Recruiters! Conferences Don’t Care About You!

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I’m down at ERE’s Fall Conference in Chicago this week.  It’s a conference designed for Talent Acquistion leaders (FYI – they don’t like to be called ‘Recruiters’).  It’s really cool the folks at ERE do a great job putting together great content and work to push the role of Talent Acquisition forward in organizations around the world.

HR Tech also does a great job for HR folks looking for HR Tech.  So does Sourcecon, for people wanting to be better sourcers.  So does TLNT’s Transform for HR leaders. Heck, even SHRM National has some great content.

Besides ERE, though, where does a TA leader or Recruiter go to keep up on their industry. To get better. To challenge and measure themselves and their organizations to get better?  No where, that’s where.

ERE does a fall and spring national conference.  If you don’t have the budget for a national conference, usually $1-2,000 to attend, plus travel which usually doubles the cost, you’re screwed when it comes to getting really good recruiting content.

SHRM has both local and state opportunities for HR Pros to get further development and expand their knowledge base.  Do you have a local recruiting organization or a state recruiting organization that will offer this to you?  Most likely No, unless you live in D.C. (RecruitDC) or Minnesota (Hello Paul!).

It’s crazy when you really stop and think about it.  Almost no where are we really leveraging the minds and the dollars to bring these people together at a state or local level.

I’m in Michigan.  I know right now I could put two days of content together, leverage some awesome Recruiting talent from around the world to come in and speak, and get 250-500 Recruiting/Talent Acquisition Pros from Michigan to attend at $400-500 each.  That’s anywhere from $100-250K just in conference fees, not including probably another $100-200K in sponsors. So, some company isn’t interested in $400-500K!?

Southeast Michigan is begging for technical talent. Organizations would spend the money to spend their TA teams to something like this.  All across the country many areas are hurting for talent and willing to invest (a little) to get their recruiting teams better.  But, most are not willing to have those same teams travel across the country at the price tag of $3,000 each for the same content.

Build it and they will come…just don’t build it too far away!

I see this work on the HR front.  Monthly local SHRM meetings will get 50-100 participants at $50 per meeting for lunch and one hour of content! State conferences give you a day and half of content for $500-750, and most of that is vendors trying to sell you crap.

It just seems insane to me that someone who actually does conference planning for living can’t figure out how to leverage the largest 25 metro areas and put together a calendar of ‘local’ level recruiting conferences.

Like I said, ERE does a good job nationally, their just leaving about 90% of the money that is available out there locally on the table.

Job Descriptions are Just Commercials for Jobs

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Only Employment Lawyers and HR Pros from 1990 believe that Job Descriptions are important legal-type documents that are still needed in 2014.   Most companies have given up on job descriptions (JDs).  At best you’ll find them, today, using ones from back in 1990 when people thought writing JDs was an important part of human resources.  You’ll still find a few HR Tech vendors around trying to make you believe this is an important skill to have.

Our reality, though, is that JDs are really just a marketing tool to get you interested in a position and company. Nothing more, nothing less.

If this is true, 99% of companies are failing at JDs in a major way!

The other 1% are using titles like “Ninja Developer” and think they’ve gotten it solved.  The problem we all share is that we haven’t let marketing just take this part of our business over. It’s a legacy thing.  Somehow we believe only people in HR can write job descriptions.  It’s that ‘legal’ thing again.  We need to make sure we put “EOE” on the bottom, and you know you can’t trust marketing to do that!

Last week a Facebook group I’m in shared the following employment branding commercial:

I know, this isn’t a job description, but do you really think the JDs at Kixeye look like your JDs?  No, they don’t!

I know. I know. Your company can’t do something like this.  You’re probably right.  But you can do something that is more like you. More authentic.  More real. More, well, you.

That’s the problem with your JDs.  They aren’t you.  In fact, I would argue they aren’t anyone!

Your JDs, most JDs, are just a boring list of job requirements, that may not actually be required, and skills needed to do the job, that may not actually be needed to do the job.  Job descriptions have turned into those things most companies are embarrassed to even show you.  Weekly, I have conversations with companies that will either say they don’t have a job description, or the job description is old and updated, or just flat out ask me to help right them a new one!

It’s time HR gave up the job description business and handed it over to marketing where it belongs.

 

Chipotle’s Sweatshop!

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Last week the Chipotle location in State College, PA (home of Penn State University) posted this sign on the door:

“Borderline sweatshop conditions”.

Have you ever gone into a Chipotle restaurant?  You pretty much see most of the kitchen.  There is a little prep area hidden from view, and it looks much like everything else you can see.  Stainless steel, well lighted, air conditioning and ventilation. Chipotle’s food safety is right on par with most major chains, they take it very seriously, the worst thing that can happen to a chain is the bad publicity of a food related illness.

“Borderline sweatshop conditions”.

The hours of this specific location are from 11am to 10pm, Monday through Sunday.  Workers probably get in around 10am, or so, to prep. A manager might have to be in earlier for deliveries and such.  My guess is they’re out each night around 11pm.  Each location will have 3 to 4 managers to cover those hours.  There are two times per day that a Chipotle restaurant is busy, 11:30am to around 1:30pm, and 6pm to around 8pm.  It can be very busy and hectic during those ‘rush’ eating times.

“Borderline sweatshop conditions”.

I would love to send these former Chipotle workers to a real sweatshop.  To a place where they weren’t getting paid $10 plus per hour with free meals, training, safety equipment and potential to move up. To a place where they actually didn’t have the choice to lock up millions of dollars in facilities, equipment and food, and just walk away for the day.  To a place that was actually a sweatshop.

This is why ISIS hates us.

It’s just too easy to tell boys not to hit girls

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A lot of focus on domestic violence this week.  I’ve been challenged to think about this at a number of levels.  I grew up in a household that had domestic violence.  As a boy and young man I watched horrible men hit my mother, and I was unable to stop them.  I grew up with anger, like many young men.  I believe life has a way of putting things back in front of you that you don’t address.  I now have three sons.

There is no reason to ever hit a woman, we are told.

We are also told to “be a man”:

I’m guilty of doing some of this with my sons, and I’m a man whom I would think most people think I’m a pretty progressive father. I encourage kids to do what they want regardless if our society believes it’s masculine or feminine.  Hell, I sang falsetto in my high school rendition of Music Man as part of the barber shop quartet!

I’ve also screamed at my sons while coaching them to stop acting like a ‘girl’, to ‘be a man’, that ‘you’re acting like a bitch’.  I’ve fallen into the masculinity trap in raising my own sons. I’ve actually told my wife, that ‘she doesn’t get it’. “Let me do this”, “they need this”. To her credit, she doesn’t.

I believe we fail boys by telling them “just never hit a woman”.  Like that one statement, just solves it.  Just, takes away years of us trying to make them aggressive, make them ‘men’.  If we don’t show these boys that it’s okay to cry, to show emotion, when they are young, all we are doing is setting them up to eventually ‘pop’.  My Dad use to say that to me.  He could see the emotion building inside me, and me trying to hold it all in, because I was trying to be a man.  “Eventually, that cork is going to pop and everyone better watch out”, he would say.  And it did.

I was challenged with a question this week. What if one of my male employees hit his wife or girlfriend, like Ray Rice hit his fiancee?  Would I do what the Ravens did and fire that employee?

It’s easy to say yes.  That’s the politically correct thing to say.  “Of course! You never hit a woman!”

Then you realize, I might be raising one of those ‘men’.  I might be one of those ‘men’.

The better question to ask, isn’t “would I fire them”, it’s “what would you do to help them?” What would you do to stop this all together?  It starts with boys.  We don’t fix ‘men’ who hit women.  We fix boys believing that the way to deal with their emotions is not through aggression and violence.

The New Hire Genius

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No matter what the organization, or what the industry this holds true.

You will never be ‘considered’ smarter by your boss, then you are on the first day you’re hired.

Take advantage and change as much as you can, as fast as you can.

It only lasts as long as the next hire into your department.

Then you’re back to being the idiot.

Fear Can Create Sustainable Success

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I’ve been told that fear can only create short-term success.  That’s a lie.

You see I grew up with a single mom.  She probably didn’t sleep most nights, and the nights she did it was probably helped by a glass of cheap boxed wine.  She had a mortgage and she had two kids to feed.  She lived every single day in fear.  Fear of losing her kids.  Fear of losing her house. Fear of her check bouncing at the grocery store.

She did the one thing she knew how to do, recruiting, and started her own business.  She started as a branch manager for a local temporary employee company.  Learned the business in the hardest way possible. Temp staffing is the lowest common denominator in the staffing world.  It is the definition of ‘grind’!  She knew technical staffing, high end bill rates, was a much better life, but she was a woman and it was the 1970’s.  Fear.

She built a successful technical staffing business that has lasted for the past 35 years.  Never has the fear stopped.

You see she grew up in an era where you managed by fear.  It seemed normal.  If I’m living in fear, why shouldn’t I share some of this fear.  It was a very common management tactic in the baby boom generation.  You had Opec, the cold war, recessions, etc.  People didn’t believe they have the choices they have today.  If you got a job, you had to keep ‘that’ job, and if that meant a little fear, so be it.

If you didn’t do what you were told.  If you didn’t make your monthly goal. If you talked back. All of that could get you fired, and you never wanted to be fired.  Fear.

I took over the company five years ago.  I’m a man.  I also have fears.  I fear I won’t be able to pay my mortgage if I don’t have a good job.  I fear how I’ll pay for my son’s college education. I fear I’ll have enough money to ever retire.  Different fears than my Mom.  But I live with some fear in my heart.  Maybe I was wired that way from growing up the way I did.

Fear pushes me out the door to work every single day.  Fear isn’t my enemy.  Fear of failure motivates me to succeed.  If I didn’t have fear, I’m not quite sure how I would perform.

I tend to believe businesses and business people who succeed have embraced living with this fear.  They’ve decided to become partners in a way.  Fear is their life coach. I won’t call fear a friend, but I know it’s something I can count on. Rarely a day goes by when we don’t meet for some reason or another.

Here’s what I know from 35 years of sustained profitable success.  Fear isn’t what you believe it to be.  We believe fear can only motivate for short bursts, and then people will fall down in a puddle and be less productive.  That’s a lie.  The unmotivated are selling this version of fear.  Those who don’t want to reach levels they never thought they could, are selling this version of fear.

Fear can create sustainable success, but it might not be as comfortable as you would like it to be.

Baltimore Ravens Failed HR 101

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By now everyone has seen former Baltimore Raven running back, Ray Rice, knock out his wife with two punches to the head in the elevator of an Atlantic City casino.  My question is, why didn’t anyone in the Baltimore Raven’s organization see this before agreeing to bring him back initially, with only a two game suspension?

The Raven’s claim no one in their organization saw the video from inside the elevator until it was leaked to TMZ this week.  Do you buy that?  I don’t.  Twenty years in HR and I would have put a stop to this with one decision.  “Ray, you want to be a part of this organization, we need to see what happened from inside the elevator before that happens.” But, I can’t get the tape, the casino would release it, it’s not mine to get, etc. Bullshit.

Then, I guess you don’t want to play football very badly.  It’s a very simple HR problem.  You have an employee (Mr. Rice) who does something you believe to be really bad, but you can’t fully prove it, but you know he can.  Make him prove he’s innocent.  Make him go get the tape.  An innocent person will do that.  A guilty person will give you excuses about why they can’t.

I truly think that someone on the Ravens knew what was on that tape, but had the casino’s word that it would never get out, and they believed them!

Once it got out, yes, they did the right thing.  But, it never should have gotten this far.  Good organizations get the information they need, or they stay conservative as possible.  The video footage was out there. If TMZ can get it, you better believe the Ravens could have gotten it.  It’s all about money and pressure.  The Ravens have both and decided not to use it to get to the truth.  That’s an example of a poorly run organization.

I’m guessing this guy will never get a chance to play football again in the NFL.  I can’t believe another team would ever take the publicity hit to bring him in, even if he ever gets reinstated by the NFL.

It begs the question: what if this happened to one of your employees?  Yeah, you would fire them, but do you believe they should ever get a chance to work again in their chosen profession?

It’s messy. It’s HR. Ray knocked her out.  She forgave him and married him.  Life is really screwed up.  My guess is eventually he’ll have to work somewhere, or he’ll end up in prison, probably where he should have ended up in the first place.

I know one thing, the NFL pays better than prison.

 

Is Your Recruiting Department Racist?

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At one point in my career, over a decade ago, I was working with a company where we hired a high percentage of foreign born applicants based on the technical skill set they had.  Many of the names of these applicants were extremely hard to enunciate.  Most of the hiring managers I worked with would spell the names out or say “the guy that worked at…” A few would try and say the names and butcher them badly.

Internally, in our recruiting department, we would ‘joke’ about asking these candidates to change their name to something it was easier for the managers to say, ‘Joe’ or ‘Charlie’ for instance.  Deep down we knew we had some managers who would be more willing to interview if the name came across as ‘Joe Vishay’ or ‘Charie Xjang’.  The manager would assume that because the candidate ‘choose’ an American name they must have better English skills.

It’s racism at a strange level.  You want to hire the person, but you feel because you can’t say their name, they must not be worthy.

Check out this video –

This Man Changed His Name From Jose To Joe And… by buzzfeedvideo

I know if I asked 100 HR and Talent Pros if they were ‘racist’, 100 would say they were not.  But, at a certain level we are.  We won’t interview Jose, but we’ll interview Joe. You won’t interview Marcus, but you’ll interview Mark.  My hiring manager wouldn’t interview “Arjun” but he would interview “Al”.

How do you stop this?

Hire Jose and Marcus and Arjun to do the hiring. That’s a start, at least.  Call out those hiring managers who continue to not want to interview qualified candidates because they can’t pronounce the name of the candidate.  You know who they are.

Also, educate your hiring managers, and give them the phonetic spelling of the candidates name.  Let your hiring managers know the pride they feel about their own surnames is shared by cultures all over the world.  I’m proud to be a “Sackett”. I get asked almost monthly by someone if I’m related to the Louis L’amour ‘Sackett’s’, and rarely do I point out those were fictional books!

Take the names off all your resumes you send to managers, as a ‘test’, and replace the name with a code number.  Did it make a difference in who they chose to interview? It’s a great inclusion exercise to have with your leadership team.

No one ever wants to admit they are racist.  The truth sometimes is very sobering.  This isn’t about blame, this is about fixing what’s wrong. Great leadership teams will understand this.

HR’s September Call Ups!

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For those who aren’t big Major League Baseball (MLB) fans you probably don’t know what the “September Call-Up” or “Expanded Rosters” mean.  Each year on September 1st, as the MLB season goes into its final month, the league allows teams to invite players from their minor league teams and the roster number expands from 25 to 40.  For teams who are out of the playoff race, this allows them to give some younger guys an opportunity to perform on a larger stage.  For those in playoff races, or teams that have already solidified a playoff berth, the extra players allow them to rest some regulars.  For playoff teams these extra 15 players can’t play in actual playoff games, only in the final regular season games.

Ok, Tim – why the hell should we care about Major League Baseball’s September Call-ups?

In any HR shop I’ve ever worked in, or with any HR Pro I’ve ever had a conversation with, Succession Planning is always an issue HR Pros struggle with in their organizations.  Many times sports shows us there is a way that it can be done.  You just need to find a way to tailor it to your environment, and I think the MLB gives us a window to how a competitive organization attempts to get this done.

Succession is difficult and costly, there is no way around it.  If your organization is truly trying to do succession and not spend money, it won’t be pretty and it probably won’t be effective.  To really know a person has the ability to step into someones shoes when they leave, you have to see them actually do the job.  In most organizations this just isn’t an option.  How many of us have the ability to pull out a high performer from their current position, and put them into a new position, while the other person is still in that position?  Not many of us!  It’s just not a reality most of live in.

Baseball’s September call-ups is one strategy that you might be able to use within your organization.  While pulling someone full-time into a new position, might not be something you could do, could you do it for 30 days?  Before telling me you can’t what would you do it that same person had a medical issue and had to be hospitalized or home-bound for a month?  You’d make it, you’d get by, that’s what we do in organizations.  The team would rally and make it work. So, giving someone a 1 month succession stint into a new potential role – full immersion – would actually give  you some decent insight to whether or not the person could actually handle that role in the future, or at least show you some great development needs that have to ensure success.

Is it perfect? No – but that’s why it works.  We don’t get perfect in HR – we get good enough and move onto the next fire.  We don’t get million dollar budgets to formalize succession and have a bench full of high performing talent to just step in when someone leaves our organization.  It’s our job to figure out succession, while we figure out how to keep the lights on at the same time.  I love the September Call-Up – gives me insight to the future of my team, shows me how someone performs in an environment that doesn’t pigeonhole them forever, and let’s me know if they show some potential for The Show!