The Ghost of Athlete Past

Posted on by
2

I have three sons.  Two of whom are current high school athletes having successful high school careers.  Both have potential to move onto college and play the sport they want, if they choose that is the path they want to take.  Both are considered very hard working kids in their sports by their coaches and teammates.  They get that from their Mom, I was more of a gamer type.  Their Mom was the type of player other teammates hated playing against in practice because she never took a play off.  It made her very successful as a college athlete.  She has passed this down to our sons.  I’m grateful.

You see, anyone who has been around high school athletics will recognize this, not all kids give their all.  Many times you have kids on these teams with super high potential and athletic ability who seem to just piss it away for no real reason.  They don’t work hard.  Coaches play them anyway.  They screw around in school because they think their future is playing professional sports, or that colleges won’t care they’re a crappy student.  People treat them differently because their the local star of the moment.  They float through life believing this will never end.

Flash-forward 10 years and they are usually sitting in the stands of the same local school’s games carrying around their regret like a backpack.  Working at the local factory or some crappy sales job, talking about how they were so close to ‘making it’.  But they didn’t.

I wish I could send these kids a Ghost like in the movie The Christmas Carol.  A Ghost of Athlete Past to show them where they are and where they are going.  Where they are truly going is not where they think.  It’s not dropping out of college because they didn’t prepare themselves. It’s not sleeping in their parents basement at 28 because they can’t find a job to pay them enough money to have their own place.  It’s certainly not sitting a some random game at their local high school talking to anyone who will listen how they were better than the current version of themselves on the field right now.

I know people like to blame coaches.  The coach should have been able to get ‘that’ kid to see how they were throwing it all away.  Some blame the parents for not disciplining them enough and showing them how their path was broken.  I tend to blame the collective.  All of us who each, at one time or another, gave the kid a pass.  Well, he’s the best player, you need to put up with his attitude.  We won’t win with out him so, you’ve got to put up with him not practicing hard.  Well, we need him for this Friday’s game, so let’s just give him a passing grade ‘this’ time.  We’ve all failed him.

We all had the chance to make this kid a great kid.  Great athlete, great student, great person.  Instead we filled him with regret that he’ll have to carry around for a lifetime.  I lifetime of regret at 18.  It’s heavy at 18, and it only gets heavier each year after.  I love athletics.  Athletics have given me a ton in my life, as they have for so many people in our society.  It breaks my heart to see a young kid getting ready to sling that backpack on, though. To know you’re looking at someone who has already seen their best days at such a young age.

Just a reminder to give it your all today.  Some will only have one shot. Did you do everything you could have done to be ready?

 

Performance Doesn’t Matter: Women must still sell attractiveness

Posted on by
9

True.

Right?  The title of this post is a true statement.  A woman can be a great performer, but she still needs to be attractive to find high success.  This is a parameter for her male peers.  Her male peer can come in with a beer belly and stain on his tie and no one cares. No one!  That same performing lady comes in with a beer belly and stain on her tie, and well, that’s might be a little weird, but you get my point.  She has to sell not only is she great performer, but she looks good doing it!

I grew up with an attractive mother.  Don’t get creepy.  I didn’t think she was attractive, she was my Mom, but I constantly had people tell me, “you’re Mom is attractive”.  Which to this day I’m not really sure on how to respond, but with “thanks, she owes it all to the easy childbirth I put her through”.  She was also a very successful business woman.  But she would be the first to tell you, these things weren’t mutually exclusive.  She always had to have her ‘A’ game on both in business and with her looks.

Oh, but Tim that was the 1970’s and 80’s, today that isn’t the case.

Is it ladies? Do you feel like your attractiveness plays no role in your perceived performance?

I can take a look at my own workforce.  Some of the guys role in here looking like they took all of 10 minutes to get ready and find the cleanest smelling shirt.  The females who work for me carry around ‘toolboxes’ of beauty products and always, I mean always, are put together.  I don’t ask or demand this, but some how there is a perceived culture which makes this seem appropriate.

I’m sure there is a bit of competition going on.  The ladies like to look good, especially when the other ladies in the office look good, and it starts a vicious little game to who’s more beautiful.   Doesn’t matter if you’re married or single, young or old, almost all play the game.  Guys don’t play this game.  Guys play other games, just not the ‘I’m prettier than you’ game.   This still doesn’t speak to why in our culture we expect both great performance and good looking when it comes to female performance.

You then have that big stereotype of the pretty woman who doesn’t perform, but still keeps her job.  This is the traditional stereotype of women and performance.  Oh, Mary is an idiot, but she’s beautiful so they’ll never let her go.  I don’t think this happens as much, but I’m also not naive enough to not think it still has some impact.  Pretty women will always get more chances to screw up, than a less attractive woman.  Always.  Not fair, but true.

Guys, especially those in leadership, will never bring this up.  It’s a taboo subject. Being in HR I’m always amazed that the ones who will bring up this subject more than anyone are other female leaders.  Guys won’t touch performance and attractiveness with 10 foot pool, but the ladies will!  Female executives are some of the first ones who will speak about another female employee in the context of ‘she’s a good performer, but she holy smokes she’s a troll’ and then walk away like it’s completely normal!

So, I ask you female readers, do you feel your looks play a role in your perceived performance at work?

 

 

 

The #1 way to tell someone they Suck!

Posted on by
4

Every Monday morning we have a recruiter meeting at HRU.  The purpose of the meeting is for our recruiting department to share with each other what they are working on, what they’ve accomplished the prior week, and give in updates that the full group might need to know.  Something came up this morning that I wanted to share.  Like most recruiting departments/companies/etc. we have our “Repeat Offenders”  – these are the people who just won’t give up.  At one point, a recruiter probably called them, and maybe even interviewed them, possibly even hired them – but now, they won’t leave you alone – they call, they email, they LinkedIn, send Facebook Friend requests, etc. Basically, they become a stalker!

This morning, one of the recruiters says “Mr. Jones (I’ve changed the name to protect the guilty) won’t stop bugging me, he emails his resume to me ‘every’ day!”  We all know Mr. Jones, because Mr. Jones use to work for us at a client, and it didn’t turn out so well.  Now, Mr. Jones wants us to find him his next assignment.  The problem with Mr. Jones isn’t skill related, it’s personality related – he’s annoying.  He was annoying to the client and to his work group peers, he is annoying to us, and I’m pretty sure he was annoying to his ex-wife – thus the “ex”!

So, the BIG question. How do you get Mr. Jones to stop bugging you?  This happens to every single recruiter I know eventually.

Here are the steps I use:

1. Tell Them!

That’s it – no more steps.  Here’s our problem as recruiters – we never want to burn a bridge.  “Well, Tim, you don’t know where he might go, who might hire him, I don’t want to ruin my reputation”  We have to think about our “Candidate Experience”! Bullshit.  You’re being conflict avoidant, and if you look at your last performance review, I bet under “opportunities” is probably says something about avoiding conflict or not confronting issues head on.  I had a very good HR mentor once tell me – “it’s best to deliver them that gift, then to allow them to walk around not knowing”.  Once you start being straightforward you’ll be amazed at how many people will say, “No one has ever told me that!”  That’s the problem – no one ever tells them the truth, thus they keep doing the wrong thing, instead of trying to fix what is wrong.

How do you get an annoying candidate to stop bugging you?  You tell them exactly, very specifically, very calmly, with no ill intent – “I want to give you a gift.  You might not see it as a gift right now, but I hope in time you’ll understand it to be a very valuable gift.  I (don’t use “we” or “us” or “the company – you’re avoiding again by using those) – I think you have a very bad personality flaw that comes across annoying to me, and from the feedback I have received, to those you work with.  If this does not change, I won’t be finding you any job in the future, and you’ll probably struggle to find one on your own as well.”  OUCH! That hurt right?  But, read it again, was there anything mean or untrue in the statement? If this person actually listens to the statement and acts on it, will they be better for it?  You can change the reason for whatever issue the person might have – maybe it’s hygiene, maybe it’s a crazy laugh, who knows – but the basic message stays the same.  You need to change, or I never want to speak to you again.

It’s hard for recruiters to understand this, because 99% have been taught to be nice, thoughtful people – not to be rude.  This sounds a bit rude.  In reality, I think it’s rude to string a person along and not care enough about them to actually tell them what is wrong and to help them.  Stop telling candidates your blow off lines and start telling candidates the truth.  At the very least, you’ll have more time on your hands to talk to the candidates you really want to speak to!

HR’s Biggest Irony: We think we’re Contrarian

Posted on by
Reply

When you get a group of HR Pros together there is one thing I can count on – the majority believe they somehow think differently than everyone else.  Then you look at their words and actions, and you discover they’re just like everyone else.  HR isn’t the only ones who believe this, in fact it’s rampant throughout our organizations.  The reality is, when we get around others, it’s really difficult for us to act and think differently. Hello ‘Group-think’!   The Motely Fool had a great piece on this in regards to investing, but it works for organizations as well:

“In the 1950s, Solomon Asch brought a group of students together and asked them to solve a set of problems, such as whether two lines were the same length. These were simple problems with obvious answers. But several of the students weren’t trying to pick the right answers. They were actors working for Asch, purposely giving the wrong answers in front of their peers. 

Asch repeated the study with varying numbers of actor-students blurting out the wrong answers. His conclusion: Three-quarters of the test subjects went along with the actors’ wrong answers at least once. In any given experiment, at least one-third of test subjects ignored the obvious answer and followed the actors. Just one in four consistently gave the right answer even when their acting peers disagreed with them.

Even when everyone around you is giving an obviously wrong answer, your tendency to second-guess yourself, not want to embarrass yourself, and your natural desire to fit in can trump every bit of rationality you think you have.”

Sound familiar?

The contrarian in most organizations is either the CEO, or the first one fired!  Contrarianism is not valued in the majority of our organizations.  CEO, and many senior executives, will tell you it is, and it’s what they want, but the facts don’t lie.  Most people who go against the grain don’t fit in well in corporate structures.  Which makes it even more funny when I hear HR Pros tell how they are the contrarian voice in their organizations.  No you’re not.  Plus, I would question is that what you really want to be?

I believe HR doesn’t need to be contrarian, HR needs to be conformist.  HR needs someone who is going to take that executive vision and completely conform to it.  Full buy-in, drink the kool-aid, get the tattoo on your ass, conformity.   In away that is contrarian, if you are lead by a visionary leader, either way it’s what our organizations need out of HR.  HR thinks the opposite.  They think our leaders need someone to tell them their full of it.  They don’t. Your leaders don’t want to hear they’re full of it. In fact most, really, just want to hear you think they’re right.  Those who are very self aware still only want to hear how you can help them make their ideas reality, not that their ideas are crap.

That isn’t what you expected was it? HR needs to conform, there, I said it.  Conform to the vision. Conform to the mission. Leading through conformity.

 

It’s Criminal Not To Recruit Your Competition’s Talent!

Posted on by
4

If I get 100 Talent Acquisition Pros in a room (no this isn’t going to be a dead lawyer joke) and ask them if it is ‘ethical’ to recruit each others employees, about half will say ‘No’. In fact, there are even a number who will say, “we have an agreement to not recruit from each other”! I’ve heard this, out in the open, with no restraint. It’s normal practice in the corporate world. It’s very common to hear inside Talent Acquisition departments say they don’t ‘actively’ recruit from each other because they’ve been told not to by their executives. That type of conversation will soon be a thing of the past, although, I doubt highly the activity will be!

From SHRM on the highly publicized lawsuit of many of Silicon Valley’s largest tech companies who ‘conspired’ to not recruit employees from each other:

“From 2005 to 2009, the leaders of Northern California’s largest and most powerful companies agreed to reduce competition for workers by entering into an interconnected web of secret, bilateral agreements not to solicit—‘cold call’—each other’s workforces,” the plaintiffs allege.

“By shielding their employees from waves of recruiting, defendants not only avoided individual raises, they also avoided having to make across-the-board pre-emptive increases to compensation,” the plaintiffs claim.

Agreements among the companies to refrain from the common recruiting practice of cold-calling each other’s employees deprived workers of information regarding pay packages that they could have used to find higher-paying work or to negotiate for higher salaries with their existing employers, according to the lawsuit.”

That’s right Talent Acquisition Pros it’s actually illegal to say you won’t actively recruit from your competition because you’ve agreed between each other not do it.   I get it, I get why you do this.  Having a hot job market and constantly taking talent and losing to each other seems like a never ending treadmill of work, but that’s the life of a Recruiter.  You know there are ways to stop this from happening.  Pay better.  Engage better.  Develop talent better. Have a vision that is real and share it.  It’s the age old business conundrum, do you want to pay on the front side or the back side.  Reactionary companies end up paying on the back side – more money in wages to attract talent because they turnover people who leave for better companies, more wages, etc.  It eventually catches up.

Other companies pay up front and keep their talent by paying at market or above, then constantly evaluating the market and changing pay whenever it’s needed without having employees ask, or have to leave to get paid fairly.  They develop talent from within and spend the money to do it right, giving themselves an internal pipeline.  They make sure to only allow people into leadership positions who are engaging and visionary.  It’s a lot of work, and costs money, but in the end it’s still cheaper and you have a better company.

I would actually love to see legislation that makes it illegal if you’re a corporate recruiter and you don’t make cold calls to recruit!  You saying you’re a ‘Recruiter’ but you don’t actually recruit!   That’s the real criminal activity going on!

The Mt. Rushmore of HR and Talent Bloggers

Posted on by
6

I’m a sports geek and recently the sports talk shows and Twitter have been blowing up over The Mt. Rushmore of the NBA.  This happened because Lebron James came out and said he wants to be on the Mt. Rushmore of the NBA when his career is done.  His current NBA Mt. Rushmore is: Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, Larry Bird and Oscar Robinson.  The reality is, is had no bearing on anything, but people love to argue the concept!  Why Oscar? What about Russell or Wilt?! Wouldn’t you put Lebron on it right now!? It’s a never ending argument that sports geeks, like me, love to have.

The Mt. Rushmore got me to thinking about my own world and the Mt. Rushmore of HR and Talent Bloggers.  People can start the argument with just the title! Why not just HR? Aren’t those two separate mountains!?  I don’t think so. While there are thousands of bloggers in the space, I don’t differentiate the two, because to me Talent is part of the HR function, not a separate thing (although I do think it will be out of HR in the future!).

So, here is my Mt. Rushmore of HR and Talent Bloggers:

– Kris Dunn – Mostly HR, writes every freaking day for the past 5+ years at the HR Capitalist and Fistful of Talent, has great opinions on topics, ties in pop culture, sports, politics, etc. He entertains and educates. First and foremost he is and has been an actual practitioner in the field – he has gotten his hands dirty cleaning up after an employee picnic, had to do I-9 audits, design hiring processes, facilitate on-boarding and open enrollment meetings. KD knows your world and knows how to give you information to help you get better at what you do.

 – Jessica Merrill-Miller – Jessica is one of the few HR blogger types who has actually made this a paying career.  Also a one-time real HR person, over the past few years she now only blogs and consults, but is a content machine with great opinions, and super helpful advice to HR pros, candidates and leadership alike.  JMM loves this stuff!  In fact, I would put money down that if you made JMM chose between Blogging4Jobs.com (her website) and her husband, it would be a quick divorce! You feel her passion when you read her stuff and go to her site.  Everyone wants to make money blogging, but no one puts in the time and effort that JMM does.

 – Glen Cathey – Many will know Glen by his site Boolean Blackbelt.  Glen gets recruiting and sourcing at a completely different level than 99.9% of people in this industry, and that isn’t an exaggeration!  While some will be intimidated by his writing – it can get technical – the information he provides is more valuable than a Master’s degree in HR.  Also, he does have a beginners guide to get people started, and he loves to use screen shots of what he’s doing to help visual learners.  Of all the people I read, Glen puts the most effort into his posts. Super detailed, great research, it’s like my own personal training guide on how to find talent better and faster – and he just keeps delivering!  Glen is also a working Talent pro – so he’s giving you real, live up-to-date stuff. Not something he did 10 years ago and is still trying to sell as relevant.

 – Laurie Ruettimann – While LFR is currently on blogging hiatus, or sabbatical, or vacation, it really doesn’t matter – she’s the queen of HR blogging.  No one is more opinionated and spot on, usually, with those opinions.  That’s why I love her writing – she can make me laugh and not like her all in the same post.  That’s what a great blogger does, she challenges the way you think.  LFR is the also the only HR/Talent blogger I know who can talk about her bathroom habits and have a thousand people comment. She’s got a great audience and the HR folks love to read her take on things.  She the prototypical anti-HR lady, who was an HR lady, lady.  She’s a CHRO, who decided not to be a CHRO.  For those who need a LFR fix – she has a Tumbler, or you can read her years of content still up at The Cynical Girl.  

People always want to know who I read – it’s these four consistently.  I also read all the folks at Fistful, I think they’re all great as well.  Who would be on your Mt. Rushmore of HR and Talent Bloggers?

 

Closeted Conservative

Posted on by
9

Don’t think this is a post about me coming out as a Conservative! I did that a long time ago.   I actually don’t consider myself a conservative.  I would consider myself a social moderate.  I hate big government, tax increases and 24 months of unemployment insurance.  I also hate my government telling women they can’t get an abortion, and the fact our planet is dying and government does little to stop it.  Every time there is a Presidential election I feel none of the candidates are good choices.  The two party system is slowing killing everything that is great about America.

So, who am I calling out of the closet?

All those individuals, male and female, that you have working for you. All ages and ethnicities, that are considered to be ‘conservative’ in their beliefs towards issues in politics, society and culture.

Do you know why they are in the closet?

You put them there.  You make it wrong for them to believe in Jesus, to believe women shouldn’t have abortions, to believe that people on welfare sometimes take advantage of the system.  You make them stay in the closet by making them believe that the only ‘right’ opinion is that of the liberal minority in your workforce.  You teach them that ‘inclusion’ is believing what you believe.  That your liberal beliefs in politics, finances and social responsibility are the ‘right’ beliefs.  That if you believe like we do, feel free to share it publicly around the office, but if you don’t believe like we do you aren’t welcome here.

So, they stay in the closet.

It’s not that they’re really bad people.  They just believe differently than you.  You might look at them as throw backs of by gone era.  Must be from the Midwest, you think to yourself, no one on the coast would think like that.  Must be from a small town, because big city folks are more ‘well rounded’ in their beliefs. You make them feel like their kind is unwelcome in your work environment.  We like are employees to be progressive in their thoughts and beliefs.  We are an ‘Inclusive’ workplace…

Until you’re not.

It’s My Birthday, Biatch!

Posted on by
6

Yeah, it’s my birthday, if we were really close friends you would have already known that and sent me something cool like Diet Mt. Dew or a Sprinkles Cupcake.  But you didn’t, so I wrote this stupid blog post as a birthday present to myself.  That’s what happens when you turn 33, you give yourself a present, like an adult.  Actually, I’m 44.  I don’t get why people get all upset to talk about their age.  I look at it as I’m one year closer to moving in with my kids and making their life miserable, paybacks are bitch boys!

Actually, I’m fairly certain that with the massive amounts of Diet Dew I drink I’m headed on a path to Alzheimer’s, and I don’t say that to make fun, it’s just a fact. You can’t put that many chemicals in your body and not think something will happen.  I’m very self aware. I think it’s probably a blessing in disguise to my kids. They can put me in a home, and I won’t know the difference either way.  All I ask, remember it’s my birthday, is you put me in a home that has a lake or a pond.  I like sitting by the water, even it I won’t know why.

Anyway, my wife asked me what I want.  Which is a little like asking ‘what do you want me to allow you to buy yourself’, which I appreciate, because she gets me.  If I’m going to have to get something for my birthday, I might as well like it!  At 44 there isn’t really anything material I need, so here’s the list of things I would want for my birthday in no particular order:

1. To be left alone in the house with a gin and tonic and an NBA game on.  So I can fall asleep without interruption.

2. For someone in my family to take my kids, so my wife and I can have a solid 24 hours together without having to make a meal, do a load of laundry or pick up shoes, coats, backpacks, empty food wrappers, socks, empty cups, etc.

3. For you to listen to this white kid do the rap from TLC’s Waterfalls –

Now you know what a 17 year old Tim Sackett was like.

Happy Birthday to me kiddos!

3 Steps To Make HR Suck Less

Posted on by
2

Are you working in a HR department that sucks?  You know if you are, it’s alright, you can admit it – it’s the first step of changing it.

I bet I talk to over a hundred HR Pros a year that begin the conversation with – “our HR department sucks!” or “my company doesn’t get it when it comes to HR” or “Our HR department is terrible”.   It’s not the outlier, it’s the norm.  So, many HR Pros working in HR functions where the organization has the feeling that “HR” sucks in our company.  If you’re not in one now – great – but chances are you have either been in one before, or eventually you’ll make a “grass is greener” decision and put yourself into this situation.

You know what?  We have the power to make HR Suck Less.  Yes, you do.  Stop it, you do.  No really, you do. Alright that’s enough, just play along with me at least!

Here are the 3 steps to making HR Suck Less:

1.  Stop doing stuff that Sucks.  But Tim! We have to do this stuff.  No you don’t – if your HR shop blew up tomorrow – your organization would still go on.  Over time you’ve “negotiated” to do all this sucky stuff – thinking it would “help” the organization, or give you “influence”, etc.  Stop that.  Give it away, push it out to other departments – start doing stuff that doesn’t suck, more than doing stuff that does suck.  It’s not easy, but it can be done, little by little.

2.  Get rid of people in HR who Suck.  Some people get real comfortable with sucking.  They wear their suckiness around like a badge of honor.  You need to cut the suck out of your department – like cancer!

3. Stop saying that you Suck.  We brand ourselves internally with everything we do – and if you say that you suck at something – the organizational will believe you suck at something.  If you say we are the best in the industry at recruiting our competitions talent away from them – you’ll be forced to live up to that – and little by little you will live up to that and the organization will begin to believe it as well.  Signs and Symbols!

Every single HR Shop who feels they suck – doesn’t have to suck.  If you feel you don’t suck, but everyone else tells you that you suck – you suck.  You’re just delusional and you keep telling yourself things like “we have to do this stuff”, “it’s the law”, “we don’t have a choice”, etc.   This is the first sign you’re comfortable with sucking – you aren’t listening to your organization.  No one has to suck – you can decide to do things in a complete different way. Perception is reality in terms of sucking.  You need to change perceptions, not reality.  You can still accomplish the exact same things, just do it in a way that people think you rock.  Start saying “Yes” to everything – not “No”.  “No” sucks.

Sucking less is a decision – not a skill.  You all have the skills – you just need to make the decision – to stand up and believe – Today we will no longer Suck!