In Low Hire Times, Great Recruiting is More Important!

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We have been on a great run! A historic run of hiring for about a decade now. That does not happen often. For the most part, over half of the current workforce has never seen a downturn in the economy that was sustained for more than a few months. It has been a heck of a good run.

Over the past decade, recruiting has seen massive evolution and growth. Our technology has improved immensely. Our skills have improved. Our branding and recruitment marketing has improved. At no other point in history has talent acquisition wielded more power than they have over the past decade.

I mean, it almost feels like recruiters have gotten respect! (almost)

Here’s the thing.

With all of this change and growth, we will still have organizational leaders when a downturn hits who believe we can cut recruiting as one of the first things. The axiom is if we aren’t hiring, we don’t need recruiters. That makes logical sense. In reality, we don’t really stop hiring. We just hire way less.

The truth is, when we hire less, each hire takes on much more significance. Our ability to hire really well when we hire fewer increases with importance. We don’t have slack in the system to make bad hires and have them be covered up by all the other hires.

If I have to hire one hundred people per month, leadership assumes some of those will be misses. If I can only hire ten per month, I can no longer have misses! False-positive hires can not happen when you only hire a few.

Why?

If times are tough and I only get to hire a few people. Multiple factors are at play. First, my hiring number is small. Second, the business needs great performers to survive and grow. Third, we truly need to know who the great performers are before we hire them. Forth, every low performer that makes it through the process exacerbates our already dire problem.

Bad Times Are Not The Time To Cut Talent Acquisition!

Bad times are the time to double down on ensuring your TA function is humming at maximum efficiency and effort. That your technology is performing exactly as it is supposed to perform. That you have very few false positives, and your Q0H (Quality of Hire) is through the roof. Also, you need to have hunters on your team, not just farmers.

Organizations will get leaner, and TA teams will get leaner. The recruiters who should keep their jobs should not be process jockeys. I can literally hire anyone with two ounces of sense to process applications. That is a pennies-on-the-dollar job. The recruiters who thrive in a down economy are assassins. Recruiters who can go out and find the best talent and talk that talent into coming onto your sinking ship.

This past decade was not a great decade to grow assassins. Why?

You would think the opposite to be true. Everyone was hiring. The competition for talent was fierce! Why didn’t we grow more assassins?

It’s a combination of technology, flow, and ease of apply. We had this strange convergence of a time when we had millions of open jobs, a time when it was never easier to find talent, and you could apply to jobs with one click. Basically, most TA shops turned into Inbound recruiting process shops. We post jobs. People apply. We process those applications. Rinse and repeat.

If there is candidate flow to your jobs, why spend the extra effort to make sure that flow is actually good? It must be good, right?! Just process more applications. We are hiring so many it doesn’t really matter, we’ll make some great hires out of that pile. Or we won’t. It doesn’t matter, we have another pile to go through.

Assassins grow when times are tough. You need to find yourself some assassins and get ready. Winter is coming.

As Leaders Should We Involve Everyone In Decision Making?

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There is an African Proverb that says:

“If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” 

It’s a paradox we face as leaders right now. We are forced to move fast because the world is moving fast. We are also forced to believe we must involve everyone. Yes, we want to go fast, and yes, we want to go far!

Typically, that turns into something like this. The Boss lady calls a meeting of the team. Everyone jumps on the Zoom call, and the lady boss says, “Hey, we need to make some changes” based on some market/industry/tech change. “So, we are going to use this time to brainstorm and make some decisions on what we should do.” We’ve all been in these meetings.

The other way this can go is no meeting, Boss lady brings in a few confidants on the team, gathers some information, and then she just makes some decisions. Good or bad, she’s the boss, and she’s paid to make these decisions. A little old school, we are told this isn’t really how it should be done anymore.

The reality is both actually work differently. One is fast, one will go far, and we need both.

As a leader, sometimes the best course of action is just to make the call if there is a need to move fast. Look, we have a new product launch that got moved up, and we need to be fully staffed in four months. I’m pulling in a few, or one, people who can handle this item, and I’m getting out of their way. Go, make this happen!

We understand, as leaders, this might piss some folks off. “Well, no one asked my opinion on this!” Yes, you are correct, and by your reaction, I can see I made the right decision by not pulling you in. We desperately needed to move fast! I wasn’t looking for input. I was looking for fast results.

Then, we have times when what we are trying to do will have a long-term impact on our organization. A bunch of moving pieces and multiple stakeholders. Moving quickly, while desirable, might not be the best course of action. We need to hear folks, and folks need to be heard. We want to go ‘far’ with this project.

My leadership comfort zone has always been to go fast. If you’re fast, you can course-correct with the extra time. If you go slow, my belief was the decision would most likely be made for you. As a leader, were you hired to make decisions or have decisions happen to you? Now, this isn’t really the case, but man, that sh*t sounded good on my PowerPoint slide deck!

“If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” 

Both strategies are correct. Both have a purpose of when to be deployed. Too often, we tend to stick with the one strategy that we feel most comfortable with as leaders. It’s important we understand what we are most comfortable with because that is also our blind spot. I have to remind myself constantly to slow down when it’s right so that we can go far.

I’ve worked with a ton of leaders who were most comfortable with going together, truly believing they were the best leader. In the end, they failed because while they were well-liked, they didn’t execute fast enough for what the business needed.

Hiring Managers! Job Seekers Are Judging You on These Two Criteria!

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If you’re out looking for a job, it usually feels like you’re being judged on every little thing you do, have done, or potentially will do in the future. Interestingly enough, a Harvard professor discovered you’re actually only judged on two things:

“People size you up in seconds, but what exactly are they evaluating?

Harvard Business School professor Amy Cuddy has been studying first impressions alongside fellow psychologists Susan Fiske and Peter Glick for more than 15 years and has discovered patterns in these interactions.

In her book, “Presence,” Cuddy says people quickly answer two questions when they first meet you:

 – Can I trust this person?

 – Can I respect this person?

Psychologists refer to these dimensions as warmth and competence, respectively, and ideally, you want to be perceived as having both.

Interestingly, Cuddy says that most people, especially in a professional context, believe that competence is the more important factor. After all, they want to prove that they are smart and talented enough to handle your business.”

Trust and Respect.

I’ll add these are probably two things you’re being judged immediately following the judging that gets done on your overall appearance, which is almost instantaneous! Let’s face it, we like to hire pretty people.

Once you open your mouth, you’re being judged on how well you can trust what this person is telling me and if you respect their background, work ethic, where they came from, etc. Most of this is based on the person doing the judging, not you. I know, that sucks.

How do you help yourself?

1. Try and mirror the energy of the person who is interviewing you. If you come in all calm and cool, and the person who is interviewing is really upbeat and high energy, they’ll immediately question you as a fit.

2. Do research on who you’ll be interviewing with and try and get some sense of their background and story. Try and make some connections as fast as possible in the interview. This will help build trust and respect with this person. In today’s world, it’s not that hard to find out stuff about an individual. If HR sets up your interview, just politely ask who you will be interviewing with (the name).

3. Be interesting. Have a good story to tell, one that most people will find funny or interesting. Not too long. A good icebreaker to set off the interview in a great tone.

I tell people all the time. An interview isn’t a test, it’s just a conversation with some people you don’t know. We have these all the time. Sometimes you end up liking the people, sometimes, you don’t. If you don’t like the people you’re interviewing with, there’s a good chance you won’t like the job!

E107 – What Would It Take For an Enterprise HR Leader to Show Up At a HR Conference? #HRFamous #HRTechConf

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On episode 107 of The HR Famous Podcast, long-time HR leaders (and friends) Jessica Lee, Madeline Laurano, and Tim Sackett come together to discuss all things 2022 HR Tech!

Listen below and be sure to subscribe, rate, and review (iTunes) and follow (Spotify)!

1:30 – Tim has recently been on the conference circuit and he’s loving the in-person energy!

2:00 – JLee was recently speaking at an event and she was asked for pictures after her talk. She asks the crew what to do in that situation. 

7:30 – Tim and Madeline went back to HR Tech and felt the big energy at the conference. Madeline says the expo was bigger than she’s ever seen

11:45 – Madeline says that the Women In Tech sessions were so packed that they couldn’t let anyone else in! 

14:45 – Tim asks JLee what would get her to come to HR Tech on a regular basis. She says that she doesn’t know if she would since she’s so inundated with content and pitches from vendors and it would feel duplicative for her to go to a vendor event. 

17:40 – Tim thinks it’s a mistake by vendors to try and influence big VPs and CHROs rather than talking to director and manager levels about their products who are actually in the trenches. 

21:45 – Tim and Madeline are really excited by some up and coming texting technologies, especially for frontline workers. 

25:45 – Madeline calls out some providers who are doing the work around skills but she notes that there are some start-ups and ATS’s who are lumped in that maybe shouldn’t be. 

29:00 – Tim asks the crew what these HR conferences are missing. JLee thinks that the conferences should provide a deck for attendees to take back to their teams and share what they learned. 

34:20 – Can we pick a better place for HR conferences? JLee is sick of Vegas but Tim and Madeline think it’s hard to host anywhere else because of the size of the conferences. 

35:30 – Tim shares a story about the “BFF Happy Hour” where Kyle Lagunas came in and started the whole party. Tim and Madeline had to play mom and dad in order to keep the event in check.

Hiring for High Give-a-Damn!

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Josh Zywien, the CMO of Paradox, made a great hire recently, and I sent him a note telling him so. I like to do that. He knows he made a great hire, but it’s always nice to get a note confirming your belief! If you don’t know Josh, you should give me a follow, he’s one of the good guys in our industry.

Josh responded to my note with a statement I wanted to share because it’s profound:

I like to hire people who have a ‘high give-a-damn’! 

I absolutely love that and told him I was stealing it!

What does hiring for High Give-a-Damn Mean? 

It’s one of those intangibles you know when you see it. Like porn. Hard to explain, but when I see it, I know what it is. High Give-a-Damn (HGD) individuals don’t just care about their job and their company. HGD is pervasive in all aspects of their life. You’ll see it come out in other ways away from their career as well.

The High Give-a-Damn Traits:

  • High attention to detail
  • Live an orderly life
  • Most likely, they have a well-kept house, clean, and probably make their bed every single morning.
  • Classic fashionable dress styles that don’t stand out, but you notice them
  • They say the right things and the right times
  • They can be counted on
  • Follow-through is impeccable
  • They give a shit about stuff that matters
  • Have a habit of taking care of their physical & mental self more than the average person.

People with HGD don’t drive around in a messy car with a coffee stain on their shirt. They might not have a lot of money, but what they have, they take care of. They do more with less because part of HGD is not to waste resources, both professionally and personally. So, you take care of your stuff. Part of your ‘stuff’ is your personal self.

I’ve written about organizations “Hiring Pretty” in the past. Scientific research shows that organizations that tend to hire more attractive people actually have higher results. There is a bit of this in HGD. Individuals with HGD most likely get the most out of the attractiveness they have.

It doesn’t mean the person has to be naturally ‘pretty,’ but think of the time when you took that one selfie, that one time when you were feeling super cute, had that one hat on, the light was right, and now it’s your favorite IG photo. Yeah, that, but now what if you did that every day? That’s HGD. “Felt cute, not ever gonna delete!”

Now, at this point, you might be saying, “Tim, all of this seems superficial. There is nothing here about skill or performance, about actually being able to do the job.” Yeah, I’m not only hiring for HGD and nothing else. This is about what if I had three people who had similar skill levels, education, and experience. At that point, my tiebreaker is, who has the most HGD?

Who is going to bring the most HGD to the team? Because in the end, when I’m going to war with my team, I want people who give a damn. Yeah, we might be making widgets for crackheads, but I still want people who want to make the best widgets for crackheads. People who want to make sure that crackhead has the best experience with our product and service. (Right now, Josh is like, WTF, how did I get in a Tim Sackett Blog Post with Crackheads!?)

Not enough Hiring Managers are hiring for HGD. In fact, as a society, we have kind of gone soft on HGD. We have this belief that you can be HGD in your personal life but not your professional life, or vice versa. The reality is true that HGD is always on or never on as a personality trait. You either give a damn about your life, or you don’t. I want to be around and work with people who are HGD.

Which Recruiters Will Get Laid Off First? #HRFamous

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On episode 106 of The HR Famous Podcast, long-time HR leaders (and friends) Madeline Laurano and Tim Sackett, with special friend Kyle Lagunas come together to discuss Global TA day, the first people to be laid off in a recession, and why recruiters won’t be laid off as quickly as we think. 

Listen below and be sure to subscribe, rate, and review (iTunes) and follow (Spotify)!

1:00 – Welcome to the pod, Kyle Lagunas! JLee is a busy gal and is out this week. 

3:30 – Tim asks if they go to the grocery store or if they get their food delivered. Kyle likes his time at the market, and Madeline tries to do delivery. 

5:00 – Tim has a whole setup for his Global TA Day: prizes, ice cream social, lunch & learns, and more! 

7:00 – Tim put up a LinkedIn post leaning into “hustle porn” and ripped on quiet quitters and how he can’t wait to pass them. Kyle says he’s going to rip him to shreds. 

9:30 – Business Insider, a pod favorite, put out an article about the first to be laid off in an economic downturn. The categories offered are recent hires, high earners, Millennials, 

12:30 – Madeline talks about why she thinks recent hires may not be fired as quickly as they suggest due to the re-skilling turnover. 

15:30 – Tim talks about how Ford had a pretty major layoff, but it was for a very specific reason, the emphasis on EVs. 

19:00 – Madeline brings up how we’re still writing and talking about Millennials as if they’re kids. Many Millennials are 40 or pushing it. 

21:15 – Tim and his oldest son told a guy they were golfing with that, “I didn’t get good until my Dad stopped coaching me.” Tim said it was a dagger to the heart. 

23:00 – This list shares that recruiters are the most likely to be laid off. The crew is quite surprised that this is still the case in a world where companies are having a lot of trouble hiring recruiters. 

26:00 – Kyle is really worried about the ramifications that something like this list could have. He says that morale is really low in the TA space, and this could force people to leave the profession. 

29:00 – Madeline is surprised that there is nothing on this list about the number of hours worked per day. She thinks there is a signifier in the likelihood of being laid off with the number of hours worked per day. 

33:00 – Tim thinks one of the hardest things is to plan a workforce, and HR can struggle at interpreting data and inputs to plan accordingly.

The Key Ingredient You Need to be Successful at Work! (and Life)

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Ugh, I hate that I wrote that title. I. AM. NOT. A. LIFE. COACH!

I don’t write about sports as much as I used to. When my sons were in sports, and I was coaching, I bet I wrote some sort of sports analogy about once per week. The thing with this idea is it works in sports, but it really works in almost anything in life.

Okay, here it is:

“Having people around you who want you to win is key to success.”

I’m not going to take credit for this, nor will I give credit to anyone because I have heard something like this for the last twenty years, but I find almost always people forget about this one simple but powerful idea.

We discount how much of our success is tied to being surrounded by people who want us to be successful! Or we give ourselves too much credit for our own success. We think we’re smarter or better when in reality, we are all about the same, but the circumstances we find ourselves in are very different!

I tend to find myself in conversations with parents regarding their high school and college athletes who are working on going to the next level because I’ve had kids and a wife who played sports at a high level. What most parents and kids don’t understand is how important it is to play for a coach who truly wants to see you succeed. Wait!? Don’t all coaches want to see every player they have on the team succeed? Nope. Unfortunately.

In college athletics, when coaches change, they inherit a bunch of kids who they didn’t recruit, so they aren’t fully invested in these kids. While they will need some or most of these kids, in the short term, to be successful, Almost always, they will bring in their own kids and be more invested in them.

We are currently seeing massive transfers in all sports taking place in college athletics, and a large part of that is kids trying to find a coach(s) who truly wants to see them succeed!

It sounds like when leadership changes take place at work, right?!

When a new leader comes into your company or work team, we see the same type of behavior. New leaders want to bring in their own people. Why? Because you need to surround yourself, even as a leader, with people who want to see you win! Individual contributors need this. Leaders need this. Anyone who wants to win needs people around them who want to see them win!

It’s not about just making it. Keeping it going. It’s about seeing you win. That’s key. Don’t think you can exchange that for something less.

This is why it’s key for you to put yourself in a position where you feel everyone around you wants to see you win. If you’re a leader and you have people on your team that you are unsure they want to see you win, you need to get rid of those people. If you are in a job where you have a leader or peers who don’t want you to win, you need to find a new job immediately!

See, this is why I would be a shitty life coach. I never want people to leave their job. It’s not in my DNA. Keep that job. Make it work! Then I write this post and say leave your job immediately if you are not surrounded by people who want to see you win!

I have some very close friends in my life. The one trait I feel for each of them, without an ounce of jealousy, is I want to see them win! My own team at HRU, without a doubt, I want to see each person I work with be massively successful and win all the time! Surround yourself with people who want to see you win!

Timmy Sackett, World’s Worse Life Coach, Out.

The 5 Reasons Your Recruiters Aren’t Recruiting!

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Oh boy, here we go. Buckle up, gang!

I guess I need to start at what the hell is “recruiting” and what’s not “recruiting.” We have to because what most of you are calling “recruiting,” I call processing candidates who applied to your job. To me, that’s administering the recruiting process, not really recruiting.

If you post a job and someone applies, technically, most of you call that recruiting. You’re paying a full-functioning human anywhere from $65K to $165K for them to be a “recruiter,” and they are posting jobs and waiting for someone to apply. I used to say I could train a monkey to do that job, but now I get to say I can easily train A.I. to do that job for pennies on the dollar.

Posting and Praying is not recruiting. Posting, collecting candidates who applied, and screening them, is what I like to call “Inbound Recruiting,” and that’s not really recruiting. It’s just administering the recruiting process. Do. Not. Get. Me. Wrong. Being amazing at administering your recruiting process is still valuable and needed. The best “outbound” recruiting shops will still have about 70% of their hires filled by “inbound” recruiting!

Outbound recruiting is then “real” recruiting. That’s when a recruiter has a requisition and really has no valid candidates for the hiring manager, and thus they have to go out and find valid candidates. Now, part of that process might still be finding new places to share and post jobs, but that’s only one small part. The larger part of “real” recruiting is cold outreach to people who don’t know your job is open or might know, but they need some persuasion.

Okay, Why Aren’t Your Recruiters Doing Any “Real” Recruiting?

1. They don’t have capacity because, as humans, we naturally fill our time with what gives us the most success, and in your current state, that is “Inbound recruiting.” This means you tell your recruiters, and you expect your recruiters to do outbound recruiting, but they can easily fill their day with inbound recruiting, and it pays the same. So, why not take the easier route?

2. They don’t know how to really recruit. Honestly, most corporate talent acquisition pros who have never worked in an agency have spent most of their career doing 99% inbound recruiting. That’s just the truth, and we know why from what I said in #1. So, we have to teach them how to do outbound recruiting! (Side note – HireEZ’s own internal Recruiter, Vivian Jiang, will be doing an Outbound Recruiting Session specifically for Corporate TA Pros at the Michigan Recruiters Conference on Nov. 10th in Detroit!)

3. They aren’t rewarded and recognized for doing real recruiting. Almost every time I work with corporate TA teams, I find that the recruiter who fills the most jobs is looked at and rewarded like they are the top recruiter. What I find is they rarely are the top recruiter, but they are the recruiter who processes the most fills through inbound recruiting.

4. Your TA Shop is not structured to do real recruiting. See #1, but basically, you should have “processors” who only do inbound recruiting, and they are amazing at it, and then you have recruiters who only really recruit in a modern TA function. You can get processors for half the price of real recruiters, and they are measured completely differently than outbound recruiters.

5. Your hiring managers don’t know the difference. Right now, today, your hiring managers honestly believe that your TA team is recruiting for their opening. They have no idea that you are only posting jobs and collecting whatever person applies. Those people applying might be the worst talent in the industry, but you are selling them on they are the best. If they knew the truth, they would demand change. What I find is real recruiters work with hiring managers to actually uncover the best talent together in the best TA shops.

This isn’t easy!

I get it. The change management alone from moving from inbound recruiting to outbound recruiting is painful, which is why I think the best approach is to break up the function into two very specific processes of inbound and outbound. It never, and yes, I’m saying never, works to have and expect recruiters to do both.

We built the Michigan Recruiter’s Conference to specifically work with Corporate Talent Acquisition teams to start to work on these challenges and pain points, and I’m super excited to bring it back on November 10th in Detroit with our awesome corporate TA team sponsor DTE Energy onsite at their beautiful and modern campus. Join us!

iCIMS Inspire 2022 is Back – Virtual and Live! Nov. 17th! #iCIMSINSPIRE

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Hey Gang! I’ll be attending iCIMS Inspire Live on Nov. 17th in Santa Monica, CA! Join me!

INSPIRE is an annual conference hosted by iCIMS, the talent cloud company. This award-winning event unites global talent and tech innovators to connect, learn, and celebrate. INSPIRE returns as a hybrid event on Nov. 17 with a limited in-person audience in Santa Monica, CA.

There’s an amazing lineup of folks, including:

Sekou Andrews, CEO, SekouWorld, Inc

One of the most successful spoken word poets in the world! Two National Poetry Slam championships, two national poetry tours, two Independent Music Awards, three Helen Hayes Awards, the most “Just Plain Folks” music awards in history, the 2020 ABA “Entrepreneur of the Year” award, and the first “Best Spoken Word Album” Grammy nomination for a poet in 30 years. 

Sonia Jhas is an award-winning Mindset and Wellness Expert

One of the country’s most influential voices in mental and physical well-being. With 80+ million media impressions and a social media following of over half a million, Sonia has been imparting her honest and ground-breaking approach to mind and body as a speaker, educator, author, and advocate for over a decade and is consistently ranked a top health influencer. 

Dee C. Marshall, CEO, Diverse & Engaged

Dee C. Marshall is an award-winning business owner, influencer, international speaker, and thought leader on equity, diversity, and inclusion across industries, sectors, and globally. Dee was recently awarded WBENC WBE Star Award, named 2021 Entrepreneur Magazine Top 100 Women of Impact, 2021 NJ Most Influential D&I Leaders, Top 50 People of Color List by RIO, Top 25 Influential Black Women in Business by The Network Journal, and Top 25 Leading Women Entrepreneurs.

As well as many talent acquisition industry insiders delivering content designed to elevate our talent acquisition practice.

If you can’t make it on November 17th, register anyway to get some of the content sent to you after the event.

Register Today for iCIMS Inspire 2022! (Virtual Registration is FREE!)

Registration is Free for Virtual! Register Here!

What are we missing around Quality of Hire (QoH)?

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This week CrossChq released a report titled”The CrossChq “Q” Report” that was loaded with some research and data around the quality of hire. The quality of hire metric is like the holy grail of HR and Talent Acquisition! Everyone talks about it, but no one really feels like they know what it is and where they can get it!

Download the “Q” Report Here

Let’s dig into what they found

The one that will jump right out and make you question your own existence is this:

“Internal Referrals have a Quality of Hire -26% below the industry average”

What? The What?!

Since the beginning of time or at least the beginning of HR, we have all lived by one unbending truth! Referral hires were always of higher quality than some hires out of the general population. You get taught this in the first hour of the first day of HR and Recruiting school!

Turns out, we’ve been lied to or at least led to believe that referral hires were better when they weren’t. How could this be the case? Well, we love to believe in this one premise, which was probably never proven. We want to believe someone who works for us would never refer a candidate who wouldn’t be a great worker!

The reality is most people just refer friends or family, and they have no idea how that person works, nor do they really care. They just want to hang out all day with people they like, regardless of how they work!

Another thing in the report that was somewhat shocking:

“Interviews show only a 9% correlation rate to Quality of Hire!”

Okay, we all know that our hiring managers suck at interviewing. In fact, almost everyone sucks at interviewing! Why? For one, 90% of hiring managers don’t interview enough to ever sharpen that skill. On top of that, we are all too gullible and believe what we here and don’t dig in. BUT, this number is shocking!

I think most organization should be testing “no-interview” hiring. That doesn’t mean we don’t talk to people or try validated assessments (more on this in the study), but formal interviews with a 9% success rate are a giant waste of time!

This study is definitely worth a download and read. I’m always skeptical of vendor-based research, but I really like the effort, data, and quality of this one. I think it has some true merit. We all know we need to select better, but we mostly keep doing and believing the same stuff, without really any merit.