3 Ways to Turn Down a Job Offer

Posted on by
2

The NBA free agent signings took place at midnight EST last night.  The signing period lasts 9 days, where players can negotiate, but not sign, deals until last night at midnight.  One big free agent signing this year is DeAndre Jordan, who was with the LA Clippers last season, and had a verbal, handshake, agreement to join the Dallas Mavericks.

That was until DeAndre decided to change his mind and re-sign with the Clippers, but not tell the Mavericks he was going to do this!  Basically, doing what we see in HR all the time, accepting our offer, only to see the candidate turn around and accept the counteroffer.  The problem with DeAndre was that he never let Dallas know he was going to do this, so they weren’t able to go after another player to replace him!

Not only did he not tell Dallas, he actually tweeted out a picture from his house with a chair blocking the door, to give the implication that his Clipper teammates weren’t allowing anyone to come to his house until after midnight and contract was signed!  Way to keep it classy LA…

So, how should a candidate turn down an offer when they decide to go in another direction?  Here are three ways that are all better than was DeAndre did:

1. Pick up the phone! If you are adult enough to make the decision to accept another offer, be adult enough to pick up the freaking phone and let the other party know that is what your intent is.  You get bonus adult points if you also give them a reason or two of why the other offer was better for you to accept! Do this the moment you have made the decision to accept the other position. Timing is critical for this, as the other organization might have a backup candidate and they don’t want to miss out on this person.

2. Send an email.  Less favorable, and it’s definitely conflict avoidant, but at least you did something to let the organization know.  The plus factor on the email is you have time to craft your message, as some people are not good over the phone in real-time interactions.  Again, give the organization some sort of ‘real’ reason on why their offer wasn’t as good as the offer you accepted.  This will be appreciated, as companies need to know how to get better.  NEVER – give the “it’s me, not you” as a reason. That’s lame!

3. Text message.  I put this one in for the kids. They like texting, but the reality is, this looks unprofessional, and you’ll get know adult points for doing this.  The one way I can see texting being used to turn down an offer is if it is used in conjunction with another form of communication. A quick “just wanted to let you know I will not be accepting your offer. Sorry. I’ll call soon with an explanation”, will work, but make sure you call!

I’m not sure why anyone ever feels it’s okay to accept a job offer, then just decide to not do it, but never communicate back with the organization. This happens more than you think, but I’m always surprised by this mentality of who would think this is acceptable.

In my career I’ve probably had at least a half a dozen people accept jobs, sign an offer letter, then on start day, be a no-show. I find out later they decided to accept a counteroffer, but never communicated anything back to my organization.  This is across multiple industries, multiple companies. I would love to see an industry study of why people think this is an appropriate behavior!

The morale to the story? Don’t be a DeAndre!

The Jealous Girlfriend Interview Technique!

Posted on by
2

About a year ago Forbes had an article, Top Executive Recruiters Agree There Are Only 3 True Job Interview Questions, that shared the “wisdom” of a handful of Executive  Recruiters on the only things that you should really have to ask a candidate.  There 3 questions where:

  1. Can you do the job?
  2. Will you love the job?
  3. Can we tolerate working with you?

Simple enough.  Straight to the point, and you can assume for the $75,000 you’re paying, this is probably the extent of their screening as well!

In my Recruiting/HR career it’s probably the single most often asked question I get:

“What are your best interview questions?”

Then, you get to hear their questions. About how Google has some really great ones. Even, how I heard once about a company that asked people if they were an animal which animal would they be? Or, if you only pick one vegetable to eat the rest of your life, would it be carrots?  It goes on, and on. Until you want to vomit!

The actual interview questions have very little impact in the success of the interview.

If you are interviewing anyone with some decent smarts, they are going to be able to ace your questions with little effort.  What is important in interviewing is what you allow the candidate to get away with.  I find that most recruiters and hiring managers to be way (I mean WAY!) to easy when it comes to questioning candidates.  See if this example sounds familiar:

Interviewer: “John, looks like you left your last next to last company in May, but didn’t start your current position until July. Can you explain that gap?”

John: “Sure, you know I was doing a great job and I didn’t see myself moving up in that company, so I wanted to go find somewhere I could move up the ladder.”

Bam! At this point, most interviewers move on to the next questions.  When clearly, John deflected, and someone needs to rip into some Gestapo interrogation tactics and find out what’s really going on.  But they don’t, it would be a conflict, he might think we are rude, and well, we’ll move on…

Follow-up questions to original answers during an interview is a skill in itself.  The only interview questions you ever need are the questions a Jealous Girlfriend asks when you come home on a Saturday morning around 3am.  Shoot, just hire Jealous Girlfriends as your interviewers! They’ll get to the bottom of a candidates background!

The hardest interview I ever had was with a woman that was eventually my boss, who was a former U.S. Army interrogator. It was exhausting! It was painful! It was Awesome! I actually lost my voice (after the 7th hour – True Story!).

She was the ultimate Jealous Girlfriend, in fact, I think she trains Jealous Girlfriends in her spare time.  There wasn’t an answer I could give her that she was satisfied with. She just kept at it, until I would slip and say something I really didn’t mean to. Once she smelled the blood, it was over.

The result? She hired the best talent (excluding me) in the entire organization by far!  Bad hired did not make it past here interviewing technique.

So, don’t worry about having the “best” interview questions. Really any will do. Just don’t accept the first answer you get!

 

T3- @Hirabl

Posted on by
Reply

This week on T3 I take a look at the specialized staffing vendor software technology called Hirabl.  Hirabl is designed to help staffing companies catch revenue they missed because a client, or potential client, hired one of of the staffing vendors candidates, but never paid the fee. What!?!

Yep, it’s actually a fairly common occurrence in the staffing and talent acquisition game.  It can happen a number of ways. I don’t want my talent acquisition brother and sisters thinking I’m called them cheats.  99.9% of are completely above board, but .1% are sneaky!

Here’s how it all might go down:

An organization is contacted by a staffing company to help on an opening. A good staffing company will insist on a signed contract.  The get the signature and begin working.  The organization decides not to move forward with any of the staffing companies candidates. Both parties go on their way.  This happens a lot in the staffing world.

Fast forward six months down the road and the organization has the same opening.  They post the opening and a candidate comes into their ATS. The same candidate the staffing company presented six months prior.  By contract, that candidate is still ‘owned’ by the staffing firm. The organization hires the candidate, but never thinks about paying the staffing company. The staffing company has moved on and doesn’t even realize you hired their original candidate.  By contract the organization still owes the fee, but it’s rarely collected, because on one comes asking!

Hirabl has technology that goes out and through social profiles and your internal data, finds these circumstances.  You then get an alert, so you can go ‘remind’ the organization you presented the company to that they indeed owe you some money.  Depending on your volume, Hirabl, on average, is finding hundreds of thousands in lost fees.

You need a couple of things to make this successful: 1. Good, signed contracts; 2. Good data for them to search on. Most staffing companies, using a decent ATS, will have the data.  The contract question might be more difficult for some. In my organization we don’t do anything without signed contracts, so we would be good on that front as well.

I wanted to write about this for a couple of reasons. First, I know a lot of staffing folks who read my blog that can use this and get back some lost revenue. Second, I wanted those corporate talent acquisition folks to know that staffing vendors are getting more sophisticated, and some things that you might have gotten away with years ago, will soon be coming to an end.

Be careful signing a staffing contract. Usually, most staffing vendors are going to ‘own’ candidates they submit to you for at least twelve months.  That means if you hire one of those folks, even if that candidate came to you on their own, you contractually are liable for that fee. That’s why you should be signing a ton of contracts.  Find a few good firms. Work with them closely, and you won’t have any surprises.

You can better believe I’ll be trying Hirabl!  We do a ton of volume, and as much as I would like to think no client hired one of our folks, I know we’ll find some where it happened. Stay tuned!

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.

Hiring Is About To Get Really Difficult!

Posted on by
20

One thing was abundantly clear from speakers and thought leaders at SHRM 2015, hiring is hard, and it’s about to get much harder!

That isn’t good news for any of us in HR and Talent Acquisition. There are two forces that are currently happening that are making hiring more difficult than it has been in over ten years:

  1. Solid economy and job growth.
  1. Baby Boomers leaving the workforce.

This isn’t earth shattering information, we all kind of new this was happening.  The issue is we are now all beginning to feel this in every part of the country and in almost every job category.  This means some things are going to happen, and the top HR and Talent Pros are already preparing for these:

  • Wage Growth: CareerBuilder CEO Matt Ferguson spoke at SHRM on Tuesday and had some great data showing that organizations see wage growth of around 5% in 2015, and similar in years to come. Are you budgeting 5% increases? I’m guessing not!
  • Recruitment Process Challenges: How many steps does it take to apply for a job in your organization?  If it’s more than two, you’ve got problems!  Can someone apply for a job online with your organization without having a resume? Why not?  Matt also showed data from CareerBuilder showing 40% of HR and Talent Pros have never applied for one of their own jobs to better understand the true experience!
  • Technology Challenges: Do you have a way to reengage candidates in your system on a regular basis?  A system that allows you to let great talent know, that you already have in your system, when you have an opening that fits them? It’s called CRM, and only about 20% of companies have technology that can do this important recruitment marketing function!
  • Job Design Challenges: Too many of us are working and designing jobs like we are living in a society that was pre-internet, pre-ultra connected. We still think we need employees sitting in front of us from 8-5pm, Monday thru Friday. If they aren’t sitting in front of us, they must not be working! Indeed shared that 80% of job searches on their site include this single word: “Remote”!  Are you adjusting those jobs that can be flexible?

Those organizations that believe they can recruit and get talent like they have been doing for the last couple of decades are going to fail.  It’s really that simple.  Talent attraction will be a powerful strategic differentiator for organizations over the next decade, like almost no other time in our history.

The good news?  At no other point in our history do have access to the information on how to be successful!  Twenty years ago, doing great talent acquisition was mostly trying stuff and getting lucky.  In today’s world you can learn easily how the best organizations are attracting talent at conferences, on websites, in blogs, webinars, etc.  There are so many sources of this information, that we now have no excuse to improve what we are doing.  We just have to do it!

 

Live from #SHRM15 – It’s a Wrap! Lessons Learned.

Posted on by
1

The largest HR conference in the world, SHRM National 2015, concluded this week on Wednesday.  As I reflect back on the conference for 2015, I wanted to share some thoughts and learnings I got from the conference.

Here are my thoughts in no particular order:

1. The Expo is still overwhelming.  700+ vendors and some of the SHRM veterans tell me it’s smaller than in year past.  Who cares! It’s still freaking huge!  The funny part is these 700+ companies are truly only a fraction of sellers who are coming after HR and Talent Pros on a daily basis.  I’ve been coming to SHRM for years, and the size of the Expo never stops fascinating me.

2. SHRM is missing an Gigantic opportunity.  15,700 SHRM members attended the annual conference.  About 235,000 did not.  SHRM should be Streaming content live to the members who can’t make it.  Not all the content, just some of the content. Give those that can’t come a taste of what they’re missing.  Of course, some of the big keynotes won’t allow this, contractually. But, almost, 100% of us speaking for free, would welcome the streaming opportunity.  If SHRM streamed content from the national conference, they could get another 50,000 members watching remotely! I can’t tell even implore to you how bad of a missed opportunity this is for SHRM.

3. We are all not Zappos and Google.  I think SHRM speakers get this more than most.  99.9% of SHRM attendees work for organizations that have daily struggles in real HR and Talent problems.  The members come to get better, not to hear how the .1% do it better.  We don’t have Zappos culture, we don’t have Google’s resources, we are Real HR people, give us real HR examples.  I think in 2015, SHRM did a good job of getting speakers that were like the rest of us, and I appreciated that.

4. I’m confused how SHRM schedules speakers and space.  I wish SHRM would tell you up front what size room you would be speaking in. Kris Dunn and I had one of the smallest venues to speak in. Probably a room of 500 and it was packed. People sitting on the floor, standing, etc. My friend Mary Faulkner, who was really good BTW, from Denver Water, had a giant room that probably sat 2,000!  It was Mary’s first time speaking at SHRM, the room was too big. Ours was too small.  SHRM had to know this.  Socially, Kris and I could have gotten 500 people to show up in the parking lot and hear us do our thing.  We’ve worked for years to build an audience.  Why doesn’t SHRM take that into context?

5. HR Vendors Have Learned the ROI on big parties just isn’t there.  Back in the day at SHRM National, you could jump from party to party, every night of the conference.  Huge parties! Free food, drink and entertainment.  This year, there was only one, and it was the SHRM party with Jennifer Hudson. Great party, but it was the ONLY one!  There were private parties, dinners, etc. But nothing for the masses.  That was a change, and I don’t see it coming back.  Vendors are getting more specific and smarter with their spend. Why spend a couple of hundred grand on everyone, when you can spend $25K on a few that you’ll know will more than likely buy?  That’s just good marketing.

6. The SHRM App continues to get better.  Early in the conference I threw SHRM VP of Conference, Lisa Block, under the bus when I tweeted out what “idiot” password protected that SHRM App, which was a first.  I quickly had to eat crow when Lisa tweeted back and said she was the idiot and the reason why was because now the App had all the content of each speaker’s presentation.   Which was totally awesome!  And, I’m the idiot! Lisa did good. Can’t wait to see what she has up her sleeve next year.

I hope to see you all at SHRM in 2016 in D.C.!

 

 

 

Live from #SHRM15 – HR Ladies are Brave!

Posted on by
1

Kris Dunn and I presented to a packed room at SHRM on Monday on the topic of HR technology and what HR Pros need to be thinking about and doing to bring their own shops into the next decade.  It was great. The attendees asked a ton of questions and were so engaged.

I know I’m going to catch crap about saying HR ladies are brave, when their are HR guys as well at SHRM. The reality is about 85% of the attendees are female. So, while I’m sure there are brave HR guys, my example has to do with one of the HR ladies.

Literally,  minutes after it got done I overheard someone making fun of an HR pro who made a comment about ‘getting onto LinkedIn’ to find some talent, because they had not yet been on LinkedIn.  This is the real struggle.  It made me upset that this person was being made fun of.

Here was an HR lady who was brave enough to come to a technology session, working on her own development, trying to get better.  I started out the session telling folks that I feel like an idiot when it comes to technology.  I’m definitely not an expert.  I’m interested, and I’m following that interest. The reality is I’m just scratching the service of what HR technology is all about.

As compared to most of the people in the room I probably know a thousand percent more about HR technology then they do.  There is this continuum of novice we are all on, when it comes to our level of knowledge. Some are at the level where they don’t know about LinkedIn.  That’s okay.  We all start somewhere.  That’s where I started.

She was brave to have the guts to ask the question.

It takes guts to let people know that you don’t know something, but you want to learn.  That’s what is great about industry conferences about SHRM. Most attendees are in the same boat.  They want to share what they know and learn what other know.  All to help themselves and their organization.

It’s not easy.  It’s not easy to admit you don’t know something, when it seems like everyone else does.  It takes someone who has some courage to open themselves up to the opinion of the masses. My hope is that we all come to this safe place to learn and help develop each other.

I’m proud of all the HR pros who came to my session and raised their hand and asked questions that might have gotten them judged.  That takes guts.  It made the session great, because it was real.  Real questions, from real HR pros, wanting real help.

It wasn’t something at 30,000 feet.  It was ground level, real world HR and it seemed like everyone really liked it.

Thanks for showing us the way brave HR lady!

Live from #SHRM15 – We All Just Want Attention

Posted on by
2

Monday’s big keynote speaker was the ever popular Marcus Buckingham.  Marcus has the great English accent, high energy and great leadership content to share. He’s strong every time I’ve seen him, going on way too many times at this point in my life!

The big bomb he dropped on the SHRMies this session was the money-shot quote of the conference: Millennials don’t want feedback!

We’ve all been told by thought leaders and Millennial experts for a decade that all Millennials want is feedback and work-life balance!  They don’t want money or power or ice in their beer.  Just feedback and time off.  Marcus put a stop to all of this, and had the data to back it up!

In reality, Marcus told us the truth.  Millennials, and the rest of us, don’t want feedback, we all want attention. Pay attention to us!  Stop by frequently and see how we are doing, give us some insight to our near future, help us get our jobs done.  But, please, don’t give us feedback on what we are doing wrong!

No one wants that.  The whole reason performance reviews fail is because they don’t deliver what we truly want, attention, not feedback.  So, our “HR” answer to this is to do what?!? Let’s do more frequent, smaller, feedback sessions! NO!

Unfortunately, this is going to be big old Titanic to turn around.  The wheels have been in motion to long to stop what we’ve already started.  HR technology platforms and your processes are already in place. Your managers have already been trained, and now you want us to stop?!?

Basically, yes.

Those organizations with high engagement are not the ones who are giving more feedback. They are the ones who are paying more attention to their employees.  Yes, there is a difference.

This is fraught with issues for most HR pros and organizations because it feels a little pie in the skish.  There is an assumption that you pay attention to your employees and they’ll just magically do what they’re supposed to do, and we live happily ever after, cats and dogs living together.

We know that isn’t reality.

Some employees need to be managed to get the most out of them.  They need to be held accountable. I do think there is a balance that we can get to when it comes to paying attention to our employees, like they want, and being able to ‘manage’ them like the business needs.

Managers need to know that even with those employees they’ve worked with for a long time, it’s critical that they don’t stop paying attention to what they’re doing, professionally and personally. Also, our employees need to understand that, yes, we care about you, but that doesn’t mean you can just not perform the job you were hired to do.

I don’t need engaged employees that don’t do the job they were hired to do. I want engaged, productive employees.  It’s all about balancing your approach, and I love that Marcus put to bed the concept that Millennials just want feedback!

Live from #SHRM15 – S#*t HR Tech Salespeople Say!

Posted on by
6

That’s right SHRMies today is the day!  2 pm West Coast time, because you know it’s the best coast, Kris Dunn, and I will be dropping knowledge at SHRM 2015. Our presentation will give you the ins and outs of selecting your next HR and/or Talent technology. We’ll also be talking HR vendor negotiating and give you keep insight to getting the best deal you can!

Check us out, if you’re here.  If you’re not, here’s a little taste of what you’ll be missing:

S#*t HR Tech Salespeople Say and How to Translate It!

“This software/tool pays for itself!”

Yeah, and so does that travel insurance you bought to protect your vacation last year!  This always goes well with another line they throw into the mix, “you’ll save so much money, you’ll be able to put money back to the bottomline of the business”.  If you believe this I’ve got some great land to sell in the Everglades!

“Buy now, before the price goes up in September!”

Every single time I hear this from an HR Tech salesperson I hang-up or end the conversation.  This is the cheesiest, of cheeseball lines that a salesperson can use when negotiating.  If you’re giving me a price in June, but I need a couple of months to get this decision through the proper channels, the price better be the same in sixty days.

“We don’t have that yet, but it’s in a future release!”

You know what else is in a future release?  Their ability to use 3D printers to make real rock star candidates!  Sure that future release might be 100 years down the road, but technically they didn’t lie to you!  If the product you’re looking at doesn’t have the functionality you need now, and it’s critical for you to have it, you need to walk away.  Too many things happen in the tech industry to plan on ‘a future release’ to make the product work for you.

Want some more?!?

We’ve got plenty, stop on down to the live show and check us out.  Kris and I are like the movie Twins, with Danny DeVito and Arnold Schwartzneggar.  He’s the big one. I’m the good looking one! I think that’s how that movie went…

Anyway, it’ll be fun.  If you couldn’t make it to SHRM, hit me with an email, and I’ll make sure you get a copy of the slide deck for the presentation.

Live from #SHRM15 – Secret Sauce Recipes!

Posted on by
1

Yeah, I know it’s Sunday and I normally don’t post on a Sunday, but I’m at the annual SHRM National Conference in Las Vegas and it starts today. The opening keynote speaker is Coach K, the Duke University head basketball coach.  I’m not a big fan.  His team beats my team way too often! So, he’ll be painful to listen to as I remember each defeat.

The SHRM expo floor also opens today with a big reception.  The SHRM expo is hard to describe.  Part flee market. Part carnival. Part car show. All HR and Talent.  Everyone who ever wants to sell stuff to HR is here.  They hand out pens, stress balls, mints, hand sanitizer, t shirts, frisbees, candy, basically, anything to get you to stop and talk to them.

My favorite free stuff that vendors give out is information!  You see, all of these vendors have clients that actually pay these vendors money to use their products and services.  These vendors know what others are doing to be successful.  If you take a few minutes they’ll gladly share the secret sauce recipes of all kinds of organizations!

We all want secret sauce recipes!

It’s probably the greatest weakness of HR and Talent Acquisition, in general, from industry to industry, is we suck at getting competitive data on what other organizations are doing in their HR and Talent shops.  We don’t network with our competition. We think if we share what we are doing, we’re somehow sharing national secrets. So, we fumble around through life, trying to figure it all out on our own.

That is why I spend most of my time at SHRM meeting with vendors.  I treat them like normal people, and they in turn give me great insight to what is working and not working in the world of HR and Talent.  I get smarter. I learn what I can take back to my own shop.  I gain some understanding of what the best organizations are doing that is successful. That’s valuable!

I don’t really care what Coach K does to cheat his way to national titles and stealing recruits.  What I care about is being on the cutting edge of what the best companies are doing to gain an advantage with their employees and getting the best talent.

Check me out on Pericope, where I’ll be live streaming during the conference!

*image credit to Gaping Void.

Live From #SHRM15 – Everyone Wants Priority Status

Posted on by
Reply

Next week I’ll be speaking at SHRM’s Annual National Conference in Las Vegas with my good friend Kris Dunn.  Come check us out!  Our session is titled: We’re Bringing Techy Back!  It’s on Monday, June 29th at 2pm in rooms N228-N230.

In this session we’ll discuss everything you need to know, as an HR and Talent pro, about selecting your next HR technology, what HR tech companies are saying, and what it really means. We’ll also give you some great tips on negotiating the price! Our hope is to take the fear and confusion of HR Tech and make it simple and clear.  We’ll also have some fun and probably be a bit snarky about the HR Tech industry!

Also, check me out on Periscope (TimSackett) as I’ll be attempting to do some live video feeds from the Expo floor and maybe, just maybe, live from our session at SHRM.  It’s super easy, just download the app to your phone and you can watch whatever it is I’m videoing, live, in real-time. You can also ask questions and make comments.

As I get ready to take off to Vegas I started thinking about checking in to my flight and hoping I’ll get a good status so I can find some space in the overheads and not have to wait at baggage claim.  I hate the concept of priority status, because I hate the way it ‘classes’ individuals.  I get it. Delta wants to take care of those passengers who are most loyal. I actually like that part.  After that, it all becomes a little hairy!

First comes the needs of those who need extra time and help boarding. Usually, elderly, injured and families with babies and strollers.  I’m fine with this, but the family thing has gotten out of control. I mean, look, your kid can walk by themselves, you don’t need extra time! You’re just gaming the system.  If I was smart I would befriend a really old person and offer to carry their bag!

First Class is next. Okay, they pay the most, I can buy into that.  I’m a capitalist. I can fit my brain around that.

Next, comes those skymile frequent flyer types.  Again, I’m all for loyalty programs, and would argue these folks should probably get on before first class, but they are both getting on early, so all have no real issues.

This is where all hell breaks lose.  Seating Status 1, or 2, or 3, etc.

There doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason behind the rest of us get on the plane!  They claim that ‘zone’ seating is done back to front, but if you’ve flown anytime recently you know that isn’t true.  You can buy into zone 1 if you want to pay a little extra to jump on early, but not as early as about 50% of the plane listed in the above classes.

Basically, Delta has created this entire system where people just all push towards the gate and wait for their zone, but try and get in early on their zone. It’s chaos!  And their is no reason for it.

Can you imagine if you did this with your employees or candidates?  It’s dysfunctional at best, and creates ‘fans’ who end up hating you at worst.

I fly about 12-15 times per year, not anywhere close to the real frequent travelers I know.  But each time I question the boarding process and what a bad process it is, on all airlines, not just Delta.

What’s a better way?  I like the pure capitalist play of seating by ticket price! Those who paid the most, get on first, all the way down to those who paid the least or got ‘free’ travel with miles. I’m even willing to have this take longer. It might not be ‘better’, but at least I can justify why I’m getting on last!

See you in Vegas.  Make sure you hit me up on Twitter (@TimSackett). I would love to meet you in real life while I’m at SHRM, unless you’re creepy, then please hit up Kris Dunn (@Kris_Dunn)!