T3 – LeoForce #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 on T3 I demo’d the recruiting robotics software LeoForce.  LeoForce is basically an ATS add on that takes your sourcing function to the next level.  While most ATS softwares start when you have identified someone as a candidate, LeoForce starts when you start sourcing and integrates with your ATS to make sure you have end to end coverage of your process.

Besides the ATS integration and functionality, LeoForce’s claim to fame is it’s recruiting robot Arya.  Arya uses behavior pattern recognition to identify patterns from your best recruiters/sourcers, automates those behaviors, and repeat success, significantly boosting your ability to mutiply hires. Arya also automates portions of your recruiting process, from initial qualification and applicant collaboration, to finding qualified, interest candidates.

LeoForce also has a VMS tool which is a crawler app that will constantly update your VMS jobs and statuses, and move it into your ATS. This tool also communicates to recruiters with alerts on new jobs and status changes.

5 Things I really like about LeoForce: 

1. Job Booster – In LeoForce you can create and post jobs with virtually one click to your own career site,  job boards, social sites, etc. It takes the task of posting and broadcasting your open positions down to almost nothing.

2. Applicant Collaboration – Maybe the most powerful feature is how LeoForce communicates with potential candidates via email in a way that seems very personalized and non-robotic, automatically.  This automation allows recruiters and sourcers to do other things, while the system does much of your pre-qualifying and screening. In the end the recruiting team is getting warm candidates to work with, not cold candidates.

3. Machine Learning – the system learns what your successes are, and continues to learn over time, to get better.  It’s not a brand new search every time you begin a search. It’s not starting over, it’s continuing to build on prior successes.  Another huge time saver, that moves your process along faster.

4. LeoForce makes your ATS what you wished it was when you bought it. That’s really the crux of the issue. Our ATSs just don’t have the sourcing and recruiting capabilities we need for 2015.  The integration is seamless, pulling your jobs automatically from your ATS, giving you enhance search capabilities of your database and social recruiting functionality you probably never had.

5. It’s Inexpensive!  I love the fact it only cost $100 per user per month. In my world $1200 a year is super cheap as compared to the tools you just handed a recruiter/sourcer that is using LeoForce.

Most companies fall into this trap. Our ATS just isn’t good enough for what we need in recruiting automation.  Then we make the decision we better start looking at a new ATS that can do this.  At a minimum that is a $100,000 to $150,000 spend over five years for small and medium sized business. Upwards of millions for enterprise organizations.

LeoForce is something you need to look at and demo if you believe your ATS just doesn’t have the recruiting capabilities you need, before you scrap your ATS for good.  Or, if you’re just in the market for great recruiting automation, this is a tool you need to see. Check them out, it will be worth your time.

How To Get a Great Job in 2015

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Last week I got a call from an old work friend. He wanted to have lunch.  He just left a position and was in transition.  Not a bad or negative job loss, just parted ways.  When you get to a certain executive point in your career, it’s rare that bad terminations take place. It’s usually, “hey, we like you, but we really want to go another direction, and we know you don’t want to go that direction, so let’s just shake hands and call it a day, here’s a big fat check.”

Executives get this.  For the most part there isn’t hard feelings, like when you were young and lost a job. I usually find that the organization the person is leaving from are super complementary, and usually takes the blame for the change.  Executives in corporate America are like NFL coaches. You get hired with the understanding that one day you’ll be fired.  It’s not that you know less, or aren’t going to be successful in your career, it’s just that the organization needs change, and you’re part of that change.

Welcome to the show, kid.

My friend decided that he was going to find his next position not through posting for positions online, or trolling corporate career pages, he was going to have lunches.  About two per week, with past work friends. Let’s connect, no pressure, we already know each other and I want to catch up.

You see, in 2015 you don’t find great jobs by filling out applications in ATSs and uploading resumes. You get great jobs because of the relationships and personal capital you’ve built up over your career.  Having lunch and reconnecting turn on a relationship machine. I believe that people, innately, want to help other people. When a friend comes to you with a situation, and you have something to offer or help, you will do that.

The problem is most people who are looking for great jobs don’t do this. They lock themselves in their home office and apply to a thousand jobs online and get upset when nothing happens. Great jobs aren’t filled by ATSs and corporate recruiters.  Great jobs are fill through relationships. Every single one of them.

Want to find a great job in 2015?

Go out to lunch.

One Surefire Way To Get The Job You Love

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Everyone wants a job they love.  Everyone. The priorities might change from person to person, but if you asked someone, do you want a job you love, or a job you hate, 100% of people will give you the ‘Love’ answer.

There are some caveats. I might want a job that I love, but I also need a job that provides adequate pay and benefits.  I’d love to a professional puppy petter, but I just don’t see anyone putting a high value on that job.  I might want a job I love, but I also want to be close to my friends and family. While I would love working with injured dolphins on a remote island in the pacific, without my friends and family, that job would get old quick.

The one surefire way you get a job that you love is to want ‘that’ job for the right reasons.

Not because this ‘new’ job is better pay or benefits. Not because it’s in a warmer climate, or that my girlfriend lives nearby.  That is not how you get a job you love.  You’re just getting a job that fits some of your life criteria.

To get a job you love, you have to want it because that’s what you’ve always wanted to do your entire life.  You have a path that shows you’ve wanted it your entire life. You’ve been working towards this job. If you walk the path, you have a much better chance of getting to the end.

I would love to coach the Los Angles Lakers.  But, let’s face it, while I’ve wanted this most of my entire adult life, I’ve never put the work into pursuing this love job.  I didn’t bust my butt coming up the coaching ranks. I wasn’t willing to travel around the world pursuing this passion. I wasn’t willing to make peanuts for years as I got experience.

The problem is people just want a job they love without the path.  It doesn’t work that way.  99.9% of people don’t fall into jobs they love.  They might start a job not knowing if they’ll love it, and go on the path, and find out that they actually do love it.

Want a job you love?  Work for it. Show people that’s what you want through your actions and efforts.  That’s the surefire way to get a job you love.

6 Ways to Make Your Recruiting/Talent Metrics More Strategic

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Let’s face it—the recruiting metrics you use at your company are either non-existent or stale.  Sure, you tried to roll out the basics—time to hire, cost per hire—but all that did was put the focus on your HR/Recruiting function, not the people who actually make the final hiring decision.  Flash forward 12 months since the launch of those basic recruiting metrics, and you’re bored… heck, everyone’s bored.

Never fear! The FOT webinar makes it’s 2015 debut with Six Ways to Make Your Recruiting/Talent Metrics More Strategic – And Make Managers Own Their New Hires.

Join us for this webinar (sponsored by Chequed.com) on Thursday, February 26th at 2pm EST (11am Pacific) and we’ll hit you the following goodies:

– A review of the traditional talent selection/recruiting metrics.  We’ll give you a rundown of those metrics like Time To Fill and Cost Per Hire, what the standard benchmarks are for each and then explain why only using these traditional metrics is a lost cause/suckers play.

– An explanation of the Holy Grail of reporting Recruiting Effectiveness and why it changes the conversation from “Did we fill the position?” to “Did we make the right hire and what happened once we filled the position?“. We call this metric Hiring Manager Batting Average (HMBA for those of you that need an acronym), and it’s the cleanest, most all-encompassing metric you can have to make your internal recruiting conversation strategic—not transactional—and actually make it tie in to your overall talent strategy, not just Talent Acquisition.

– How to change the dialog of organizational turnover from being an HR problem to being everyone’s problem. Admit it, you report on turnover all the time. We’ll show you how to link turnover to your selection process in a way that spreads the wealth related to turnover responsibility—and actually sets you up to be more consultative and less reactive related to employee churn.

– We’ll give you 5 additional metrics to show how your recruiting/staffing process actually reduces risk of bad hires and prepares for future searches.  You need to get out of the trap of only reporting cost and time.  We’ve got the metrics to show you how to do that.

Things that are hard:  Riding a bike on a freeway. Getting your kids to eat peas. Getting managers to own the bad hires they make and be interested in getting better at selection.  Join us for Six Ways to Make Your Recruiting/Talent Metrics More Strategic – And Make Managers Own Their New Hires on Thursday, February 26th at 2pm EST, and we’ll show you how to create recruiting/talent metrics that get the attention of your organization.  You’re on your own with the other two.

Rejection Letter Dos and Don’ts

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A number of years ago I got rejected for a job.  I know, I know, you are probably as surprised as I was.  The funny part is, I got the hard copy, snail mail rejection letter 18 months after I had apparently applied.  I went back into my email to try and figure out what really happened.

You see, as a Recruiting Pro, I wouldn’t actually apply through an ATS, especially for an executive position, which this was.  My email confirmed the fact; I had sent the CHRO of a large organization my resume directly.  This rejection letter was from that contact.

18 months. Send a resume. No communication for 18 months. Rejection letter. That’s the time line. How’s that for a solid candidate experience!?

Ever since this experience I’ve always had strong beliefs of what you should do and not do when it comes to sending out rejection letters.  Here’s the deal about Rejection Letters:

Do –

  • Send personally signed letters to all people you have had personal contact with (i.e., over the phone, in person, referred by someone internally – you get the idea).
  • Draft a letter(s) that builds your brand.
  • Once a candidate is a “no”? Send the letter. If they’re a “maybe”? Keep them in the process.
  • If they never had any personal contact, send them the ATS mass email.

Don’t –

  • Send a letter to everyone who applies.  Within your recruitment/sourcing process should be a communication when someone applies.  In that communication, let them know that only those chosen for interviews will be considered part of the recruitment process – meaning we will communicate with those individuals directly moving forward – all others thanks, please apply for other positions that come up that fit your experience and background.
  • Tell people you chose someone with better qualifications or someone who is more qualified – you really don’t know that – who you chose was a person who best fit your organization at this time.
  • Tell people you’ll keep them on file for future consideration. You and I both know that you don’t. Tell them the truth – if you ever want to work here, apply again and possibly make some internal connections to help move your resume to the top.

In the end, you want your rejection letters to make people feel like I’m glad I applied, and I would apply again and I would continue or will start using this organization, buy their product or service.  It’s not easy, but it can be done.

If you really want to know what people think of your rejection process, pick up the phone and call a few that have made it to different levels of the hiring process, and just ask. People who get rejected are more than happy to give you feedback!

T3 – @OrgVue #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.

Today on T3 I get the pleasure of reviewing OrgVue a London based tech firm and management consultancy, that built one of the most awesome HR specific Business Intelligence tools I’ve ever seen!  OrgVue is an integrated software platform bringing Org Design, HR Analytics and WOrgVue logoorkforce Planning together in a single product. Gartner named them the ‘Cool’ product of 2014, and ‘Cool’ is an understatement!

Think about this way, you have many systems in your organization that have employee data, and even in a suite environment, rarely does everything come together nicely.  It’s messy. OrgVue takes all this messy data and brings back to you clean answers.  One thing every HR shop gets tasked to do is developing Org Charts. OrgVue takes Org Charts into the next millenium.  It does, intuitively, what we always wished Org Charts could do. Click on a person and gives you all their data, performance, roles they’ve been, etc.

From a workforce planning perspective it does real-time workforce modeling.  Lose your head of design? What impact will that have downstream? OrgVue can show you in a few clicks. Want to re-org? OrgVue can show you cost savings of the new org before you even make the move through it’s modeling tool.  OrgVue takes the HR Business Partner model to a whole new level.

5 Things I Really Like About OrgVue: 

1. OrgVue gives an organization one source of true data maintained through seamless integration of multiple systems and locations. Want to compare hiring analytics between Michigan and Texas, just a few clicks. North America and Europe, a few more clicks. It’s crazy powerful!

2. OrgVue constantly is intaking and cleaning data in real-time.  This means the charts and reports you pass along to decision makers are accurate and not dated.

3. So many of our executives are visual learners. OrgVue understands this and brings your HR data to life visually. Also, executives are known for asking for ‘one-more-thing’, “Can I just see this data sliced a bit differently”. It’s the vain of HR pros around the world. Not with OrgVue.

4. The organizational modeling and scenario planning tool is unlike anything I’ve seen from any other vendor, ever. In fact, I’ll say that OrgVue probably could take the jobs of some highly paid consultants that you pay to do this now!

5. Everything you create and see in OrgVue is turned easily with a click into Excel, PowerPoint and PDFs.  Why fight it?! Big orgs want their paper, spreadsheets and slides, so give it to them, when they need it.

I say this too often, but I was completely blown away by this product.  I would invest in this company, that’s how blown away I was!

But, let me be clear, OrgVue is for a sophisticated HR buyer.  This is a big shop, Fortune 1000 type product.  Regardless, I would encourage every HR executive you must demo this product. Even if you aren’t in the market, treat this a personal development, the OrgVue folks will teach you some stuff on this demo.  You will never look at your data the same way again!

Double Your Chances for Promotion in Two Easy Steps

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I had a kid reach out to me last week and ask how he could get promoted at his current company.  I call him a kid, because he was probably 20 years younger than I, so I’ve reached that point in my life I can start calling adult professionals, ‘kids’.

Laurie Ruettimann and I had this talk just a couple weeks ago, right after she turned 40. I told her, “I’ve finally reached that point in my life where I have 20 years of solid work experience, but I feel bad about telling people that number!” 20 years of experience sounds old!  I remember when I had five years of work experience and I would try and stretch it to 7 or 8 years of experience by adding in college jobs!

Now, I have the legit experience and I want to make it sound like it’s ten years!

So, this kid wants to get promoted.  He’s got just under 5 years of experience and he’s itching for more.  We’ve all been there. Here’s what I told him:

“You need to do two things in this order: 

1st – Put together a self-development plan with activities and goals and a timeline. Show that you’re working on your ‘opportunity’ areas. (Opportunity areas are weaknesses for the GenXers reading this) 

2nd – You need to make your direct supervisor keenly aware of this plan, and (the most important part) you need to ask that supervisor for help in accomplishing your plan.  Have very specific things your boss can do to help you complete your development plan.” 

We then talked about what some of those things would look like based on what he told me he thought his ‘opportunity’ areas were.

Bosses love to promote people they believe they’ve helped and mentored.  It’s a great ego stroke, and they get bonus points from the organization because they are ‘developing’ talent.  Bosses don’t get credit for hiring great talent.  They get credit for promoting great talent.

It’s Organizational Behavior 101 at it’s finest.

It doesn’t have to be very sophisticated.  Bosses like to promote people that they believe are engaged in their job and the company.  By you taking the initiative to have your own development plan, and not wait for them to offer it up to you, and by you asking them for help, you just doubled your chances of getting promoted.

There are a lot of moving factors in anything like this, but if you are working for someone who is respected in the organization, and you have an above average performance as compared to others in your work group, this will almost always play out well for you.

Want to get promoted?  It only takes two steps.

Will Your Kid Grow Up to be in HR?

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The website BookofOdds.com had an interesting article titled “Hey Kids, Pick A Career“, in which they give certain odds on what occupations your child (or any child born for that matter) will become a certain profession. This is of particular interest to me since I have one son entering college this year, and another, next year.  Both of my sons are weighing those normal options of doing what they think they want to do vs. how much money can I make.

As you can imagine the article gives some of the obvious careers first, like the odds my kid will be a:

  • Surgeon: 1 in 2,872
  • Professional Athlete: 1 in 9,684
  • Fashion Model: 1 in 81,440
  • Fire Fighter 1 in 452
  • Elementary Teacher 1 in 87

Because you know, we all thought we were going to be one of those when we grew up!

I don’t know about you, but I when I took the career interest assessment in my junior year of high school it didn’t say I was going to be a HR Pro.  In fact, mine gave me my top 3 “best” career choices, which honestly in order were: 1. Teacher; 2. Floral Designer; 3. Sales.  Not sure how the Floral Designer got in there, but to this day I love working out in the yard! There wasn’t even a category for HR or Personnel or Hiring Guy or anything.

So, Book of Odds really got me thinking about what my 3 son’s will be when they grow up. I know their personal choices right now (oldest to youngest) are: 1. Exercise Science or Accounting, 2. Musical Theater, 3. Stay at home with Mom.  Fairly normal given their ages of 18, 16 and 11.  In reality they are more likely to be:

  • Administrative Role: 1 in 5
  • Sales: 1 in 9
  • Food Service:  1 in 11
  • Healthcare: 1 in 19
  • Education: 1 in 16

What about HR?

  • Human Resources: 1 in 656.9
  • More interesting: 1 in 10 HR Pros make under $28,030 per year (ouch!).

Well, I can hope, like most parents that my kids find careers that pay the bills and make them happy. The odds are I’ll probably have at least one living with me until their late 20’s!

First Ever Michigan Corporate Recruiters Conference!

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I’m super excited to announce I am co-organizing the first ever Michigan Recruiters Conference to be held on March 13th in Lansing, MI starting at 9am!

Jim D’Amico, Director of Talent Acquisition at Spectrum Health, and I have been talking about doing this for over a year and late in 2014 we finally just said, “Screw it! Let’s pick a date and force ourselves to get his puppy off the ground!”  And we did it!  With a lot of help from Jim’s team at Spectrum, my team at HRU, our techy guy Matt Wagmann and our friends at the Accident Fund corporation!

Register at www.MichiganRecruits.com

Our Goal for the Michigan Recruiters Conference:

We want an event similar to an ERE, but local. Great recruiting and talent acquisition content, without having to pay thousands of dollars to attend.  Our fee is $49! We want to raise the level of recruiting in the state of Michigan.  We want to offer this in an environment where the corporate Talent Acquisition folks don’t feel like it’s a meat market (i.e., no staffing agencies).

We want to bring in national speakers, corporate talent acquisition best practices and next-gen practices that aren’t even being used by the masses. We want to network and share our successes, and find ways that corporate talent acquisition pros can better leverage each other and their knowledge. We plan on having two Michigan Recruiters Conferences per year, one in the Spring and one in the Fall.

We are not doing this for profit. The sponsors (CareerBuilder is our first, but we would love more!) and fees are only to cover costs of running a great conference like this. Sounds like we want to be a bunch of Hippies!  I hope so, this is going to be great!

The format of the Conference: 

Unlike normal HR conferences we aren’t looking to do 1 hour and 15 minute sessions. Who the hell even came up with that length of time!? It’s way too long, and just encourages rambling. We are Recruiters, we don’t have time to ramble!  Our sessions will be 30 minutes, 45 minutes and 1 hour, depending on the content and presenter.  A professional national speaker can easily hold the stage for an hour.  Your local sourcing pro who has some great ideas to share, might only need thirty minutes!

We will strive to have you leave each conference with great ideas you can use immediately, ideas that will challenge what you do long term, and increase your network and tribe of other talent acquisition pros you can lean on.

It won’t be a full day.  6 hours or so. Get in, get out, go make placements.

We’ll attempt to always hold these at host corporations who are willing to have this progressive knowledge come into their walls.  Thank you Accident Fund Corporate, and Darcy Kerr, for hosting this first conference in Lansing, MI!

Why no staffing agencies? 

I’ve already gotten a ton of crap on this. “Tim, aren’t you a staffing agency?” “Tim don’t you rail against being treated as a second class citizen by LinkedIn?” “Tim this is hypocritical!”

Here’s the deal.  I speak about a dozen times a year, nationally, to HR and Talent Acquisition pros, and never once have I been accused of trying to sell my services. I’m not worried about me, but I know my industry.  I’ve already had agency folks try and sneak their way into the conference like a Catfish!  To make the Michigan Recruiters Conference a success we need corporate talent acquisition pros and leaders to see the value of a conference like this. If their first experience is some cheese-ball from RecruitTech coming on to them in the first fifteen minutes, that experience is ruined.   So, Jim and I decided, no agencies, yet.

We do see a time down the road, once the conference is established, where we will be able to invite in our agency brethren.  Minnesota started in a similar way.  Even at that point, we’ll have hard rules around selling at this conference.  It’s designed to be developmental. That’s the conference we want.

Sometimes to make something great, you rub a few folks the wrong way.  Agency folks are resilient, to say the least, I know they’ll bounce back. I look forward to the day I can invite them as well.

The 2014 #8ManRotation eBook is Here!

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I’ve got some buddies in the HR industry: Matt Stollak (aka The Professor), Lance Haun, Steve Boese and Kris Dunn.  Five guys who like HR, love sports and we all write about it many times throughout the year.  Back in 2010 we decided, with the majority of heavy lifting done the Professor, to put all these posts together as an annual ebook.  Today we release the 2014 edition of The 8 Man Rotation.

The title “8 Man Rotation” comes from a basketball concept where 8 players are rotated in a normal playing group.  We only have 5 of us writing for this, but 5 Man Rotation isn’t really a thing.  Let’s face it, it’s our book, we’ll call it what we like.   If you like HR, Talent and such, and have a passing interest in how this might all relate to the popular sports stories throughout the year, this is for you!

The 2014 Forward is brought to you by the venerable Paul Hebert! Enjoy.