When Should You Suspend an Employee?

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This week it was announced that the NFL would suspend Cleveland Brown’s wide receiver, Josh Gordon, for one year for violating its substance abuse policy. This wasn’t Gordon’s first offense, in fact he has been on under discipline by the league this full season for prior violations.  He has previously gotten a DWI and tested positive for marijuana use, which cost him playing the first ten games of this past season. He also missed the last regular season game for breaking team rules.

This most recent offense came after the teams final game of the season on the plane ride home, he had four alcoholic drinks with his teammates. He was tested upon landing, and that broke his discipline of not drinking until the season was over.  His season was over, but the NFL season still had the playoffs.  He claims, he thought his discipline only ran until his season was over. The NFL didn’t budge and suspended him for at least one full year.

Josh Gordon has had a history of trouble, he failed three drug tests in college. He had a trouble and hard childhood, raised in near poverty and having to fight against the constant influence of bad things you come in contact with growing up in bad neighborhoods.  He’s highly talented.

What do you think?  Did the NFL go too far in their discipline? Would you have done the same thing in your work environment?

Here’s my feelings:

1. I don’t suspend this kid. I get him highly supervised treatment, that includes still being apart of football, but not playing in games. Take away the big money, give him enough to live on, but enforce treatment, practice, increased testing, all for that same year.  You don’t help Josh Gordon by telling him to go away for a year.

2. Does he deserve this? No.  But, from a business perspective, it is in my best interest to fix him and use his talent.  I would also lock him into a long term deal that is advantageous to my organization and allows me out without payment.  I turn this into a win-win for my organization. I’ll help get you better, but I need something in return. Welcome to capitalism.

3. At a certain point, your talent will not outweigh my need to protect my organization. This means you can’t keep screwing up and believe we are going to keep trying to help you.  No matter how talented you are. This means that less talented people in my organization would not get the same treatment.

Most HR people will not be comfortable with #3. The fact is, I’ll jump through more hoops to help my best salesperson than I will for an entry level salesperson.  My investment is different. thus my threshold of help is different.

I suspend someone in my organization when their value to my organization is no longer greater than the cost to my organization. Until that point, I work with them to correct whatever actions we need to correct. I don’t look for an equal equation.  I’m not in the business of equal. I’m in the business of generating greater value.  My employees have to add value.

 

 

Stories from the D: How Loyal are your Employees?

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By now almost the entire world has heard the James Robertson story. He is the Detroiter who walked 21 miles to work, one-way.  It sounds like a story your grandparents told you about how they had to walk to 2 miles to school, in the snow, uphill, both ways!  The difference is, this story is true:

“James Robertson, 56, of Detroit, walks toward Woodward Ave. in Detroit to catch his morning bus to Somerset Collection in Troy before walking to his job at Schain Mold & Engineering in Rochester Hills on Thursday January 29, 2015. James walks 21 miles daily round trip to his job.Robertson’s round trip commute requires a bus ride each direction as well as nearly 21-miles of walking consuming 22 hours of his day before beginning again throughout the work week.”

He leaves his home in downtown Detroit at 8am to make sure he makes it on time for his 2pm shift, and he’s always on time.

“I set our attendance standard by this man,” says Todd Wilson, plant manager at Schain Mold & Engineering. “I say, if this man can get here, walking all those miles through snow and rain, well I’ll tell you, I have people in Pontiac 10 minutes away and they say they can’t get here — bull!”

walking man

 

Why does he do this?  For a job that pays $10.53 per hour.  Why does he have to walk?  First, his 1988 Honda Accord broke down and he couldn’t afford to fix it, he also struggled with the high cost of car insurance. Second, Detroit might have the worst large city public transportation in the nation! Why doesn’t he just move closer?  The house he lives in, with his girlfriend, was inherited and they own it outright.  Why doesn’t he just find a job closer to home? There aren’t many, that are good, and he’s loyal.

More loyal than 99.9% of your employees!

This story will have a happy ending. A local university student heard read this story and started a GoFundMe account to help get James a car to drive to work.  As of today, that account has raised over $275,000 and both Honda and General Motors have come forward to offer him a free car!  People love to give to someone who isn’t asking for it, but deserves it.

For all the bad stories we hear about of lazy employees, people who don’t want to work and live off welfare, we forget that there are more people who get up every single day and just want to work.  You have more loyal employees than you have disloyal.  We should be celebrating those people.

You know I love the fact this story came out of the D.  Detroit got hit hard during the recession, but we are bouncing back.  We are doing that because of people like James Robertson.  He’s someone you should tell your kids about!

 

Sometimes You Just Need to ‘Burn’ a Hire

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I love baseball. There is a concept in baseball where a pitcher will ‘burn’ a pitch, here and there.  Basically, it means that the pitcher isn’t actually trying to throw a strike, they are using this pitch to set up another pitch.  For intensive purposes, the pitcher is wasting that pitch for the greater good.

Have you ever done that in HR and hiring?  Have you ever burned a hire?

I have.

In large organizations you sometimes have to burn hires to prove points and/or get hiring managers on your side.  I remember a time when we first started using a very complex pre-employment assessment.  The hiring managers hated it.  They didn’t believe in the science.  They didn’t believe what the assessment was telling us.

That’s the funny thing about really good assessments.  They only work if you, and your organization, are bought in to the belief that using this assessment, in the long run, is going to give us better hires overall.

In this instance I’ve allowed hiring managers to hire individuals who the hiring managers love, but the assessment told us was going to fail, knowing I was probably right.  I was willing to burn a hire, to prove a point about the greater good of the tools we were using. I wouldn’t continue doing this, but sometimes you have to be willing to prove out your beliefs.  This sets up the assessment for future success, and ultimately better hires.

I’m also willing to burn hires on executive referrals.  Too many times in my career I’ve been contacted by high level executives and board members of the companies that have ‘requested’ I get a job for their kids, or their sister’s kid, or some other family member.  For the most part, on average, these hires are horrible.  But, I’ve learned that fighting this is never a good career move, so you burn a hire.

When I talk to HR people about doing this, many a very much against burning hires, or at the very least, willing to admit they burn hires!  Rarely, will you find a HR or Talent Pro willing to state publicly they burn hires, but behind closed doors we know this happens often. Sometimes the battle isn’t as important as the war your fighting internally, so you let hires go through the process you would normally stop.

This doesn’t make you bad at HR or Recruiting, this makes you strategic. Like the pitcher, you’re just setting yourself and your organization for success. To do that sometimes you just have to burn a hire here and there.

T3 – TalkPush #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.

It seems like lately I’ve had the chance to review some really big, really dynamic HR Tech enterprise level tools.  I’m excited today to get back to a tool that everyone can use, especially those small and medium size HR and Talent shops.  On T3 this week I’m reviewing the automated phone screening tool Talkpush.

Talkpush is just what it says it is.  The solution automates your normal phone screens.  We don’t talk about phone screens as much any more, because in HR Tech everything has gone digital with the explosion of video and video screening tools (which I love). The reality is, though, many employers just don’t need, or want, a video screening solution.  Talkpush fills the need for a phone screening tool quite well.

95% of candidates never get ‘heard’ by a potential employer.  A recruiter spends only 7% of their time, on an average week, with candidates they’ll actually hire. When candidates are interviewed about their experience with an employer it comes up constantly that they don’t feel like they ever got a fair chance to be heard. A tool like Talkpush allows the candidate to have a voice, and recruiters to more efficiently spend their time.

The system is super easy to use and you can have the system up and running for your candidates in the matter of minutes.  No need to get IT involved, just signup and start using it.  All the screens are saved into separate audio files that you can attach to a candidate in almost any applicant tracking system. These same files can easily be shared with a hiring manager, who can hear first hand how candidates respond to your own questions.

5 Things I really liked about Talkpush:

1. It’s super easy to use.  We get caught up so often on wanting purchase and use overly sophisticated systems, and then don’t use them for that same reason. Talkpush can be implemented and used even by people who could never figure out how to set their VCR clocks, or still have a VCR!

2. Inexpensive. Free trial to start with no obligation, $1 per interview and around $300 per month for unlimited interviews.  You can’t beat this cost as a screening tool.  It costs more than $1 to have a recruiter dial the phone and leave a message!

3. Great for volume hiring.  Send out mass invitations to screen hundreds of people all at the same time. I’ve had to open new locations for employers and it can be a major headache when everyone is applying all at once.

4. Audio files are searchable.  Technology is an amazing thing.  Someone says they have experience in robotic programming as part of their answer to a screening question. Months later you need someone with robotic programming skills. Talkpush has the capability of you searching all of your screens for key words, and potentially finding talent you had no idea existed.

5. Questions are in your voice, your language.  You record the screening questions that will be asked, and they can be different for every single job you have, if you want.

Talkpush has a really smart dashboard as well, that tracks all of your responses, allows you to push those responses to managers along with LinkedIn Profiles, photo of the candidate (if you wish), resume, etc.  I think some people will look at this review and think this is a ‘low-tech’ as compared to the digital platforms that are on the market.  I look at it as a different hi-tech solution for organizations that don’t need or want a video solution, but still have a great need to screen candidates.

The fact is, many people are still uncomfortable with video.  Probably not your younger candidates, but once you get above mid 30’s you’re dealing with people who didn’t grow up on video, and might just might be much more comfortable doing a screen via the phone.  Check them out, I really believe Talkpush fills a market need for so many companies!

5 Ways to Get an Entry Level Job

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The most read blog post I have ever written was on Hugs. The second most read blog post was how to get an entry level job. I think there might be a correlation there, but I’m not fully sure!

Just last week, I had another person reach out to me and ask me how to get an entry level position.  Each time this happens, it becomes a very personal story. Each person is different. They come from different areas, educational background, demographic backgrounds, etc. That’s why it is so difficult to tell ‘everyone’ how to get an entry level job.  There is no one right answer for everyone.

I do believe, though, there are common things you can focus on to help your chances. But here’s the deal.  This is about ‘how’ to get that entry level job, not about how to get your dream job.  Many times to get that first entry level job you need to come down on your beliefs and dreams. That will come once you get some experience.

Here are some ideas to try, that just might help:

1. Be Specific. Most people searching for entry level jobs are willing to take anything, and therein lies their problem.  Hiring managers don’t want to hire people who want anything. They want to hire people who specifically want the job they have open, and want to come to their company. Even if you don’t ‘really’ want that job and that company, act like you do, if you want the job.

2. Look and Act the Part. Each company has their own culture and language.  Some will dress casual grunge, some college preppy, some in your Dad’s old suits, find out how they look, and mimic that look. Mirror their language, volume and tone.  Don’t be super loud and aggressive if everyone you meet is chill. Also, don’t act chill if they’re acting like they had four Red Bulls before you arrived.

3. Network and involve everyone you know.  We have a weird thing in our culture where we keep it secret that we are looking for a job, from the main people in our life that can help us! Mom and Dad might know, but we don’t tell our friends and neighbors and teachers. We don’t tell Dad’s golfing buddies and the ladies Mom does GNO with on Tuesdays.  To get an entry level job you have to be willing to use every angle you have. I would call my ex-girlfriends parents, if I think it would help. Become a LinkedIn expert and make a personal daily goal to connect with so many people.

4. Ask for help.  Women are good at this. Guys are awful at this. Pride is a bitch. The cool thing about our culture is people have a really hard time not helping you, when they are asked to help! It makes them feel guilty to not help.  Specifically use the word “help” when reaching out to people. “Mike, I need your help. Can you please connect me with Bob at your company?”  Mike will.

5. Be All-In. A very common question I get from entry level job seekers is how can I get a position in a specific location (I.E., I live in Michigan, but I want to live in California). This one is really easy. Move to California! But I can’t afford to move without a job?! Then save, and move when you can. If you can’t move without a job for a few months, you are not in a position to move at all. Employers are going to hire entry level from a local pool.

One other way, that HR people hate me saying, to get an entry level job is to intern for free! Doesn’t have to be full-time. It can be one day per week. Offer yourself up for free. Do anything.  Show the company how much you really want to work.  Should they want to pay you? Yes. Reality of the world we live in can make this very hard for some companies.  You do what you have to do to get the job you want.

The entry level job market is the most difficult and easiest market to break into.  You don’t need any experience to get an entry level job, but you’ll have more competition for those jobs than at any other time in your life! Focus on what you can control and make it happen!

The Best Recruit No One Is Talking About

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I’m sure my #8ManRotation partners have read this story, but you might not have.  Bleacher Report had an article this week about a stud high school quarterback, Easton Bruere, out of New Mexico, who threw for 4500 yards, 49 touchdowns and only 6 interceptions this year alone and won the state title for his team.  He’s 6’3″, 200 lbs, strong athletic kid.  3.75 GPA and no legal trouble. He has zero college scholarship offers at the D1 level.

Let me give you a personal angle on this story.  Easton’s Dad and Aunt, both attended the University of Wyoming, when I did.  Both his Dad and Aunt were D1 athletes, Dad, Carl, in Football, Aunt, Ginger, in Volleyball and his sister plays college volleyball.  So, this kid also has a D1 pedigree. He comes from a very athletic family.  My wife and Ginger played together at UW for years.

There is great learning from this for all of my recruiting brother and sisters out there!  I can think of two things specifically:

1. As soon as you believe there are no more ‘recruits’, talent, people, left to hire, you’re dead wrong. This kid is in the middle of New Mexico.  Very few D1 football players come out of New Mexico, so most schools just fly over it on their way to Texas or California.  It’s forgotten about, in terms of football talent.

We do this all the time in recruiting talent for our organizations. “We tried that before, didn’t work.” Have you heard that? Okay, try it again. It didn’t work one time, doesn’t mean it’s never going to work.  “We went to that school three years ago and didn’t recruit anyone, so we didn’t go back.” “I tried calling into that company once, but couldn’t get through.”

 2. On the flip side, college coaches will go to the end of earth to find talent.  Was this kid missed? Or, is there something else we just aren’t getting from this article?  You see what we do.  We assume.  We assume if no one wants the kid, there must be something wrong with him. So, we just take it as fact and don’t do our own evaluation.

This is a problem with corporate recruiting as well.  How many resumes have you passed on because the person was unemployed for six months? “Well, if there weren’t hired by someone, there must be something wrong with them.”  Or, maybe you should bring them in and make that determination for yourself. But, you don’t.  You assume.

In recruiting, more than almost any other field, we give ourselves self-fulling prophecies.

I don’t know if this kid deserves a shot. Sure seems like it from the data I see. Because I know the family, I’m rooting for him.  His dad and aunt were highly competitive.  He has the skills, the experience and the genetics.

Remember this story the next time you go to pass on a candidate without a real reason.  Remember this story the next time you decide to pass on a source because previously it was a bust.  We’re all in the talent game. The funny thing about talent is, it can come from anywhere.

Check out Easton’s recruitment on twitter at #EastonBruere.

Stop Trying to be Happy at Work

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In 1942 Viktor Frankl, a prominent Jewish psychiatrist, was taken to a Nazi concentration camp with his wife and parents.  Three years later, when his camp was liberated, his pregnant wife and parents had already been killed by the Nazis. He survived and in 1946 went on to write the book, “Man’s Search For Meaning“.  In this great book, Frankl writes:

“It is the very pursuit of happiness that thwarts happiness.”

What Frankl knew was that you can’t make happiness out of something outside yourself.  Riding the Waverunner doesn’t make you happy. You decide to be happy while doing that activity, but you could as easily decide to be angry or sad while doing this activity (although Daniel Tosh would disagree!).  Frankl also wrote in Man’s Search for Meaning, “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing, the last of the human freedoms — to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”

I get asked frequently by HR Pros about how they can make their employees or workplace happier.  I want to tell them about Frankl’s research and what he learned in the concentration camps.  I want to tell them that you can’t make your employees happy.  They have to decide they want to be happy, first. But, I don’t, people don’t want to hear the truth.

Coming up with ‘things’ isn’t going to make your employees happy. You might provide free lunch, which some will really like, but it also might make someone struggling with their weight, very depressed.  You might give extra time off and most of your employees will love it, but those who define themselves by their work will find this a burden.

Ultimately, I think people tend to swing a certain way on the emotional scale.  Some are usually happier than others.  Some relish in being angry or depressed, it’s their comfort zone.  They don’t know how to be any other way.  Instead of working to ‘make’ people happy, spend your time selecting happy people to come work for you.

In the middle of a concentration camp, the most horrific experiences imaginable, Frankl witnessed people who made the decision to be happy. Maybe they were happy to have one more day on earth. Maybe they were happy because, like Frankl, they discovered that the Nazis could take everything from them except their mind.

Provide the best work environment that you can.  Continue to try and make it better with the resources you have.  Give meaning to the work and the things you do.  Every organization has this, no matter what you do at your company.  Don’t pursue happiness, it’s a fleeting emotion that is impossible to maintain.  Pursue being the best organization you can be.  It doesn’t mean you have to be someone you’re not.  Just be ‘you’, and find others that like ‘you.’

HR and Snow Days

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Based upon the ‘historic’ snow storm on the east coast this past week, I pulled one from the archives on my feelings about how HR should handle snow days. Enjoy.

Look I get it.  I have 3 sons and Snow Days are a big deal…if you’re 10!   So, if you’re an HR Pro, right about this time tomorrow, you’re going to feel like you have an entire organization full of 10 year olds,  as we begin to see the first signs of Snowmagedon!

I understand people freaking out, that is, if you live in some place south of the Mason-Dixon line, and you’ve never seen snow before. But, I live in Michigan and it snows here. The snow starts around Halloween and ends around Easter.  What I don’t understand is anyone that lives north of, let’s say, Chicago, is even blinking an eye at a snow storm coming.  Let it snow, clear your driveway and get your butt to work.

It’s not a difficult concept! No, I don’t want you to drive to a client if the roads are dangerous, and, no, I don’t want you to drive to work if the roads are dangerous, and, no, I don’t want you to run around the office with scissors and your shoes untied!  But I do expect, we’ll all be adults.

If it looks like there’s going to be a lot of snow tomorrow, you need to make a plan. How about packing some work to do from home, or just plan on watching Lifetime all day, because I completely understand you missing the 3 days’ of warning that the snow was coming! (he screamed to himself in a mocking voice…)

Snow Days are the kind of crap that drives HR and Leadership completely insane!

Why is it, the CEO finds his way into the office, driving his Lexus sedan, but Perry in IT just can’t seem to get his 4X4Chevy Tahoe out of the garage?   If you want a day off that damn bad, take a day off,  but don’t insult the intelligence of all those who found a way to come in.

Be sensible, give your local snow plows some time to clear roads, give yourself extra time to get to work, but at the very least give it a shot. Then, when you get stuck, take a picture with your phone and send it to your boss, they’ll appreciate the effort!

2015 Candidate Bill of Rights

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In November 2010 Monster.com asked me to write a post on a hot topic at that time a “Candidate Bill of Rights“.  Needless to say, I’m not a huge fan of a Candidate Bill of Rights – I’m a Capitalist and believe in a free-market system of HR and Recruiting.  In 2010 (remember those days?) we had candidates coming out of our ears. In 2015, most of us are begging for talent. Welcome to the show kids!

Here were my main point back then – and what they still are today:

Candidates –

You Don’t Have To Apply:

  • If we have a crappy working environment – you don’t have to apply
  • If we don’t pay appropriately for the market – you don’t have to apply
  • If we don’t give my employees opportunities for growth – you don’t have to apply
  • If we don’t treat you like a human – you don’t have to apply
  • If we don’t give you a full job description – you don’t have to apply
  • If we don’t tell you every step of the process – you don’t have to apply

You Don’t Have To Work Here:

  • If we make you wait endlessly without any feedback – you don’t have to work here
  • If we make you an offer that you don’t like – you don’t have to work here
  • If we don’t offer the right work-life balance – you don’t have to work here
  • If we give you a bad Candidate Experience – you don’t have to work here

Candidates – if any of the above is true – you have some decisions to make:

1. Can I live with what I know about the company and the experience they put me through to get this offer?

2. IF SO, do I want to come and work for the company?

3. IF YES – welcome aboard, you’re coming on ‘Eyes Wide Open’

4. IF NO – thanks – good luck – see you next time

You see we all have choices – if you don’t like the way I’m treating you as a candidate, don’t come and work at my company.  I would hope that most HR Pros are smart enough to get this fact – treat candidates like garbage and they’ll stop applying for your jobs, thus making your job all the more difficult.  That might be a bit pie-in-the-sky thinking because I also know way to many HR/Talent Pros that don’t get this!   They have a little bit of power and have decided to torture candidates with painfully long and arduous application and selection processes – that aren’t helpful to their own companies, statistically, and definitely aren’t helpful to the candidates.  During a recession they don’t see much impact from these horrible processes, but eventually the tide turns and face the results of their actions.  Karma is a bitch!

So, do we need a candidate bill of rights – No!  Do you need to spend a ton of time, effort and resources on candidate experience – No, as well!  Don’t go right ditch-left ditch and start over correcting.  Treat candidates like you would want to be treated.  Have a few standards and etiquette, and some manners.  It’s not hard, it’s not expensive and you definitely don’t need to pay a consultant to show you how to do it!

Karma is biting a bunch of hack talent acquisition pros in the butt in 2015.

The Key to Finding Your Dream Job

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I’ve been given the opportunity to speak to high school and college graduating seniors. The one common question to both groups, I get frequently, is “how can I get my dream job?”  It’s a simple question, with about one million answers.  Which makes it a tough question to answer in front of a group.

I think I might have found the perfect answer for this question.  From current Penn State football coach, James Franklin, when asked at a recent conference how does a graduate assistant move up in the college football coaching ranks:

“It comes down to people and opportunities for growth. I always tell people to stay broke for as long as possible.  When you have a car payment and other things like that, it becomes a factor. Keeping money out of it allows you to chase your dreams longer.”

Stay broke as long as possible.

I remember back to when I first got out of college and was making $20,000 at my first job.  The reality was, I could have gone almost anywhere and made $20,000.  The money wasn’t the draw of the position, the opportunity was.  If it wasn’t for me, I could go and try something else. I had a crappy car and $400 per month apartment. I didn’t have life obligations that were going to stop me from chasing a dream.

Fast forward five years and now I have a new car, a new house and a new kid.  Chasing a dream would be much more difficult.

You hear it all the time, chasing dreams is for the young. Not because the young necessarily have better dreams or are better equipped at chasing dreams, it’s because the young can ‘afford’ to chase their dreams.  They, usually, have little holding them back, financially.  The older you get, the more responsibilities you have and the larger tax bracket you’re usually in.

Leaving a $20,000 job to chase my dream wasn’t going to be a problem. Leaving $100,000 job to chase my dream was going to be a problem.

No one really wants to tell you this in their ultra-motivational writings and speakings.  “Go chase your dream! Don’t let anything or anyone stop you!…Just be prepared to have nothing for a while!”  We never get to hear that last part.  Want to be an NFL Referee? It’s a great gig! You just have to put about 15-20 years in at being a referee at every other level where you make peanuts and have to work other jobs to make ends meet. Yes, you can get there.  No, you won’t get rich getting there.

You can definitely go out and work towards getting your dream job.   Being broke will help you with that.  It takes away the fear of failure and losing what you have.  If you have very little, losing it doesn’t seem as bad.  If you have a nice life, giving it all up, seems extremely hard.  Being broke, in a very ironic way, gives you more options, when it comes to dream jobs!