The Unpaid Internship: HR’s ethical dilemma or Victimless crime

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HR is the most ethical part of your organization.

Free labor is like crack to any organization.

HR is the most ethical part of your organization.

A soft economy is like a crack dealer of free labor that businesses can’t resist.

HR is the most ethical part of your organization.

Most job opening in the US want 5 years of experience, so unpaid internships allow workers to gain much needed experience.

HR is the most ethical part of your organization.

An internship is a win-win proposition for businesses and workers. They provide an exceptional opportunity to discover and cultivate talent.

HR is the most ethical part of your organization.

Last year businesses profited millions of dollars of the direct work of unpaid interns.

HR is the most ethical part of your organization.

An internship is an investment – for both parties involved.

HR is the most ethical part of your organization.

Free labor is like crack to an organization.

(inspiration from Chris VanWyck of www.ciesadesign.com (great creative firm) – check him out @cvdub on twitter)

My only HR tip for managers

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Don’t suck!

Oh wait, that really isn’t a tip – more of a mantra I try to give my hiring managers (how’s that for great HR!).  Actually if I had to give one tip of advice to managers from the HR side of the desk I would have to say I would tell them: Be Consistent.  Let’s face it, one of the most challenging things about our job as managers is trying to get consistent performance out of our staff – but we make it difficult on ourselves by not being consistent in our actions.  Why do we do this?  Because nobody gave us silver bullets when they gave us a key to the managers office and told us good luck.  The fact of the matter is manager don’t know how to get consistent performance so they jump all over the place trying new techniques to get their staff to perform.  They take advice from their executives and try that, they take advice from their significant other and try that, they take advice from the cab driver, the bartender, the priest, from Dr. Phil – hell let’s face it they would try anything if it meant their staff would perform consistently day-after-day, week-after-week.

But that’s the problem.  Every time we try something new, we throw our staff a curve ball and they freeze.  “Ok, what the heck is he doing now – how is this going to effect me, what should I do, what shouldn’t I do, etc.”  So, instead of performing better – they actually perform worse – the constant changing causes confusion.  The managers who get the best performance over a long period of time, are those managers who are most consistent in their behavior – regardless of style.  Did you read that?  REGARDLESS OF STYLE!  In HR we care so much about style – but that’s the beauty of managers – everyone is going to have their own style – in HR, we just need to help make sure that style is not Schizophrenic.

You can be a consistent “slave driver” at the office – and you’ll actually get better performance than someone who is jumping around being the friendly manager, the understanding manager, the motivating manager, etc. Why? Because the staff knows what to expect – “Well, my boss is a slave driver, but you know what you are going to get and if you deliver he stays off your back.”  Is it the best sytle? No. Is it effective over time? Yes.  Is their a better way? Yes.   But there in lies the problem with many HR Pros – we spend way to much time trying to change adult manager behavior – a person’s personality – instead of helping them find ways to work best with who they are.  “Hey, Tim – we know you’re a slave driver, so we want to help you out with some employee relations things that will keep your staff wanting to come to work for you day-in and day-out.”    Instead, we go “Tim, you’re a slave driver and we need to change your personality of 40 years and be someone you’re not.”  How’s that working out for you?

So – My tip for all managers: Don’t Suck  Be Consistent!

Does Executive Presence Matter?

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Now – people read the title of this and either have one of 3 answeres: Yes, No or Maybe.

If you say “No” – you don’t have Executive Presence.

If you say “Yes” – you probably are working on your Executive Presence.

If you say “Maybe” – you just might have it.

How do I know this?  I’ve had two very strong mentors, both former supervisors, who I worked for a very large organziations that had “Executive Presence”.  Both were men, but I don’t think that is necessarily a trait you have to have to have Executive Presence (although statistics on leadership will show you that it doesn’t hurt – do you hear me Glass Ceiling!?).   Anyway – these two guys had some things in common (besides being male) that gave them Executive Presence –

1. I won’t say “conservative” dress, but let’s say they didn’t stand out – you get the idea navy suit, white button down, clean, crisp, $200-$300 shoes, nice watch.

2. They didn’t speak first – they listened first – took just enough time not to awkward, then responded with a safe answer. Never controversial.

3. They never saw a problem as dire – but methodically went about solving it – staying in control – confident a solution eminent.

4. They never let you know who their emenies were – or really who there friends were either. (why is that important – because it causes both groups to want to find out where they fall – leaving that individual in control)

5. They were present – but never the first one in the room.

I have the belief that Executive Presence can’t be taught.  If you have it, it can be nurtured, but if you don’t, all the training in the world is probably just going to make you annoying.  It’s the standard “Leadership” arguement – you either have it or you don’t – it can’t be taught – unless of course that’s the training you’re selling – than well for $1495 I can teach you how to be a great leader (that always cracks me up – does a true leader really feel the need to pay money to become a better leader?).  Now, can you train someone to be an effective, heck -even a great, manager -yes – but that’s different than being a leader.

How can you gauge if you are a good leader?  Well, I could sell you a great 360 assessment with coaching for $5k! (just kidding, but if you have $5K you want to throw away I’ll give you the best 360 you’ve ever had in your life, I’ll tell you things your soul wouldn’t tell you!) – or you could just find out who you know who is a really good leader, the best one you know, personally – and ask them. You see, good leaders can usually point out other good leaders when they are asked about it.  You’ll catch them off guard, but when they take their minute to think about it (because they’ll do that if they’re good – one is they’ll try and figure out why you are asking them that question)  they’ll frame their answer in a way that will usually open up a larger conversation.  If they value you, they’ll tell you the truth – yep, you are and here’s why or nope you’re not, but here’s what you can do to get better.

Executive Presence matters – it matters a whole lot for your organization – and you can’t discount this trait when looking at your future leaders.  I don’t care if you have Gallups OD department – you aren’t going to “train” executive presense into those who don’t have it.  So, make this competency number one on your succession plan calibration chart – it will make weeding through your middle managers a bit easier.

Just Don’t Call Me “Late for Dinner”

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A funny thing happened a couple of years ago – I went to go run my Mom’s business. That in of itself isn’t funny – the funny part took place during a 5 minute conversation before we (she) decided it was final, I was coming in to run the show.  Here’s how the conversation went:

Mom: So, what should we call you?

Me: Well, I don’t care, as long as the check clears.

Mom: Very funny, I’m the President and CEO.

Me: How about VP?

Mom: We already have a VP.

Me: How about COO?

Mom: We aren’t that big.

Me: How about Executive VP?

Mom:Perfect. You can have my office in the corner, be ready to take over in 3 months. (4 days later she left and I was the new Executive VP in charge)

Now, this was more than 4 days in the making – I had previously spent 8 years working at HRU, then 10 years working corporate recruiting and HR positions across a number of industries with some fantastic companies – so I was groomed so-to-speak. Plus the fact I can remember sitting on my Mom’s bed at night when I was a kid while she called candidates about positions she was recruiting for – you could say I was bred to do this job.

So – what about the title?

I was reminded a couple of days ago when a good friend of mine got a new title – going from Sr. Manager to VP of Talent or something (all before she turned 30).  It reminded me of me – I had a goal (like most young ambitious people have) to be a VP before the age of 35.  I was young enough, and naive enough, not to really care about what I was going to VP of – I just needed that title!  That title would give me so many things:

  • Prestige
  • Honor
  • Responsibility
  • Credibility (I mean they just don’t give out VP titles to anyone, right? Right?…)
  • Perceived Importance to the Organization
  • Etc, etc., etc.

Ben Horowitz had a great article at Fortune recently – Titles and Promotions – where he theorizes titles are important because:

1. Employees want them—while you may plan to work at your company forever, at least some of your employees need to plan for life after your company. When your head of sales interviews for her next job, she won’t want to say that despite the fact that she ran a global sales force with hundreds of employees, her title was “Dude.”

2. Eventually, people need to know who is whom—As companies grow, everybody won’t know everybody else. Importantly, employees won’t know what each other do and whom they should work with to get their jobs done. Job titles provide an excellent short hand for describing roles in the company. In addition, customers and business partners can also make use of this short hand to figure out how to best work with your company.

Beyond these core reasons, employees will use titles to calibrate their value and compensation against their colleagues. If an employee with a title of Junior Engineer believes that she is a far better programmer than her counterpart with the title Senior Architect, this will indicate to her that she may be under paid and undervalued. Because titles will be used to calculate relative value, they must be managed carefully.

So, do I think titles are important – No, I don’t – Yes, I do.  No, because I’ve learned now after almost 20 years in HR – titles are meaningless to who actually performs and gets the job done. Yes, because, like Ben says above, enough people care about them, that as HR Pros we have to care.  Let’s face it, very few people have the internal fortitude and confidence, to work without stripes.  Most employees like to know who’s in charge and who is caring the “A” card in the decision making tree.   Whether I like it or not, titles matter to many people for many reasons and it’s our job in HR to figure out how to best utilize this tool, than, for the benefit of our organizations.

But for the record – no matter what my title is – I still report to Mom!

You’re Not Required To Act Like a Jerk

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I was on vacation last week – Yea Me!  I got to spend a ton of quality time with Kim and the boys as we hit Northern Michigan and pretty much just laid around for most of the week.  One thing happened during the week that stuck with me, and with my kids as we were hanging out in one of the small sleeping towns up north.  First, most of Northern Michigan closes down during the winter – shops, restaurants, etc.  They’re mostly summer towns that open up between Memorial Day and Labor Day (you get a peak into life in Michigan – we only get 90 days of temps warm enough to wear shorts).  So, as we were walking in between the 3 shops that were open all year – we decided to cut across the street, instead of walking the other 100 yards to the next corner.  A car stopped to let us cross, very neighborly, and that caused the person behind them to also stop – a local plumber/repairman (he was driving a van with his name and number on the side).  We crossed and the local repair guy yelled out his window as he passed “that’s what cross walks are made for!” in nasty-jerk tone – which wasn’t missed by my kids – who were concerned – I laughed – since it was funny someone would put one ounce of energy into caring that a family didn’t use the crosswalk in a town where we were clearly the only ones walking around and no traffic!

He was being a jerk.  Probably he is a jerk – most people don’t just act like a jerk – you either are a jerk or you’re not jerk.

I’ve run into quite a few HR folks in my life who tend to be jerks.  They don’t have to be jerks, but they let their informal and sometimes formal “power” in HR to turn them into jerks.  You know these people – they tend to be black and white – in a world full of grey.  These are the people who love to exact punishment that doesn’t fit the crime.  They are the ones who won’t let somebody sign up for insurance because they missed the deadline by a day, and gosh for bid, if they let one person, than they have to let everyone, right!?   These are the ones who won’t hire someone who had a DWI on their record when they check their background – 15 years ago – because well come on when they were 19 years old – they never got a DWI.  These are the ones who use their progressive discipline to fire a solid performer, because again – you were 15 minutes late and when we started the process 18 months ago we told you, you couldn’t be late again – ever, or you would be fired. They are jerks.

HR Pros – don’t kid yourself when you do something stupid to an employee and you try and justify it by saying “that’s the policy/rule” or “that’s the process” or “well, I can’t do anything about that” or “that’s not up to me” – more than likely you’re being a jerk.  You don’t have to be a jerk – you’re choosing to be a jerk.  In almost everything we do in HR, we can chose to help someone, in one way or another – but to many of us make the decision not to help and be a jerk.  You don’t have to be a jerk to have accountability and consistency within your organization – you have to have the guts to say “no” when the time calls for it.

Are You An AL or NL Person?

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My friend John Hollon over at TLNT is a Los Angeles Angles of Anaheim fan (which for starters should not be  allowed to be a name – I mean really!  Let’s just call them what they are The Mighty Ducks!) and we were having a discussion about the differences between American League fans (AL) and National League fans (NL).  I’m a Detroit Tigers fan – have been all my life – my Mom actually dated Kirk Gibson for a while while he was a Tiger,  although she didn’t know who he was when she met him (which I think is very funny, since he was one of the biggest names in baseball at the time), and I’m pretty sure Kirk didn’t see it as exclusive and I never got to call him “Daddy” or even “Uncle Kirk” – although he did give me a signed baseball by the entire 84 Tigers (then my dog chewed on it – now you know my entire life).

Back to AL vs. NL. 

John sees the differences between the two leagues fans as this:

“To me, AL fans aren’t as beholden to tradition (eg, the Designated Hitter). They’re more into style and looking good (more excitement, runs and scoring), than substance. NL fans believe in the basics of the game — pitchers hitting, use of the sacrifice to move along runners, low scoring games, more pitching and defense… maybe, sometimes, even a little boring…”

I can’t really disagree with him – it’s a pretty spot-on assessment – but we are both AL guys, so we have to believe “our” league is a little bit sexier and more exciting than those NL fans!

Here’s my take:

American League Fans

 National League Fans
Hot Dog with Mustard Fish Tacos with Mango Salsa
Budweiser (or Bud Light for the ladies) Mojitos (for both guys and gals – unless it’s Philadelphia than its beer snuck into the stadium hidden in their kids pants)
Fitted Ball Cap – Flat brim Yeah-no, it messes up my look
Batting Practice in the outfield bleachers 2 hours before game time No one arrives before the 3rd inning – I mean don’t look desperate
7th Inning Stretch Bottom of 6th running to the parking lot to beat traffic
Removing your cap for the National Anthem What’s with this obsession with hats?
Sitting at a game while it’s snowing Forgetting you have tickets for a game
Big Giant Guys hitting Bombs! Pitchers up to bat who look like they’re about to be attacked by a pit bull

Let’s face it the American League is just top to bottom better baseball – Red Sox, White Sox, Yanks, Twins, Tigers, Angels, Rays and Rangers.  The National League just can’t compete with: Braves, Philly, Cubs, Reds, Padres, Cards and Giants.  The only fans you can really r

Selection, Assessments and the MLB

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Major League Baseball is back this week, which means I now have something to do each night until November!  Yeah me, I’m winning!

More importantly the MLB gives us some great things to write about throughout the season.  I don’t know of a sport where more there is more of a correlation to HR than Major League Baseball.  Think about what the MLB does as compared to our daily jobs as HR Pros across the country:

  • No one does more analysis and assessments before hiring (drafting) than the MLB
  • No one has a larger succession plan in place than the MLB (minor leagues)
  • Pay for Performance compensation (Ok, I’ll give you a pitcher who has a 9-13 record and a 5.79 ERA should not get paid $5.6M per year – but we all have our market)
  • Constant employee motivation and leadership development – Employee Relations Issue (hitters in an 0 – 21 slump at the plate, Manager calls him out in the newspaper, etc.)

You get the picture – the MLB is like one giant HR laboratory – but with an unending budget – and a heck of lot more Dominicans than your average U.S. workplace.

The one thing I wonder is how long we (HR/Talent Pros) would have our job – if we had the same success rates in selection as our MLB counterparts?

There are up to 50 rounds each year in the Major League draft – and a MLB team can sign as many Free Agents (those who didn’t get drafted or no longer have rights held by another team) as they want.   In the end the failure rate of selection is astronomically high.  From a Sports Illustrated article in 2010:

…major league teams selected 436 high school players after the 13th round. Only nine of those kids signed a contract that year and eventually made it to the big leagues — a 98 percent failure rate. After Round 26, teams selected 213 high school players, only one of whom, Victor Diaz, an outfielder who appeared in 147 games for the Mets and Rangers, played even a day in the big leagues — a 99.5 percent failure rate…

Can you imagine a 99.5% failure rate in hiring in your organization!  You would have your job for about 26 minutes!  You think you have a hard time assessing talent, the folks working for MLB teams, it would seem, could use some help from some HR Pros and assessment vendors in revamping their selection process, because something isn’t working right – and you thought the athletes weren’t held accountable!

There are good lessons to learn from their failure of MLB’s selection science (or should I say lack of selection science):

1. Don’t get caught up in the hype.  What happens when 13 old guys stand outside the fence watching some 17 year old kid throwing 91 mph fastballs – they all lose their minds – HR folks aren’t much different – have you been to a college career fair for hard to find grads!  Just because they have 1 skill doesn’t make them a star, and even if they have more, they might not be the fit for your “team”.

2. Past Performance Doesn’t Always Predict Future Performance.  Oh, that one stings a bit.  It’s definitely one major criteria to look at, but it doesn’t always ring true – many factors come into play – culture of previous organization, former leadership, position, industry, etc. 

3. Don’t overlook small town, small school kids. It’s easy to pick up great business hires from Harvard – but what about one from Northern Iowa?  Not every kid who goes to an Ivy League school is going to be great, and not every kid going to B and C business schools are idiots. 

 

Is HR really Female?

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The Godfather of HR John Sumser put up a post over at HRXaminer – HR is Female – from a report by HRxAnalysts that shows 75% of those in HR are female, white, etc.  (I know you’re shocked – good thing someone funded that survey!) 

My question is – who cares? (besides John – who it thinks everyone in the HR community is more influential than me, so let’s face it, he can suck eggs)

Now the guys at HRxAnalysts (John and another guy with a very impressive resume that includes StarrTincup) will say that those who sell to HR care – by having this data you can better prepare your sales presentation and tact to potentially close more buyers, etc.  But that isn’t really my question…

Who cares – in terms of – is it really that important?  I mean really.

HR is the one part of every organization that it isn’t suppose to matter if your female or male, white or black, straight or gay, cat or dog.  One problem with surveys like the one above is they perpetuate a notion – a notion that “HR is Female” – I know they are just stating facts – but in the end, they are also making a conclusion – “HR is Female”.   What is HR wanted to by “Flamboyantly Gay Male” – nope – can’t do it  – “HR is Female”.

What if Female wanted to be “Operations is Female” – nope – can’t do it – “Operations is…” –oh wait, you don’t know what Operations is do you?  Because no one did some stupid survey about it and make it official, did they?  Operations might be Female, or Male, of Single-Black-Female-with-1-kid – but you don’t know that – so now when you look at Operations – you don’t see Female – you see “Possibilities”.

I love data, but sometimes we measure just to measure, with no real purpose in why we are measuring.  Then when the measurement is done, we have to publish something – even if it really has no real baring on anything.  Yep – HR is Female, and she’s smart and she’s mostly white and she mostly likes dogs – but HR is also Male, and she is also black, and she also likes cats.

 My advice to HR vendors trying to sell to HR – get to know HR for who she/he is, build the relationship, find out if your product/service helps solve a need they have and go from there (tip: it takes more than one phone call and visit – and not all HR Pros like donuts, some like bagels).

Stay In The Box

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I was reminded of something recently – getting out of the box – isn’t comfortable.

Now – I know what some of your are thinking – “But, Tim, you need to get out of the box to challenge yourself, to push the limits, to get you and your organization better!”

Really?

Or have we been sold this by this eras snake oil salesmen and women (leadership trainers, life coaches, every motivation and leadership book written in the last 20 years)?

I’m not sure.

Here’s what I know:

1. People perform better when they know their boundaries. (their box)

2. There is comfort in knowing what to expect, with comfort comes sustained performance long-term.

3. In reality, a very small percentage of your employees will actually perform above their average performance being “out of the box”.

We as HR Pros tend to a little overboard sometimes, in the attempt to “help out” the cause within our organization – that can be both good and bad.  Things are going as well as they could be, so we push to get everyone out of their box and reinvent themselves, in hopes that this will lead to better performance and higher organizational results.  When in fact, many times, it will lead to the exact opposite.  Not everyone is wired to get “out of the box” – in fact probably at a minimum 80% of workforce should stay in their box, and keep plugging along with their solid performance that they are already giving you.

The trick to great HR in getting great performance – is to find those race horses who you can push out of the box, and they show you a whole other level of performance that you and they didn’t know existed.  But if you keep pushing plow horses out on to the track in hopes of turning them into a race horse – you and they will fail.  So, don’t drink the Kool-aid and believe everyone can and wants to be out of the box thinkers and performers – not everyone does – and you limit yourself by thinking in such general terms.