Black, white, gay, straight, Christian, Muslim, Furry, Jock…
We went to the same school.
We vote for the same politicians.
We both loved Breaking Bad and our burritos with pinto beans instead of black beans.
Equals hired.
Hired doesn’t equal the most skills, it equals the most connections made with those interviewing you.
Unless you know you’re hiring people who, specifically, think different than you, inclusion is a mirage.
Here’s the staffing game has taught me over the past 20 years.
1. Great candidates get hired.
2. The difference between a great candidate and a very good candidate is one hiring managers gut feeling (usually).
3. The very good candidate that didn’t get hired, is someone elses great candidate.
This means that many of you are just sitting on another organizations great candidate! This means you’re sitting on something very valuable to someone else. Something that others would probably pay for.
Question:
Would you be willing to pay to have access to Google’s ATS?
Yes. Yes you would. More than you pay for LinkedIn Recruiter, I’d gamble!
This begs the question: would you be willing to sell your backup candidates? The ones you didn’t hire, but would have if your first choice didn’t accept.
So, what if your organization, your talent acquisition department, decided to start calling up other organizations that you know of who had similar needs and say, “Hey, we got what you want!” Do you think you could turn your corporate in-house talent acquisition department into a money maker? Yes. Yes, you could. Will you? No.
It really wouldn’t take much. Within your staffing process you add a little disclaimer, you know the ones nobody reads, which gives you freedom to ‘sell’ the contact information to those submitting for your jobs to other companies who are also looking for similar talent. From there you establish some relationships with other companies. Negotiate a price. Sign some simple agreements. When communicating with your backups about not getting the position, you pass along some good news. While they didn’t get the job they applied for, you have another position, with another company they might have interest in.
Bam! You’re printing money.
Very little extra effort, and almost no extra resources needed. Your talent acquisition department just turned into a profit center.
No organization would do this because they believe it will ‘hurt’ or ‘damage’ their employment brand. “Tim! If candidates knew we were going to sell their information to other companies, they wouldn’t apply to our jobs!” Or, maybe they would because they actually want to work for you! If that’s your process, what option do they have? Plus, all your doing is potentially giving them more options. How many people do you know that don’t want more options?
While no one is doing this publicly, I’ll tell you it is happening privately. I’ve been approached by corporate talent acquisition pros who are willing to ‘sell’ me access to their database for a fee. I pay them. They deliver to me candidates who applied to their positions that they never wanted to begin with, or couldn’t use. I haven’t ever did this for the simple fact that each time I was approached, the person was doing this behind the organizations back, with them wanting the check made out directly to them, personally. That’s shady.
But, if a company was willing to do it all above board as a paid service…I can’t tell you I would be in!
In athletic recruitment there are these things called ‘Prospect’ camps. Depending on who you talk to these are either just coaching staff supplemental income, or serious recruitment functions needed to get prospective student athletes on campus.
Whatever they are, they’re a little genius!
Here’s how the entire system works. Usually an assistant coach emails your kid, who has a dream to play college athletics, that they are having a prospect camp and you’re invited to attend, for $150. Two things just happened: 1. Your kid just got an email from a college coach; 2. That coach insinuated that your kid is a ‘prospect’! Either way, there’s a good chance you’ll bite and pay the $150.
A couple of things happen at these camps. Coaches actually invite players they really do have interest in, and they invite anyone else who is willing to pay $150! So, a hundred kids show up, two or three which have actual ability to play college athletics, and they go through drills and modified games. You instantly know who has ability because the coaches spend time with those kids. If your kid doesn’t have a coach talking to him or her, they don’t have ability. It’s a real quick and easy way to set your own expectations.
These camps are a necessary evil of the function of recruitment. While most parents don’t like them, they all pay the money and have their kids attend.
These prospect camps got me to thinking if we in HR could do this in our organizations. Could we charge $150 to have potential employees come in and check us out, while we check them out? We run them through some tests, show them our facilities, make them compete against others in their same job function, spend time with our employees. At the end of the day, we offer a couple of them jobs.
Could it work? Maybe not for the average organization, but what about Google or Apple or some other big organization that has thousands wanting jobs with their company? I think it could work. The one issue we face is the expectation. “Well, I paid $150 what do I get for this?!”
We would have to deliver $150 worth of ‘value’ in these Prospective Employee Camps. I think that is probably the easy part. Think interview skills, resume skills, leadership skills, some hardcore job function skills based on what they actually do. It’s part self-development, and part dating game. People pay millions of dollars per to sites to find their perfect romantic match, with most failing to do so.
Prospective Employee Camps might just be a way for your organization to set itself a part from all the noise, and get candidates to come in that truly interested in (I’m willing to pay to be here, truly) and want to be a part of your organization. I know, crazy idea, but when you see it work in one area it just begs to be tried in another!
HR 101. If there is one thing I could give a new HR Pro it would be this simple advice. No matter how prepared you think you are, you really only need to prepare yourself for one thing, being surprised.
You don’t really get judged on your daily stuff. Let’s face it, 99.9% of the time that goes off without a hitch. You get judged on how you handle surprises.
Surprises make and break great HR Pro careers.
There’s really only way to prepare for surprises. You need to expect that a surprise will always happen. That one employee you can’t lose or the entire project will blow up, be prepared to lose them. Talk about it, plan for it, and basically come to grips that it will happen. Then it will happen, and you’ll be the only one not surprised by it.
The best HR Pros I’ve worked with had this one common trait, they were unshakeable when surprised. Almost like they expected it.
I got asked to be a mentor for someone recently. It’s not the first time I’ve been asked, but I found myself wondering what ‘Tim Sackett’ as a mentor should look like. Maybe it’s where I’m at in my career, but I found myself wondering what is it that I could really give someone coming up in our industry.
I would assume anyone asking for a mentor doesn’t really want me to show them how to recruit. They’ve probably got that down pretty well, at least the basics. The advanced stuff is probably best taught by some folks much better than me (Glen Cathey, Jim Stroud, Amybeth Quinn, Paul DeBettignies, etc.).
Maybe I could offer up some help on the employment branding/marketing side on HR and Talent Acquisition. I’ve had to do that for the last 20 years, I probably know just enough to better than most, but not as good as folks like Laurie Ruettimann, William Tincup, Maren Hogan, Lance Haun and Matt Charney.
I’m just dangerous enough with HR Tech that I could probably help out in that area for sure. I’ve bought and implemented systems and tools at every stop in my career. I know the game, but I certainly don’t know it as well at Steve Boese, William Tincup (again), John Sumser, etc.
It could be my mentee could use me for just straight HR generalist knowledge base. If I know anything, I know a little about almost anything in HR from my stops in my career. While I love talent acquisition, I really consider myself more of an HR pro. Probably not as good as Kris Dunn, Dawn Burke, Robin Schooling, Jessica Miller-Merrell, etc.
Compensation and Benefits, maybe that’s should be my ticket? Um, no, probably not. I probably know the least about this area as a whole and Ann Bares is my go to person for all things compensation.
There’s got to be something I’m the best at, worthy of being a mentor. What about employee engagement? From small companies to organizations with tens of thousands I’ve had employee engagement as a major measurable, I could do some damage here. But, again, not as well as someone like Paul Hebert.
Talent acquisition as a function might be something I’m most comfortable with. In my career, I’ve been constantly pulled into TA no matter what organization I’ve been in. It’s been the one constant in my career, start in HR, and end up in Talent Acquisition. Moving an organization from old school, post and pray, to one that hunts for talent is right up my alley. I don’t really know anyone I would recommend over myself on this.
As a mentor I think the most valuable thing I can give someone is the network I’ve built over the years. It’s something I discovered a long time ago. I’m probably not going to be the best at any one thing, but I can know people who are. Having the ability to know you need to surround yourself with people who are better than you, especially in areas you’re weak, is the key to having success in any stop you have in your career.
As a mentor I’m probably going to find out what you’re bad at, then introduce you to people who are really good at those things. You don’t need to the best at everything when you surround yourself with the people who are the best at everything!
It’s that time of year when parents and kids make a big decision, to ride or not ride the school bus! From the Project archives.
I read a very funny quote today from a comedian, Jenny Johnson, which she said
“If you rode the school bus as a kid, your parents hated you.”
It made me laugh out loud, for two reasons:
1. I rode the bus or walked or had to arrive at school an hour early because that was when my Dad was leaving and if I wanted a ride that was going to be it. Nothing like sitting at school talking to the janitor because he was the only other person to arrive an hour before school started. Luckily for me, he was nice enough to open the doors and not make me stand outside in the cold. Lucky for my parents he wasn’t a pedophile!
2. My kids now make my wife and I feel like we must be the worst parents in the world in those rare occasions that they have to ride the bus. I know I’m doing a disservice to my sons by giving them this ride – but I can’t stop it, it’s some American ideal that gets stuck in my head about making my kids life better than my life, and somehow I’ve justified that by giving them a ride to school their life is better than mine!
When I look back it, riding the bus did suck – you usually had to deal with those kids who parents truly did hate them. Every bully in the world rode the bus – let’s face it their parents weren’t giving them a ride, so you had to deal with that (me being small and red-headed probably had to deal with it more than most). You also got to learn most of life lessons on the bus – you found out about Santa before everyone else, you found out how babies got made before everyone else, you found out about that innocent kid stuff that makes kids, kids before you probably should have. But let’s face it, the bus kids were tough – you had to get up earlier, stand out in the cold, get home later and take a beating after the ride home, just so you had something to look forward to the next day!
You know as HR Pros we tend also not to let our employees “ride the bus”. We always look for an easier way for them to do their work, to balance their work and home, to do as little as possible to get the job done. In a way, too many of us, are turning our organizations and our employees into the kids who had their Mom’s pick them up from school. I’m not saying go be hard on your employees – but as a profession we might be better off to be a little less concerned with how comfortable everyone is, and a little more concerned with how well everybody is performing.
Too many HR Pros (and HR shops for that matter) tend to act as “parents” to the employees, not letting them learn from their mistakes, but trying to preempt every mistake before it’s made – either through extensive processes or overly done performance management systems. We justify this by saying we are just “protecting” our organizations – but in the end we aren’t really making our employees or organizations “tougher” or preparing them to handle the hard times we all must face professionally. It’ll be alright – they might not like it 100%, but in the end they’ll be better for it.
TaxFoundation.org recently released a map that shows how much $100 is worth for each state. The concept being where you live has a huge impact to what you can afford to buy with that same $100 bill. Here’s the map:
It begs the question, why would anyone live in D.C.? Or New York? Or California? Or New Jersey?
I’m not a coast guy. I live in 4 bedroom, 3 bath house in Michigan that costs under $350K. It’s new. It’s in a great neighborhood. I don’t have a highway running through my backyard. I’m close to a university, shopping, good restaurants, etc. I’m getting the most out of my $100!
Don’t get me wrong. I love to visit big cities. Chicago and Detroit are both close, so those are easy. New York and D.C. are great. California and Texas are lovely. I’m always thankful to come home. No traffic. Little crime. Kids still seem to be kids. Basically, I’m Ward Cleaver.
Michigan, and the Auto Industry, is going through a big growth bubble right now. It’s a combination of the Auto industry coming back. No one bought cars during the recession, so pent up demand. Aging auto workforce that stayed on through the recession and now wants out. There are thousands of jobs in Detroit for technical workers.
Recently, I had a company contact us about helping them find automotive engineering talent to go to California for a start up. They want to build an entire car start up in Silicon Valley. My first question was, why? They don’t really have a good answer to the why. Besides the fact, well, this is where we are now. Okay. I can recruit auto engineers for you, from Detroit to Silicon Valley. But understand, Detroit talent is going to have sticker shock! Major sticker shock!
They are use to getting more that $100, for their $100, and now I’m going to tell them I’ll give you $85 for your $100. This is really like a decrease of 25% to go and do the same job. Well, they said, we’ll pay more. 25% more? Even so, my $350K house is $1.3M in Silicon Valley for less house. But you’re close to the beach! For $1.3 I better be on the beach! Is the mindset of an engineer from Michigan!
Recruiting is a mindset. You can see why I can recruit folks to the Midwest! I know the hot buttons to push. Everyone has a certain value they want for their $100. For some the ocean and the beach and sunny weather is price they will pay for. For others, they want less traffic, quiet, clean air. It’s your job as a recruiter to be able to find that value, and not let your own perceptions of that value get in the way.
This isn’t necessarily a new concept, but it’s one that is popping up a ton lately in conversation. The basic concept is we should be our managers and supervisors to be ‘coaches’ to their employees, not managers. The view from Organizational Development and Training folks is that coaches are more of a representative of great leadership than we would normally think of when we think of managers and supervisors.
Um, what!?!
I’m not sure what people are thinking but I’ve been ‘coached’ and have been a coach most of my life. When you tell me I should ‘act’ more like a coach, and less like a manager I get very confused. Let me give you a little insight to how most coaches behave:
– We yell. Usually a lot. Yeah, you don’t see that at your 8 year old’s soccer match, but go to a high school football game, basketball game, soccer match, etc. Don’t even get me started on college!
– Our vocabulary consists of about 6 words I don’t use on this blog very often.
– Our intent is to get our players to be a more aggressive version of themselves for a short period of time to help us win a game.
– I’ll make you cry. It’s actually a goal of mine. To push you beyond your comfort zone so you’ll breakdown and comeback stronger.
– If you worked really hard and give it your all I’ll give you a hug and maybe pat you on the backside. If you fail, I’ll probably yell more.
– I’ll publicly extol the virtues of team, while behind the scenes push internal competition beyond a healthy level.
– I love it when my players want to kill each other, and having a fight at a practice isn’t really a bad thing.
This is the reality of coaching once you get beyond very young youth sports where everyone gets a participation medal. This is real life. Not every sport, not every coach. But if you took the top 100 most successful coaches in every sport, you would be shocked at their behind the scenes behaviors. You wouldn’t like most of them. You wouldn’t want them around your kid.
But, let’s go ahead and teach our managers to be coaches!
Here’s the deal. What training and OD are teaching our managers to be, are not coaches. It’s an altruistic version of what they want coaches to be. They believe coaches are there to just help you along to get better and build great teams. Which conceptually is true. How it’s done is not something your training department or OD would want to sign up for!
It’s a difficult concept. Most athletes who have really been coached at a high level get it. Coaches are super hard on you, because that’s the only way to make yourself better and win championships. They’ll push you beyond what you think you’re capable of. In the end you usually end up respecting your coach and are thankful for the pain they put you through. Mostly, it ends up good. But is that a process you really, truly want your managers and supervisors to put your employees through?
Doubtful. You want all the outcomes of a great coach, but you’re not willing to allow them to go through the process of how a great coach gets his or her team ready for battle. Give us the result without the process. It just doesn’t work that way.
Last week I did an entire post on ‘excuses’ candidates give when missing or cancelling interviews, check it out here. Then I get a question sent to me from a reader, who was getting ready to leave for an interview, that very day, and had their pet die. Her question to me, “should I tell the interviewers, when I arrive, that my pet just died?”
That’s karma. As soon as you make fun of something, the world has a way of pointing out this stuff really happens!
Here’s what I know. I have had a pet die as an adult. It crushed me. I cried like a baby. No, like a b_a_b_y!! The hardest cry I can ever remember having in my life. The old veterinarian that helped me out actually had to sit down with me and put his arm around me like he was my Dad. I’m thankful he did that.
I can’t even imagine going to an interview after that just happened. I would have been a mess.
So, what was my advice?
I would have told them my pet died. I’ve interviewed thousands of people in my career. Almost all of those folks actually wanted the job they were interviewing for, and wanted to put their best foot forward. Every once in a while I had an interviewee come in and you could tell something was not right. Sometimes they would tell you (sick kid I was up all night, just lost someone close to me, etc.) and give you context to why they were off their game. Many times they wouldn’t, and it didn’t go well, you could tell they were distracted and usually that ends with not moving forward.
You see, while most people don’t think HR is at all ‘human’, I am. I get you’re going to have really crappy stuff happen to you in your life, and how you deal with it probably tells me as much about how you’ll perform in a job than any other single thing. One thing we rarely get to see is how a candidate truly handles stress. Real stress! So, having someone come in and show me that it really sucks, but life moves on and I really want this job, shows me they can handle stuff.
I think you need to be careful with this, though, because you can easily turn this into a huge negative. Let me give you two examples:
1. Pet dies in your arms an hour before you interview. Almost everyone would say that’s traumatic and very stressful. You coming to the interview and soldiering through will get you positive interview points.
2. Your sister lost her job an hour before you interview. Potentially shocking news and you feel awful. Bringing something like this up would make me question your resolve! It’s a job, it’s your sister, that isn’t really traumatic.
Do you see the difference? You gain positive points for being able to handle something universally considered horrible. You get negative points if you can’t handle everyday stresses. The problem is too many people considered ‘everyday stresses’ as horrible stresses, and no one is going to tell them differently. I see this interviews all the time.
So, feel free to share major life stresses in interviews if you know they come across as real honest major stresses, and you feel confident you can show those you’re interviewing with that you can handle it and move on. If you’re worried because your kid had a running nose before you left and you share that, you’re probably not getting asked back for a second interview.
Wait for it…
“That’s what she said!”
I saved you the trouble.
Being too long is a major problem in the world today. People aren’t willing to wait, primarily because they don’t have to. Baseball can’t attract a young audience because the kids don’t want to sit around for three hours, at a minimum, to find out the outcome of the game. Soccer is exploding in the U.S. because it’s 90 minutes and they don’t even stop the clock when someone is injured! No commercial breaks, except for a short halftime period.
People won’t read a 700 page book, they want 300. No one wants to watch a three hour movie, make it two. Why do we have to have an hour meeting, make it thirty minutes.
Being too long is not a weakness you want to have in todays world. Being too long is now a sign that you probably don’t really know what you’re doing. If you can’t be short and concise, you’re looked at as ‘old fashion’.
That’s what your candidates are thinking of your selection process. You try and tell yourself, and your leadership, that we ‘take our time’ because we want to ‘make the right decision’. But your competition is making those same decisions in half the time. You’re old fashion. You’re broken. You’re taking too long.
Moving fast used to be considered reckless. Older generations would tell us to ‘slow down’. Measure twice, cut once. But, what if I made a process where measuring once was all that was needed, and I could eliminate the second measure? Wouldn’t that be better?
The legacy of the recession in Talent Acquisition is this, you had less to do, so you filled that time trying to add value. There is a tipping point to adding value. You extending the length of your selection process at a point no longer adds value. You’re taking too long to make hiring decisions. I know this because I’m constantly hearing stories of candidates you want, accepting offers from other companies before you’re ready to make an offer.
You’re taking too long.