The HR Technology Conference Pitchfest Competition is Open for Applications! @hrtechconf

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I’ve said this at least a thousand times but my single favorite event of the year is the HR Technology Conference’s Pitchfest competition! 30 HR/TA Technology startups competing for the honor to be named HR Tech Startup of the Year! $30,000 dollar prize, plus a booth at the 2023 HR Technology Conference, and an invaluable amount of publicity that comes with participating and winning this event!

Pitchfest Application Here

The Application Deadline is July 29th, so you have to get on this if you want to try and get into the competition! Huge shoutout to the Randstad Innovation Fund for their continued support of the Pitchfest. The lifeblood of great HR Tech is more and more startups are given access and opportunity to develop the next generation of technology. Last year the Pitchfest had more female founders presenting than I’ve ever seen, and they were amazing!

For Pitchfest 2022 I’ll again be one of the judges and I’m looking forward to seeing all the great tech!

One of the most difficult things for HR Tech startups to do is break through all the noise. There are roughly 10,000 different HR technology products on the market worldwide. Most buyers can name just a handful, and usually, it’s only those they are currently using, or have used in the recent past. It’s events like the Pitchfest that give these startups a chance to break through all the noise.

What Am I Looking Forward to For The 2022 Pitchfest at HR Tech?

  • Pandemic Tech! So many great workplace pandemic-related HR technology solutions are hitting the market with real applications to the modern workforce.
  • Talent Acquisition Tech! Double the amount of current openings today than in 2019 and even a recession will leave us with million of jobs to fill. AI has made major advances in recruiting tech and more keep hitting the market.
  • Intelligence and BI Tech! Data is king, but actually being able to easily understand and use the insights of your data is even a better king! HR Tech is finally understanding this in a major way.

If you haven’t signed up for the 2022 HR Technology Conference, I’ve got a special code that can save you $300 off the current early bird rate! Code – “HT22MA26” for your special Tim Sackett discount!

Register for the HR Technology Conference Today!

I’m back from London – What did I learn?

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I was over in London during the 4th of July holiday. I hosted the DisruptHR London event and attended RecFest 2022. The weather was very un-London like in that it was amazing!

This was my third time in London and every time I learn a little more:

London –

  • Still the best mass transit system around. Nothing beats the Tube!
  • London is a better New York. Big city. Big city stuff to do. Smells wonderful and seems like a smaller city. Flowers everywhere. There’s so much to see.
  • Food is improving, but mainly that’s all the non-English food coming in.
  • Shopping is funny in London. So many people from different countries and middle east tourists love the gaudy logo brand clothing! The gaudier the better! They wait in line to get into the biggest brand name stores! Like, you never have to ask what they are wearing, you can read it clearly across their chest! The English, tend to not be so loud about their dress.
  • They still laugh at how much soda Americans drink, but that’s only because instead of drinking soda they drink the same amount of beer.
  • The English men dress exponentially way better than American men on average. Also, almost none of them wear shorts. I had folks comment on my “American” shorts, mostly that it was too cold for shorts. It was in the ’70s every day.
  • It’s one of the most diverse cities I’ve been to. You meet people from so many countries it’s unbelievable. And no one is complaining that England is trying to make the country their country. London is London, you came here, welcome to London. We’re going to stay being London, we hope you like it. If you don’t, you’re free to leave. That doesn’t mean they aren’t accepting and welcoming, they are. But they are also English, no matter your skin color or nationality.
  • I had drivers from six different countries – Afghanistan, Italy, South Africa, Iraq, Norway, and Croatia. Each one was excited to talk about America and all couldn’t wait to go back or go for the first time. They seemed truly excited. Also, unfortunately, most wanted to go to Las Vegas or New York. To them that’s America! This wasn’t normal driver chit-chat, these folks really wanted to talk about America and many had stories of them trying to get to America, but England was easier.

DisruptHR London –

  • Just an amazing group of HR professionals and speakers. The London HR crowd was so engaging.
  • We struggled to get 200 folks to sign up. Which is strange, but it’s really about advertising and marketing. Everyone who came raved about the event, but almost 100% said they had never heard of it. It felt like we hammered the marketing for eight straight weeks. Also, this was actually the 16th DisruptHR London, so it begs the question of who was coming to the first 16?!
  • If you’ve never done a 5-minute DisruptHR talk – as a speaker – it might be your greatest challenge! You must try one!

RecFest2022 –

  • 4,000+/- Recruiting professionals at an outdoor festival. Jamie Leonard, the founder of RecFest, hates when I call it the world’s largest Recruiting party, but it is! It’s also a festival and conference and it’s amazing.
  • It was a warm, sunny day, and I and like 50 other people had on our American shorts!
  • Word is, RecFest might be coming to America in 2022, but if you have a chance to go over to London for RecFest 2023, it’s a must-do!
  • People in the UK seem to love to queue (that’s standing in line, for Americans). When I arrived at the festival there were 1,000 people in the queue just waiting to get in! Eventually, they just opened the gates, then people went right back into the queue for coffee, food, and beer. I think the English just walk around looking to stand in a queue! That won’t work in America. Jamie and the crew will have to figure that out. If Americans stand in line for ten minutes, they’ll never come back!
  • There is nothing like this anywhere in the world! The RecFest folks truly have something special on their hands.

Don’t Offer Yourself Up to the Burden.

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I was on TikTok the other night. TikTok for me has become my mindless tv. You know when you’ve had your normal busy day and you just want mindless interaction before you go to bed. The TikTok algorithm is amazing. I get all my golf vids, funny vids, political vids, puppy vids, and out of nowhere last night the algo snuck in Conor Crippen.

I was now all in down the Conor Crippen rabbit hole. I don’t even know why the algo surfaced this up, but damn it, I love it! it’s an inspiring story and I’m laying there watching Conor videos and I’m laughing and crying and smiling and if anyone saw me they would have thought I was probably having a breakdown of some sort!

Here’s Conor’s story:

On Conor’s site, he has this saying and it won’t get out of my brain: “Don’t offer yourself up to the burden.” He goes on:

“Every day, no matter what you are going through, you have a choice. You can either give in to the burden you’re facing or refuse to let it define you.”

I needed to hear that. Almost everyone I know needs to hear that.

Conor’s story is inspiring not just because of this perseverance and strength, but also because of his mother’s perseverance and strength! His aunt wrote their story in the book titled, “Just Give Me the Road” based on a quote his mother said just hours after his accident. It’s an amazing story.

Make sure you follow Conor on TikTok:

https://www.tiktok.com/@crippenconor/video/7081670691757575466?is_from_webapp=1&sender_device=pc&web_id=7094594753518913067
@crippenconor on the TikToks

You can also hire Conor to come to speak at your event! I hope that I get to meet Conor at an event I’m speaking at in the near future!

Also, shoutout to TIkTok for taking my mindless activity time and helping me find such an amazing person!

Who is in your circle of Care?

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I was on the Workday Ventures analyst call yesterday and they had one of their new venture partner companies, Wellthy, and their CEO, Lindsay Jurist-Rosner, on to discuss her company and experience, etc.

Wellthy is a fascinating company, especially when you take into context the current demographics of the U.S., and really all industrialized countries. Wellthy is a digital care concierge service. Think about taking care of aging parents and how you have to deal with the logistics and administrative burden on top of everything else. This is where Wellthy steps in and helps families with this burden.

Lindsay said something profound that stuck with me in terms of how they look at each family and their ability to care for their family: “Who is in your circle of care?” Meaning, when you need help, who are those who will take care of you. What her company finds is it’s almost always the parents. For so many people, this is problematic and that problem is growing as we live longer and a larger portion of the population ages.

It’s not just helping to take care of aging parents, although that is a giant issue, it’s also how we care for our own children, or extended family with needs, maybe even a close friend or neighbor who relies on us (their circle of care).

I’ve written before about how helpful my personal board of directors has been to me over my career with big decisions. I never thought about my circle of care!

Can you write down your circle of care network?

Immediately I have my wife. She’s the CEO of the Timmy circle of care network. I would also put in my Dad, even though he’s about to turn 80, if something happened to me, he would do whatever he could to care for me. My three sons would also be in there, but honestly, until this moment, I never even thought of them in that context. But they are adults and if something happened I know they would gladly find me a home! (just kidding – they wouldn’t be happy about the price and money being taken out of the estate!)

Beyond family, I have my co-workers that probably know more about my medical issues than most of my family. I mean we spend so much time together, so I’m guessing they would also be considered part of that circle of care. I have some neighbors and friends that would help out in a pinch from time to time, as I would do that for them as well.

As I write all of this down, god damn, I’m a pretty lucky person. I can count on a lot of people in my circle of care.

Unfortunately, most of our employees aren’t so lucky. Many have almost no one that they could count on within their circle of care. This is why Wellthy and this type of technology are growing quickly within the HR Tech landscape. We no longer live in a world where we can expect to keep their personal lives at home and not have it impact their work life. So, the best companies will find ways to support an employee’s circle of care.

It’s interesting if you think about it, at every age we need care and support. Some of us are lucky to have that robust circle of care along the way, but many will never have it, or have it and lose it, or not have it and gain it. All of our employees will be at different levels of support, no matter their age, gender, ethnicity, etc. As health care issues are taking a national stage currently, it’s important for us as leaders to rethink how we are supporting our employees and their wellbeing.

What is the Health Insurance Design Impact to Employer Paid Abortions?

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Obviously, we had major news recently around abortion rights in America.

What I really want to talk about today is an amazingly quick response by organizations to immediately offer a new health benefit. Within hours of the announcement, we saw major employers come out publicly stating they would pay for the expense of their employees to obtain legal abortions if they could not get one in the state they lived and worked. Some employers also announced that they would pay for relocations for their employees to live in states with legal abortions.

All of this, just from a health benefit plan design perspective is quite remarkable!

Most employers can’t agree on offering smoking cessation programs for their employees or paying for gym memberships, but within hours, we are now paying for abortions. We have severely unhealthy obese employees, but we won’t pay for bariatric surgery. Organizations tend to move very slowly in making benefit design changes, and those changes tend to mostly be around cost/benefit.

Are we being “Inclusive” by offering an abortion benefit?

Again – I’m 100% in favor of a woman’s right to choose!

But we need to have a conversation about the hypocrisy of some of these decisions being made around this issue. This is what we do as professionals in HR. We discuss decisions we make as organizations, and how each decision tends to lead to other issues we can’t yet know what they might be.

So, we are now offering abortions as a health benefit. Why?

Let’s say we are willing to pay $5,000 dollars for our female employees to get an abortion. It definitely makes us sound like we are a very progressive employer! It’s interesting, though, that many of the employers who are willing to pay for your abortion are not willing to pay for your parental leave if you chose to keep your baby. They are unwilling to pay for childcare assistance after you have your baby.

Why is that?

Could it be, that not having children make you a more productive and less expensive to insure employee?

We must ask ourselves this question, if not only to ensure we are being inclusive in our insurance offerings to our female employees.

If you want to be “inclusive” you offer a woman a full choice. Yes, you can choose to have an abortion and we’ll support you! Yes, you can have the baby, and we will still support you! If you only choose one side, you are being exclusionary. Why?

Abortion as an employer-paid health benefit

There are benefits we pay as employers that have very little financial impact but make us look like we are an employer of choice. College Tuition reimbursement was always the biggest one. We offer you college tuition reimbursement knowing almost no one actually takes advantage of it. It’s one of the lowest-used benefits a company can offer! But, we feel great about ourselves when we market this out to candidates and employees.

Are abortion benefits the next college tuition benefit? You offer it up, knowing it makes you look like a progressive employer, but you know it really has very little financial impact. On the flip side, offering paid parental leave and childcare assistance, well, those benefits actually cost us real money, so no, we won’t offer those!

All women should be allowed to make their own choice with their bodies. Period. Employers are going to decide if they should help women with that decision. I think we, as HR leaders and professionals, should be advising our executives that having a “Choice” is about more than one option. Our benefit plans should support any choice a woman wants to make, not just one.

Abortion is health care. Having and caring for a child is health care. Organizations need to support all choices that a woman might want to make.

The Most Important 20 Minutes of Your Week!

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A lot of folks are currently Looking for work and there are a ton of open jobs, like 12.5 million! This means that this week you’re likely to do more phone screens than a similar week a few years ago. Almost everyone in TA is working harder and trying to push more through the funnel. You and your teams will be cranking out phone screens!

You and I (TA Leaders and Pros) don’t consider a twenty-minute phone screen to be an interview. Candidates definitely believe it’s an interview. They prepare for your phone screen at the same level they prepare for an in-person interview with the hiring manager. First impressions and all.

Here’s the problem, that twenty-minute phone screen, one of many you will have during the week, isn’t even in your top 25 most important things you’ll be doing this week. So, how do we address this variance in importance with how the candidate will ultimately view your employment brand, you, your hiring manager, and the job?

That’s a tricky question.

I think the first thing we need to do in talent acquisition is simply to recognize this reality. We are going to be talking with scheduled candidates about who we are, who they are, and what we have, and this is extremely important to them, especially for those out of job. To have some empathy and understanding of the situation. To provide something of value, even as we look to gain some value of information ourselves.

It’s a powerful thing to know you’ll be talking with a number of people in a week, all of whom this could be their most important conversation of the week, month, or year. That we (all recruiters) have a major impact on this event in their lives. We can create an amazing experience, or we can do something less than amazing.

I have this naive belief that all of us humans actually want to do things that make other people happy and satisfied. Isn’t that a great little fuzzy, cute world I live in!?! If we knew we had the power to make someone’s life just a little better, we would use that power for good. That if given the choice to make someone’s day brighter, we would always make the right choice.

Well, we do.

Do Good. Be Kind. As Chris Kurtz would say.

This week, as you go out into the world and phone screen your brands out. Try and make someone’s week. You are worth it. They are worth it. It will be the most important twenty minutes of their week, it’s important we remember that!

The State of Hourly and High-Volume Hiring in 2022

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It’s Friday. It’s the Summer. Blog traffic is crap on Fridays in the summer! You get my raspy, deep morning voice instead, enjoy! So, here’s a vlog instead:

It’s Your Boy!

Here’s the link to the report – The State of Hourly and High-Volume Hiring in 2022 by HR.com. Here’s the link to Matt Charney.

You are underestimating the number of stupid people you work with?

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Look, I get it, I’m not the smartest person in most rooms, so this is definitely the pot calling the kettle black!

I ran into Professor Carlo Cipolla’s Basic Laws of Human Stupidity recently, here they are:

1.      Everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals among us.

2.      The probability that a certain person is stupid is independent of any other characteristic of that person.

3.      A stupid person is a person who causes losses to another person while deriving no gain and even possibly incurring losses.

4.      Non-stupid people always underestimate the damaging power of stupid individuals.

5.      A stupid person is the most dangerous type of person.

I love this! I need to give Carlo a hug for developing this!

Is Stupid a Super Power?

I’ve worked long enough in HR to know stupid people can really screw stuff up! You can have an entire team of people working their butts off to solve a problem or develop a new product and it only takes one stupid person to bring it all down.

HR was kind of built around the concept of we’ll have a few stupid people working for us, let’s have one function in place to try and limit their impact! Its kind of like HR is the Super Friends and Stupid People are the Legion of Doom.

Every single HR policy that has ever been written was because of a stupid person. One stupid person couldn’t figure out something, no one else had an issue with it, but now we have to have a policy because Timmy doesn’t get you can’t stick your arm into the machine that cuts metal bars.

Stupid people are the reason for centuries we couldn’t be treated like adults at companies. “Hey, cool, Jill, you need to go to the doctor? No worries, we know you take care of your work, we’ll see you tomorrow.” Then Timmy steps in and says he needs to go to the doctor as well, but then posts a pic of himself drinking a cocktail by the pool, and then doesn’t come back until three days later, because apparently, his doctor is in Bora Bora.

How do you know who the stupid people are at your work?

First, let’s clarify there’s a difference between flat-out people who lack intelligence stupid. Like they had no choice! Their dumb Mom and dumb Dad got it on in the back of a Chevy one night and now you have stupid babies running around. That’s a different stupid. Because those folks can actually be great employees!

The stupid we are talking about is from #3 above. They know better, or should no better, but they are stupid enough to not only hurt others but hurt themselves. Now that’s stupid!

We need to create an assessment to uncover stupid people in our organizations. Maybe it’s something like a multiple-choice exam:

Scenario: Your co-worker, who is attractive, enters the conference room you are also in. You:

A. Make a pleasant welcome, something like, “Hi, Mary, Great to see you!”

B. Yell out, “Wow, nice rack!”

C. Immediately turn to another co-worker and say, “I’d hit that”

D. Get on Teams and message your “Bro” group about Mary

We all know how to answer this simple example question unless you’re stupid. Stupid people get confused by normal stuff. Normal behavior is like Kryptonite to a stupid person.

Here’s what I know. You should never underestimate the power of stupid and the influence it has on your organization. You have to be on guard and ready at all times because stupid never rests. It’s always lurking. Just waiting to do something…stupid.

If You Could Choose 1 ATS Which One Would It Be?

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One of the most asked questions I get over the last decade of writing and speaking is “What ATS should I buy?” I don’t have one, because there are so many variables at play, plus there are most likely over one thousand ATSs in existence!

My buddy, Hung Lee, at Recruiting Brainfood, had this study put together and I love it! Basically, it was asking users of ATSs (a couple thousand, worldwide, so statistically relevant), if you could choose an ATS which one would you choose?

The results:

https://insights.recruitingbrainfood.com/wdrw/2021

What can we learn from this data?

From the get-go, Greenhouse Software seems to be very popular with users! Greenhouse is definitely one of my top recommendations when people ask, and I truly think you can’t go wrong if you choose them.

You can also probably understand fairly quickly, that there isn’t a ton of big enterprise users that answered the survey because the vast majority of giant enterprise use one of the big 3: Workday, Oracle, or SAP. Taleo/Oracle and Workday are at the top of the big enterprise ATS world, with SAP/Successfactors coming in third, which seems to align with what I hear from enterprise Talent leaders.

You hear the big 3 enterprise recruiting modules get beat up a lot, but the truth is, when you’re hiring hundreds of thousands, if not millions of employees per year, you need a system that can handle that volume and complexity. Plus, you most likely need full global and you want something that won’t break. They tend to lower marks from users because they aren’t as feature-rich as the best-of-breed ATSs on the market, but all have a solid partner ecosystem that adds most of the features a big enterprise is looking for.

As you start to look at the lines that have more attractors than detractors, you see some interesting stuff. You see the large numbers of likes for SmartRecruiters, Lever, and SMB ATS Workable. All of which are great selections as well. Avature is a surprise, as they are an ATS, but were built as a CRM, but users seem to like the combination.

I use Loxo, so I’m excited to see them in a very positive light on a list with all these big brands and established ATSs. At the end of the day, the best thing that can happen for any brand or service is the people using you would choose you to use it again if given the option.

DisruptHR London (UK) is on! July 6th, Tickets Available Now!

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DisruptHR London returns with a bang this summer! July 6th at 6 pm! Join us at the Royal Institution, home of the world-famous Christmas Lectures, to hear from stellar HR and Talent experts, network, and enjoy the iconic surroundings.
DisruptHR London Speakers!
Get Your Tickets Here! Before They Sellout!

DisruptHR London is an information exchange designed to energize, inform and empower executives, business leaders, and people in HR.

100s of professionals will come together at the Royal Institution on July 6th for an evening of inspiring speakers and networking.

  • Hear what HR leaders and workplace innovators are doing in 2022 to improve the workplace
  • Discover innovative approaches to how companies are disrupting current practices and adding value to the London HR community
  • Drinks and networking with London’s most forward-thinking HR and Tech professionals

The Speakers!

Enjoy 12-15 5-minute talks from well-known HR and Talent experts including:

  • Tim Sackett, HRU Technical Resources President, Senior Faculty Member at Josh Bersin Academy, Chief Storyteller at Fistful of Talent HR Blog
  • Kirstin Furber, People Director at Channel 4
  • Torin Ellis, Diversity Strategist, author, and contributor on SiriusXM.
  • Professor Graeme L. Close, Professor of Human Physiology. Head of Nutrition European Tour Golf and Nutrition Consultant to England Rugby.
  • Dave Millner, Author, Futurist and Consulting Partner at HRCurator
  • Adam Pacifico, Partner at Heidrick & Struggles, Barrister, Host of ‘the Leadership Enigma’ Podcast
  • Dr. Rochelle Haynes, Good Work Advocate, GigHR Expert, Senior Lecturer at UWE and CEO at Crowd Potential
  • Neil Usher, Chief Workplace & Change Strategist at GoSpace AI
  • Dr. Martin Littlewood, Principal Lecturer in Sport Psychology & Development and BASES Accredited Sport & Exercise Scientist at Liverpool John Moores University
  • Perry Timms, Founder & Chief Energy Officer at PTHR
  • Simon Haigh, Founder, and CEO at Simonhaigh.com and GCM Growth Group

The Location!

The Royal Institution! Home of the World Famous Christmas Lectures!

The sponsors!

Get Your Tickets Today!