Even Kanye Uses Staffing Firms!

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Kanye West is starting up a clothing line and apparently needs some additional staff to get the line off the ground.  How do I know? The staffing firm he is using posted the openings on LinkedIn!  Yep, the kind of personal branding is using a firm to find his next CFO and VP of Production.  From Bloomberg:

“Two ads appeared on the site over a week ago by Decision Toolbox, a staffing firm in Irvine, Calif., that are looking for people to be chief financial officer and vice president for production at what is vaguely called the “Kanye West clothing project.” “[U]nlike those in which celebrities merely lend their name to a label, this venture will have the star power of Mr. West’s artistic vision at the heart and soul of it,” the ads say, although they neglect to mention that sometimes that vision is just a white T-shirt.

When asked if the posts were real, Decision Toolbox said that they were and that the person behind the new Kanye line was Richard Dent III, the former chief operating officer of Victoria Secret’s (LTD) PINK line who since 2012 has been the chief executive of custom menswear company Astor & Black. Dent did not reply to e-mails asking him to explain the new venture, so it’s unclear if Astor & Black is producing the line for Kanye or if the rapper is creating it himself and has just put Dent in charge.”

Here’s the thing – Decision Toolbox is your average, everyday staffing provider.  I’m sure they would say they’re special, but the reality is they do a little RPO, a little contingent and probably some contract work.  Besides Kanye’s VP and CFO positions, they are also looking for a Machinists and Automotive Service Manager.  Sound specialized to you!?

My first reaction — I’m a little surprised on how such a huge celebrity didn’t get roped into an expensive retained boutique firm!  My next reaction — I want to meet the person at DT who pulled in Kanye as a client!  There’s a story there, and I’m 100% sure it isn’t because they have the best customer service!

This does uncover a couple of issues, though, within the staffing industry:

1. If you can recruit, you can recruit.  Staffing providers sell the fact they specialize, but the reality is, you can either find talent or you can’t.  Given, you might get talent faster with someone who spends more time in a certain industry or classification of jobs, but good recruiters will get you people regardless.

2. Retained searching is the biggest waste of time and money ever created by the staffing industry, but it’s good work if you can get it!

3. If your ‘special’ staffing firm you just hired puts your CFO and VP positions on LinkedIn as their strategy to get you the top talent in any industry, you made the wrong choice of staffing companies!

3 Ways To Make Contract Hiring Work For You

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I was in a meeting with an HR executive recently talking about some pain points they are having.  You see, in my business of staffing, you don’t get in the door unless someone in HR is unhappy with some kind of results in their hiring.  It’s the game.  You’re unhappy, I come in and tell you how I’ll make you happy.  This HR Pro was having a hard time finding engineering talent.  They did what a the majority of corporate recruiting departments do – they used a number of sourcing options, posting options, looked at hiring incentives, made sure they paid competitively, etc.  Not bad, hit all the basics.  After this failed, they went the direct-hire agency route.  Made some hires.  Some worked out.  Some didn’t.  Paid fees on all of them, since all made it past the guarantee.

So, how are you going to help me?

Fair question.  Really the only question she needed an answer to.

I dig in and find out that while the direct-hire agency route worked.  It left them feeling ‘unsatisfied’ because although they didn’t blame the staffing firm they were working with for the turnover, they couldn’t get over paying all those fees, and now have nothing to show for it.  The reality was, they have a tough environment, a challenging workplace culture, and some managers who aren’t the best managers.  This caused the turnover.  Still, they are left in the same place they started — ‘we still need engineers’.

Okay, now it’s my turn.

Me: “How about you try contract?’

Her: “We don’t use contract, we want to hire direct.”

Me: “Why?”

Her: somewhat stunned I asked this question and expected an answer — “Well, we need these people long term, not temporarily, and we want top talent and I don’t think hiring contractors would give us top talent.”

Here is HR executive’s dilemma: first, they need engineering talent; second, they turn over talent because of their environment; and third, they don’t want to pay fees.  Whether she wanted to hear it or not, Contracting was the answer to her problem.

Here was my conversation with her:

“You need to bring in Contract Engineers to fill these jobs.  We will find talented people, you will be amazed.  After 12 months, I’ll let you have them for no buy-out.  Thus, you’ll have no fees.  You have a bad environment with high turnover, you need us to find you engineers who can survive this environment and help you move forward all at once.  Contracting is great for this.  For many reasons people decide to contract.  Folks like you judge them for that, and consider them low talent.  I can give you a list of clients we are working with right now that will share stories with you about how wrong this is.  You will find great loyal talent when using contractors.”

“But it costs so much!”

“That is another misnomer! Let’s say your total hourly cost for an engineer is $60/hr, which includes pay, benefits, PTO, bonus, 401K match, taxes, etc.  I can get you that same level talent for $60/hr.  I can do that because I don’t pay all the fringes you pay, I pay the same taxes, and lower amounts of PTO.   Your cost on a 12 month contract hire is virtually the same as if you would have hired the person direct, plus if you fall in love with them, you pay nothing after 12 months.”

It’s not a sales pitch.  It’s just the facts when you work out the numbers.  She signed up.  I’ll let you know how it works out, but to be honest I already do.  We’ve been doing this for 33 years.  It will work out great, and she’ll solve her problem.

There are 3 concrete ways which Contract Hiring is a no-brainier:

1. High Turnover positions.

2. Short Term Projects – 3 months to 3 years – but basically we don’t nee the person on after that

3. Beginning or Ending of a location.  Need to grow quickly, or shutting down a location

There really isn’t any reason to be paying 20-35% fees (yes, I spoke to a company paying 35% the other day!) for direct hires.  The industry found a better way, HR Pros just struggle to change.  One other major factor that makes contract hiring work, is it seems to make companies more comfortable in taking some risks in hiring people they normally wouldn’t.  ‘What the heck, they’re on contract, if we don’t like them, we can replace them.” Every time I hear this, it makes me smile, because I know they’ll like the person!  But if contracting gives them that ‘freedom’ then I’m all for it!  I hate telling them they have the same freedom hiring direct!

 

 

 

I Really Don’t Give a S&*t About Your CEO

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Getting ready to go to The HR Tech Conference in a few weeks.  I’m totally jacked up to see all the new HR geeky tech stuff!

For those who haven’t been, as a blogger/media type to a conference, let me give you a little behind the scenes.  As an ‘invited’ guest blogger of the HR Technology Conference, my personal information is released to all those vendors who are attending.  This is so those vendors and I can schedule some time together.  They tell me how great their stuff is, and the hope is I’ll be so impressed that I’ll write about it.  Once I write about it, you (my savvy reader) will then go and buy this product.  That’s the game.

Here’s what you probably don’t know.  This ‘process’ of setting up these meetings happens mostly through emails coming from PR firms that the HR vendors have contracted with.  The emails usually have a title like: “Come meet PeopleWankers CEO at HR Tech!”  The body of the email talks about how great of an industry veteran the CEO is, how they are leading their company into the future of HR tech, what is new and exciting about their product, etc.

Here’s my issue.  I don’t care what your CEO has to say.  Let’s be honest, most CEOs are so removed from the actual daily, end-user, product experience they have no idea what actually happens after install!  The real job of the CEO is to make investors feel great about the millions that are being spent in bringing this product to market.  I don’t care about that.  I care if your product actually works. If it actually makes the job of HR, Talent Acquisition, Operations, etc.  more efficient and more profitable.  You want to know something else, the CEOs at these literally look like they are being tortured! They hate these briefings.  Is that really how you want your product presented.  Bored to death CEO with an overly caffeinated PR and Sales person trying to cover up for the complete shit show that’s going on in front of me.

The person I really want to meet from your company?  One of your clients who is currently using the product!  Find one of your companies champions, fly them into the conference, have them stop on their way from the airport at a convenience store and pick up a 20 oz. Diet Mt. Dew, and let’s sit down so they can show me how they use the product and how it has changed their life!  That’s what my audience really wants to read about.  They want real life.  It’s okay that your product isn’t perfect, we don’t expect it to be, we just want to know how it might work for us and if it would be a fit.  The CEO can sit with us if she wants!  It might be the most valuable time they spend at the conference.

So to Summarize how to talk to Timmy at HR Tech:

1. Cool Product or Service

2. Real user of product

3. Diet Dew

Seems really easy.  Alright, I need to get back to going through 300 emails about meeting lame CEOs…

 

3 Ways Your ‘Cool’ Boss Is Killing Your Career

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My wife and I have saying in our house:

“We never want to be the ‘cool’ parent.”

You know why?  ‘Cool’ parents are the ones you let their kids do things they shouldn’t be doing as kids.   It’s not my job as a parent to get my kids to like me – it’s my job to raise responsible adults who do better for their family and the world in general.  That means we say ‘No’ a lot.  No, you can’t got the movies at midnight. Yes, I’m aware the Brown’s allow this – they also allow their 17 year old son’s girlfriend to sleep over, and the teenagers to drink.  I would rather you shoot me in the head.

You know what’s funny?  I don’t think my kids hate me. (Kids – please don’t comment on this post!)  Kids like having boundaries.  They don’t tell you they like this, but when they have boundaries they act like better people. If you leave them without boundaries you end up with Lord of the Flies.

I’m not saying that being a leader/Boss/Supervisor is like being a parent. Okay, yes I am, it’s very much like being a parent!  Everyone wants to be the ‘cool’ boss when they first start out in a managerial role.  It’s very normal to think this, and go down this path.  What you find out quickly is that employees, much like children, don’t perform as well without consistency.  Things at work are going great, you’re the ‘cool’ boss, all of sudden times get hard, you lose a big client, and you have to make tough decisions, and your employees lose their minds.  This happens because you begin acting in a way you never have.  You begin hearing things like: “You use to be so cool.”; “You seem stressed all the time.”  These are signs that your subordinates think your friends.  Let me tell you a little secret — Friends don’t fire friends.  You are not friends with your subordinates.  You might be friendly, but that doesn’t make you friends.

‘Cool’ bosses who believe they are friends with you, also rarely tell you the truth about your performance.  Why? Because they don’t want to hurt a ‘friends’ feelings.  They hint at it, they run all around the bush, but they’ll never really tell you what you’re doing that is holding you back in your career path.  Here’s an example: “So Tim, tell me what does it look like for a promotion?” (I’ll be Tim the Cool Boss!) “Well, Mary, you know I back you 100%!  If anyone deserves it, it’s you, but it’s not my call.  I’m sure you’ll get it.” No, she won’t.

A ‘Cool’ boss can ruin your career faster than almost any single thing you run into in the corporate world.  While you might think the cool boss is great, the reality is your executive team knows.  They know this person lacks what it takes to move the organization forward, so they are probably stuck in middle-management for life.  A ‘cool’ boss lacks the credibility needed to influence decision makers.  This makes it very hard for your ideas to be seen and heard at an organizational level.

So, what are the 3 Ways you ‘Cool’ boss is killing your career:

1. They aren’t helping you get the most out of your talent

2. They won’t be honest with you and what you need to change

3. They don’t have the influence to move your career forward

How does it sound being the cool boss now?

$43/hr Fast Food Worker!

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There is this new, hip burger joint in Detroit metro called Moo Cluck Moo (alright, it’s a SmashBurger knock-off) which is becoming famous for paying it’s workers a minimum of $15/hr.  Okay, it’s not $43/hr, but the title was to prove a point and ask a question.  If you haven’t eaten at one of these new burger joints – they’re great! I mean great if you love a great burger, fries and shake and a ‘fast food’ meal bill of $50 for a family of four!  BTW – the sweet potato fries at SmashBurger will be on my death row menu.

How much should a fast food worker be paid?

Is $15/hr really a living wage?

$15/hr equates to about $30,000 before taxes.  Take out taxes,  health insurance co-pays, etc., and for arguments sake, let’s say that $30,000 is now $22,000.  $22,000 is fairly realistic, right?

So, $22,000 is about $1800 per month.  Let’s break down the expenses:

Crappy Apartment – $600/month

Crappy car payment – $250/month

Crappy car gas – $200/month

Crappy car insurance – $100/month

iPhone 5 – $100/month (you know this is true!)

Crappy Apartment utilities (electric, gas, cable) – $150/month

Food (other then your fast food meals you get while working) – $300/month

That’s $1700.  Let’s say we’ll leave the extra $100 for emergencies.

Is this living?

Now, let’s look at it from McDowell’s standpoint.  Unlike their ‘fast food’ friends at Moo Cluck Moo – which average check for a family of four is north of $40.  The average check for a family of four to eat at McDowell’s is probably closer to $25.  That extra $15 per check – does a lot.  It definitely makes it easier to pay $15/hr.

My point isn’t that we should be paying fast food workers more.  Someone choosing a career in the Fast food arts shouldn’t expect to make a ‘living wage’, they should expect to make a wage you can’t live on.  I love that Moo Cluck Moo is pushing the envelop in paying service workers and showing others that it can be done, on a small scale.  Can McDowell’s do it?  They could.  Are you willing to pay $15-20 more per meal for your family to eat at McDowell’s?  No, you’re not.  You will at Moo Cluck Moo – because it’s cool and hip and good.  But you can’t do that all the time.  It’s not sustainable on your living wage as a teacher, or accountant.  So, you sometimes have to go the cheaper route and eat at McDowell’s.

Simple economics will tell us that selling $.99 Double Cheeseburgers does not allow you to pay your hourly staff $15/hr and stay in business.  Charge $5 for that Double Cheeseburger and you can now pay $15/hr wages.  You will also have a drastic decrease in customers, so you’ll have to layoff most of your staff.  But those who remain will certainly be happy making $15/hr!

You can’t have it Fast — Good — and Cheap.  You must give up something.  Want McDowell’s to pay their workers a ‘living wage’?  Show them you won’t go away in droves when they double their prices.  You won’t do that.  If you won’t change — why should they change?

 

 

Do you follow terminated employees on Twitter?

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Did you see what Mike Tomlin, Pittsburg Steelers Head Coach, did last week to the players who didn’t make the final cut of the team?

Here it is from Deadspin: ”

This is pretty much the perfect 21st century NFL story, pairing the coldly impersonal nature of personnel moves with the vapidity of social media relationships. After the Steelers made their final roster cuts, head coach Mike Tomlin promptly unfollowed them on Twitter.”

First, let me say, I love this!   As a fan of most sports, there is nothing more I love than to see a coach go all in with his team, and that’s exactly what this is!   I’ve got 53 on the roster — I’m following 53 on Twitter.  That’s my team.  We live together, We Tweet together!  Whether it’s athletics or business, you want your team to focus and support the team you’ve got.  If that means making a gesture like unfollowing someone a social network, so be it.  We want to win!

Leadership is all about signs and symbols.  While this might seem small and insignificant in the larger scheme of running an NFL team, I love the detail of it!

So, what about you?  Do you unfollow (FB, Twitter, etc.) past employees who leave your organization?

 

Do You Have A Resume Commerical?

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Being that I run a recruiting agency, in the Technology space, I always find it funny to read and hear people talk about how ‘resumes are dead’.  It seems that if you talk to anyone who thinks they know and understand the IT industry, this is especially true.  CIO Magazine recently had an article: IT Hiring: Your Text Resume Is Soooo Last Century, which laminates on which type of resume is now the ‘in’ thing.  From the article:

“It’s no coincidence that LinkedIn recently began encouraging its users to amp up their profiles with videos, illustrations, photography and presentations. And Toronto startup Vizualize.me has attracted 200,000 users to its tool, still in beta, that turns text-based resumes into online infographics.

“People are open to new formats, new ways of presenting credentials,” says John Reed, senior executive director of Robert Half Technology, an IT staffing firm based in Menlo Park, Calif. “People are trying to figure out how to stand out in the crowd, how to bring life to their profile and experience, and they’re using social media tools to do that.”

Reed says that neither he nor his colleagues have seen a lot of applicants submitting videos yet. When they do, they function more like cover letters than resumes. “The videos are ‘let me introduce myself before you look at my resume,'” Reed explains. “The companies look at it and say, ‘That’s cool, that’s an interesting twist, that makes the candidate stand out.'”

So, are resumes dead?  I don’t think so.  Here’s what happens, as an industry heads toward ‘zero’ unemployment like the IT industry is heading, hiring managers, recruiters, HR, etc. become more open to anyway they can find talent.  This means you’ll run into many ‘candidates’ who are not really actively looking — those all powerful Passive Candidates — and don’t have a traditional resume.  Many of these folks will be open to talk to you, but really don’t want to take the time to put a resume together.  In a traditional recruitment process, 90% of Recruiters would walk away from these candidates – “Well, if you won’t put a resume together, then you must not want to really work here!”  This is why so many people hate recruiters and HR!  Because we say stupid stuff like that.

The best recruiters and HR Pros will find a way to get these candidates in the door without a ‘traditional’ resume.  As the article in CIO points out – video is one way to do this.  I’m a huge video fan, not necessarily as a resume replacement, but as a compliment to your resume.  Where HR, Recruiting, and/or a hiring manager might skip over your resume because of some illogical preconceived notion of what they think they want, many will see a short 90 second video introduction of a candidate and say “let’s get this person in for a face-to-face!”  That’s very powerful.  Whereas a passive candidate might not be willing to take an hour or two piecing together a traditional resume, most are willing to join a Google Hangout for a couple of minutes to introduce themselves and give some highlights.

It’s like a commercial in very modern day sense, and does what your resume might not be able to.  It’s not perfect.  Just like a resume, a short video might attract you to a candidate you ultimately find out is not a good fit for your position.  The video resume commercial does, though, give you one more short piece to the puzzle, and honestly still so few people are doing it, it will help set the candidate apart, and your HR/Recruiting shop apart from the competition.

Is HR Going The Way Of The Travel Agent?

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Quick: What is your first thought when you think of Travel Agents?

Mine? 1970’s and 1980’s, women working in strip malls, with sunny vacation posters on the windows selling over-priced-all-inclusive vacations and cruises to Mr. and Mrs. Middle America.

Quick: What is your first thought when you think of HR Managers?

Wait! Don’t answer that.

Time had a great piece recently of how Travel Agents might be the most misunderstood occupation in America today.  Most people, if you asked, would believe travel agents are no longer needed.  We have the Internet!  Expedia. Orbitz. Travelocity. Kayak. Why would anyone with half a brain ever use a Travel Agent?!  But, wait.  Here are some facts from the article on the travel industry:

– 8,000 travel agencies in the U.S.

– 64% of all air travel is booked through travel agents – that’s $84 Billion worth!

-64% of all cruises are still booked through agents

Why use an agent?  They give you the customer service you don’t get from an internet site, and solve travel problems.  Does it cost more? Yep.  You pay for what you get.  I had a young employee recently who booked a trip to Vegas on her own. Cheap airline, limited flights. Weather became a problem and flights were cancelled.  Next flights not for another couple of days.  No, we won’t move you to another airline – it’s an act of G*d.  No, we won’t give you your money back, we can give you a voucher for another flight.  No, your deposit for your hotel won’t be refunded.  Vegas trip blown up.  Travel agents wouldn’t have booked that trip.

Does this remind you of any other industry? (Hint: HR)

HR Technology is moving the way of complete manager self-service.  Need to add an employee to your staff – we’ve got a program for that.  What about onboarding that new employee? Got you covered!  Performance Management? Come on, we specialize in that — give us something challenging!  Training? Bingo. What can’t HR Tech currently do, that we do in HR?!

“Hello, Travel Agent, I need to book a trip out of HR!”

What you find out quickly, is your value to an organization is not measured in the ‘tactics’ you do.

Travel agents aren’t about booking your flights. Yeah, they do that, but you pay them for when your trip begins to blow up.  When there’s a mile long line at the airport desk to re-book, and you make one call and have it done for you.  Get to a horrible hotel two thousand miles from home?  Don’t worry, Mr. Sackett, we’ll get you into something nice tonight.

HR isn’t about all those jobs that the tech can do.  HR is about what we can do to help our organizations become more successful.  It’s about having the one on one conversation with the new manager who isn’t getting the most out of her team, and helping her get more out of that team.  It’s about helping a star employee understand their role in the future and why ‘our’ organization values them.  It’s about ensuring our mission, values and vision is carried out across all parts of our organization.

HR technology companies can create a piece of software that can do just about anything.  What that software can’t do is replace your interactions you have within your organization.  Get out of your office today and go touch some employees, properly.

 

 

How Many Hugs Is Too Many?

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My post on The Rules About Hugging At Work is one of my most read posts ever.  Check it out.

As you know – I’m a hugger.  If we meet and you believe we are friends because we connected on Twitter 2 years ago — well — you’re getting a hug! That’s how I play.

I wanted to give you an update to my Rules About Hugging At Work.  Some of you know I have 3 sons, 16, 15 and 10.  Apparently, your kids listen to you when you talk around the house.  My ten year old started 4th grade this past week and his teachers felt like they needed to add some Sackett Hugging Rules to the 4th grade — they’re not as much rules as they are limitations.  I know what you’re thinking — No — we don’t go to a Communist private school.  I send my kids to public schools, I mean it did wonders for my grammar, so they should be just fine.

Yep, my boy Coop (seriously how could you resist him in the pic above!?) likes to hug like his old man.  What did ‘Dad’ do about it when he heard the ‘fuzz’ came down on my little man?  Not a freaking thing!  I told him to hug away – just follow the rules:

– No bathroom hugs

– No hugs from behind

– Only linger if you feel the other party is hugging back.

What kind of a world do we live in where a 10 year old boy is told he’s hugging too much?  He the sweetest, most kind, kid I know.  I’m glad to know this is how we turn our young boys into men — hugging limitations.  Well played America.

Enjoy Ari Gold – he gets it – no one ever stopped him from hugging! (NSFW)

Has HR Evolved Enough To Allow Napping?

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Have you read any studies recently, or in the past, that said how beneficial naps are to high performance?  I bet you have.  Here’s one I read this week from the Wall Street Journal:

 “In a 2012 study in the journal Neurobiology of Learning and Memory, researchers split 36 college-aged students into three groups. Each group learned a memory task, pairing words on a screen with a sound. Afterward, one group had 60 minutes to nap, another 10 minutes. The final group didn’t sleep.

Upon retesting, the napping groups fared better, as expected, said Sara Alger, lead author of the study and a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Notre Dame.

More interesting, she noted, was that on further testing, including a week later, the 60-minute group performed far better than the 10-minute group, which now performed as poorly as the non-napping group. The researchers concluded that slow-wave sleep—only experienced by the 60-minute nappers—is necessary for memory consolidation.”

The benefits of napping is one of those things that we as a society, for the most part, completely agree with.  You never really ever hear anyone argue against it.  Naps are good.  So, why is napping at work still considered taboo?

Maybe a better question is: do you currently work at an organization where you would feel comfortable taking a nap, at work?

For the vast majority of you ready this the answer is ‘No’.  While the benefits of napping to productivity are unquestioned, we (American Society) still see napping as a sign of weakness, of fragility, of not being able to handle it.  There are a few of those ‘hip’ Silicon Valley companies who ‘allow’ napping, but for the most part who will not find napping rooms in most American companies.  You will not find HR in American companies encouraging their teams to ‘shut-it-down’ at 2pm and having nap time across the company.

Don’t get me wrong, you will find American employees sleeping on the job!  But don’t worry, HR will ‘handle’ that!  I myself have fired employees for ‘sleeping’ on the job.  The issue isn’t if napping is good for productivity.  The issue is those employees getting fired for sleeping are doing it without consent or permission.

I wonder if employees, I even think about my own team, if told — “Hey, from now on out you can take a one hour nap at work!” — would they take advantage?  I’m sure they would take advantage if they were told it wouldn’t effect their start and end times.  What if you told your workforce — “We are now working 8am to 6pm, but from 2pm-3pm we’ll all be taking a nap!”  How would that go over in your workplace.  I have a feeling that ‘taking a nap’ would become a very negative ‘policy’ change!

So, what say you HR Pros — Has HR (In America) Evolved Enough To Allow Napping at Work?

I say, No!