I’ve Got a Great Business Opportunity for You!

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No. No, you don’t. You have a great business opportunity for you, and you need me to make it happen.

Email Subject Lines in the Past Week

  • “Business Opportunity”
  • “Potential Opportunity”
  • “Great Business Opportunity for You!”

There was one common theme with each one of these messages sent to me. Not one of them was an opportunity for me to make money, but each was an opportunity for me to pay someone else money!

Idiots Using these Subject Lines

Do you seriously believe that these subject lines are working? That people are reading them and going, “OMG! I’m the Luckiest Girl alive today! This beautiful human chose me for this opportunity that I was neither looking for nor really even wanting! #Blessed”

I have a feeling there is something clinically wrong with the person who uses this subject line. I want to get them professional help. Medication, therapy, a punch to the throat, whatever it takes, I’m a giver, a helper of sorts.

I would love it if we could have a law where if some moron uses a subject line like this we can send them away for a while. Like prison, but more used car sales lot they have to live in for eternity. Every day, all day, just wandering the lot getting approached by an overly aggressive used car salesman that won’t leave them alone.

Look, I Get It 

I run a company that has to sell our services. Every morning I get up, shower, get dressed, and head off to work. “Gotta make the donuts!” They don’t make themselves. Our world is predicated on someone buying whatever it is we’re selling.

So, I feel for you, but I’ve got a few words of advice –

Be Better! 

Be someone who you want your kids to be. Be someone you want your grandmother to talk about at bridge club. Be someone who will get referred by one client to a future client.

Also, I get you can’t just put up a subject line that says, “Hey, buy my crappy lead generation tool!” (Although, I bet your click-through rate on that is a minimum of 100% higher than “Business Opportunity”.

The world isn’t looking to do work, to make you money. Maybe I’m wrong, maybe your subject line of “Business Opportunity” was just one big miss by me. You were saying, “Hey, I’ve got a business opportunity for me, I just need a sucker like you to bite”, if that’s the case, my bad, continue being an awful person.

Great Business Opportunity

As always, I’m here to help, fellow sales pros. Here are some subject lines that are guaranteed to get some click-through:

– I’ve got your bag full of puppies!

– You need to verify your Pornhub password

– BOGO on Wine, Chocolate, and Jimmy Choos

– Is this your Mom on Facebook?

“But, Tim, these are all lies!” I know, and I’m super excited you found the commonality between my subject lines and yours. Good luck!

 

–

What is the Top Applicant Tracking Software (ATS) in the U.S.?

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Okay, you guys know I love my guy, Rob Kelly over at OnGig and his team, for putting together data around the most used ATSs. OnGig recently released their latest report and I wanted to share some highlights and reactions.

First, let’s answer the biggest question – is this real? Yes, Rob and the team looked at over 1,000 companies and dug into which specific ATS they are using. Most were Enterprise level, but there were also a number of SMBs.

Here’s the breakdown: (click on the pic for a larger version)

 

Tim’s Reactions:

– In 2018, Workday had a 4.20% share in the enterprise ATS market. In 2020, that has grown to 21.92%, and they have thousands of customers going through and waiting on implementation. Workday has taken over the recruiting market at the enterprise level as of right now and I don’t expect that to change anytime soon.

– In 2017 Taleo’s market share was 25.51%, in 2018, 19.11%, and in 2020, 14.68%. Still a giant piece of the market, but it shows how Taleo didn’t react quickly enough to the changing marketplace to keep or grow their huge advantage. Keep an eye on Oracle Recruiting Cloud and the impact that will have for those Oracle customers looking to move to the cloud and away from Taleo.

– iCIMS share at 8.94% is extremely impressive, given they totally retooled their software over the past year or so, and basically pioneered the recruiting “App Store” marketplace concept which allows users to build an integrated stack with the features they want fairly easily. Also, this number doesn’t include many of the mid-market, SMB customers iCIMS have.

– Along with iCIMS, Greenhouse, SmartRecuriters, and Jobvite are all top best of breed ATS plays on the market and we are beginning to see this separation of organizations who are choosing the Best of Breed recruiting technologies, to those who are using the Giant HCM recruiting modules (Workday, Oracle, SAP).

What does any of this mean to Enterprise TA Leaders?

If I’m a current TA Leader working for an F1000 organization I better be ready to answer this question:

“Why can’t you, or can you, use the recruiting module for our large HCM stack?” 

Every single CFO, CIO, and CEO, if they haven’t already are going to be looking at their financial, operational, and supply chain stack and making a decision, most likely, between Workday, Oracle, and SAP (there are some others, but these 3 own 90%+ of the market).

These leaders are being sold on the power of one platform and the ability to leverage all of that data, and part of that decision will be HR and TA explaining the benefits and drawbacks of going enterprise module solution versus best of breed.

By the way, and this is very important, your input to this decision, as a TA and HR leader, will be weighted by the overall cost of the combined organizational solution and decision. Don’t be confused and think you are an equal player in this decision. The reality is, we (HR/TA) are not, as our portion of this contract is peanuts compared to the rest. The CFO and CIO are the big players, so if you want leverage around what you need, make friends fast!

Final Thoughts:

Many of you will not be given a decision on the TA tech stack you are given. I find that unfortunate, but that is a reality at the enterprise level. HCM Recruiting Module, best of breed ATS, an Excel spreadsheet, they all work, if we make them work.

Workday has a tremendous partner network with some of the most advanced recruiting technology on the planet. You can build a great Workday TA stack. You can build a very strong Oracle TA stack. The key is getting the decision-makers to understand, no matter what system you choose, the core ATS is only the foundational piece, and each of us will have other pieces that we’ll need to add to that stack to make it most effective for our organization.

Those pieces will cost money, on top of the money that is spent on the foundational ATS. Try not to allow yourself to be handcuffed with a new ATS (at any level) and be told this is all you get. Modern-day recruiting and talent attraction take way more than just an ATS.

One last shoutout to Rob and the OnGig team – keep up the great work!

The 5 Faces of Thought Leader!

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I’m not sure when this started, but over the past few years I’ve been introduced as a “Thought Leader”.  At first, it was flattering.  Wow, a ‘Thought Leader’!  I wasn’t sure what it meant, but it sounded cool.  You mean, I’m a ‘Thought Leader’ like Steve Jobs? Well, slow down Sparky, not quite like Steve Jobs. Oh!? Than a Thought Leader like whom?  (The thought leader in me wants to ‘who’, not ‘whom’, but something tells me my blogger thought leader friends will tell me I should have used ‘whom’, but knowing I used ‘whom’ at all means, it’s probably wrong!)

That’s when it hit me.  Thought Leaders come in many different sizes and shapes.  I wasn’t a great Thought Leader of our generation.  I was more of a great Thought Leader at that specific moment, in a very narrow segment of ideas and knowledge. Context is everything.

Let’s face it, we all have different perceptions of who and what we believe to be Thought Leadership.  Here are my Faces of Thought Leadership:

1. The Thought Righter.  This is a Thought Leader that you agree with. You believe they are Thought Leader because you agree with what they are saying, so they must be a leader!

2. The Thought Stayer. This is a Thought Leader who has been around for a long time.  Well, they’ve been in the industry for thirty years, they must be a Thought Leader at this point!

3. The Thought Thinks Differently Than Everyone Else. Yep, this person just thinks differently, thus they are Thought Leader.  This is probably what a lot of people believe is ‘true’ thought leadership (Leading thought, thus they are thinking it before you).

4. The Thought Best Practicer. This is conference thought leadership at its best. It’s not really thought leadership, it’s thought leadership from five years ago.  It’s now just popular thought leadership.

 5. The Thought I Work For  A Cool Company. If you work for a cool company you automatically garner status of thought leadership, when in actuality, you might be a “Thought Idiot”. I won’t give you an example, you know who these folks are.

6. The Thought Innovator.  This is a person who believes everything is perpetually broken and they must fix it.  “You know what is wrong with babies, they don’t come out of the womb talking and walking. If we just forced gestation to 218 weeks and planted electrodes into their brains we could be having babies that were as smart as Einstein!”  Um, what!?

Thought leadership is a funny little silly thing.  You can call yourself a “Thought Leader”, but that basically just informs everyone you’re not.  If it is bestowed on you by someone else, they basically are defining what you are as a Thought Leader. Which can be dangerous, if you really aren’t that person.

I like to think of Thought Leaders as people who come up with ideas before everyone else but those ideas will eventually become popular belief.  This means you are really only a Thought Leader in hindsight.  Steve Jobs was a Thought Leader because he did things before others saw them, then they became wildly popular.

In this scenario, I had a chance to become a Thought Leader in Workplace Hugging, but then the pandemic hit and now I’ll be known as the Thought Leader who tried to kill workers by encouraging them to hug and catch the virus. It’s a fickle world…

Side Note:

Somehow “Influencer” in the HR/TA space has become a bad word. I know other “Thought Leader” “Influencer” types who refuse to call themselves this title, or also don’t want to be labeled as such. They’re okay with other socially acceptable titles: Analyst, Expert, make something up, it’s all the same. The reality is, it comes back to people wanting to be able to label you so they know how to describe you. I don’t think of it as bad or good.

The truth is, we are all selling something, and the person who tells you they are selling nothing is selling you the hardest. I might not be selling you a product or service, but you can damn be sure I’m trying to sell you on an idea at the very least. You can call me anything you like, as long as you’re calling me something, I’m probably doing it right.

Recruiting Behavior in 2020 – Will it change for 2021?

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In Episode 40 of The HR Famous Podcast, Tim Sackett, Kris Dunn and Jessica Lee appear at TalentNet Live and do a panel on behavioral trends among recruiters in 2020, using the 2020 Recruiter Nation Survey from Jobvite as their source for conversation.

The gang discusses how recruiters have changed in the depths of COVID, Tim gives his rant about the use of social media by recruiters, JLee notices that female recruiters might be more balanced than males and KD wonders how soul-crushing it is to be a resume writer in 2020.

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

RESOURCES AND SHOW NOTES:

————TalentNet Live and Jobvite

TalentNet Live

Craig Fisher

Jobvite

The 2020 Recruiter Nation Survey

—————Jessica Lee, Kris Dunn and Tim Sackett

Jessica Lee on LinkedIn

Tim Sackett on Linkedin

Kris Dunn on LinkedIn

HRU Tech

The Tim Sackett Project

The HR Capitalist

Fistful of Talent

Kinetix

Boss Leadership Training Series

There Is a 75% Chance of Selecting Better Talent if You Only Hire…

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ME! No, I’m only joking. I’d be way higher than 75%! 😉

You all know I love data and some of the fun things we can pull out of studies about performance and selection. A 2014 study on world-class athletes found that the top-performing athletes had older siblings in 75% of the participants studied!

So, want to hire better performers? Ask this question:

Do you have older siblings? 

Ironically, those only children, the super great ones all those parents love, only have a 5% chance of being world-class! Oldest kids get the other 20%, and middle kids, well they don’t get anything but to continue to complain it’s unfair! 😉

Why do people with older siblings tend to perform better? 

Okay, I get it, we are talking about world-class athletes and performance, but really the same foundations are set by older siblings no matter what the skill or profession. Want to be a better cook? It probably helps to have older siblings who were cooking around you and showed interest, which made you interested, etc.

Siblings tend to compete with each other, and the youngest will always be at a disadvantage until they are not. If you’re kicking little Timmy’s butt all over the court, you won’t work as hard to continue to get better, but little Timmy will never stop until he beats you. (By the way – this isn’t a “boy” thing, the study was done on female world-class athletes – it works across all genders)

The youngest kids get all the advantages of being pushed harder and getting knowledge transfer from seeing older siblings fail and succeed. On average, they are more likely to gain from being in an environment where older siblings are performing.

Does this concept transfer to the world of work? 

I don’t have hard data from a study that it does, only anecdotal evidence to say it depends! I’ve worked with brilliant people who come from all kinds of family dynamics. I do find, on average, that those people who were raised as younger siblings bring competitiveness to the workplace that if channeled appropriately can be very good.

I do think it also depends on how close in age they are to their siblings. The closer the better in my experience. My younger brother is 15 years younger than me. He’s more only-child than younger sibling grinding it out trying to beat me. My two oldest sons are twenty months apart, one year apart in school age. They are strong competitors, and my youngest you is four years younger than his brothers gets competition shoved down his throat, by his brothers in everything he does.

So, today, younger siblings who have taken all the beatings from your older siblings, smile bright! You probably have a better shot a being great, because of those beatings!

Finding Qualified Diverse Talent is NOT Your Issue!

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During 2020, I’ve spoken to a lot of leaders who are concerned with their diversity recruiting. Every single one of them will say something like, “Tim, we just can’t find the ‘qualified’ diverse talent we need!” Sound familiar? Feel familiar?

I’m not a diversity recruiting strategy expert. I leave that to my friend, Torin Ellis. I do think I’ve got a bit of knowledge when it comes to overall recruiting, though.

When I break down the response I get from most leaders, regarding diversity recruitment I usually have one cringe, and one response. “Qualified?” What do you mean by that? I hear it as, you can find plenty of diverse folks interested in coming to work for you, but none of them, or few of them, are actually qualified to work for you. Is that how you read/hear that?

It makes me cringe a bit because what you’re actually saying is we don’t have a supply problem, we have a training and development problem, but you don’t even realize that. You could have your perfect diverse mix of employees if you just invested a bit in training and developing these great hired into great employees. But, you don’t see the value in that, which makes me think you probably don’t see the value in a diverse workforce, to begin with.

What I actually say to them is this, “You don’t have a diversity recruiting problem. You have a diversity pay problem because finding diverse “qualified” talent is easy. Finding ones that will accept your job, culture, location, and/or average to low pay is really hard!” 

Finding talent has never been easier in the history of humanity. We have more technology and tools than ever before. Finding is easy. Recruiting is hard..

Successful recruiting takes some skill. A success recruiter will find the “qualified” diverse talent you are looking for and then they’ll do a few things:

  • They’ll get them interested first. They will make them feel desired and wanted by the organization. By the hiring manager. By the team. Being Desired is a powerful drug!
  • Next, they’ll discover what that talent actually desires in their career. Quickly, efficiently, like a sniper.
  • Then they’ll make a determination: 1. Are we going to meet those desires. or 2. We won’t meet those desires.
  • One, you obviously move on to screening, assessing, etc. Two, and you move on to giving something back to this person. “I can’t help you right now, but I’ve taken notes and if I have anything that ever comes close to meeting what you need, I’m going to contact you back.” 99% of recruiters will never say that to a potential candidate.

Honestly, about 25% of the time when you tell someone “I can’t help you, but…” they’ll actually state a desire to keep going. You taking the potential away will make some reveal they actually have an interest. Doesn’t mean you will still move forward, but it’s a nice outcome.

I can easily find you “qualified” diversity talent. Don’t think so, call me. I can find anyone. The problem we’ll run into is that some of that talent is rare and will cost a premium to get. It’s a simple economic proposition, you can buy talent or build talent. They each have their costs and benefits. I find most organizations claim they want to hire diverse talent, but aren’t doing what it will take to make it happen.

Are you struggling to be happy at work?

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In 1942 Viktor Frankl, a prominent Jewish psychiatrist, was taken to a Nazi concentration camp with his wife and parents.  Three years later, when his camp was liberated, his pregnant wife and parents had already been killed by the Nazis. He survived and in 1946 went on to write the book, “Man’s Search For Meaning“.  In this great book, Frankl writes:

“It is the very pursuit of happiness that thwarts happiness.”

What Frankl knew was that you can’t make happiness out of something outside yourself.  Riding the Waverunner doesn’t make you happy. You decide to be happy while doing that activity, but you could as easily decide to be angry or sad while doing this activity (although Daniel Tosh would disagree!).  Frankl also wrote in Man’s Search for Meaning, “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing, the last of the human freedoms — to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”

I get asked frequently by HR Pros about how they can make their employees or workplace happier.  I want to tell them about Frankl’s research and what he learned in the concentration camps.  I want to tell them that you can’t make your employees happy.  They have to decide they want to be happy, first. But, I don’t, people don’t want to hear the truth.

Coming up with ‘things’ isn’t going to make your employees happy. You might provide free lunch, which some will really like, but it also might make someone struggling with their weight, very depressed.  You might give extra time off and most of your employees will love it, but those who define themselves by their work will find this a burden.

Ultimately, I think people tend to swing a certain way on the emotional scale.  Some are usually happier than others.  Some relish in being angry or depressed, it’s their comfort zone.  They don’t know how to be any other way.  Instead of working to ‘make’ people happy, spend your time selecting happy people to come work for you.

In the middle of a concentration camp, the most horrific experiences imaginable, Frankl witnessed people who made the decision to be happy. Maybe they were happy to have one more day on earth. Maybe they were happy because, like Frankl, they discovered that the Nazis could take everything from them except their mind.

Provide the best work environment that you can.  Continue to try and make it better with the resources you have.  Give meaning to the work and the things you do.  Every organization has this, no matter what you do at your company.  Don’t pursue happiness, it’s a fleeting emotion that is impossible to maintain.  Pursue being the best organization you can be.  It doesn’t mean you have to be someone you’re not.  Just be ‘you’, and find others that like ‘you.’

Thank You!

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As you go off on your Thanksgiving Holiday – Thank you! Thank you for reading my thoughts. Thank you for your support over the years. Thank you to all those who send me personal notes on how a post impacts you. Thank you to all those who send me personal notes about my grammar errors.

In a year that has been so hard on all of us, thank you for your friendship. Have a great holiday!

The Weekly Dose: The Meeting Owl @owllabs

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Today on the Weekly Dose I take a look at a piece of tech hardware, not software that is gaining popularity with organizations who are doing more and more hybrid virtual meetings. Owl Labs developed a speaker/mic/camera combination, The Meeting Owl, that makes in-office and remote workers feel more like they are in the room.

One of the biggest pains for remote workers is when they are having meetings with co-workers that are in-office is many times you don’t get the full experience of what’s actually happening in the room. You either get one view of a large conference room, viewed through a small screen, and it’s hard to pick up who’s talking and actually get to see their expressions, etc.

The Meeting Owl is a smart speaker/mic/camera that gives you a complete 360-degree view and sound of the entire meeting room. It basically turns any room into a smart meeting room. One of the coolest things is that it works directly within whatever meeting platform you are using: Zoom, Teams, etc.

What I like about The Meeting Owl:

  • It makes all participants of the meeting, even those who are remote, feel like they are actually in the room with everyone.
  • If you are remote and viewing the meeting you can view both the presenter and those participating.
  • This simple device can turn any room or office into a smart meeting room almost instantly.
  • The price is fairly low, $999, for a telecom-type speaker device, but you get the added advantage of the 360-degree camera view.

We are all challenged with how we will not just make Remote work, work, but how we will make remote work thrive. The Meeting Owl is a great idea coming out of the tech community to make it easier for not only remote workers to feel better connected, but also clients and any other stakeholders who feel like the normal video calls feel less than ideal.

The Meeting Owl seems like a great alternative to super expensive conference room video/audio systems that are being sold on the market. With this speaker and a cheap smart TV you can turn any room into a fully functioning smart conference room for about $1500.

Owl Labs did not pay for this post, but, as always, if they want to send me a Meeting Owl I would happily accept it and play with it! 

3 Things you can do at the office the Friday after Thanksgiving – Remote Work Edition!

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So, in the United States, if you have to work the day after Thanksgiving in an office environment, we’ve had this neat little game we play. You act like you work all day, while basically doing nothing!

I’ve written about this in the past and tried to give advice to those poor souls who must go into the office the day after Thanksgiving. I was trying to help them be productive, things like:

  • Clean out your files – paper and digital
  • Send out emails to folks you are thankful for but haven’t told recently
  • Organize your calendar for the next month to ensure you kill the last month of the year.

This year, for so many office workers, it’s completely different! You now are remote. The vast majority of you will have no watchful overload to see if you are actually doing anything or not. It’s just you and your conscience, working all alone at your home.

So, what should you be doing this Friday?

Well, the try-hards in the bunch will do the things listed above but also add:

  • Early morning email out to folks that manner with some kind of important question. Make sure to note, “No reply needed today, but you get a minute…”
  • Late afternoon update on something with data. “I was just crunching some 3rd quarter data and found that we can probably do a budget adjustment for 4th quarter on “X”.”
  • Pro-Level: send a text message to someone else who is working asking for a file you can’t find.

This will show the powers-that-be that you’ve been working super hard all day!

Then there are the other things you can do in between that 8 emails and that 4:30 pm email:

  • Black Friday online shopping (this should take up most of the day) – at least one stop at some sort of office supply site, because “office supplies”
  • Catch up on some Netflix documentaries that have some sort of connection to whatever you do. Research for work stuff.
  • For those who love holiday decorations, this is a perfect time to “decorate your office”
  • There’s always some sort of football game on, just have it running on your second or third screen, I mean you’re working!
  • I like to make a big pot of chili for lunch on Black Friday (it’s okay, you’re working you get to eat lunch)
  • I like to send out holiday cards to my professional network on this day, which is probably really is work, so I might hold off until Monday for this task.

If any of my own team at HRU Tech is reading this – do not send me emails early in the morning or late in the afternoon – unless you really need something, because I know you’ll be doing work if it’s needed, and you’ll be enjoying your life if it’s needed! You can sed me any text messages with great deals you find that you think I should be aware of!