What The ‘F’ Do Recruiters Know?!

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FYI – Gang!  I’ve been asked to be a part of a panel discussion at SXSW 2014!  I’m super excited because I’ve never been to SXSW, but everyone tells me it’s something you have to do, if your anybody.  And if I’m anything, I’m somebody.  Being somebody, I’m asking you to vote for our session.  The voting seems a little American Idolish, reality TV show, but, Hey, give the people what they want and they’ll return the next year.  SHRM should take note…

Here’s the details on the Session:

What the F*ck Do Recruiters Know?

What the F*ck do recruiters know? They know most of you have no freaking shot at ever being in a management position, but all of you think you want to be and can be. They know your too fat and too ugly to have a great career – but you have zero self-insight and think ‘that stuff really shouldn’t matter’ – when it does to those making the decisions. Recruiters know that they don’t have to know your job, to find someone better to replace you. Recruiters know nothing about what you do – and they’re completely fine with that – but you’re not. Recruiters know how to get shit done in your organization and what buttons to push to get stuff over the finish line.

The gang from America’s Snarkiest HR and Recruitment Blog – Fistful of Talent – takes the filters off and shows you that the shit that recruiters know.

Session synopsis: Recruiters don’t know shit, except some shit you want to know, come and get to know their shit and you’ll be the shit.

– See more at: http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/vote/20816#sthash.fZL1hSBn.aIWAdapn.dpuf

I’m guessing it will be fun.  Probably won’t change my life, but a cool experience talking with like-minded people, and beer.

Go vote, please.  Takes like 2 minutes to register and vote.  Look at it this way – each day I provide free content.  2 minutes to vote for this session is payment for sucking all of my ideas into your work places’ for free for the past 2 years.  BTW – I have tracking program that shows me who reads each blog and exactly where they go after leaving my blog – so I know.  I know if you truly care about me or not.  And much like Santa, I’m making a list.

It’s your move.

– See more at: http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/vote/20816#sthash.fZL1hSBn.aIWAdapn.dpuf

To Succeed You Must First…

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FAIL!

87% of people polled could finish this statement.  Are you surprised?  It’s jammed down our throat constantly, but I’m not sure why.  I have friends who make their entire living going around the country speaking to people about how great it is to fail!  They know that people love to hear this because so many of us fail often.

Why is it people think you must first fail, in order to succeed?

The actual Proverb is this:

“In order to Succeed, you must first being willing to Fail.”

Can I call Bullshit on this?

Oh, I just did.

Why do you have to fail first?  Can’t you just go out and freaking succeed!?  I mean hit one out of the park on the first pitch. I don’t need to strike out. Sure it might happen, but why should I tell myself that first I need to strike out before I hit a home run?  Do you think MLB players go up to bat with that mentality? “Ok, let’s get his strike out, out of the way so I can go hit a home run later.” No, they don’t!

This one statement gets jammed down our throats in business more than any single other piece of garbage advice I’ve ever heard.  I think people like this statement on posters in their office, or on their coffee mug, because it gives them an excuse for failing. “Well, you’ve got to fail first, before you can succeed…” (tips up coffee cup to mouth as coffee drips onto the front of his white shirt)

Then it gets dragged into all kinds of other crappy advice statements:

– “All my failures equal success!”

-“I haven’t failed enough to succeed!”

– “Success is just a failure away!”

– “Success always starts with failure!”

– “The secret to Success is failure!”

You want to know the real secret!?  Statistically speaking, the more you fail, the more likely you are to fail again!  Let that one run through your failed brain pattern for a second.

It’s like those parents who have four girls and the Dad goes “well #5 will surely be a boy!”  No it won’t, you and your wife are predisposition through genetics to have girls, moron — but please enjoy your fifth girl!

If you fail often, you will probably keep failing.  That’s why you shouldn’t hire people who show a pattern of failing.  They aren’t learning how to be successful, they are learning how to fail!  Stop reading your Stuart Smalley Daily Affirmations and wake up!  Those who tend to fail, tend to continue to fail.  But those who fail will tend to buy into the lame malarkey about how failing will lead them to success. Why? Because they are failures.

Happy Monday!  And remember “To Succeed, you must first Succeed!”

Opportunity, Looks A Lot Like Work

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In a world where everyone is completely insane over our celebrity culture – I can buy into this message from Chris Kutcher at the Teen Choice Awards:

Great message for the pre-teens who were probably watching this live – but also for the millions who now watching on YouTube.  As a father, I find it hard every day to find great message and role models for my sons.  I’m not saying I want my kids to look up to Ashton Kutcher, but hearing him say that it’s cool to be smart, that its cool to work, well, I can buy into that.

Last week I wrote a post on the only 3 career paths that are available for new graduates are: College, Military or Prison.  I forgot two:

1. The Lotto (Which is really the last great American Dream! And yes, I do consider ‘Lotto’ a career path! Just look at how many people play it hoping to make it their career!)

2. Work

What I mean by ‘Work’ is actually working one of those ‘crappy’ jobs that politicians and the media keep putting down as not ‘real’ jobs.  Those ‘crappy’ jobs (sales, service, etc.) are actually real jobs — if you make them real jobs.  Yeah, you won’t make much, but like Kanye said “He got ambition baby look in his eyes. This week he mopping floors, next week it’s the fries.”  Those crappy jobs, worked by someone with passion and dedication, can turn into something really good.  Maybe not in 1 year or even two years, but eventually they do.   I’ve worked and had a W2 job since the day I turned 16.  I’m not the smartest, I’m not the sexiest, but I go to work — everyday.

Top HR Lies

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In the never ending quest to beat a blog series to death, let’s hope this is my last installment of “Top Lies” (Top Candidate Lies, Top Recruiter Lies).

At this point I’ve completely pissed off ‘candidates’, made some fun of Recruiters, so now it’s time to really have some fun with the easiest target of all  — HR!  For the most part my peers in HR have fairly thick skin.  HR is actually use to being made the joke in the professional world.  The only profession that gets made fun of worse is probably lawyers!  I could do an entire post on why HR lacks respect, but that has been done a thousand times and in reality having respect in HR isn’t a professional dilemma, it’s a personal one!  If you’re in HR and don’t have respect in your organization, don’t blame the HR profession, you need to look in the mirror!

All that being said, HR might be the king of the liars in your organization!  Let’s break down a few of Top HR Lies:

– “In HR we are here for ‘our’ Employees!”  — HR is not an employee advocate.  HR supports the organization’s leadership and mission.  BTW – many HR Pros don’t even get this concept! When push comes to shove, HR will always support that way leadership wants to go, not the way employees want to go.

– “You can tell HR, we are always confidential!” — No we’re not! HR has an obligation to look out for the best interest of the organization, not you.  If you tell HR something ‘confidentially’, there is a very good chance that information will be shared with others in the organization.  The reality.  HR has to mitigate the risk of the organization.  Your craziness has risk to it.

– “We had no idea layoffs were coming…” —  Sorry, but we did.  But we just can’t tell you that and create panic throughout the organization.  So, we lie. It sucks, but there isn’t any other way.

– “No, you can’t change your health benefits until next Open Enrollment, it’s the law!”  — Yeah, that’s kind of a lie as well!  There are laws governing when we ‘have’ to allow you to change your benefits (marriage, child being born, divorce, etc.), but HR can decide to change the plan rules and allow you to change if we wanted. But, that becomes a logistical nightmare!  Even with keeping our plan rules intact, we can still get around it.  Let’s say you are a young employee and chose the crappy low-cost catastrophic major medical plan that basically covers nothing, but you’re young and nothing will ever happen to you. Then, something does happen to you.  You come to HR. HR says, “We told you so! Sorry, you have to wait until next Open Enrollment, have fun with that cancer!”  HR could actually fire you on a Friday, hire you back on Monday and have you sign up for the ‘new’ insurance.  Based on your plan there could be some audit risk based on IRS code, section 125 – so check it out before you go do this. But, it’s not like you’re doing this all the time – this is maybe once a year for a desperate situation – I’ll take that risk (and have) to help my employee in this situation!

– “We fire people!”  — HR has never fired anyone, ever.  Managers of of employees fire people.  HR just supports that decision, and frequently influences a manager to make that decision, but we don’t pull the trigger.  Managers blame HR — “HR is telling me I have to do this”, but that’s a lie as well.  HR advises of the consequences if certain actions aren’t taken. Ultimately, leaders make the final decision on what is actually going to happen.

– “Top performers get rewarded!” — Actually, in most organizations even average performers get rewarded….and low performers.  We have a compensation plan and don’t want to leave anyone out. So, you can be great and get a 3% raise. Your cube mate could be a slug and get a 1% raise.  How does that feel?

–  “We treat everyone equally!” — The reality is we treat certain employees better and give them more leeway to screw up, because they are more valuable to the organization.  Not all employees are create equal.  That was just something that sounded good on the poster for the break room.   Some employees are actually substantially more valuable to the organization than you are.  We treat them differently.

– “We value diversity and inclusion!” — We actually really don’t give a crap about this.  It gets shoved down our throats, legally, organizationally, etc. What we really care about is filling positions with solid talent.  But leadership makes me provide a report that counts the color of faces, so now we have to care.  So we care about the number of faces, not the true sense of diversity.  Don’t hate the players, hate the game.

Alright HR Pros – What Lies Did I Forget?

 

 

Employees, Smoking = Less Money

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Smokers will hate to hear this, but if you smoke, you’re more likely to make less money.

Really?

Really.

From CNBC —

“In a new paper, Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta economists Julie Hotchkiss and Melinda Pitts found that smokers only earn about 80 percent of what nonsmokers earn. People who used to smoke and quit more than a year earlier, though, earn 7 percent more than people who never lit up in the first place.

The PSA advice that “one cigarette is one too many” apparently is true at work. Hotchkiss and Pitts found that the earnings of both a weekend social smoker and a pack-a-day puffer suffer a similar wage gap.

“It is simply the fact that someone smokes that matters in the labor market, not the level of intensity,” they wrote. “Even one cigarette per day is enough to trigger the smoking wage gap.”

That truly sucks, because those of you who know me, know I love hanging out with smokers!  Smokers are the backbone of your informal office communication network.  Smokers come in all shapes and sizes, from all levels of your organization.  It’s nothing on any given day to see a senior executive and some rank and file employee, standing outside enjoying a smoke and some small talk.  Many times strong relationships are formed outside in the ‘smokers area’, and it is very common for information to be shared that normally wouldn’t be amongst employees of different ranks.  I don’t smoke – but I love going out and hanging with smokers!

So, as you can imagine, this news from the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta (and why does Atlanta have their own Federal Reserve?!) was extremely disheartening to me.  I wonder what else Julie and Melinda have been digging into down there in Atlanta?  Do employees who drink Gin make more than all other employees? (please let this be true!) What about the office slut? Does he/she make more money, at work?  If so, did they name that ‘the slut wage gap’?  Do our tax dollars support this ‘research’?

Here is what I know, compensation pro wannabes, if slice and dice the data enough, you can make up any conclusion you want to.  The reality is, smoking equates mostly to lower education, thus lower wages.  That’s a broad stroke, but fairly accurate.  Educated people, for the most part, understand that smoking is bad for you.  Having that knowledge, and being educated, tends then to lead to a non-smoking life.  Having lower education, and knowing smoking is bad for you, tends to lead to a life of ‘what the hell, I’m going to die anyway’.  Some educated folks fall into this same trap.

So, I’ll ask you my smoking friends – if you knew you could make more money, would you stop smoking?  Also, if you never smoked, are you willing to pick it up for a 7% bump in pay?!

Smoke’em if you’ve gotten them in the comments…

 

Most Embarrassing Termination Ever

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You probably saw this when it hit the interwebs on Sunday and blew up yesterday, but if you didn’t, AOL’s CEO, Tim Armstrong, fired an employee while on a conference call with 1000 AOL employees!  Here’s the actual verbiage from Slate:

“It was supposed to be a conference call to rally the troops ahead of what would undoubtedly be hard times. And at first it sounded that way. But then at one point Armstrong can be heard saying (minute two of the recording), “Abel, put that camera down, now.” And then: “Abel, you’re fired. Out.” A few seconds later, he went on as if nothing had happened. The victim? Patch creative director Abel Lenz. Business Insider notes that if Armstrong fired Lenz for taking photographs it was an odd reason. Lenz always took photographs of meetings to then post in the company’s internal site.” 

And we wonder why American CEOs get a bad rap…

I’ve been a part of some pretty ugly terminations in my day.  Terminations when the CEO, or another senior executive, comes to you and says “Tim, go let go of ‘so-and-so'”.  My response is always, “Sure! What for?”  I say ‘Sure!’ first to make sure I’m on their page.  I need the ‘what for’ because I need to put it on the form. In HR we always have a form, for that executive to sign-off on.  In the business we call that ‘CYA’, technically.   If the superior I was speaking to was hot, I would usually get this response, “Because I said so”.  I would then quickly type termination reason: “Because I said so” on the form and ask them to sign it.  This usually got to the real reason, as I’ve yet to run into a senior executive willing to sign the form with the reason being “Because I said so.”

To Abel’s credit, he responded with “No Comment” on Twitter from a bar soon after being fired with a picture of the bar.  G*d, I love social media!  This might be the most public firing I’ve ever heard of in a corporate setting!  Clearly, we don’t know the behind the scenes information.  Did Tim tell Abel not to take pics beforehand, and Abel decided to do it anyway?  Did Abel sleep with Tim’s wife the night before, and Tim just got a text from the misses?  Did Tim just hate Abel and actually planned to do this all along?  I doubt those facts will ever some out.

I would pay to be a part of the HR weekly meetings at AOL this week!  HR is vilified about 99% of the time by executives, the 1% when we are their needed ‘partner’ just happened at AOL.  The CEO had a major brain fart, and now needs to know how HR will get his ass out of this mess.

So, I’ll ask you HR Pros!  What would you do in this scenario?

 

 

How To Get An Entry Level Job, Part II

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The most read post at the Tim Sackett Project is: How To Get An Entry Level Job.   Check it out, if you haven’t already. It’s my advice to a new college grad about how to get that first job. That grad is Christina Hart, and I wanted to do a follow up to the original post to see if my advice worked, or if it’s just B.S. like the rest of the stuff I write!  Here are the questions I asked Christina and her responses, unedited:

(Tim) What worked in your job search in finding your first entry level job after graduating?

(Christina) “When we spoke a little over a year ago, I was just in the process of picking up and moving to New York City. Before that point, I had been applying for full-time jobs while working a few part-time jobs in my hometown in Michigan. I knew that NYC was my desired location, so I made a commitment to move and give it a try. It was a struggle to get interviews before that point, because many companies were looking for individuals who were already in the NY area, and could come in at little more than a moment’s notice. For me specifically, moving to NYC made all of the difference. Within 24 hours of being in the city I had a job, and it’s highly unlikely that I would be where I am without having taken that step first. My first job in the city was temping as an administrative assistant, which lasted about 2 months, and from there I was offered a great full-time position at that same company.

The temping agency route is something I never really considered, a somewhat atypical path for most graduates to think about. That being said, it got me in the door and from there it gave me an opportunity to prove my worth. I networked within the company, which led to a career sponsor, and my current role.

At the end of the day, the thing that worked for me was taking that giant risk and moving across the country to the city I wanted to be in – even without having a job first. I think for graduates who have that same mindset with being in a certain geographical region, the best thing really is to just go, and once you’re there, network like crazy.”

(Tim) What didn’t work?

(Christina) “I tried a lot of different things when I was looking for my first entry-level role. Some of which, seems silly looking back. I remember seeing a lot of students who were doing social marketing campaigns for themselves on twitter or starting websites dedicated to hire so and so dot com. I had one of those websites. I was on just about every website at the time to create my personal brand. I had an about.me, a website, twitter, facebook, blog, and personal QR code – and most of it was redundant. While it’s still incredibly important to be cognizant of your online presence, quantity does not equal quality. I was hyperaware of every social platform and making sure that I was on each and every one. I don’t think that’s necessary, nor helpful in your search. I think you need to be very aware of what you want your social brand to reflect, but at the end of the day the company is not going to care whether you have 3 or 10 sites dedicated to such. Most of them are gimmicky anyways, and that’s often not what’s going to get you ahead. My advice to myself looking back, focus on understanding a few platforms really well and showcase that, instead of spreading yourself over every trend at the moment (like those hireme websites).

Continuing on the topic of social, I did a ton of online networking while looking for my first job. I participated in a ton of twitter chats, reached out to lots of people on LinkedIn, and applied online to every job imaginable. Looking back, I’d tell myself to get off the computer and get to every in-person networking event I could. I relied on social too much. I think it’s pretty typical of students now to rely on those indirect forms of communication (that’s how we communicate, right?) – but business and relationships still need to be nurtured in person. Go to networking events just to talk; talk to anyone you can. Don’t always greet that person with your pitch, instead try to form an authentic connection and from there people are more willing to help.”

(Tim) What advice would you now give someone graduating and looking for their first job?

(Christina) “Intern. Take a volunteer or part-time internship in the area or field you want to work in. You’re going to need it.

Customize your resume for each job/company. It should be tailored based on the job description and should include key words relevant to that industry. If you don’t know what those key words are, do a quick Google search and chances are you’ll learn pretty quickly. If the position says it’s looking for someone who knows Radian6 or CSS or WordPress – make sure those words are on your resume.

Speaking of platforms and programs, if the job or industry you want to be in requires knowledge or expertise in those areas – learn them. Take a class. Teach yourself. Make yourself an expert.

Get offline. LinkedIn is still my most successful and important networking tool, but turning those relationships into real life ones was the most important thing I could do. Go to large networking events or meet people for coffee. It doesn’t matter what size, as long as you’re talking. Show your value, so that people will remember you when they hear of a job. Make sure you’re the person they remember.

Nurture those relationships. Check back in every so often. A relationship is two ways; make sure you’re not just taking.

If you want to work in a specific industry or at a specific company reach out to people in those areas and get to know that industry. Use LinkedIn to ask people to share their expertise. Use informational interviews to find out what it takes to succeed, and what skills you need to have. Don’t be afraid to be concise in what you want. Tell them you want to work in X and ask them how to get there.

Everyone has to start somewhere – if you want to work at a company or in a certain industry bad enough, take whatever job will get you in. I know we all want to be running the company from the get go, we want the prestige, but you’re only going to get there if you get in first. Be the low man on the totem pole and use the opportunity to learn from those above you. If you work hard you will go far, no matter where you start. Humbleness, and a strong work ethic, will show through.

Find a career sponsor, and a few mentors. Know the difference between the two.”

(Tim) What was the hardest part of your job search?

(Christina) “Realizing the skills gap exists, and also that I didn’t want any of the jobs that were typically associated with my degree. I was applying for jobs and industries with which I had no expertise. I expected people to see what a great candidate and person I was, without the credentials to back it. We all assume a liberal arts education from a good school will get us a job, in reality; technical training and internships are imperative.

I’m introverted in nature, so learning to utilize my strengths to my advantage was a struggle. Working a room a large networking event was difficult. Learning to define what makes me the best candidate and how to describe my qualities took time.”

 

4 Big WOW items I got from Christina’s Experience —

1. Commit!  If you want a certain job, certain industry, certain location, certain company – y0u have to commit 100% and go after it.

2. Get in anyway possible.  Christina took a temp job into the industry and location she wanted.  People shit all over the idea of temp work, but the reality is, most companies frequently hire on temporary workers who are awesome into full-time roles.  It’s hard to find great talent, when a ‘temp’ proves themselves as ‘great’ talent, rarely do they get let go!

3. Get Experience.  I have so many HR friends who hate that I say this, but you need to do an unpaid internship if you can’t get a paid one!  For the betterment of your job prospects you have to get some experience.  Many times that experience will come in the form of an unpaid, volunteer professional type of a position.  It is the reality of many companies today that they can’t afford to have paid interns, but would love to have interns.  Go offer yourself up for free.

4. Have Lunch!  You have to network with ‘real’ people, live, face-to-face.  Social has a part in this — initial networking, follow up, etc. But nothing replaces the good old sit down and talk one on one type of networking.  It takes time, but it’s the best way to spend your time.  People can ignore you on social media, they have a very hard time ignoring you when you’re sitting across from them!

Reason #2763 People Hate HR

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Beyond the normal reasons that people tend to Hate HR –  I had one come across my desk recently that might be the #1 reason of why people hate HR – but since there are so many reasons I’ve decide #2763 just sounded better!

Here’s the story line:

Normal sunny summer day.  Candidate comes into interview – hiring manager loves candidate – candidate loves hiring manager, company and position. End of story right?  Wrong! You see candidate must relocate.  Relocation painful.  Relocation stressful. I say in my deep caveman voice.  Send candidate to HR – they’ll solve the Relocation dilemma because they have Big Relocation Policy!  Ugh…

Big Relocation policy says that the corporation will spend a ridiculous amount of money for corporate housing for 90 days.  Furnished apartment, flights home each week, food allowance, etc.  Average monthly cost for temporary living expense for the organization runs about – $4000 per month – for 3 months.  Candidate says I don’t need temporary living – I want to move right away because of getting my kids enrolled in school.  Instead of temporary living expenses – can you just give me $2000 for deposit and first months rent on a place in the area I want my kids to go to school?  Seems like a no-brainer, right? Wrong, again!  Big Relocation Policy doesn’t allow for this.  You need to use temporary living at corporate housing.  You need to spend thousands of more dollars.  We not make decision – policy make decisions…

Good Rule of Thumb for HR Pros:

“If it saves your organization money, find a way to make it happen.”

You think this is a one time occurrence, one bad company, one bad HR pro – it’s not – this is HR.  This might not be your example in your HR shop – but I guarantee you, someone has one of these stories about you.  Theses things are ridiculous, but we explain them away by telling folks ‘you don’t understand’ – ‘it’s situational’ – ‘it’s a slippery slope’ – etc.  You know what – those folks – they do understand.  They understand business.  They understand how to help people and make their work life a little easier.  It’s not them that don’t understand – it’s you.

You want to hear reason #2764 of why People Hate HR…

The Best Thing HR Can Ever Do For Employees

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By random circumstance I’ve had three of the most boring HRish types of conversations in the past month about 401K!  Can you imagine me talking about 401K?  It’s so, well, it just regular old HR talk!  One conversation was with our banking partner (Shoutout to PNC, 33 year business relationship with them and I value that greatly!), two others with trench HR peers, but all three conversations were about the exact same thing — Auto Enrolling employees into 401K.

This is actually a really polarizing topic in HR, I’ve found!  It comes down to two schools of thought:

1. HR Pros who believe auto enrolling is helping their employees

2. HR Pros who believe they are infringing on the privacy of their employees by auto enrolling their employees

I’m in camp #1!  In fact, I’ll go on record in saying that auto enrolling your employees into 401K is the single greatest gift you can give to your employees over their career with your company.  Bam!  I said it.

Let me give you a few facts about employees:

1. The majority of your employees that are under 30 have no idea they should be saving for retirement – when it’s the most important time to do so.

2. The majority of your employees at any age – don’t save enough for retirement.

3. The majority of your employees think a magical fairy will come along at age 65 and pay for them to live the next 25-30 years.

These are all actually true!

Most people don’t think about retirement and the amount of money it will take to retire until they get to be around 50.  At that point, it’s too late and they are then on a path to be a senior citizen greeter at Walmart.  HR can change all of this.  HR can ensure that when your employees get to be around retirement age, at least they might have some hope of sitting around enjoying not working!  It’s easy. It’s called Auto Enroll – check it out.

If it’s so good why aren’t all companies doing this?

It’s America, right?  We hate being forced to do anything.  What!? You mean your going to force me to sign up for 401K and save for my future! How dare you!  This isn’t Russia!

Want to take 401K Auto Enrollment one great step further!?  Auto Enroll your employees and have 3% taken out of their pay automatically as well.  Just auto enrolling really does nothing but making it easy for people to start saving, but you can actually auto enroll and start them out with an automatic deduction of your choosing. The employee at anytime can choose not to participate and stop the deduction, but very, very few ever will!

Can you imagine the difference you could make in your employees life by forcing helping them start saving for retirement?  For many of your employees, it would be the best thing HR ever did for them, period.

2014 Career Paths: Prison, Military or College

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My gun-loving Democratic friend, Laurie Ruettimann, sent me an article last week about the plight of Americans from the Washington Times basically saying 4 out of 5 Americans are at or near Poverty. I sent a message back ‘joking’ that it was another attempt by her to convert me to Democrat.

She replied with “No, it’s my attempt to get help. It’s employers like ‘you’ who can help this, not government, not Democrats, not Republicans…”

Here’s segment of that article:

“Here’s a snippet of what the American dream has become in the past few years: Irene Salyers, 52, of Buchanan County, Va., said the economic trend is only going to get worse.

“If you do try to go apply for a job, they’re not hiring people, and they’re not paying that much to even go to work,” she said, AP reported. The youth have “nothing better to do than to get on drugs.”

The American Dream is a nightmare for the majority of Americans. Our government can’t help. Let’s face it: the brightest people in our society aren’t in government; they are in private industry because that’s where the money is. Our government is mostly filled with narcissists who like to think they are really important while doing nothing but spending our tax dollars on band-aid programs and trying to stop the bleeding of a broken system. That’s just reality. 

No one, on either side of the political fence, has the brainpower to stop what’s going on.  They just jump on the bull and hang on with no control over where the beast wants to go.

I use humor in most situations. It’s my defense mechanism. When you grow up in the inner city — white, short and red headed — you either get your ass kicked or become funny. I didn’t like getting my ass kicked, so I got funny. Over the past year I’ve come up with what I think the career path is for my own three sons in today’s world. It’s what our government and public education system now provide to every American child.

What Career Path Will You Choose?

There are three concrete paths:

1. College

2. The Military

3. Prison

Realistically, those are the only three career paths a middle-class American child has today.

If you are a smart white kid with some money in your family, you have options. You can go to college. You can go to Europe. If you are a smart minority kid, the government will pay for you to go to college.

But most kids from the “lower-middle” or “lower classes” will either go to military or prison, regardless of race. A few will make it through the Community College ranks. 

(One caveat, super smart kids can go to college on scholarship no matter what race.)

But the broader point is this: if you are of average-to-lower intelligence, your career path narrows. College isn’t an option. Let’s face it — if High School kicked your ass, college probably isn’t a good bet. So you are left with the Military, which is actually a great option for many young people today who are lost.

Or you have prison.

This is what our society is showing our young people. College is the only way to move up. And if you don’t go to college, you have to go to the military or you’ll end up in prison.

We no longer have skilled trade programs. Service jobs don’t pay enough for you to actually live. Any decent hourly wage job will eventually be sent overseas or technology will be invented to make it obsolete.

Our President wants to start a Community College program that will allow most Americans to attend. I actually like this idea — but it’s really just taking the old programs that high schools use to provide and moving them into ‘High School II’ — aka community colleges. I think high schools could do most of these ‘non-professional’ programs better and cheaper than community colleges — but at least it’s a start.

Corporations, ultimately, will have the final say with all of this. If American companies want and need a trained workforce, they will make it happen regardless of what our government does. If they don’t, the career paths I’ve laid out will remain.

I am not trying to be pessimistic. If anything, I am being pragmatic in my views of our current situation.  Four out of five Americans are within reach, or in, poverty. That’s real. 

What is your company doing to help out this situation?