3 Stupid Questions To Ask In An Interview

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I’m sure at this point you saw the news from this weekend – Reese Witherspoon’s husband got arrested for DUI and she did what any drunk celebrity wife should do – threatened a police officer with the best question ever asked by celebrities – “Do you know who I am!?”   Yep – Mrs. Legally Blonde herself asked the one question celebrities are trained to never ask, under any circumstances.  She broke Rule #1 of being celebrity – and it was glorious!

This got me to thinking, from a candidate perspective, what are the questions who could ask that would ensure your interview went from Fab to Drab in about 3 seconds!?  My Catfish Friend, Kathy Rapp, over at Fistful of Talent had a great post this past week – 3 Questions Freakin’ Awesome Candidates Ask – which gave candidates three absolute home-run questions to ask at the end of the interview to show you’re a Rock Star candidate.  My list does the opposite!

The cool part of my list – is that each of these questions are from actual candidates asked during interviews that I’ve been apart of:

1.  Do you drug test?   Nope!  But we do now!  I’m pretty sure the person who asks this question has already made up their mind they don’t want to work for your company and they use this to ensure you won’t hire them.  Believe me there are plenty of people who interview, to get their parents, spouse, etc. off their back, but they don’t really want to work – so they sabotage themselves.  Asking dumb questions at the end is one of the best ways to sabotage an interview! Other question on this path – Do you do background checks? Do you do credit checks? Do you hire felons?

2. How long before I get to use sick time?  Never!  Because you wont’ be working here!  Again, the person who asks this question asks it for a reason – that reason is they ‘plan’ on being sick.  Quick HR Pro Rule of Thumb – if someone plans on being sick – you aren’t going to be happy with that hire.  Other questions on this same path:  When would I get a raise? How soon can I use my health insurance?  What happens if I’m late to work?

3. Can you date co-workers here?  To be honest – my immediate follow up question to this, without answering his question, was – “Are you dating one of the employees here?”  To which he said “No” – but that he ran into this at another employer and didn’t want to ‘have any problems’ again.  So, you’re assuming we have folks here who are just not going to be able to hold themselves back and must date you!?  Is what I’m hearing!  Again, I’ll come clean on my next response – I told him “You’re allowed to date employees here, you just can’t sleep with them.” (That wasn’t actually our policy – but it was fun to say!) At which he had no response and I ended the interview.  Other questions on this same path: Can you drink alcohol on the job here?  Can you smoke pot in the work bathrooms?  Can you steal office supplies?

What has been the dumbest question you have ever heard during an interview you were apart of?

It’s Tuesday! Have A Great Day, or…

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I know a guy who always answers “Outstanding!” when you ask him how he is doing.  I always wondered what it would feel like to have an “Outstanding” day, each and every day.   Just once I wanted to say “Really? Outstanding? Again?  That’s like 34 out of 34 days in row now – do you ever have just a “Great Day”?”   My guess is Mr. Outstanding probably wouldn’t have gotten the sarcasm of my inquiry…

Watched The Odd Life of Timothy Green this weekend with my wife and 9 year old.  This scene sums up how I think most people feel –

Have the day you have!

 

Launch and Learn

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I love HR Pros! I really do.

There is one common trait that many of the best HR Pros have – we love to have things perfect before we launch or go public with them!  BTW – this is specific to HR – Operations, Sales, Marketing, etc. are all willing to ‘try’ stuff – to throw it out there and see what happens.  In HR this is taboo!

Why is that?

For me this idea is the one thing that truly holds HR back from being innovative.  Think about these words from Mark Suster at the Both Sides of the Table blog:

“I’m sure you’ve all heard saying derived from Voltaire, “don’t let perfect be the enemy of the good” which in a way is encapsulated in the lean startup movement and the ideology of shipping a “minimum viable product” (MVP) and then learning from your customer base.

I think about this topic of perfection being the enemy of the good often. Because I live in startup land where everybody is a perfectionist. I think this is particularly true because every startup entrepreneur is trying to catch lightning in a bottle.

I hear about it in every first product release. You can see it in the founders’ eyes. They want the perfect feature set, the PR company lined up to do the perfect press release, they want maximum coverage, rave reviews, viral adoption and they want to sit back and then wait for the signups to come roaring in.

Life doesn’t work like that. And gearing yourself up for a lighting-in-a-bottle moment leads to bad company decisions.”

If those types of decisions lead to ‘bad company decisions’, inevitably those same types of behaviors will lead to bad HR decisions.

I hear what’s going around in your head right now, HR Pros!  I’m an HR Pro myself – that voice is hard to quiet.  “How can making sure something is perfect – a project, a program, a new process – be bad for HR and our organization!?”  Making something perfect isn’t bad.  Failure to launch is bad.  Also, taking too long or using too many resources to ensure perfection can be a huge negative to how HR, and you, are viewed.  In HR we aren’t trying to save lives or solve the world economic crisis – we have some room to ‘test’ and do some ‘trial and error’ – as long as communicate that is what you’re doing.

I’ll give you a little secret I’ve used for years in HR.  Like most of us in HR I’ve designed my fair share of new programs and processes, and I’ve tried to make them perfect.  To ensure I didn’t have something blow up on me – I always have done ‘soft’ launches.  I’ll launch with a single department or I’ll communicate out that this is a ‘test’ and we need feedback.  99.9% of the time my ‘test’ goes off without any issues and the ‘test’ becomes the program.  That .01% of the time that something goes wrong or there are errors – we chalk it up to why we ‘doing the test first’!  Everyone wins.  Employees and hiring managers get to tell you where you messed up without feeling like they’re stepping on toes.  You get to correct your errors without feeling like an idiot. The company moves forward – faster.

 

PeopleCompanies

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I’ll give inspiration for this post to awesome HR Pro Trish McFarlane. Trish posted a small little vent on Facebook this week about all these HR companies who use “People” as part of their corporate name – and none of us really know what the hell they do.  So, I’m going to help you out and tell you what I think they do based on their company Name!  Here we go:

PeopleClues – I’m going to assume they are finding out ‘clues’ about people – probably people we want to hire into our companies.  The problem is I don’t want ‘clues’ – I want ‘Facts’!  Please change your name to ‘PeopleFacts’ – and then I will work with you. Truth be told – I have no clue.

PeopleScout – Seems like a never easy one – a company who is going to go out and ‘scout’ people for you.  Not Boy or Girl scout. Scout as in find.  As in pilgrim days when you went to go ‘scout’ out a site to build your cabin.  Solid.  I hope that’s what they actually do!

PeopleFluent – Um, I’ve got nothing.  But that never stopped me before!  When I think ‘fluent’ I think language – “Why Yes, I’m fluent in Spanglish!” So, this clearly is a company who will help out your company when you have interpreting issues, language barriers and such.   I don’t have that issue, but it’s good to know such a niche company exists.

PeopleTalent – I’m guessing staffing firm – only a staffing firm would think “You know what the world needs – they need people and they need talent – PeopleTalent”

PeopleCorp – No idea.  A corporation that is run by people and not machines, but it’s really run by machines – but they want you to think it’s run by people.

PeopleMatch – This screams assessments – but it could also be staffing.  Either way I’m betting on a catchy slogan like – “We Match People!”

PeopleSoft – This is clearly an American company.  We are people.  We are soft.  Thanks for point out we are fat and miserable.

PeopleAnswers – I’m hoping this is a company that you can call and they will have answers for you about your employees that you don’t get. “Why does Tim have tuna fish on Tuesdays each week?”

PeopleClick – Probably started in late 90’s, early 2000’s – the computer mouse goes ‘click’ – we’re techy and in the HR space – People + Click = PeopleClick.  Potential million dollar ad campaign – “We’ll find you Talent in the Click of a button”

PeopleReport – Sounds like a company started by a bunch of ex-principals.  What’s better than HR and the ability to report what everyone is doing wrong!?  Absolutely nothing!

PeopleMatter – No they don’t.

PeopleNet – This is probably a late 80’s, early 90’s – even before ‘click’ – we had ‘The Net’ – another tech savvy HR company who wanted a techy sounding HRish name.  No idea what they do – could be a sourcing company – ‘We throw a wide ‘net’ around talent’  (I really should have gone into used car sales marketing)

PeopleQuest – True story – on my son’s baby name list – ‘Quest’ – was an actual option!  Can you imagine growing up with a name like – Quest!  The world would be your oyster. You would be unstoppable – Watch the F out -here comes Quest!  In terms of this company – I’m guessing staffing again – you’re on a quest to find talent or some lame thing.

People-Results – First off let me tell you this company almost didn’t make the list because of the Hyphen in the name!  What People-Results are you too good to eliminate the hyphen, or do you feel people are too stupid to understand it’s two words and not one?  Performance Management all the way – People and Results – it’s all we ever wanted!

PeopleVerified – Background checking.  We need to know is this is a verified person or not.  Apparently is takes 48 hours to find this out from a background check company – or you can Google – it takes 48 seconds!

I honestly didn’t look at any of these companies before I gave my assessment!  How close did I come?  To be fair – I actually knew PeopleSoft and PeopleReport – I’ve worked with both. All the others?  No idea!  Really. How’s that feel marketing pros?

 

 

 

 

How Do You Really Get A Job You LOVE?

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My single most read blog post ever is – How Do You Really Get An Entry Level Job?  It’s about a woman who reached out to me and asked me for advice – so I gave her 5 tips on how I would go about getting a job if I had her skill sets and resume.   One major difference between getting an ‘entry level’ job and getting a job you ‘love’ is that when you’re just trying to get your first job – my advice is to take anything!  I mean anything!  I’ll take out the trash, I’ll answer phones, I’ll wash your car – just let me get in the door – my talent will take over from there and eventually I’ll move up the chain.  Most folks don’t think of taking out the garbage when they think of getting a job they ‘LOVE’.

So, how do you get a job that you ‘Love’ – I mean one of those jobs that doesn’t seem like work because you ‘Love’ it so much?  One of those jobs where you would be willing to take less money to be able to do it.  That’s the key.  You see I get asked frequently what my ‘dream’ job would be – I have had the same answer for at least 20 years – Head Coach, Los Angles Lakers.  That’s my ‘dream’ job – for a couple of reasons – I love basketball, love the Lakers and that I would be getting huge BANK!   I don’t know if I would ‘Love’ the job – but I sure would give it a lot of hugs and kisses.  Now, if someone said, “Tim, we are going to offer you the head coaching position for the Lakers, but it only pays $75,000.”  I would decline – because I wouldn’t ‘Love’ that job for $75,000.  I would ‘Love’ that job for about $1M per season – which would be a bargain for my skill set – Mr. Buss!

That word ‘Love’ is real tricky.  Many people say the ‘Love’ their job – but you ask them to take a 10% pay cut and they don’t ‘Love’ it anymore.  Here’s how you get a job you Really Love:

1. Know what it is you ‘Love’ – Too many folks want a job they love – but they don’t even know what it is they love to do.   “Well, Tim, I love to sit on the couch and watch movies.”  That’s a very easy job to get! Congratulations – have fun with that – plus you might want to find someone willing to support you in your new chosen profession.  I don’t say that in jest – that really isn’t that hard!  I know quite of few ladies who have chosen to do Yoga each day and have lunch with the ladies – they ‘Love’ their jobs!  They’ve found ways to get supported in doing their jobs.  Guys – don’t be haters – I know guys who have found ‘sponsors’ that let them stay home and fish and golf – face it – they must be really good at something – or they’re better at finding suckers than you!

2. Understand that something you ‘Love’ at 20, might be different at 30, and 40, and... – I wanted to be a teacher from age 12 to about age 23 – even today I love interacting with children – I’ve done youth sports coaching for the past 20 years.  I got my undergrad degree in Elementary Education.  I was 100% positive -teaching was a job I would ‘Love’.  I found out that it wasn’t.  I fell out of ‘Love’ with teaching.  I see so many folks who ‘Love’ something, do it for a while, then realize they don’t really love it anymore – but they have this idea that you can’t stop loving something and move on to the next thing.  It’s alright to stop loving a job you once loved.   Want a job you ‘love’?  Sometimes that means leaving a job you once loved.

3. Realize, falling in ‘Love’ is sometimes the greatest part of finding a job you ‘Love’ – Too many people get set on finding a job they are instantly in love with.  Most times, loving a job doesn’t work like that.  Many times you fall in love with a job you initially didn’t like very much.  I’m fairly certain the first time I met my wife she wasn’t instantly in love with me!  But I wore her down.  Jobs can be like that!  They seem kind of average, then over time you begin to realize you really are in love with it.  Don’t get caught up in the notion you need to instantly be ‘in love’ with a job to eventually ‘love’ your job.

Do you love your job?

The Ultimate Guide to Mobile Recruiting

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867-5309 (Ok, if you under 35 years old you might not get this reference – but Kris Dunn is 43ish – and he wrote this content – so forgive the GenX reference – but here’s the link to the Tommy Tutone video back when MTV had videos!)

Jenny, Jenny, we’ve got your number…. But in the dynamic landscape of mobile recruiting, those seven digits aren’t always enough to get the job done. So what’s an HR or recruiting pro to do?

Sure you could leave your card plastered on a bathroom stall for all willing and able talent to see, or you could register for the April installment of the FOT webinar and start laying down the foundation for your mobile recruiting strategy.

Join Microsoft’s Xbox’s own – Jason Pankow and Kris Dunn (not from Microsoft Xbox) as they lay down FOT’s Ultimate Guide to Mobile Recruiting, brought to you by the mobile sages at iMomentous.  Join your hosts April 24 at 1pm ET and they’ll hit you with the following:

  • A survey of the mobile recruiting landscape and the factors driving the need for HR and recruiting professionals to develop their mobile recruiting strategy.
  • Mobile site vs. Native App? FOT tackles the great debate, presenting scenarios of how each fit into your mobile recruiting strategy.
  • The five keys to enhancing your mobile recruiting strategy by capitalizing on features like quick apply, SMS, social media and QR codes.
  • The ultimate checklist for selecting your mobile recruiting vendor, including the top questions you need to ask when vetting potential vendors.
  • How to go beyond the optimized screen to attract top talent to your organization by incorporating video content and thought leadership into via your mobile recruiting strategy.

Hire Jenny.

Register for FOT’s Ultimate Guide to Mobile Recruiting webinar today! (It’s FREE because we make someone else foot the bill!)

How New Leaders Categorize You

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It’s a pretty common phenomenon for new leaders to turnover most, if not all, of their team when they take over.  It happens all the time!  It’s a primary reason while you’ll see senior leadership take way too long to change out an ineffective leader – the fallout sucks.  Let’s take a look at how most leaders take a position.  It usually happens one of two ways: Promotion or Termination- old leader gets promoted up or gets canned – organization finds new leader (internally or externally) to come in and takeover.   Either way, the team has a new leader.  Now, 99.9% of the time, this next thing happens: Change!  New leader comes in and feels pressure to make a difference, to do better – so they make change.  Then, this happens – Crappy Communication!  Most leaders are not equipped or trained at how to communicate as a new leader, and don’t negotiate with their team on how the team likes communication – so they fail at this part.

Change + Crappy Communication = Employees leaving and having bad attitudes about the new leader.

Here’s how a new leader categorizes employees of a new group they take over:

The Converts – These are the people who are going to forget about the old leader as soon as the person leaves the parking lot and fall into the ‘new’ line of thinking.  What’s funny about these folks is many times their thought process switches 180 degrees depending on what the new leader likes, thinks, prefers, etc.  These folks will be the ones who stay around and thrive – they are corporate survivors in the truest form – some will see 10+ leaders come and go in their careers.

The Zombies – These are your victims.  They only support themselves and how bad their life is because bad things only happen to them.  They are just waiting around for the next bad thing to happen to them.  These will be the first people get to get terminated – which perpetuates their Eeyore belief that everything in life is against them.

The Militia –  Are the employees who are going to fight blindly to keep the vision of their old leader alive.  These folks are passionate, so the new leader will try and convert them over to the new vision, because if you can get them on your side – they make great soldiers. But some will leave and/or get fired because they just refuse to give up the rebel flag!

The Double Agents – DA employees fall in the middle between converts and the militia – they really don’t want to be on one side or the other – they want to find another job, but don’t want the new leader to know.  They want to watch the new leader fail, but at the same time need that person to think highly of them to ensure their next position and possible recommendation down the road.  These folks are the ones who surprise the new leaders – they think they’re on board, then get a two week notice dropped on their desk.

The Insider – This is the most dangerous employee to a new leader. The Insider is an employee who has connections and influence and will funnel information on how the new leader is doing to higher level folks in the organization.  Successful new leaders find this person quickly, and convert them quickly – it’s key to survival!

How does a new leader stop a mass turnover of their team?  I like to see new leaders do three things:

1. Communicate the new reality quickly.  I like to see new leaders do this within the first week of taking on the new position.

2. Team transition meeting.  Third party facilitated, this meeting allows employees to share their fears of a new leader, share the history of the collective group and allows the team and new leader to negotiate how they will communicate with each other.

3. Individual meetings. New leaders should set up a meeting schedule to meet with all of their direct reports weekly in the first 90 days.  Making sure everyone is on the same page is critical.

 

 

 

 

How Obamacare Can Help Your New Hire Retention

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You know what’s really cool?  When major change happens to an industry, entrepreneurial people find a way to make money off that change!  I love America!

Obamacare, The Affordable Care Act, is having major changes to the healthcare industry and some forward thinkers are taking advantage.  One company in particular is a startup out of New York, NY called Health Recovery Solutions.  Here’s what Forbes had to say about what they are doing:

“For too many patients, hospitals have a revolving door: They leave, get sick again, and are quickly readmitted.

The Affordable Care Act aims to curb preventable return visits with heavy financial penalties: If 25% or more of the Medicare patients a hospital treats for pneumonia, heart failure or a heart attack are readmitted within 30 days of discharge, the hospital gets whacked with a 1% reduction in its Medicare reimbursements for every single patient it treats.

The penalties kicked in late last year, and those little 1% slices add up fast. “If a hospital gets $300 million a year in Medicare payments, that’s $3 million,” says Sandeep Pulim, a co-founder and chief medical officer of Health Recovery Solutions, a startup that aims to help hospitals cut their readmissions.”

How do they do it?  They give each patient a tablet with a recovery plan, videos, instructions, etc. when they leave the hospital.  Teach them how to use it and follow up with communications to ensure the patients is using and following the plan.  Let’s say this helps stop 50% of readmissions – that saves the hospital $1.5M in penalties – lets say the service and equipment cost $750K – the organization still saved $750K by using their service. Pretty good ROI!

How does this help your New Hire Retention?

You could use the same methodology with your new hires!  Let’s say your cost of hire is $5,000 per hire (which is very low for almost any kind of hire!), and you’re turning over 25% of your new hires.  This is costing your company thousands of dollars each year.  A tablet is $500 – you load it with content that helps a new hire not only adjust to your culture, but to their job – build a communication and followup plan – engage the hiring managers – reduce your new hire turnover by 50%.  You will save thousands of dollars.  Bam – there’s your business case ROI to buy tablets and build content to your executive team.

Another company has already shown you the road map – you just need to make some adjustments and build content – it takes time, but it isn’t too hard for HR to do.  It’s funny how having to carry around a tablet, as a new hire, will change your culture. People will see them and think ‘hey, that’s a new hire – I should say something. I should do something to help them” – signs and symbols are powerful that way.  Having to log into each day and see what the plan is for them each day, helps new hires focus on where they are going with the company – where they need to be at.  The power of direction and goals, helps add comfort to the uncomfortable nature of starting a new position, in a new company.  Having a built in communication tool between you, the hiring manager and the new hire will definitely let you know sooner when something isn’t right and let you address it.

Innovation happens best when major change is about to hit.  If you look close – Obamacare will give us some great ideas in HR!

 

 

Are You Getting Knocked Up or What?

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I have to stand up and applaud Sheryl Sandberg today.  Not for leaning in.  For finally saying what every HR and Operations person in history has always thought, but every lawyer who works for our organizations would never allow us to do.  Ask a simple question that has huge aspects to how we run our businesses.  “So, what’s the deal?  You knocked up or what? What’s the plan?”  It’s not discriminatory. It’s not biased.  It’s a reality of our workforce.  Women get pregnant and have to take time away to have the child.  Organizations need to plan effectively for this.  To do that the leadership team needs some time to plan.  Seems like a very simple concept to grasp. Yet, most in HR, to this day, advise their leadership teams to never have this conversation with a female employee.

From the Wall Street Journal – Sheryl Sandberg: It’s OK to talk about babies:

“People genuinely want to handle gender issues in the workplace well, but it’s a topic that makes everyone uncomfortable,” says Sandberg. “No one wants to be insensitive, so often they say nothing at all.” One male manager told Sandberg he would rather talk about his sex life in public than take up gender issues with his staff.

Many managers, especially men, may shy away from such discussions because they fear saying anything inappropriate, or worse, illegal. For lots of managers, even mentioning pregnancy and child-rearing is off limits. “The easy and often reflexive recommendation from counsel is often to stay away from any conversation or discussion,” say Joseph Yaffe and Karen Corman, employment lawyers at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom.

That’s a “very bad interpretation” of gender discrimination laws, Sandberg says. While rules to protect against gender discrimination are necessary, she says they shouldn’t be used to stifle important workplace conversations. “The path of not talking about it is not working,” she says.

So, should you do a 180 and now tell all of your leaders to start asking their female workforce if they’re actively engaged in trying to make babies? No, slow down cowboy!  Here’s some talking points to help move your organization towards having business necessity conversations about potential work disruptions due to pregnancy:

1. Let it be known publicly within your organization how you want to work and communicate with expectant ‘parents’ – both parents need to know, since many families are now deciding to use FMLA time to help care for their spouse/partner and baby.  This just isn’t a Mom issue any more.  Communicate that you expect that parents will miss time for the birth or adoption of a child.  The intent of communicating open and honestly with leadership to help plan your absence so there is as little disruption as possible to organization and for the individual employee.

2. Coach your leaders to never imply or pry about an individuals desires for family.  If your culture is open, your employees will come to your leaders when the time is right.  Be very clear with your leaders – an employees pregnancy is something very personal – some will want to celebrate, some will want to keep if very quiet – don’t treat everyone the same.  Always be supportive of how you as a leader and organization will continue to support them in their career development – in what ever way they decide they want this to go.

3. Acknowledge the realities of what is ahead.  I love having a sit down with HR, the group leader and the employee to have one big open discussion, having everyone on the same page in developing the transition plan.  This includes scheduling a return, which will have some flexibility to it.  The worst thing you can do to a new Mom is to have her go from maternity leave to full work week right away!  Start with partial week or days during the first week.  Talk with the leader about allowing for some additional flexibility during those first days. Be empathetic.  If you feel someone is taking advantage of your flexible policy – address that individually – don’t manage the entire organization like everyone will take advantage – most will not.

I go into each expectant mother conversation planning and expecting 100% will return to work. Period.  I know the reality is, 100% will not return.  I never ask, “So, are you coming back?”  The reality is most will never know until that baby is in their arms.  Those who know for sure, will tell you.  Either way, I don’t need to ask that question, my plan stays the same – how do we support the employee and support the organization will as little disruption to both as possible.

The worst thing we can do as leaders and HR Pros is act like everything is the same and not talk about it.  It’s not.  There will be change and great organizations plan for change, and make the best of the situation at hand.

Want Higher Employee Engagement? Integrate a Cat Charity

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Have you ever tried to get your employees to join a Habitat for Humanity project, or go down to the local homeless shelter to volunteer?  It seems like an easy endeavor, I which of your employees don’t want to help out the less fortunate?  Apparently, most of them!  From Georgetown University’s Center for Social Impact:

“…the study underscored this new dynamic: You are twice as likely to see a message from one of your social network contacts promoting an animal charity as you are a human rights campaign. And causes dedicated to the disabled or homeless are even less popular, the study found.”

It sounds unbelievable right?  I mean, we all hire great, caring people – we are great, caring people, so why is it we would rather support a charity to help animals, than our own brothers and sisters who are living on the street? I call it the face test.  It’s easier for us to look into the eyes of a dog and cat and feel empathy.  It’s difficult to look into the eyes of a homeless man or woman – it makes us uncomfortable.  It’s similar to when people have a hard time talking about death – it becomes a little to real for them.  You having to engage a homeless person puts into real terms what life potentially has to offer – to you.  It makes you very uncomfortable.  So we combat that by making ourselves feel good – by donating money to animals.  We can rationalize that to ourselves – these beings can’t take care of themselves – so I will help them.

How does this help your Employee Engagement?

Pretty simple – don’t fight psychology – you’ll lose.  I’m not saying don’t support homeless charities – please do!  What I am saying is that your employees will rally around and be more engaged to help homeless pigmy goats, or barn cats in need of food.  It’s sad, but true.   People like to feel like they are making a difference, but most don’t want to get their hands dirty.  Local animal shelters needs funds. Great!  Our employees are the best, they’ll help!   And, they will.  That’s a good thing for your engagement.  Don’t focus on the negative, focus on what you can control in your world.  If you truly feel that bad about the concept, go out on your own and donate your time and resources to take care of actual humans.

Believe me, I’m guilty of this as well.  I support the crap of finding a cure for Leukemia. Truth be told, I’ve never met or known anyone with Leukemia – yet each year we do specific fundraising things just to help this cause.  I drive by a homeless guy almost every day on way to and from work – and I’ve never once offered to help him – not thrown him a couple bucks, dropped off food, nothing.  Psychology is a monster.  I vow to stop and offer some assistance the next time I see a homeless person.  I also vow to start an office program to help disabled kittens – it’s sure to get high participation!