Everyone in HR Sucks at JDs

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“So, how are your Job Descriptions (JDs)?”

Ugh! It’s the question we hate to get asked because we know they suck!  There’s only like five companies in the world that have good job descriptions and that’s because they only had to hire like three different kinds of people.  Most of us are stuck with JDs written in the 1970s, and while we know they suck, we can’t seem to find anyone to write a better one.

By “anyone” I mean the hiring managers, who usually ask for the ‘latest’ JD we have.  We blow the dust off Mr. 1970 and send it along.  To which the hiring manager goes, “yeah, that’s about right.”  You then send her the candidates you get from the sucky job description and she says, “these people aren’t even close!”

Shocking…

Sucky job descriptions are like a right of passage for HR pros.  I can’t tell you how many corporate meetings I’ve been in when the topic of conversation was somehow swayed to JDs and it always ended with, “we should hire an intern this summer to redo all those.”  Which never happens. Even the interns know how bad of a job that is!

The real problem doesn’t have to do with HR, but we own it because we own the bible of JDs for the organization.  Obviously, hiring managers should own their own JDs for their departments, but most just won’t do it, or don’t care to do a good job until they can’t find anyone for their open position. Talent Acquisition wants to get all ‘cute’ with them and turn them into marketing commercials, which could be cool if done right, but they also suck at it!

HR is the worst of all to write JDs because they turn them into something SHRM would have an HR boner over, but no one else in their right mind would ever read.  It becomes of a game of how many acronyms can shove onto a piece of paper and for gosh sakes don’t forget the say if it’s “salary” or “exempt”. I mean who would apply for a job unless they know that data?!?

ATS vendors and many of the suites have tried to solve this by auto generating the most boring JDs known to the history of man for you to just cut and paste.  The only good thing about these systems is they give you someone to blame for how sucky your JDs are.  “It’s not us, it’s this crappy software they make us use!”

Some Silicon Valley companies attempt to have “cool” job descriptions and titles, but really how cool can you get with “Brogrammer” and “Coding Ninja”? It’s like watching your high school robotics team try and pick up the cheerleaders.  You root for them, but in the end you know it’s not happening.

What can you do?

I like in-take meetings.  HR and Talent Acquisition pros hate these because it forces them to spend quality time with hiring managers, but they work. A funny thing happens when you sit in front of a hiring manager for more than 45 seconds. They begin to really talk and tell you what they need.  Not the bullet point stuff, your 1970 JD already has that, but the real stuff they want. The stuff that gets people hired and gets the req off your desk.

We all have sucky JDs. It’s nothing to get embarrassed about.  I would have a contest and reward the suckiest JD in our company as a kickoff to making better ones.  Have fun with it. Embrace it.  Just do something to stop it!

Your HR Software Doesn’t Suck!

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It’s the one of the great HR truths:

– Candidates who get a flat tire on their way into an interview are liars.

– Employees don’t really get sick on Mondays and Fridays.

– You hate your HR software.

Or so we all thought.

Key Interval, a rising HR Analyst firm, came out with some dynamic research recently that showed that 76% of HR and Talent Pros actually don’t mind the HR software they’re using!

This goes against everything I ever thought was true in HR.  From the moment I stepped into my first HR position, people bitched and complained about their ATS, about their dinosaur HR system of record, about their performance management system.  In reality, the research actually shows that most practitioners actually don’t mind the system they’re using, and get the work done they need to get done.

I personally can’t name one person I ever met who was using Peoplesoft or ADP who had one good thing to say about them (side note – I’ve used both, and they worked just fine), but now I wonder if that was just HR commiseration and bonding.  “Hey, you want to be one of us, let’s talk crap about our software!”

The data presented by Key Interval is deep, so I tend to believe that over what I think I know about this issue. When I think about it in my own context, I have to admit, I never really hated any single piece of software I used in HR or Talent Acquisition.  Did I wish I had something better with more bells and whistles? Heck yeah! There’s always a shinier toy.  But, the software I was using was getting the job done, and not stopping me from doing what needed to be done.

One of the major reasons HR and Talent pros probably feel like they hate the software they use, is because they had, and have, no say in what they use. It’ the Skippy and Jif issue.  If you’re made to eat Skippy peanut butter, you’ll most likely will complain that Jif is better. Jif is better, but that’s not the point.  The point is we all like to have a say in the tools we use to do our job.  What pen are using right now? More than likely you either have a great office supply budget and buy pens you love, or you bought pens you love on your own and brought them to work. HR pros are crazy about pens.

This concept was just one small piece from a 66 page report Key Interval just released.  There’s a ton of data on for both HR pros and HR vendors on how relationships impact software selection and renewal, that is fascinating. HR vendors are completely insane not to be delivering cookies to their best clients each week, face to face!  Go check it out, the guys at Key Interval are brilliant in a very pragmatic way, that gives you the knowledge you need to know to move your organization forward.

 

 

T3 – Talemetry

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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.

This week on T3 I reviewed the recruitment marketing and automation software Talemetry. Talemetry works with your ats & includes CRM, job posting, talent networks, employee referrals, mobile automation, career site landing pages, etc.  Basically, they do everything your ATS doesn’t do, but you wished it did!

Talemetry works with your applicant tracking system enabling you to reach candidates quickly using all recruitment marketing and sourcing channels and activities on a single powerful technology platform. Improve candidate experiences, optimize recruiter efficiency, control costs, and measure what works.   Ultimately, they are delivering a full suite of products to help you manage the candidate relationship like you want to, but never were able to.

Talemetry, like many of the major recruitment CRM and recruitment marketing automation tools are for enterprise level type talent acquisition shops. Basically, if you have 2,000 employees and above, this is a product that can transform how you recruit for your organization.

5 Things I really liked about Talemetry

1.  Perfect tool for Talent Acquisition leaders who are managing multiple locations that are using multiple ATSs and you are struggling to get all this data under one roof.  The depth of analytics within Talemetry allows you to really optimize your recruitment operations.

2. Two integration with your ATS.  Talemetry isn’t just pulling information out of your ATS, it also is putting information back in.  For those using Oracle and Taleo, this is important. The last thing you want, using an enterprise level ATS, is using a recruitment marketing tool that is just a work-around.

3. Talemetry helps your team source on a number of levels socially, job boards, etc., but also leverages your own internal ATS database to source as well.  The most underutilized sourcing tool we all have is our own database, and Talemetry doesn’t allow you to forget this!

4. Recruitment performance metrics. You don’t expect this from a recruitment marketing/automation type of software, but Talemetry delivers great individual Recruiter metrics.  Another powerful tool for leaders managing multiple locations and recruiting team spread all over.

5. Auto broadcasting your jobs out is expected.  Auto broadcasting your jobs out based on rules, like title, location, etc. is pretty cool.  Talemetry allows you to build in specific rules of what and where you broadcast your jobs out to.

CRM recruitment marketing automation type softwares, like Talemetry, are the future of talent acquisition.  Everyone has an ATS, the organizations using advance recruitment marketing tools are going to win the war for talent in the future.

Talemetry is definitely worth checking out especially if you already an Oracle/Peoplesoft and Taleo ATS users, which is a sweet spot for them.  But, they can integrate with any ATS, really, so don’t hold up if you aren’t using one of those.

 

The Real Reason for Long Term Unemployed

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In 1979 America had a major energy crisis, mostly blamed on the Iranian government reducing exports and inflating oil prices. This caused the country to go into a prolonged recession.  Our own government made this worse, by trying to help, in changing monetary policy, which knowingly drove up inflation to incredible levels.

The early 1980’s recession caused many people out of jobs, and many were unemployed for a long period.  Long term unemployed isn’t new to our country.  There is one major difference between the early 1980’s and today.

The internet.

From the New York Times:

“technology has made unemployment less lonely. Tyler Cowen, an economist at George Mason University, argues that the Internet allows men to entertain themselves and find friends and sexual partners at a much lower cost than did previous generations.”

You see in 1980 when a man was unemployed he had nothing to do but sit and think about being unemployed.  He could tinker around the house, but eventually that list of “To Dos” got done, and all you had to keep you company was the endless thought of “I’m unemployed”.

Today, you have an endless thought of “well, only one more click” which sends you down a rabbit hole you won’t come out of for hours!

Like most Republicans, I’m just going to blame the internet for this problem.

I remember my Dad forcing me out of the house to find a job.  I had to physically walk into a location to request an application, fill it out, hand it back to the manager, and see what happens next.  I also had to walk to school, in the snow, uphill, both ways.

We all know, now, no one walks in an employer and applies.  We sit at home and apply to five thousand jobs and get around four thousand five hundred email do not reply ‘we received your application’ responses (500 companies still haven’t figured out that reply functionality on their ATS).

I would love a study of the long term unemployed that would ask that one question:

“How many times have you physically gone to a place of employment and applied in person for a position?”

I would guess that number would be very low.  I’m not saying that just doing this would solve long term unemployment.  It might help some individuals get a job.  I’m saying the internet makes it too easy for you to stay unemployed.

Turn off House of Cards on Netflix.  Take a shower. Get a new haircut. Put one some clean clothes and let’s go visit some people. It’s hard to do, which means not many are doing it, which means you will have an advantage over almost everyone.  The internet won’t solve your problem. In fact, it’s probably making your problem worse.

Married with Children Campus Recruiting

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I wonder what would happen if we recruited married with children types, like we recruit kids on college campuses?

It’s a bit upside down, don’t you think?

We have separate recruiting teams, and strategies and little uniforms our recruiting teams wear at the booth on campus. We throw pizza and beer parties at the local campus watering holes to try and entice students to want to come to our companies.

Never once, after college, have I been asked to come have free pizza and beer by a company.  I mean, I don’t know if I would take that, but I would definitely take a free babysitter and free movie with my wife.  Even if it meant I would have to listen to some recruiter tell me how great ABC, Inc. was to work for and their great childcare benefits. Throw in popcorn and drinks, and I might just sign up on the spot!

But that doesn’t happen.

You see, experienced professionals don’t want or need that kind of pampering. Only college age kids want that. Why would over tired, over worked adults want something for free?

We go to campus to find kids who have extremely hard to find skills, and pay for their last two or three years of college in exchange for them coming to work for you for the same length of time.  Would you ever offer to pay for a candidates kid’s college education if they came to work for you, in the same skill capacity?

This isn’t a college recruiting vs. experienced recruiting issue.  This is a and-and issue. We need both college recruiting and we need better recruiting of experienced professionals.  Unfortunately, while college recruiting as evolved over time, how we recruit our experienced candidates has virtually stayed the same.  We post jobs. We ask for referrals. We hold job fairs, that no person currently working in their right mind would attend. We bang on resume databases.

I wonder how your recruiting, of experienced workers, would change if you spent the amount you spend on campus, on recruiting at the neighborhoods around the locations you recruit for now? Some of you will claim that you spend more money recruiting experienced workers, but most of those costs are wrapped in headhunting costs to agencies.

Imagine showing up and putting your booth outside the big Friday Night Lights local football game.  I know in my community we get 5-7,000 people coming out to those games. That’s a heck of a lot more than you will see coming through a career fair. How about outside the college football stadium!? Ten times the that amount will be milling around.

Married with Children recruiting events could work.  The campus isn’t as defined, but standing out front the Home Depot on a Saturday, next to girls selling cookies, might just work.

Privacy is the New Candidate Red Flag

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Have you interviewed anyone recently, and haven’t been able to find anything about them online?

No LinkedIn profile. No Facebook. No Twitter. No Instagram. Google even seem to turn up nothing. It was like the person didn’t exist, yet there she was right in front of you, with a resume, work history, and educational transcripts. A living, breathing, walking ghost.

A social ghost, to be sure.

I had this happen a couple of weeks ago. It was disconcerting to say the least.  Of course, I knew this when I asked the person to come in to interview. It was one of the main reasons I asked her to come in.  It was like I found this mythical creature, this interview unicorn. There was no way I was passing this up.

Besides the resume with verified job history, valid driver’s license, address, educational records and a credit history, it was as if this person never existed.

I think the kids call this a “Catfish”, or at least thats what I expected to have come interview with me. This ‘Susan’ would come in and really be a ‘Samuel’! I’ve been in the game a long time, ‘Susan’ wasn’t going to pull one over on me.

I once had a friend who told me he gave up TV.  I didn’t really believe him, either.  Let’s be real, no one gives up TV.  And, as usual, I was right.  He gave away his TV, but he didn’t give away his laptop, his tablet and his smartphone. He was still watching, trying to act like he saved the fucking world by giving away his TV device. Like we don’t know you have twenty other devices in your house to watch shows on.

But, I digress, back to my social ghost, Susan. (of course, Susan isn’t her real name I changed that, I’m a pro, her real name is Jennifer)

I asked Susan the question we would all want to ask in this circumstance: “Susan can you tell me why you hate America?”

She seemed perplexed by this, almost like she didn’t comprehend what I was asking her, but I knew better.  She knew exactly where I was going with my line of questioning.  Why would a person choose to lead a life of anonymity, when a fully functioning narcissistic life is easily within her reach?

I showed her how if you Googled “Tim Sackett” I, soley, was the first 127 pages of the search results, working towards 130. I explained how I ‘socially’ erased another “Tim Sackett”, the Truck Driver Chaplin, almost from existence. Almost like he never stopped at a truck stop along I80 attempting to save lives in the name of Jesus.  It was a life’s work. My life’s work. I could tell she was impressed.

At the point where I had just about cracked her, she softly spoke one word, “privacy”, spilled from her lips like a small newborn logging onto Instagram video for the first time.

Privacy.  I knew there was something about her I didn’t like.

The interview ended.  So, did her chances of ever getting hired by me.

No One Is Waiting To Discover You

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I’m a recruiter.  I search for talent every day.  Basically, I’m never not on the outlook for talent.  Of course I’m doing this at work, but I also do it while shopping, while eating, while I’m at the movies, while I’m on vacation, etc.

You see, I never know when I’m going to discover a talented person and have the exact right opportunity, with the exact right company and it all fits together.

But, if you’re waiting for me, to discover you, you’ll be waiting forever.

I don’t discover anyone who isn’t working to be discovered.   I’m not knocking on closed doors where it looks like no one is home.  It’s like trick or treating, I’m only going to the houses with the lights on.

I hear from a lot of people who are willing to change jobs, or are open to new opportunities.  Unfortunately, almost all of these people are waiting to be discovered.  They aren’t actively doing anything to show me who they are and why I should be looking for them.

Their argument is they don’t want their current employer to know they’re looking.  My argument back is that isn’t the best way to be discovered anyway!  Hiring managers love passive candidates, people who aren’t looking.  You can be a passively-active candidate without floating your resume all over God’s green earth and changing your LinkedIn headline to “Now Open to New Opportunities!”

Get active in your industry.  Get active in the city and community you want to live.  Let your personal network know you would be open to something great, and by-the-way this is what I think something great would look like.

We are coming into a decade where there will be more jobs than qualified people.  You can have some great options if people are aware of who you are.  Just don’t think there is some magical fairy that will discover you sitting at your desk doing your normal job in the third row, second cube, fifth floor on the seventh building in the office park, the world doesn’t work that way. This isn’t Hollywood, this is main street.

 

T3 – BrandAmper #HRTech

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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.

This week I have the pleasure of reviewing one of the hottest companies in HR Technology, and one that was named 2014 HR Technology Conference Awesome New Startup, Brand Amper by Ajax Workforce Marketing. Brand Amper is the genius behind two of the smartest people in HR Tech, Jason Seiden and Lisa Cervenka.  I’ve known Jason for years, and I personally consider him one of the brightest people I know, thus he makes really cool stuff for HR and Talent Pros! Lisa is the marketing genius behind the brand, and really helped to bring Brand Amper to life.

Brand Amper, at its core, is a branding solution specifically designed to meet the demands of managing and building a brand on social platforms like LinkedIn, where the “voice of the employee” trumps the voice of the company.  By helping employees use the company’s employer brand to look their best on social media, Brand Amper helps companies (1) make their brands stronger and more consistent, (2) identify keyword trends to improve social and career site content, (3) engage employee advocates in sharing authentic content about why people should join—and stay at—the company, (4) improve transparency and accuracy on review sites like Glassdoor, and (5) understand how employees represent the brand in real-time.

Employment branding has exploded onto the HR scene in such a huge way that almost no HR or Talent Pro doesn’t have this on their radar as a major issue/project they’re constantly involved in, in today’s work environment.  The one major problem we all face is how do we share ‘our’ brand, when our employees are going out and sharing something completely different. Brand Amper turns this upside down, and solves the issue from the opposite angle!

5 Things I really like about Brand Amper: 

1. Brand Amper solves your dilemma about “what is our employment brand, really”, issue.  It gives you exactly what your true employment brand is, and helps you to shape it on where you want to take it.

2. Brand Amper helps employees draft their employment story by walking them through some simple steps. Not creative? Doesn’t matter, Brand Amper can help the least creative person in the world come up with their story.

3.  The platform makes it really easy for employees to go out and share their story, making these stories some of the most powerful recruitment marketing you can buy. Except you didn’t have to buy it!

4. Connects with both LinkedIn and Glassdoor to make it super easy to help manage your employment brand on these two giant networks of potential candidates.

5. The entire process, while not designed to be an outcome, will raise your employee engagement.  Jason doesn’t sell this aspect, yet, because he wants the data from current clients to prove this, but I’ll say it, because it’s going to happen.  Employees love to share the good things about their job and their companies. I call this the “Grandma Effect”.  Employees want their grandmas to be proud of the job and company they work for.  Pride, raises engagement.  I’m not a genius, I just have worked in HR for 20 years.

I want to call out another T3 review I did on QueSocial (first time I’ve done this), but if I’m using Brand Amper, I’m following it up by using QueSocial. If I’m already using QueSocial, I think I would strengthen that investment by going back and starting to use Brand Amper!  If I own Brand Amper and Que Social, I’m figuring out a way to blend these two products together – because they would work great together!

Check out Brand Amper your employment brand needs this!

 

There is No Kill Switch On Awesome!

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Happy Monday Friends!

Let’s make this week completely Awesome!

Spring is upon us! (well, some of us)

There is no better time to be alive! Well, I hear the sixties were pretty great, and the fifties, possibly the twenties…anywho…

Remember –

No kill switch

 

What awesome stuff are you going to do this week?

 

Labor Unions are Dinosaurs

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You already know I’m not a fan of labor unions.  I just don’t see the point to them in today’s society.  They were needed once in our history. They are no longer needed.

Employers, for the most part, in today’s information is everywhere world, can’t afford to treat employees bad.  It doesn’t mean that we can’t find stories of this happening, it does, but employers face major ramifications for going off the rails.

Regardless, the data is even showing us how ineffective labor unions really are. From BusinessInsider:

“The Bureau of Labor Statistics recently released its annual figures on the number of employee strikes and employer lockouts for 2014. Only 11 work stoppages, including both strikes and lockouts, involving at least 1,000 workers began in 2014, tied with 2010 for the second lowest number on record.”

labor unions

Employers and employees no longer have an appetite for strikes.  Employers can’t afford them, and employees can’t afford them.  At no other point in the history of the world have employers and employees worked so well together. Both, have too much to lose.

When you reach this point in an economic relationship, labor unions cease to have relevance.

Labor unions, now, seem to be more of a burden on employees, the people they represent, than they are to the actual employers.  In the past couple of decades you actually see more employers inviting unions into their shops, not because they love unions, but because they see unions as a way to control employees more effectively.

Contracts work both ways.  When unions are strong, like they were fifty years ago, contracts work to the favor of the employees. When unions are weak, like they are now, contracts work to the benefit of the employer.

Are unions completely dead?  No.  Could they be?  Yes.  The existence of unions, while hugely important to American labor history, no longer have a useful existence in a 21st century employment market. If anything, they are now holding employees back.