Could You Be Elon Musk’s HR Leader?

Posted on by
Reply

On episode 88 of The HR Famous Podcast, long-time HR leaders (and friends) Tim Sackett, Jessica Lee, and Kris Dunn come together to discuss Elon Musk as a maverick leader (his move of HQ location without discussing with the leadership team, firing of longtime assistant, etc) and whether they could work for him as his SVP of HR. Drinking at Michigan State tailgates is also discussed.

Listen (click this link if you don’t see the player) and be sure to subscribe, rate, and review (Apple Podcasts) and follow (Spotify)!

Show Highlights

3:00 – The Michigan attorney general (Michigan fan) recently released an apology for getting too drunk at an MSU football game. She said there was more alcohol than food at the tailgate. KD said the MSU tailgates are quite aggressive.

6:30 – When MSU and U of M play each other, anywhere from 150k to 250k people are on the respective campus. Tim says it’s the “biggest cocktail of the North.”

9:30 – Today’s episode is dedicated to the one and only Elon Musk. A few months ago, Elon announced that the Tesla headquarters are moving from California to Texas. He didn’t tell his leadership team before he made the announcement, according to California officials trying to spin the move in a negative way.

12:30 – Tim can’t believe in a modern world that a CEO would do this since even small moves can cause major change for many employees. KD notes that it really didn’t impact as many people as some might think, since Elon wanted to move to Texas and the top talent at Tesla is either tied to a plant or as specialists who can work where they want as long as they are willing to travel.

14:00 – JLee mentions that Elon is the new “boogeyman.” KD mentions that his leadership team must have had enough experience with him to know that something like this could happen or would be happening soon.

18:30 – KD asks JLee for any guidance from HR leaders who work with CEOs like Elon. She notes that the best strategy may be to not try and control the leader.

20:30 – Tim mentions that Tesla is still considered a startup, even though most startups don’t grow as quickly or to the scale of Tesla.

24:30 – JLee calls Elon a little petty in response to his former assistant’s story.  The gang makes a note to discuss the dynamics of asking for more money in the future — there’s always a chance the answer is no!

33:00 – Elon recently took to Twitter to ask his followers if he should sell 10% of his stock. Tim notes that he had to do this since he has tax bills coming due.

37:30 – KD talks about some potential tax rebates for purchasing EVs and how the current administration is proposing greater rebates for auto companies with unions. KD notes the administration is penalizing one of the great innovators of the last 100 years, and also notes that the lower rebates may put Tesla out of reach for some lower and middle-class buyers, which he considers ironic due to the fact that elites will still buy a Tesla regardless of the price.

42:30 – KD asks Tim and JLee if they would be Elon’s HR leader. Tim says yes because of his extreme innovation. JLee won’t answer, but KD says he would too.

Follow Your Talent…Not Your Passion!

Posted on by
7

The worst advice you can get as a new professional in the world is to follow your passion. I’ll blame social media and the fake B.S. that proliferates Instagram, TikTok, etc. This one phrase, “Follow Your Passion” is probably the main culprit for the growth of the entire life coaching industry, and has probably ruined more careers than alcohol and drugs combined.

This is the first time I’ve written about this. I love puppies. Petting puppies is my passion. Puppies are awesome! Turns out, no one wants to pay me six figures a year to pet puppies. Ugh…there goes my passion. Honestly, from a talent standpoint, I’m not even sure I’m very good at petting puppies. I mean, I love it, but I don’t think I am necessarily better at it than anyone else.

The other day I heard someone say, “Follow your talent, not your passion.” and I thought, Oh, I like that!

When I tell some young person, you’re stupid, don’t follow your passion. I look like an old ogre who doesn’t get it. I mean I do get it, but when you’re young the world hasn’t beaten you down enough yet to understand what’s real vs. what’s fantasy. What every person can easily understand is “what is your talent”, what are you good at. There might be a number of answers to this. Some of the answers might seem like there isn’t much value, at least to a young person.

“I can easily talk to people I’ve just met.” What value does that have?! Oh, boy, let me tell you! You can work in all kinds of great positions because that skill isn’t something everyone has. I went to school for marketing, and I can talk to people easily, and I actually really like technology. Okay, now we are building up some really great skills that lead to some cool career opportunities.

We all have talents. Individually some of those talents don’t seem like much. You might have a talent of I can get up each day full of energy and ready to work. Great! That isn’t as common as you think! The reality is most of our talents, by themselves don’t seem like much, but when we combine them with other talents, and training, and the right culture fit, some amazing results can happen.

Follow Your Passion is the World’s Worst Advice

Unless your passion has some real value. That part is always missed by people giving that advice. Usually, those giving out that advice have abnormal passions. “My passion was coding and developing game theory and design…” Oh, really, well following that passion in this economy is probably a great idea!

The combination of talent + passion is really difficult for most people. People would say, oh, you love puppies, you should become a breeder or trainer of dogs. No, I have no desire to watch a dog give birth, yuck! Or work with dogs and train them, I just like snuggling them and petting them. I have passion, but no talent.

So, we begin to see there are caveats to following your passion. Basically, you should follow your passion if:

  1. Your passion has real value to earning a living.
  2. Your passion aligns with your talents.
  3. Your passion doesn’t cost your parents their retirement.

Now, my friend, Kris Dunn, believes that the most talented people you will run into usually have a high passion for the industry and/or profession they are thriving in. I believe this is true. So, in that case, yes, follow your passion. But, I wonder, is this a little bit of the chicken or the egg scenario. Do I have passion for this job, because I happen to be really freaking good at this job?!

I think many of us found success in professions we never even thought about doing when we were young. I know I wasn’t in high school thinking, “Oh, boy, I can’t wait to be a Recruiter!” I wasn’t in college thinking that either! But, I became a Recruiter, I became successful recruiting, and I’m really passionate about our profession! I love it! I talk about it every day! I’m proud to call myself a Recruiter.

My passion in college was coaching volleyball. Not very many people know that about me. I was actually pretty good at it as well. Turns out, coaching pays for crap for a lot of years and there aren’t many jobs that pay well. So, I had to make a business decision. Be a poor volleyball coach, or go make some good money and then do some coaching on the side. Some folks will say, I should have stuck it out with my passion, but it all worked out well for me in the end, and I found a passion I didn’t even know I had.

You will never hear me in front of young people telling them to follow their passion. At best, that statement is incomplete and bad advice. I will tell young people to try all kinds of stuff. Find out what you’re good at and determine if that thing is also something you can see yourself doing for a long time. Follow your talent and see if it might turn into a passion. At worse, you’ll be successful, but unhappy with your choice, and still have choices, because you’re successful.

What if you allowed anyone in your company to hire?

Posted on by
3

Let me walk you through a scenario and you tell me what I’m missing.

We all have hiring needs right now. Almost all of us are struggling to fill those needs. We love employee referrals! We also have great employees, doing great work who work with us, that we trust.

What would happen if we went to our employees and said, “Hey, we love you and trust you, so we are going to allow you to hire one person. You have total say in whether this person gets hired. We have a few parameters around HR stuff, drug screen, background check, etc., but the hiring decision is yours”.

You could probably add in some fun parameters like:

  • Here are the positions we have open that you can hire someone for. (IE., you might have some positions you don’t want the run of the mill making hiring decisions on)
  • If your hire fails, you won’t get this chance to hire another person for at least a year, so make it a good one!
  • If your hire succeeds, you will be given the ability to hire another person.
  • Maybe you want to throw some sort of bonus to your folks for successful hires, explain what “success” looks like, etc.

What might happen?

Honestly, I don’t know. I’ve never done it, but I think I would be willing to test it out.

Let’s dig into what we think would mostly happen.

My best guess is you would have some employees who would be like, awesome, I’ve got a friend or family member I think would do a great job, and I’m going to hire them. Yes! Some positions get filled and they have some employee sponsorship that will probably help hold them accountable and be more successful.

You will probably have a few misses. Yeah, I thought Johnny would do well, and since he has a record no one will hire him, but he’s my sister’s kid and I really thought he turned his life around and this was a great chance, but ultimately he’s a loser.

You will probably have some employees who think you are nuts and not serious.

The big question is would you allow this for any positions, or just low/no-skill type of positions? I mean, really, conceptually, it works for any level. If I have a finance position open, and there are certain requirements needed for the job, then it isn’t really that hard to see if the person can conceptually do the job or not with their experience and education. So, it could work for any level job, blue-collar or white-collar.

Does this empower your employees?

Imagine being an individual contributor in your organization and one day you wake up and go to work and you realize you can actually hire someone. I can have that experience of making a life-changing decision for someone else. That seems like it would be pretty powerful!

Do you remember the very first person you ever got to hire? That’s a giant career moment. I tend to think every person you hire is a pretty great career moment, but the first one is big!

I think being able to hire someone would be super empowering and it’s really just a next-level employee referral program. Instead of you just referring someone, just take it few more steps and make it happen!

I tend to look at our current staffing problems with a strong testing mentality. Let’s try a bunch of stuff and see what might work. Most of it won’t work, but we might run into something amazing! Maybe our first test of this concept is to go to a hand-selected group of 10 or 20 employees and give them the first shot. Measure the results, gather feedback, decide if it should be rolled out further or what changes should be made.

All that I know is that early in my career if the CEO came into my cube and said, “Tim, we are going to allow you to hire one person to work here!” I would have taken that assignment very seriously and would have thought that was super cool!

What do you think? Tell me how crazy this is.

The Future of Work is Adulting! @disrupt_hr @disrupthrlansing

Posted on by
Reply

Last month we had a little bit of fun with the HR community in downtown Lansing, MI at DisruptHR Lansing. Here is my video from the night:

The Future of Work? Adulting | Tim Sackett | DisruptHR Talks from DisruptHR on Vimeo.

If you want a DisruptHR event in your city, go to the site and check out how. It’s fun and inexpensive, and one of the best ways to have good HR fun in your community! I love speaking at these events because each time is a new challenge, but the crowd is so supportive!

Shout out to my team on DisruptHR Lansing for all their help – Patty Davis and Tina Sutterlin, and my HRU team, especially Lori Johnson for all of her help as well. And our Emcee, Cassie Goodband, from Keyser Insurance (also the main sponsor!)! Behind me, she’s the best Emcee in the business! 😉

To our sponsors – Keyser Insurance, Ultimate Software (UKG), Providence Consulting, MessageMakers, Urban Beat, and HRUTech.com.

HR Famous Talks Vaccine Mandate & Are Millennials Afraid of GenZ?!

Posted on by
Reply

On episode 87 of The HR Famous Podcast, long-time HR leaders (and friends) long-time HR leaders (and friends) Tim Sackett and Jessica Lee come together to discuss the new vaccine mandates and Millennial Fear of Gen Z.  Welcome to the grown-up world, Millennials! The kids are crazy!

Listen below (click this link if you don’t see the player) and be sure to subscribe, rate, and review (Apple Podcasts) and follow (Spotify)!

SHOW HIGHLIGHTS:

1:45 – JLee and Tim got dinner this week and KD was a little jealous…

5:15 – Tim recently met with the folks at SHRM and he heard that whenever they put out any content piece about COVID or vaccines, it gets 100 times more engagement than any other posts. 

7:30 – Tim notes that OSHA said all employees that choose not to get vaccinated can be forced to pay for their mandatory tests. He doesn’t know how companies are going to attract new employees and force them to pay for COVID tests. 

9:00 – Congrats to OSHA! You’ve made it!

11:30 – CNBC recently released an article about actor Kal Penn applying for a job at the White House under the Obama administration. He didn’t receive a response from his application until he mentioned to Michelle Obama at a White House gala that he had applied. 

18:00 – JLee has thought about working for the federal government to help fix their hiring process. She applied through a similar website to the one Kal Penn used and she never received a response. 

22:00 – JLee thinks the federal government needs someone with private sector sensibilities to come in and fix their hiring processes. 

23:30 – Tim recently sent JLee an article from the NY Times titled “The 37-Year-Olds Are Afraid of the 23-Year-Olds that Work For Them”. Tim asked JLee if she’s afraid of her twenty-something employees. 

27:00 – JLee wonders how we can still encourage young people to be bold and unapologetic with some more grown-up sensibilities. 

31:00 – Tim’s advice for young people is to always run ideas/suggestions/comments by a trusted mentor before going to the broader public at a corporate level. 

The Weekly Dose: Emissary.ai – Texting Makes Recruiting Easier!

Posted on by
1

Today on your weekly dose of HR technology, I review the text recruiting platform Emissary.ai. Emissary.ai is a text recruiting platform built to make candidate engagement and recruitment automation easy. Their AI recruiting software empowers recruiting teams, HR departments, and staffing firms with efficient text recruiting tools that work in harmony with any ATS, HRIS, or recruiting site.

Emissary’s platform is primarily used for one-on-one texting between recruiters and candidates, campaign texting, so many candidates at one time, and they also offer recruiting chatbots as well. One big advantage Emissary has over their competition is real API integration to products like Workday, Greenhouse, SAP/Successfactors, as well as HR tech like your background checking technology, Linkedin, etc.

What do I like about Emissary?

  • I’ve been a fan of text recruiting technology for years because this technology gives you message history between recruiters and candidates all in one place, and with real API integration all of this can be pushed back into your ATS. So, you have less worry about recruiters contacting the same candidates, or if they do reach out, they already know what others within your team are talking to them about.
  • Emissary allows recruiters to text within any environment they are in. Using LinkedIn, a chrome interface will come up and allow the recruiter to text directly from LI to the potential candidate, and all of this is synced back to your system of record.
  • Emissary’s mobile app makes is very convienent for recruiters to use their own cell phone to text candidates, but keep the entire conversation within the platform. Also, when a recruiter is using their personal cell phone with the Emissary app, their personal cell phone number is not used, so there’s no worry for their privacy.
  • Using Emissary for text campaigns is as easy as copy and pasting a list of names and numbers into a campaign and then simply using pre-built templates to make each text message going to candidates have a personal look and feel.
  • Emissary’s recruiting chatbot can be deployed almost anywhere, which allows you to screen and gather information from candidates 24/7.

I’ve said this for the past few years, if you are in recruiting, any kind of recruiting, and you are not texting candidates, you should be fired! Yes, FIRED! All of the data shows that the response rate from candidates to text is 5-10X higher than any other form of messaging candidates. There is no better way to get candidates to respond to your recruiting outreach than to use a text recruiting platform like Emissary.ai.

I would fully recommend you go out a do a demo for yourself. Many people in the industry will say, “well, my ATS allows us to text candidates from the ATS”. That might be so, but what Emissary does is completely different than what your ATS does, and you really have to see it to understand. Text recruiting technology is one of the highest ROIs within the TA technology landscape.

If you charge your employees to Covid Test, You’re stupid!

Posted on by
2

Wow, that seems aggressive!

The new, on-hold, Federal Vaccine Mandate has organizations all over the country losing their minds, and that is putting it lightly!

I have to say, for how dumb I usually think our US government is on most things, no matter what party is in charge, this Vaccine Mandate was kind of brilliantly written regardless of which side you’re on. Unlike most government regulations this one is pretty tight. You have two options:

  1. Get the vaccine.
  2. Put on a mask and test weekly.
  3. See #1 or #2

It’s extremely rare that in HR we see something so straightforward.

“Well, Tim, you missed religious and medical accommodations!” No, not really. Doesn’t matter. Great you need or want accommodation, doesn’t matter. #1 or #2, which one do you want, #2 will fill your accommodation.

So, why are you stupid for charging your employees for Covid testing?

First, the new, on-hold, federal mandate, does allow employers to charge their employees who don’t want to get vaccinated and now have to be tested, weekly. Legally, you are allowed to charge your employees.

Second, doing so, no matter what you believe about the vaccine, is stupid!

It is next to impossible right now to hire great talent. Fact.

So, in this environment, you think the best way to retain employees is to tell them you’re going to make them pay for their own test?! Um, nope! They’ll just leave you and go work for someone who won’t make them pay and probably also doesn’t make them feel like a second-class citizen for making their own health choices.

I continue to hear from well-meaning HR pros across the country that they will be making their employees pay for their own testing, and honestly, I just don’t understand this stance. It seems like a recipe for disaster when it comes to retaining employees you desperately need.

But, the testing costs a lot and we want our employees to be vaccinated!

Yeah, I want world peace.

The fact is, in the US, we are not going to get everyone vaccinated. We have huge parts of our population that just don’t trust the vaccine is right for them. Under 50% of African Americans in the US are unvaccinated and have no desire to be vaccinated. Almost 50% of Union workers in the US are unvaccinated and have no desire to be vaccinated. This isn’t something even our government will be able to force.

US employers are going to have to make some hard choices if the courts decide to let this mandate go forward. For me, that choice will be to value all of our employees and work to keep everyone safe while also letting them make their own choice, and try not to make this a hardship for all involved financially.

The thing I won’t do is to shame employees who are fearful and I won’t make them pay to get tested.

HR Pros: Do you see yourself as a coach?

Posted on by
1

I read an article in The New Yorker on the importance of “Coaching” by Atul Gawande.  Atul is a writer and a surgeon, smart and creative and I should hate him, but he’s so freaking brilliant! From the article:

The concept of a coach is slippery. Coaches are not teachers, but they teach. They’re not your boss—in professional tennis, golf, and skating, the athlete hires and fires the coach—but they can be bossy. They don’t even have to be good at the sport. The famous Olympic gymnastics coach Bela Karolyi couldn’t do a split if his life depended on it. Mainly, they observe, they judge, and they guide.

As an HR leader, I’ve always believed that HR has the ability to act as “coaches” across all vestiges of our organizations.  The problem we run into is this mentality, “You can’t coach me! You don’t know the first thing about Marketing, or Operations, or Accounting.” You’re right, a good thing I’m not “teaching” you that! That’s why we hired you. Having a coaching culture in your organization starts during the selection process. Are you hiring people who are open to being coached?

More from The New Yorker –

Good coaches know how to break down performance into its critical individual components. In sports, coaches focus on mechanics, conditioning, and strategy, and have ways to break each of those down, in turn. The U.C.L.A. basketball coach John Wooden, at the first squad meeting each season, even had his players practice putting their socks on. He demonstrated just how to do it: he carefully rolled each sock over his toes, up his foot, around the heel, and pulled it up snug, then went back to his toes and smoothed out the material along the sock’s length, making sure there were no wrinkles or creases. He had two purposes in doing this. First, wrinkles cause blisters. Blisters cost games. Second, he wanted his players to learn how crucial seemingly trivial details could be. “Details create success” was the creed of a coach who won ten N.C.A.A. men’s basketball championships.

I think this is critical in working with adult professionals. Coaches aren’t trying to “teach” them new concepts, but helping them self-analyze and make improvements to what they already do well. We/HR can make our workforces better, not by focusing on weaknesses/opportunity areas, which we spend way too much time on, but by making our employees’ strengths even stronger.

Coaching has become a fad in recent years. There are leadership coaches, executive coaches, life coaches, and college application coaches. Search the Internet, and you’ll find that there’s even Twitter coaching. Self-improvement has always found a ready market, and most of what’s on offer are simply one-on-one instruction to get amateurs through the essentials. It’s teaching with a trendier name. Coaching aimed at improving the performance of people who are already professionals is less usual.

I’m talking about turning HR into “Life” coaches or “Executive” coaches”. Those types of “coaches” are way different and fall more into the “therapists” categories, than what I see HR acting as “professional” coaches. Professional coaches work alongside their Pros day-to-day and see them in action, and work with them to specifically improve on those things that impact the business. They don’t care that you’re not “feeling” as “challenged” as you once were, and need to find yourself.

I think the biggest struggle HR Pros will have in a role as “coach” is our ability to understand most employees have low self-awareness (including ourselves!). Being a great coach is measured on your ability to get someone to see something in themselves, they don’t already see, and make them truly believe it. If we can get there in our organizations, oh boy, watch out!

Multi-channel Recruitment Marketing – Where are you finding candidates?

Posted on by
Reply

Humans are very much creatures of habit. We tend to get our food from the same places. Technology has figured this out and now many of us put in the same grocery order to pick up every single week. We tend to get our news from the same sources each day.

The problem is, we are different creatures of habit! My grocery order might be completely different from yours, and maybe from a different store. You might get your news from CNN and I get mine from Reuters. But we both get it online each morning. You might spend your time on social on LinkedIn and I spend mine on Twitter.

Most of us struggle to go outside of our habits.

This is a major problem for recruiters!

I tend to post stuff on basically three channels. This blog, which goes out everywhere. Directly on LinkedIn. Twitter updates. A little on Instagram. When I meet people who follow me they usually come from one of these three places, and I’m always amazed that many times they don’t cross over. Someone will say they found me on LinkedIn, but they never knew I had a site or was on Twitter. Someone followed me on Twitter for years, and just recently after many years sent me an invite to connect on LinkedIn.

I think we tend to believe everyone is everywhere. But they’re not. Everyone is everywhere, but they are all not in the same places!

Great recruiters are multi-channel recruiters. Average recruiters are a few channel recruiters. Crappy recruiters are one-channel recruiters.

I constantly have people, not in the industry who follow me ask me how can I be everywhere all the time. It must take so much time! I’m not really everywhere, I’m just where they are, so to them, it looks like I’m everywhere. Plus, automation helps a lot!

What is multi-channel recruiting?

If you spend the majority of your time on LinkedIn recruiting, you will find people and you will find some level of success. That’s one channel, but it’s a big channel for the industry.

If you add in other channels depending on your market and industry, you will get even better. Maybe you are active on Twitter, Facebook, local groups, created a voice on TikTok, etc. You will be more successful than just one channel.

Now, build some personal pipelines from your ATS database and nurture those, add in a blog and a newsletter, build an additional audience, become a regular at your local university sharing content around job search, etc. Adding these channels will elevate you even more.

Having a great ad strategy and understanding where your audience lives and plays online is another key channel. I like using programmatic partners to help with this, but many will use Indeed, ZipRecruiter, etc. More channels!

My channels to becoming a successful recruiter might be vastly different than your channels, but finding multiple channels is key!

More channels are needed because we have no idea what percent of our target market is going to be in each channel. Let’s say we choose a channel, we like that channel, it’s comfortable to us, but only 10% of our candidate market is in that channel? You will most likely fail. When I see recruiters fail, it’s usually they are only spending time in one or two channels.

Also, maybe you are in two channels and the vast majority of candidates are in those two channels, but so are all the other recruiters going after that same talent. But, 5% of candidates are over in that third channel and no one is over there! That could be your winning channel!

I don’t need to be in every channel, but I need to be in enough where I’ll give myself the best chance to find the talent I need. Many times we give up on a channel too fast and never go back. We constantly have new recruiters come into our environment and they’ll find some candidate out of the blue, using a channel recruiters gave up on and haven’t been to in months! It’s those slap to the forehead moments! “Damn it! I used to get so many great hires from there and just forgot to go back…”

So, as your out there fishing today, think to yourself what channels are you not using that you should start using, and what channels are you using too much?

The #HRFamous Future of Work!

Posted on by
Reply

On episode 86 of The HR Famous Podcast, longtime HR leaders (and friends) Tim Sackett, Kris Dunn, and Jessica Lee come together to discuss new Peloton users, Blink 182, how to multitask during in-person meetings and Adam Grant’s future of work.

Listen (click this link if you don’t see the player) and be sure to subscribe, rate, and review (Apple Podcasts) and follow (Spotify)!

Show Highlights

1:45 – We have a new Peloton user! KD is now on Peloton and JLee picked his username.

6:45 – Tim asked KD to make a meme with the “change my mind” format. He added the text “Michael Bolton should be at SHRM every year.”

8:40 – JLee proudly notes that while Kim Kardashian has been staying in NYC, she’s been choosing to stay at a certain Marriott hotel (location undisclosed).

10:00 – This is now a Blink-182 podcast!

11:30 – JLee is stressed because of the impending return to office. She’s worried she can’t openly multitask during meetings. She asks her co-hosts for some advice.

13:40 – Tim reminds us that people often had laptops open during in-person meetings and many of them were not just taking notes.

18:30 – Recently, Adam Grant wrote an essay in the Wall Street Journal titled “ The Real Meaning of Freedom at Work”. He discusses the Great Resignation and notes that this is part of a longer shift in work trends that has been happening for a long time.

22:00 – Tim notes that Adam Grant’s perspective on work is probably very different than most due to his job as a college professor at an elite university.

25:15 – JLee discusses how the notion of “positive liberty” entails some privilege and that those within the service industry are most likely not able to exercise this liberty.

28:45 – Everyone brings up individually and how a lot of the population doesn’t want to have their own freedom in the workplace and just wants to be told what to do and how to do it.