kind of behind the member wall “Trip Advisor” like site that allows all of us to give our own feedback on all HR and Talent technology.  This community share would be invaluable for all of us trying to make that next buying decision.

Get Your Employees to Stop Sleepwalking Through Open Enrollment

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Hey gang! I’m doing another SHRM Webinar to help you get your employees more involved in this year’s Open Enrollment, and give you some of the background to what frustrates them the most, along with some tips on waking them up!

Do way too many of your employees default into exactly the same plan they chose the year before…just because it’s easier? Is their reluctance to even consider making changes to their benefits costing them — and your company — serious money?

If so, you’re going to love the advice I have to offer about waking up your benefits sleepwalkers in this lively one-hour webinar.

Specifically, you’ll learn:

  • Why the same old, same old is so appealing to people, and how to make change seem less intimidating
  • Smart ways to deal with the blowback you might get if you take away a plan option
  • Why employees find making benefits decisions so dang hard – and how you can help alleviate their stress
  • What you can do to jolt your benefits sleepwalking employees awake once and for all

In short: if you’ve ever struggled to get employees to embrace a new plan or to take any action at all during open enrollment, this is the webinar for you!

August 20th at 2pm EST – just in time for your afternoon nap on the East Coast, and your lunch nap on the West Coast!

Free Webinar (Sponsored by SHRM and ALEX) –  How to Get Your Employees to Stop Sleepwalking Through Open Enrollment—And Help Them Make Better Decisions! 

REGISTER HERE! 

Bathroom Monitor: The Newest HR Pro Title

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I love HR.  I’m always on the lookout for the next latest and greatest HR title, so this is an exciting day!  The WaterSaver Faucet Company in Chicago, a great Union town, decided to add “Bathroom Monitor” to the duties HR is now responsible for. Check it out:

“If you work at WaterSaver Faucet Company, when you gotta go, you might not want to go.

The Chicago company installed a new system that monitors bathroom breaks and penalizes employees who spend more than six minutes a day in the washroom outside their normal breaks.

“The HR woman literally goes through every person’s bathroom use and either hands out a reward or discipline,” said Nick Kreitman, an attorney for Teamsters Local 743, which represents 80 workers at the plant, which coincidentally manufactures taps and other sink fixtures.

Employees who don’t use extra breaks get a dollar a day while others who exceed more than one hour in a 10-day period will get a warning, which can lead to termination, he said.”

Now, you probably think this is where I’ll rant about how being a Bathroom Monitor isn’t strategic and demeaning to HR Pros. But, I’m not. In this case, workers are getting what they have asked for.

If you act like a child, employers are forced to treat you like a child.  Adults use the bathroom for reasons G*d intended. Children use the bathroom for that reason and about a hundred others.  Have you ever spent time in an elementary school!?!  I have.  I taught elementary aged children.  The bathroom is a place to go when you’re bored in class to waste time. The bathroom is where mischief happens.

Watersaver HR is doing what is has to, to solve an employee problem it is having.  Employees were taking an advantage of unlimited bathroom breaks that the employer had given to them.  It wasn’t everyone, but it was enough that Watersaver felt the need to make changes.  Employees can still take a bathroom break any time they need, but once a certain amount of time is taken up over a ten day period, it starts to become a disciplinary issue.

Do I agree with this type of strategy? No.

Here’s how I would have handled it.  I would have had the managers who were having issues with a few employees taking too many bathroom breaks, get rid of those employees who were abusing the privilege of unlimited breaks.  I would have sent the message, that we don’t put up with childish behavior.  We want adults to work here.

You know what? The other employees, the majority, also want to work with other adults.  They would have applauded this. Because adults hate when they are working their butts off and others, doing the same job, are goofing off.  We are talking about medical need here.  We are talking about adults who don’t want to work for the money they are being paid. Those people have to go bye-bye.

That’s the type of strategy I would have rather seen Watersaver take.

There’s No Free Staffing Option

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I’ve gotten a chance to work both sides of the fence for an extended period of time in the Talent Acquisition/Recruiting/Staffing game. For ten years I ran corporate talent acquisition shops for some very large organizations.  One organization spent over $3M annually on staffing agency fees! Obviously, prior to me getting there!

I’ve spent almost fifeteen years on the agency side, sandwiched in between my corporate experience. What I’ve learned along the way is that there isn’t a “free” option when it comes to hiring great talent.

Frequently, I get asked from clients for discounts to my fees on the agency side.  I get that. When I was on the corporate side, I would never take an agency’s first offer.  Here’s the main problem with all of this:

Corporate talent acquisition pros don’t want any of it. They don’t your 20% direct fee, they don’t want your retained plan, they don’t want your RPO plan. What they want is Free. A free option.

Therein lies everything you need to know about staffing agencies and corporate talent acquisition.  One side wants free. One side needs to get paid.

The reality is, even staffing on your own on the corporate side isn’t free.  Corporate talent acquisition done right, has a ton of costs. Recruitment tools, automation, branding, job boards, applicant tracking, college strategy, recruiter training and hiring, etc. None of that is free.

All of this, though, should be screaming to the agency folks that something isn’t right.  What corporate talent acquisition pros are saying is “we don’t like the options we are getting from agencies”.  This should be of serious concern, because there are companies trying to design other options for corporate talent acquisition pros.  Options where they’ll feel like they are getting the value they want.

These options aren’t free, either, but they are less than all of the traditional options that 99% of staffing agencies are offering.

When I was on the corporate TA side of the desk, here was my decision matrix to when I would use a staffing agency. This matrix made me feel good about my decision to use an agency:

1. Does my team have the capacity to do this search? If Yes, why would I pay to have this done. If No, the cost if justifiable.

2. Does the agency offer me a recruitment expertise and/or pipeline I don’t have on my team?  See #1 for Yes and No options.

3. Is it financially feasible for me to add more capacity to my team, as compared to an agency option? This one took some more work. If I had a need for an agency to fill, let’s say, three positions and it was going to cost me $100K, well, obviously I could hire a pretty good recruiter for $100K. But, would I need that Recruiter in year 2, 3, etc.? Adding headcount isn’t a one time cost for an organization.

Ultimately, for me on the corporate side, it was almost always a capacity issue.  I had the expertise, but we had bubbles of work I needed extra support with.  Too often, I see corporate TA leaders upset over agency spend and it’s based on the fact they don’t have good recruiters on their team, yet there unwilling to change this fact. I’ll pay for additional short term capacity. I won’t pay for expertise I should have on my team everyday. That becomes my issue!

Corporate TA leaders become frustrated over agency spend because ultimately it’s a reflection on the team they have created.

 

T3 – @HyphenApp

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This week on T3 I review the employee community/communication/engagement/feedback tool Hyphen.  Hyphen is a mobile app that allows employees to communicate anonymously, but within a company parameter.  Only those with an organizational email can sign into and message within the Hyphen app for that company. The organization controls who gets in and taken out through this email feature. Although, any employee, with an organizational email, can start using Hyphen.

Employees, at all levels, can use Hyphen at anytime, anywhere, through their mobile device.  Everything they post is anonymous.  This keeps the conversation open from free of retribution of what is said.  It’s community moderated, so users can flag inappropriate content, and once you get flagged three times, you get put in a penalty box.  Any flagged material gets taken down.

Too often, as companies get larger, the real opinions get lost. With Hyphen, that will no longer be the case. Also, an individual can easily ask for timely, anonymous, unbiased feedback.

The 5 Things I really like about Hyphen: 

1. It’s free to users, but if the organization or HR wants to use a dashboard that will get them data analytics and some more control, that cost per user.  It doesn’t give HR access to which user posted what, or who they actual users are, but it will give them so fairly robust analytics.

2.  Executives can easily use Hyphen to get real time feedback on anything.  Hyphen can configure the app to have your executives or leadership, show up differently, so your workforce knows that a question or feedback is coming from someone on the executive team.  I love this!  Most executives complain about the filtering of information that makes it to them. It’s so vanilla and politically correct by the time they hear it, they don’t know what to really believe.

3. Hyphen can break out groups within your workforce, allowing team leaders to ask questions to their group only, or give feedback that way as well, without the rest of the company seeing the stream.

4. Hyphen can be used by individual employees to build 360 groups and gather feedback about their performance, or ask questions on virtually anything.

5. I like the community moderation and the organization’s ability to shut off employees who leave the organization.  Every company would love to have a communication tool like this, but fear where it might go because of the anonymous feature. Hyphen has found a way to make both worlds happy.

Check it out. Your employees might already have, and be using it.

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.

I’m Uninviting You

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I’m not terminating anyone ever again.

I can’t terminate anyone, because I don’t hire anyone.  I do invite people to join me.  Join me on this journey, on this path. It’s going to be a great trip.  I invite them to be  apart of my family.  Not my ‘work’ family, but my actual family.  I spend more time with my co-workers than I do with my wife and children (in terms of waking hours).  So, when I invite someone to join us, it is not something I take lightly.

That’s why, from now on, I’m not terminating anyone.  From now on, I’m just uninviting them to continue being a part part of what we have going on.  Just like a party.  You were invited to attend, but you end up drinking too much and making a fool out of yourself, so now you’re uninvited. You can’t attend the next party.  I don’t know about you, but when I throw a party, I never (and I mean never) invite someone I can’t stand.  Sometimes couple have issues with this, where one spouse wants to invite his or her friend, but their spouse is a complete tool and it causes issues.  Not in my family, we only invite those people we want to be around, life is too short.

Here’s the deal.  When you invited someone into your family, you usually end up falling in love with them.  It’s that way in business. It’s the main reason we have such a hard time firing on bad performers.  We fall in love with those people we hire.  “Oh, Mary, she’s such a nice person!”  But, Mary, can’t tie her shoes and chew gum at the same time.  So, we give Mary chances, too many chances, and pretty soon Mary is part of the family.  It’s hard terminating part of the family.

I would rather just not invite Mary to attend work any longer.  “Hey, Mary, we love you, but look, we aren’t going to invite you to work.  We’ll still see you at 5pm over at the bar for drinks.”  Sounds so much easier, right!?  It happens all the time.  I use to get invited to stuff, but somewhere down the road the group stopped inviting me.  I might have been a little upset over it, but it didn’t last and I’m still friends with everyone.  Termination is so permanent, it’s like death.  Being uninvited sends the same message, but there’s a part of being uninvited that says “you know what, maybe it was you, maybe it was us, but let’s just face it, together it doesn’t work.”

You’re Uninvited.

Are you Great at Faking it?

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In our zest to have high employee engagement, HR has once again outsmarted itself.  Follow the logic:

1. High Employee Engagement is a desired measure.

2. HR creates programs to drive Employee Engagement upwards.

3. Employee Engagement thresholds are reached with said programs.

4. HR needs more.

5. If we ensure every new hire comes in ‘loving’ their job/company/industry – we will ‘pre-buy’ some of the engagement measure.

6. Only hire people who ‘love’ our job/company/industry.

7. Candidates have brains.  “Oh, you only hire people who ‘love’ your job/company/industry”

8. Candidates now become really good at ‘faking’ their ‘love’ for your job/company/industry.

9.  Employees are smart to – “Oh, you mean if our ‘engagement’ score comes back higher, you’ll stop making us do these stupid team building exercises?”

10. Employees become really good at ‘faking’ it.

Being male, I was never good at faking it.  I’m Popeye – “I am, what I am, and that’s all I am”.   Fast Company had a solid post on why “Faking Enthusiasm” has become the latest job requirement. From the post:

“Timothy Noah wrote in The New Republic about how Pret A Manger requires its employees to master “Pret behaviors,” such as “has presence,” “creates a sense of fun,” and “is happy to be themself.” Yes–in order to sell you a bacon sandwich, employees must be fully self-actualized. And the amount that they touch fellow-employees is considered to be a positive indicator of sales, not a red flag for sexual-harassment lawsuits.”

It’s such a slippery slope.  Every action we take in leadership has consequences – some of which we know, some we don’t know until they happen.  The best leaders thoroughly try to anticipate these consequences their actions will create.   Requiring employees/candidates have high levels of enthusiasm might seem like a really great idea – but you better have authentic ways of measuring, or you’re just setting yourself up to fooled by those who ‘get’ the game.

Ultimately time and pressure always win out.  Given enough time and/or enough pressure an individuals true colors will show.  This is why it’s important to job requirements that are actually needed.  Authentic enthusiasm is not needed for high performers in most jobs.  Trying to hire for it can create some negative hiring scenarios when time and pressure take their tolls.  Is it great to have enthusiastic employees? Yep – it sure is.  I love being around those employees.  Do I set out to hire that ‘skill’ as a requirement – no – I have great even keel employees as well.  While I might not stop and interact with them as often – they are just as good as the enthusiastic ones.

Here’s what I know. If you’re hiring for a skill that can be faked – candidates will attempt to fake it, if they really want to work for your company.  How do you combat this – eliminate as much subjective stuff as you can from your selection process.  One other thing, if you do decide you need that high-energy personality, understand that personality just doesn’t come when you want it – it’s a person’s core – you get it all the time – there’s no light switch when you decide you’ve had enough.  I see hiring managers all the time that want a ‘certain personality’ – so we find it for them – only to have that same hiring manager come back 6 months later complaining it’s too much!

Your Leaders Secretly Hate Succession Planning

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You want to know what you’ll never hear anyone on your leadership team say publicly?  Well, let me stop before I get started, because there are probably a ton of things leaders will say behind closed doors, off the record, and then open the door and say the exact opposite. Welcome to the PC version of corporate America.

One of the obvious, which always causes a stir is veteran hiring.  William Tincup and I were just talking about this last week, in regards to a correlation he was making about organizations and succession planning.  I wrote a post about Veteran Hiring a while back, in which I state that companies will always, 100% of the time, publicly say they support veteran hiring, but behind closed doors they don’t really support veteran hiring.

If they did, we would not have a veteran hiring crisis in this country! If every organization who claims they want to hire veterans, would just hire veterans, we would have 100% employed veterans! But we don’t. Why?  Well, it’s organizational suicide to ever come out and say we don’t really want to hire veterans.  The media would kill that organization. Yet, veterans can’t get hired.

Succession planning is on a similar path.  Your leaders say the support succession planning. They’ll claim it is a number one priority for your organization. But, every time you try and do something with succession planning, it goes no where!

Why?

Your leaders hate succession planning for a number of reasons, here are few:

1. Financially, succession planning is a huge burden on organizations, if done right.  Leaders are paid on the financial success of your organization. If it comes down to Succession Planning, or Michael getting a big bonus, Succession Planning will get pushed to next year, then, next year, then, next year…  You see Succession Planning is really over hiring. Preparing for the future. It’s a long term pay back.  Very few organizations have leadership in place with this type of long term vision of success.

2.  Leaders get too caught up in headcount.  We only have 100 FTEs for that group, we couldn’t possibly hire 105 and develop and prepare the team for the future, even though we know we have 6% turnover each year.  Organizations react. Fire fight.  Most are unwilling to ‘over hire’ and do succession in a meaningful way.

3. Leaders are like 18 year old boys. They think they can do it forever!  Again, publicly they’ll tell you they’re planning and it’s important. Privately, they look at some smartass 35 year old VP and think to themselves, there is no way in hell I’ll ever let that kid take over this ship!

So, what can smart HR Pros do?

Begin testing some Succession Planning type tools and data analytics in hot spots in your company. Don’t make it a leadership thing. Make it a functional level initiative, in a carve out area of your organization.  A part of the organization that is highly visible, has direct financial impact to the business, and one you know outwardly has succession issues.

Tinker. Get people involved. Have conversations. Start playing around with some things that could have impact in terms of development, retention, cross training, workforce planning, etc.  All those things that constitute succession, but instead of organization level, you are focusing on departmental level or a specific location.

Smart HR Pros get started.  They don’t wait for the organization to do it all at once. That will probably never happen.  Just start somewhere, and roll it little by little. Too often we don’t get started because we want to do it all. That is the biggest mistake we can make.