The 3 Rules of Kissing Your Boss!

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On May 20, 2013, I published a silly little post on my blog called “The Rules About Hugging at Work”. The post might have taken me twenty minutes to write. It was just an idea I got, like thousands of others. I thought it was funny, so I wrote about it. To date, it’s been read over 1 Million times. Huff Post picked it up, it went viral on LinkedIn (I got over 1300 comments), and I’ve been interviewed and called “The World’s Foremost Expert on Workplace Hugging.”

Twenty minutes of writing, a throwaway idea.

Months later, I posted the exact same post on LinkedIn’s publishing platform. This was before everyone could publish (remember that). You had to be invited. I got a call from the LinkedIn chief editor offering me access. I didn’t know if it was really anything, so I just threw up old posts I had already written but added a few new pieces.

On the Hugging post, I added at the bottom my next post would be: The 3 Rules About Kissing Your Boss! as a joke. I never wrote it. Five years later, I got a message last week from someone who found the hugging post for the first time, asking how they could find the kissing post! I didn’t even know what they were talking about!

So, here’s the kissing post! 

It would be easy to dismiss the notion of kissing your boss as something that would never happen. When I say ‘never,’ I mean never. I mean, honestly, do any of us ever feel it would be appropriate to kiss your boss!?

This one is hard for me. I come from a family of huggers and kissers! My father is 80, and he still kisses me on the lips when I greet him or say goodbye. Some folks would find that super weird. Different cultures do different things.

My son was overseas this summer visiting friends in Belgium, and it was quite common for new people he met to give him that traditional kiss on the cheek, but he said those same people would not give you a hug or a handshake. This kiss-on-the-cheek greeting is very common in many parts of the world.

In America, you would probably get punched in the face if you tried kissing someone on the cheek you were meeting for the first time! I mean, look, if I don’t know you, I certainly don’t want your germs all over my face! Most Europeans I meet for business purposes in the States who come here often have gotten used to handshakes. Rarely do I see one of them do the cheek kiss greeting.

All of this is way different, though than kissing your boss! Kissing your boss would have to be a unique circumstance or special occasion. I’m guessing if you’re kissing your boss, one of a few things probably hasn’t happened in that relationship. You’ve probably become “very good” friends, some once-in-a-lifetime event is happening, or you’ve become romantically involved, in which case, not really your boss any longer! (Cue, Taylor Swift, they’re your “Lover”!)

So, if we can see a time in which you might kiss your boss, the excellent HR pro in me says we better put some pen to policy and make some rules!

Here are my three rules for kissing your boss:

1. No kissing on the lips. Kissing on the lips is a slippery slope you can’t put back in the bag! Wants that happens you might as well just get undressed. Sh*t just got real! We’re going to assume this kiss is not romantic in nature, completely as professional as kissing your boss can be professional!

2. Do not leave moisture on your boss’s cheek. Okay, somehow, we got down this rabbit hole to a point where I’m kissing my boss on his or her cheek. Let’s not make this super awkward by leaving a nice big wet spot on the side of their face. If you’re so excited to be kissing your boss’s cheek that you leave it wet, you should be checked into a mental ward.

3. Do not have bad breath. First impressions are critical, and even though your boss knows you, your boss doesn’t know the kissing you. Do not go in for that first boss kiss with bad breath! I love Ice Breakers Mints, and I have some close by almost always. Why? I can’t stand bad breath. Coffee breath is the worst, and I know many of you are major coffee drinkers! Guess what? Diet Mt Dew breath smells like a flower garden! Think about that next time go for a fill-up at the coffee station at work!

See? That’s how you do it. That’s how the World’s Foremost Expert in Workplace Hugging becomes the World’s Foremost Expert in Boss Kissing. You can’t be a one-trick pony in this world, folks. We all need to keep striving to reinvent ourselves. Watch out fall conference circuit! If you see Sackett coming, I might have just raised the game!

So, hit me in the comments. What are your rules for kissing your boss!?

The Future of Recruiting Brought to You via ChatGPT

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The robots are definitely taking your job, at least my job! I got access to ChatGPT this week. ChatGPT is a chatbot that employs deep learning to produce text that resembles that of a human and is based on the GPT language model. OpenAI’s Chat GPT can respond to numerous questions in a natural way, much like a personal tutor who is well-versed in all subjects.

Basically, it’s going to change the world as we know it!!!

As a content creator (that’s what bloggers call ourselves nowadays), I pride myself on doing research and offering up to my audience some knowledge and, hopefully, some intelligent opinions. With ChatGPT, you can basically ask it any question, and within seconds it delivers a very real life-like response that seems pretty well-educated. Of course, it’s a work in progress, so it’s not perfect, but let me give you some examples:

How will hiring be impacted in the United States in 2023? (An insightful question from Tim!)

The answer from ChatGPT:

The U.S. hiring landscape is constantly changing and evolving. In 2023, we can expect to see a number of changes in the hiring process. Here are some trends we can expect to see in 2023:

1. Increase in Remote Work: More companies will embrace remote work and hire remote employees, which will open up opportunities for workers across the country.

2. Rise of Automation: Automation will continue to grow and become more prevalent in the hiring process. AI-driven recruitment and interviewing tools will streamline the hiring process.

3. Focus on Diversity and Inclusion: Companies will continue to focus on creating a diverse and inclusive workforce. Diversity and inclusion initiatives will become a priority for many organizations.

4. Increase in Automated Job Matching: Automated job matching platforms will become more popular, allowing companies to quickly match candidates with the right job openings.

5. Increased Use of Social Media: Social media will continue to be a powerful tool for recruiting and engaging with potential candidates. Companies will use social media to advertise open positions, as well as to build relationships with potential candidates.

The Response from a Real-ish Human (Tim)

God Damn, that’s pretty good!

Now, given this is exactly what you would find from major analyst houses that cover Talent Acquisition. But if you don’t have the time and want that same answer in a few seconds, it’s an outstanding answer!

Is it really groundbreaking thought leadership? No, it’s fairly vanilla, but it is accurate.

What will the future of the job of a recruiter look like? (by Tim)

The response from ChatGPT –

In the future, recruiters will continue to play a key role in the hiring process. However, the job of a recruiter will evolve and change over time. We can expect to see the following changes in the role of a recruiter in the future:

1. Increased Use of Technology: Recruiters will use a variety of technology tools to streamline the recruitment process. AI-driven recruitment tools, automated job-matching platforms, and video interviewing platforms will become more prevalent.

2. Greater Focus on Diversity and Inclusion: Recruiters will place a greater emphasis on diversity and inclusion in the recruitment process. They will use data-driven techniques to identify qualified candidates from diverse backgrounds.

3. More Strategic Role: Recruiters will take on more of a strategic role in the recruitment process. They will focus on building relationships with potential candidates and leveraging technology to find the best possible hires.

4. Increased Emphasis on Data: Recruiters will use data to inform their recruitment decisions and track the effectiveness of their recruitment efforts. They will analyze data to identify areas for improvement and make sure their recruitment processes are optimized.

The Response from a Real-ish Human (Tim)

I have a bit of a different take, but this is still a very strong response that took like two seconds to produce! I think in the future, this blog will just be Tim and GPT talking shop!

Again, you can see the responses are fairly vanilla but also pretty accurate of what most people in the industry think. In the future, recruiting technology will allow recruiters to have more capacity, and with this capacity, recruiters will have more time to be more strategic, and have very specific focuses around talent, and data will be leveraged much more than it is today.

What did it miss? Recruiters of the future, with this extra capacity, will be able to spend more time with the best candidates. Also, AI will more consistently generate a higher quality of applicants for us to select from, as most bias will be eliminated and controlled for. But that is all opinion, so still a very powerful response in two seconds!

So, will AI be taking our jobs? Probably not tomorrow, but a day is coming when your job, at the very least, will be changed by AI like ChatGPT. We made the switch from laborer to creator in our society pretty well. I think we’ll make the transition from creator to “narrator” as well in a similar fashion.

HR 101: My Favorite (and Biggest) HR Mistake!

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I’ve made more mistakes in my HR career than I care to even remember. I could probably write a book!

It’s funny to think about your mistakes because I think invariably every person takes those mistakes and tries to turn them into some type of “learning.”

It’s a classic interview question – “So, Mr. Sackett, tell me about your biggest mistake in your career and what did you learn from it?” I have even asked it myself when interviewing others.

A nauseating response

Just once, I want someone to answer, “Well, besides coming to this lame interview, I’d have to say drinking my way through college, getting average grades, and having to take positions within HR, are probably my biggest ones. What I’ve learned is that all those high school kids in band and on the debate team really were smarter than me, and my ability to be a third-team all-conference point guard, in hindsight, probably didn’t get me into the career I was hoping for.”

But it never happens. No one is really honest about their mistakes because in making the most mistakes you do something stupid – something so stupid, you would rather not share it with anyone. So, we come up with answers like, “My biggest mistake was working too hard on a project with my last employer and not getting others involved, and I’ve learned while you can get the project done and on time by yourself, you really need to include everyone.”

That kind of answer makes me vomit. And somehow, as HR pros, we accept that answer and move on to the next question, almost like that question was just a test – a test to see if you were stupid enough to actually tell us the truth and brighten up our day!

But I’ve got a good one. I do have a favorite HR mistake, and two friends of mine recently made me think about it.

Yes, this is my favorite HR mistake

Here’s my all-time favorite HR mistake – Telling someone to go after a promotion and more money, leaving a position they truly enjoyed.

When I started my career right out of college, I gave myself 12 years to become a Vice President. Seemed like a logical goal at the time, but in hindsight, it seems obviously stupid now. It took me 16 years, and only after I realized it no longer mattered did I finally reach that level.

Two friends both recently had opportunities to leave organizations and positions they really liked, and I gave them both the same advice – you can’t even come close to measuring the value of truly liking the job you have. You just can’t, so answer me this one question: Do you love what you are doing, and who you are doing it for?

If the answer is “yes,” stay put. It’s that simple, and that was my learning.

I finally learned my lesson

I’ve left two positions in my life where I loved what I was doing and loved the organizations – both to take promotional opportunities with other companies. Both times I made the wrong decision. That is a tough mistake to make twice

I used to give out this advice to people — go ahead and leave because you’re going to have ten-plus jobs in your life, and you might as well move up as fast as you can. I don’t do that any longer; in fact, I now spend time trying to talk people out of taking new jobs – which I know is ironic since, at my core, I’m a recruiter!

I think we all hope that we learn over time from our mistakes. Once in a while, I actually do!

@SHRMLabs Announces 2023 HR Technology Winner! #SHRM23

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This was the third year of SHRM’s Better Workplaces Challenge Cup, which is a startup competition for HR Technology companies. SHRM CEO, Johnny Taylor, has been very open about his vision for SHRM when it comes to HR Technology. It is his belief that SHRM should be the leader in HR Technology.

Part of this leadership is the Better Workplace Challenge Cup. Still, it’s also the creation and support of SHRMLabs which acts as an innovation hub for SHRM’s HR Tech aspirations, that are now seeing SHRM make actual venture capital investments into HR Technology startup companies. This is a big move for SHRM and something new for members to pay attention to. SHRMLabs is being led by Guillermo Corea, who continues to push the boundaries of what SHRM can be known for in HR Tech.

HR Technology might be the most important competency for HR Leaders of the future, but it currently stands as the weakest competency by a mile. SHRM is definitely looking to change this and bring HR technology to the forefront of its membership and HR leaders.

I spoke to a number of SHRM Executive Network attendees, and they also echoed these conversations were happening in their meetings this week as well.

Okay, what about the winner of the Better Workplace Challenge Cup?!

First, I was a judge for the finals. Along with my good friend Wiliam Tincup, SHRM Knowledge Center Director Amber Clayton, Tech Entrepreneur Jeff Wald, and author and TV personality Suzy Welch. A lot of smart folks in that judge’s panel!

The competition started with over 400 entries from around the world, and those were paired down to the top 50. From those fifty finalists, we got to one North American finalist: Maxwell, and one international finalist: Inuka.

Maxwell is led by founder Adriana Cisneros Basulto (one of the two female finalists), and it’s a work/life benefits & rewards technology. Basically, through a debit card issued to each of your employees, Maxwell allows each employee to select some select benefits/rewards that fit them specifically.

Inuka is led by founder Robin van Dalen, and it’s a combination of coaching tech and employee experience. Inuka is a technology that works to increase the resiliency of your workforce through science and expert coaching at a very competitive price point that allows all employees to receive coaching, not just those at the executive level.

The winner of the 2023 Better Workplace Challenge Cup is Maxwell.

Why?

That’s always the question. I’ve been lucky enough to be a judge in quite a few of these startup competitions, and it’s never one thing or the same thing. Each founder has just a few minutes to talk you into why they should win. That tends to work very well for technologies that are easy to explain and the judges can wrap their minds around what it is and how will the eventual buyer use the technology.

In this case, Maxwell was super easy to understand how it will work and the judges seem to believe buyers would have an interest in using it for their employees. The reality is both techs were great or they wouldn’t have made it that far. Inuka will also do well and they already have a great list of enterprise brands using the technology. It was just a bit more complex to explain.

I want to thank the SHRMLabs team for inviting me to be a judge and to be apart of SHRM’s journey to get more professionals to pay attention to HR Technology and grow the industry and their competency level. HR Tech isn’t scary or too complex for anyone in HR to understand. If IT or vendors are making it seem that way, you have the wrong IT leaders and HR Tech vendors! HR Professionals and leaders deal with some of the most complex things on a daily basis, technology is definitely something we can master.

75 Years of SHRM! What does the next 75 years bring? #SHRM23 @SHRM

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It’s the annual conference for SHRM this week, and I’m in Vegas for the show. This is SHRM’s 75th year, so it’s a big celebration and the biggest conference they’ve ever put on, with over 24,000 HR Professionals in attendance.

This is my 12th or 13th SHRM conference, and every single one I’m still amazed at the passion and energy HR professionals bring here. I love to tell any audience I speak to that those who attend a SHRM conference – local, state, or national, are in the top 1% of HR Professionals worldwide. Why? The vast majority of HR Professionals will never do anything to make themselves a better HR professional. The professionals who make the effort to attend SHRM events are purposely working to increase their HR skills. I think that is amazing.

SHRM has had a mission to help HR professionals be the best HR professionals for 75 years. Building community, building educational resources, building certification. The SHRM I originally signed up to be a member of in 2001 is not the same SHRM that it is today. Today’s SHRM has a large international presence that grows every year. Today’s SHRM is pushing the boundaries within the HR Technology community with their Better Workplace Challenge Cup and SHRMLabs, investing in many HR Technology startups. SHRM continues to publish amazing authors with a specific emphasis on our profession. They’ve added specialty micro-credentials to help HR professionals as we get more and more specialized in our field.

I’m not a SHRM historian. There are way better people who can give you that knowledge. For me, the history of SHRM isn’t as important as the future of SHRM.

SHRM is one of the largest associations in any capacity in the world. Over 300,000 members strong and growing. HR, over the past few decades, has continued to increase its relevance and importance to world-class organizations, and I don’t see it stopping.

What would I like to see SHRM do over the next decade?

  • Bring Talent Acquisition into the fold in a much bigger way. Some sort of full-blown certification, training, and education. TA, in many ways, rivals HR as a function. Most CEOs would say there is nothing more important for the organization than their ability to acquire and keep talent.
  • Build HR Technology as a core competency that is a strength in HR Leaders. Currently, HR Technology is the weakest competency overall for HR leaders. In the future, that can not be the case.
  • I love what LinkedIn Learning has done, and I think SHRM can do the exact same thing for HR. Short, impactful video-driven HR education for top voices and minds in our field. GenZ grew up on video, shorter range, on-demand, and classic education and development will not call to them.
  • Get more involved in university HR and TA program development. We continue to see more and more high school graduates specifically choosing HR and TA as careers. While we see a lot of HR college programs, honestly, they aren’t the best. I believe SHRM could lead the charge to help make these programs better. And almost no universities have TA-specific programs, and it’s one of the most important functions in organizations!

I could go on because SHRM is my association and I like to push them forward, but if any of these things can happen above it’s a giant win for our profession. I want to wish all the employees and members of SHRM a Happy 75th Anniversary. It’s a huge accomplishment and our size and voice in industry are being heard.

Should Lululemon Fire Employees For Attempting to Stop Theft?

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This week’s big news in HR is everyone’s favorite retailer, Lululemon, firing two employees who attempted to thwart some shoplifters at one of their stores in Georgia. The story is pretty straightforward, a group of folks runs into a Lulu store, grabs a bunch of stuff, and runs out. The two employees didn’t really do much. One yelled at the shoplifters to get out, and one followed them outside. Also, one took a video and called 911.

Apparently, this was enough to break a company policy and get them fired.

So, what’s the policy?

Basically, the Lulu policy on shoplifting is to let the shoplifters take whatever they want. As an employee, you do nothing to antagonize the thieves, so to ensure you do not put any employees or patrons of Lulu in harm’s way. You can call 911, but you’re best to wait until the shoplifters leave because, I mean, that might upset the thieves causing them to harm employees and/or patrons.

Is that clear?

It’s super easy to make fun of this. But, in reality, many companies have similar policies. Because, as it turns out, thieves are bad people willing to do bad things. But I will still make fun of this because this entire thing is just dumb.

Should these two Lulu employees be fired, is the real question?

My first thought:

Yes, they broke the policy, and both knew what the policy was. Lululemon claims they ensure every single employee knows this policy. How? Most likely, in onboarding and training, when they make you sign documents that say you learned it, but you might not have, but we sign stuff all the time because we want the job and a discount on those nice leggings.

If you don’t fire them, what you are really doing is telling every employee to try and stop shoplifters. This becomes a slippery slope as employees go to greater lengths to stop thieves, and all of a sudden you’ve got Lulu employees carrying guns and mace and stuff. Lulu vigilantes.

My next thought:

No! We all want “loyal” employees trying to do the right thing. These two employees didn’t try and tackle these thieves. They did what any normal human would do that saw this happen, and they reacted. They said get out. They tried to get some evidence. They called the police.

This is the problem with policies in most companies. They are black and white, but we live in a world of gray. Do these employees need some “re-training”? Yes. But Lulu says they have a zero-tolerance policy on this because it’s about employee and patron safety. That’s somewhat of a lie. This is what Lulu’s legal team is saying to the CEO. “If we get a patron or employee shot in a robbery, we’re going to have to pay millions to the victims and their families.”

I mean, it’s bad employment branding and product marketing to have dead people in stores. Even when they are wearing those amazing leggings. I mean, her butt looks great, but she’s way dead. That’s never going to be a slogan that makes it past legal.

Next next next thought:

If we live in a society that doesn’t respect the rule of law, chaos ensues.

I don’t want to live in a place where thieves have no fear of retribution. Where they can just run into any store and take what they want because they know nothing will happen to them. Do I want my employees handing out their own brand of justice? No. But am I going to fire them when they say, “Stop! Get Out! I’m calling the police!” Also, No!

If Lulu was Mom and Pop Hometown Retailer, would they have this policy? Most likely, no. Lulu gets away with this because they do not have a problem getting people to work for them because they are currently a sexy brand, and many people want that discount for their overpriced stuff.

Final thought:

The HR Guy in me knows this is an easy call, even when it’s one of those that is very hard to swallow. The policy is written and approved. It’s trained and signed off on. I might not agree with it, but I have agreed to take on this role in HR or Operations and ensure policies are followed. If I don’t agree with this policy to the extent I can not uphold it, I would need to quit.

There’s always more to these stories than the mass media finds out or will tell us. I’m sure the two employees actually knew the policy but also disagreed they should be fired, and they got the story out. The media loves beating up on a big, sexy brand like Lululemon. They also, apparently, love thieves just being able to go into stores and take anything they want without repercussions (Hello, San Francisco!).

Welcome to the show new HR graduates! You were taught in school most of HR will be black and white. What you’ll soon find is HR is almost never black and white.

Airlines and Credit Card Applications

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I’ve been flying a ton lately and have had to experience quite a few airlines. I usually only fly Delta when given a chance. Honestly, I’ve flown all the others, and I find them to be superior in the things that matter to me. Delta gets me to where I’m going when they say they do. The Delta flights I’m on also seem safe and clean. The Delta employees I’ve run into actually come across as professional and friendly.

At the end of the day, most air travel has basically become akin to taking a ride on a Greyhound bus. I say this knowing most people have never ridden on a Greyhound bus. A real trip from one city to the next where you had to go to the bus station to catch the bus. It’s not glamorous. It’s slow and tedious. I once took a Greyhound bus trip from Grand Rapids, MI, to Omaha, NE, to see the girl I love. I believe that specific bus is still en route to Omaha. I started that trip over thirty years ago!

The one thing you notice when you fly a lot, which seems rather out of place, is the pitch to buy the airline credit card. What I’ve witnessed recently is the pressure on getting an airline credit card is directly correlated to the level of the airline you are own. Let me give you some examples:

  • Delta: They make a brief announcement over the intercom of some great offer of free flier miles if you go to some website and get the credit card. That’s it. One mention takes less than a minute. (For transparency’s sake: I have a Delta Skymiles credit card, but they got me via email, not flight announcement).
  • American Airlines and United: They also make the credit card announcement, but they also have their flight attendants walk up and down with actual applications for the credit card. Like, here you go, fill this out right now. It’s almost as if the flight attendants themselves are getting some sort of kickback. Or they should be!
  • Southwest: Much longer pitch, as is the Southwest way. They give way too much freedom to flight attendants and the intercom! I have to believe that standup comics actually get jobs at Southwest as flight attendants simply because it offers them a captured audience for their sh*tty jokes. You know, it’s some flight attendant up there telling a story about how their grandma got the card and came to see them for the holidays. I can’t remember if they also have the brochures/credit card applications that they hand out, but I’m guessing they do. There’s no way they don’t.
  • Spirit/Frontier: Okay, let’s be honest. I don’t fly these airlines. I would take the Greyhound bus before subjecting myself to this Carnival of the airways. But I can imagine what these pitches must be like, given all of the other cheap policies they have in place. Something like, “Yo! If we don’t get ten of you to sign up for this card, this plane isn’t leaving the gate!” They get their ten and then go, “Okay, only five more before we can take off from the tarmac!”
  • Korean Air: Nope. None of it. They just took care of me and made my flight the most pleasant experience ever.

Why do airlines shove their credit cards down our throats after we pay an exceptionally high amount for a ticket? Because it makes them a ton of money! It’s pretty simple economics. We have a captured audience. We are going to assume at least part of the audience are fans because they chose to fly with us. Of course, they want our credit card!

It’s actually somewhat surprising they aren’t pitching more things for us to buy. A new Away suitcase with a special Delta Airlines luggage tag that acts as a tracker as well! (I love my Away bag!) Some arrival limo service that’s easier than Uber and picks you up directly at your gate. Girl Scout cookies. I mean, who wouldn’t kill an entire box of Thin Mints on a flight from Detroit to Dallas? How much for the Girl Scout cookies? $20! Sold! Airport money is different than any other kind of money.

It’s all lazy marketing. We have a captured audience who paid for one thing. Why don’t we jam something else down their throats and see if we can make the flight experience even more miserable? The best is when your flight is delayed, and you hear the pitch. “Hey, why don’t you sell fewer credit cards and just get me to my destination on time!?”

I feel for the flight attendants forced to do this as part of their job. I hope they are getting kickbacks for each one they land. They should!

So, that’s my rant. Airline credit card applications in the air. Stop it. Be better.

Also, if you click here and use the code #SackettMiles you can get 90,000 Delta Skymiles!

Can America still lead the world in HR?

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I got the chance to travel to Singapore recently to be the closing keynote speaker at the largest HR Technology conference in Asia, HRM Asia Tech Festival. It was an amazing event, and I got to meet so many amazing global HR professionals. But this one question stuck with me long after I got back on the plane to return to the States!

Can America still lead the world in HR?

Now, some of my global HR friends might already be questioning, “Does America really lead the world in HR?” I’m not here to say if we do or not, but when I travel globally to speak at HR and Talent conferences, I’m constantly told, “Tim, we are excited to have you speak here, but you have to understand “X Region” is five years behind America in HR and Recruiting.”

It happens every single time!

What I actually find is the top 10% of HR shops around the world are fairly equal. If your organization has a major focus on HR and Talent, you are probably closer to best in class to your peers than you think. Where the truth lies in their statement is the bottom tends to be lower or there are just so many fewer organizations working to get to world-class HR practices overall as compared to America.

When it comes to America continuing to lead, it’s a legitimate question.

Now, I know a bunch of thought leaders in HR, mostly who are American, who love to rip on how awful American companies are at HR. It must be some weird American influencer power thing to believe that foreign audiences want to hear you make fun of America. What I find is this is true in Europe. Europeans love when you make fun of America, especially when you are American! But most of the other parts of the world, especially in Asia, don’t really react well to those making fun of the West. Much of Asia actually likes the West, so they are confused to hear a speaker rip on America.

The crazy part of my Singapore trip is the only time I heard anyone say negative things about America. It was coming from American Expats who now live abroad. So, my guess is these folks just didn’t really like America to begin with.

The question of whether America can lead in HR came from a local Singapore HR leader asking an American Expat speaker after his talk, where he spent the majority of it talking down America.

To his credit, he answered it rather well:

  1. The rest of the world has all the opportunity to now lead in HR. There is nothing holding them back from a technology or knowledge perspective. The world has gotten smaller.
  2. The rest of the world, through mass media, gets to see the worst of HR in America with examples like Uber, Twitter, etc. You see all the bad stories in the media and none of the great ones.
  3. The US has some unique cultural advantages that have kept it in the lead so far, including not having traditions, a willingness to move quickly and break stuff, and a willingness to be progressive.

Most of the world, especially in Asia, is steeped in tradition and saving face. HR Leaders in America can make a big mistake, and their career can survive it. That is not the same case in all places in the world. Thus, innovation and change do not happen quickly. What is the old adage, “You never get fired for buying IBM.”

So you have HR and Talent leaders who are not rewarded for making big changes and improvements. They are rewarded for not making mistakes. This makes it very hard to become a leader in that kind of environment. To lead, you must innovate and make change. If you innovate and make change, you will make some wrong turns. Wrong turns are career killers in other parts of the world.

America will lead in HR.

America will lead in HR for these simple facts. Much of the most innovative HR technology is still developed in America. Innovation in any function, including in HR, happens on the fringes. America has an amazing startup culture that pushes the boundaries and norms of what we should expect organizations to do. This is more conducive to developing leading HR practices and innovations.

It doesn’t mean that other regions around the world can’t create this, they are just pushing uphill on many fronts, and many of those are cultural, which are very hard to change. What I do think we’ll see are global HR and Talent teams who will work across regions to try and test things on a much more global front to see global HR change. It doesn’t have to be us vs. them. It can be all by working together.

One of my big takeaways from traveling around the world and speaking is every employer, and most countries face the exact same issues. How we go about solving them has been very different to this point, but that doesn’t mean it has to be as we move forward in the future.

Skills matter. Experience matters. Performance matters.

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Skills, skills, skills, skills…

If you’ve been around HR tech for two minutes in the last five years, “skills” is basically all you’ve heard. Well, okay, “skills” and “AI.” The HR Tech community is jamming skills down your throat like a new pharmaceutical drug that cures narcissism.

Why do we feel “skills” are so important?

  1. Hiring by skill is thought to eliminate bias. It’s not about relationships, or what school you went to, or that you went to school at all, or what color your skin is. If you have the skill to do the job, you should be hired to do the job.
  2. As a concept in organizations, skills seem to connect a lot of dots. We can measure skills and make a giant inventory of all the skills we have, and our all-knowing executive team can tell what skills we need in the future, and we can build those skills to be ready.

In theory, hiring and promoting people based on skill makes a lot of sense. In reality, it’s super hard to pull off. It’s difficult to truly assess someone’s skill in most areas. We just don’t have enough black-and-white skills measures that truly differentiate nor do we have the ability to build all the skills we believe we need.

Does “experience” matter?

The folks on the skills side of the fence want you to believe experience is an outdated concept being sold to you by “the man.” Or, more specifically, by men who have traditionally controlled the world in so many ways. Some of that is also true. But that doesn’t mean that experience doesn’t matter. It does.

You are about to go to prison for a crime you didn’t commit. You can choose between two lawyers. Both passed the bar to demonstrate their “skill” as an attorney. For one, this will be their first case. For the other, it will be their 2,000th case. Who will you choose? You are about to go into a life-saving brain surgery. You have two surgeons to choose from. Both of whom passed their boards at the highest level. One has performed over 1,000 of this specific operation. One has done 50. Which one will you choose?

There is a piece of this skills revolution that also is veiled in ageism. One of the reasons “skills” has risen is that young people are sick of old people getting hired and promoted over them. Old people who might not have the same skill level, but definitely have more experience. We can’t just say stop hiring them because they’re old, but we can say stop hiring them because I have higher “skill.” So, if it’s only about skill, we eliminate the ageism bias.

Your experience actually does matter.

Wait, what about performance?

Here’s where I get a bad feeling in my stomach around “skills.” It’s not just that a person has a certain skill, but how they perform in that skill. The reason we say “experience” doesn’t matter because there are dozens of academic studies that have shown that when we measure new hires and we take a look at their resumes and their previous job experience, there is very little correlation between where they worked previously and the job they had, to success in the new job and company.

That isn’t because experience doesn’t matter. It’s because high-performing experience matters!

Therein lies our problem. We can’t measure the performance of someone’s past job.

Let’s get back to our lawyer and doctor examples. What if I now told you that our lawyer, who has tried over 2,000 cases, actually lost every case? You would obviously try the inexperienced lawyer! Same with our doctor. The doctor who had 1,000 brain surgeries under their belt has a success rate of 10%. But our 50 case doctor has a success rate of 90%!

But wait, what if I tell you the “experienced” doctor only takes on the most difficult last-chance cases? And the less experienced doctor is given the “easy” cases where the vast majority of patients are thought to recover. Does that make a difference? You see how complicated “experience” as a factor can be.

Performance matters a great deal!

If you are looking to hire the best talent, it’s not only about skill. It’s about choosing individuals who have the skill to do that job at a baseline, then looking at their experience and their performance, and probably their intrinsic motivation. This is why a job sample is the number one predictor of a new hire performing well on the job. If they can actually do the job, successfully, then it stands to show they will probably be successful when we hire them. Although, even that isn’t guaranteed. We then add in factors like culture, leadership, peer support, etc.

It turns out hiring is really hard.

So, why is everyone saying the future of talent is skills?

I believe it’s because this is something we can control. It’s tangible and feels like something that can work. I can try and measure for skill. I can assess and build for skill. It seems obtainable, and it seems like something better than our past hiring based on experience.

In reality, hiring and promoting should have always been about skill. And experience. And performance. I want to hire highly skilled people that have amazing experiences and have performed in their previous jobs at a very high level.

What I don’t want to do is blindly hire and promote based on someone’s ability to demonstrate they can do a bunch of random skills. A job and performing in that job is not just about doing a bunch of random skills. That simplifies what employees do down too far. People and work are much more complex than just skills.

Skills. Experience. Performance. I want to hire the complete package. Be careful selling “skills” as a strategy to your executives. Most executives have great experience and high performance, and they actually believe that matters. Because it does.

An easy way to know if a candidate is batsh*t crazy!

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Have you ever hired a batshit crazy person? Yep, we all have. Wouldn’t it have been nice to know if that person was batshit crazy before you hired them? Again, 100% yes! But it’s hard, right? Candidates lie to us. They don’t give us their true selves.

Well, this is why you read this blog, my friends. I give you all the inside, pro recruiting tips and tricks you want but never knew you needed!

Okay, here’s how this will go down.

At some point, every organization will have this in a different part of the process, you will ask some form of this question. I recommend you do it early, but some organizations actually wait to do this in the background check.

The question is this: “Have you ever gone by a different first name, and/or do people in your life call you by a different first name?” Now, I’m not looking for something like my Mom calls me “Richard,” but my friends call me “Dick.” Those are the same thing. Mike and Michael, check those are the same. Also, I’m not asking for your median name and married name. We expect that to happen. Also, I’m talking about gender changes like I grew up Bruce, but now I’m Caitlin.

I’m talking about something like I grew up “Tim,” and I was “Tim” until I turned 16, and then I decided I wanted to be called “Trevor.”

Um, what?!

No sane person, not in witness protection, randomly decides to be called a different name unless there is some batshit crazy in the mix.

God bless my sister. I love her, and her name is Michelle. One day in high school, she came home and said, “Call me Chelsea now. All my friends call me “Chelsea.” And we immediately said nope. That’s not happening. Your momma named you Michelle, and everyone is going to call you Michelle. That’s what those who love you do. They put an immediate stop to anything that looks batshit crazy. By the way, to this day, she’s Michelle.

So, it’s an easy question to ask during an interview. “So, Tim, have you ever gone by a name other than Tim? Maybe something like Mark or Ted?” That response and answer you’re looking for is someone staring back at you, perplexed. Almost now, like they think you’re batshit crazy for even asking. That is the correct response! The correct answer is not, “Oh, yeah, for like a decade, my co-workers called me “Billy”!” If that happens, you immediately end the interview.

Look, I’m just out here spitting recruiting wisdom for free.

Some of it is going to hit home, some of it you’ll pass on. Pass on this gem at your own peril!