Did Your Organization Buy Its Way Out of the #BLM Conversation?

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In the wake of the George Floyd killing many of the world’s largest technology companies in the world responded, with their checkbooks. Only one came out, Reddit, and said we will be replacing a white dude on our board, their co-founder, with a person of color.

The amounts of money are impressive, and don’t get me wrong it will definitely take money and resources to change the racial culture that has built over hundreds of years, but the cynic in me believes most of these organizations wrote checks so we wouldn’t take a closer look at their own hiring issues!

  • AIRBNB – $500,000 to NAACP and Black Lives Matter Foundation
  • Google – $12 million to organizations fighting racial inequalities
  • YouTube – $1 million to Center for Policy Equity
  • Amazon – $10 million to ACLU, NAACP, UNCF, etc.
  • Apple – Matching employee contributions to organizations fighting racial injustice
  • Cisco – $5 million to Equal Justice Initiative, Black Lives Matter, and “our own fund for Fighting Racism and Discrimination.”
  • Comcast – $100 million over ten years to fight racial injustice, 1/4 of that in free media
  • Facebook – $10 million to groups working on racial justice
  • Microsoft – $1.5 million to Black Lives Matters Foundation, NAACP, etc.
  • Netflix – $1 million to the Center for Policing Equity
  • Reddit – Co-Founder resigned from the companies board and requested he be replaced with a person of color on the board.
  • Twitter – $3 million to Know Your Rights Foundation
  • Uber – $1 million to Center for Policy Equity

Technology companies aren’t the only organizations buying their way out of this conversation, or even taking advantage of the climate. Nike within days of the Floyd killing released a powerful commercial titled “Just Don’t Do It” it was watched tens of millions of times and shared all over social media as an example of how corporations should respond.

Nike has 8% of people of color in leadership roles. This coming from an organization that makes billions of dollars a year off the backs of black athletes. Thanks for the commercial, how about a public statement of how many POC you’ll hire in leadership positions before the end of 2020?

Here’s the reality.

The money tech companies are giving is nothing. NOTHING! They blow more than this on their annual spending of Kombucha on their plush campuses. These donations are hush money. “Hey, how much do you need not to talk about how crappy we are at actually attracting and hiring POC?”

Here’s what I know. If technology companies, or any major Fortune 100 company, truly wanted to solve this problem over the past decade it would have been done. Let’s say Google decided we want 1/3 of our software developers, or IT team in general to be POC.

Ten years ago they go out to every junior high and middle school in the U.S. They identify black children who have a propensity for being interested in STEM. They send these children to the best STEM high schools, hell, maybe they even make their own high schools in certain cities!

As these kids graduate high school, Google then pays for these kids to go to the best colleges and study stem. They give them annual summer internships at Google, and then once they graduate they hire them. The problem of “we can’t find POC to hire that have the skills we need” is now solved.

What would that cost? $1 billion? $10 billion? What about Amazon? Jeff Bezos and Amazon made $150 billion during the last 3 months of the pandemic! Bill Gates is spending most of his fortune, multi-billions, to end malaria, doesn’t Microsoft need better representation within their organization?

If organizations wanted to solve this issue, it would have been solved. If the government wanted to solve this issue it would have been solved. There is a simple economic solution to ensuring our organizations have proper representation at all levels.

I’m not saying that the donations supporting equity justice initiatives are not important. They are very important, but that can’t be all that is done.

Interview Pro Tips: The “You” Show!

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A bunch of folks have been doing some work at home or furloughed at home, or some laid off at home over the past few months. Depending on your situation I’ve been hearing more and more from people who are out interviewing for the first time in a long time and looking for advice.

JDP did a survey recently and found out that the average candidate preps for 7 hours to prepare for an interview! I’m not sure I buy into that piece of data, it seems like there might be a bit of exaggeration going on from candidates who want to make you believe they actually did way more than they actually do.

Let’s be honest, you looking at a companies website and reading reviews on Glassdoor doesn’t take you seven hours. It probably takes you about 30 minutes, and I would bet my career on the fact that is about 99% prep that happens for most candidates.

How should you prepare for an interview? 

There are two types of candidates I see in an interview. The first type just lets the interview happen to them. They basically react. I’m here, you have questions, let’s see how this turns out.

The second type of candidate, which is much rarer, come prepared to put on a show. I’ll call it the “You” Show! This candidate comes in and has prepared to show you why they are the person for this position. They risk that you might be the type of person who won’t like this, but more times than not I find leaders are actually impressed by these candidates.

What does the “You” Show script include?

It starts off with an introduction that includes a good story that will instantly get those in the room on your side. It might be funny, might be inspirational, but it was definitely planned and prepared. Anywhere from three to five minutes of this is who I am and why I’m unique, and why you should like me.

The You Show candidates have also prepped by doing research on those who will interview them. They probably know more about the people interviewing them, then the people interviewing know about you as the candidate. They’ll stalk your LinkedIn profile, your social footprint, Google name search, people from my school who work there, etc. I want to know my audience if I’m putting on a show, so I at least have a chance to producing a show they’ll like.

If I have one hour, planned, for the interview, I want them to hear 55 minutes of me, and very little from them. I want them leaving that room, call, video conference being wowed! Being of the mindset that we really don’t need to interview any longer, since we just found the person.

The “You” Show is probably an exaggeration of your true self. Kind of like, “Hey, this is the best me” and while I might not be this person every minute of every day, when you get the best of me, this is what you can expect. The “You” Show is high-energy, fully caffeinated, I’m going to energize you and when I leave you’ll feel better about yourself.

As you get ready for your next interview ask yourself if you would want to watch you do that interview. If your answer is “no”, it will probably be “no” from those interviewing you as well.

E19 – The HR Famous Pod – Starbucks Work Uniform Woes & Hourly Hiring with @Fountain_Inc

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19 – Starbucks Work Uniform Woes and Hourly Hiring

In episode 19 of The HR Famous Podcast, long-time HR leaders (and friends) Tim Sackett, Kris Dunn, and Jessica Lee are back to discuss a number of topics about diverse hiring. The trio talks about Adidas’s new hiring goal, tech companies’ contribution to the BLM movement, and Starbucks’ uniform debacle. Later in the episode, Tim is joined by HR leader Jonathan Zoob about hourly hiring and sitting courtside at an NBA game.

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

1:30 – The gang is finally back together! It’s been a few weeks, but Tim, Jlee, and KD are all back on the podcast this week!

2:30 – First topic of the day: popular brand pronunciations. Apparently, the US says everything different than the rest of the world.

3:45 – Adidas has announced that 30% of their hires will be diverse hires. The gang praises Adidas for putting a number out there to start progress but they question where the hiring is going to cause change.

8:40 – Tim discusses a goal that he had at a previous company for diverse hires in leadership roles. He talks about push back from hiring managers and other certain people that feel victimized by diversity hiring goals.

10:30 – KD talks about his favorite “Tim working at Applebee’s” story. Tim says that Applebee’s restrooms are like “a war zone”…..

11:30 – CNBC compiled a list of different tech companies and what they’re doing to support the BLM movement. Every company on the list contributed lots of money, but only one organization announced a change in leadership when the CEO of Reddit stepped down from his board seat to fill it with a POC. Tim accuses many tech companies of “buying their way out of this conversation” instead of making real change happen. KD thinks that monetary contributions are still commendable but they need to effect real change too.

14:45 – “You have to have money but you also have to have tangible movement”.

16:30 – Starbucks’ employees were told that they could not wear apparel supporting BLM to work. They received backlash because Starbucks’ allows its employees to wear Pride-related uniforms in the month of June. They have pivoted since their original decision. Jlee praises them for pivoting and listening to their employees and what they want.

20:00 – Tim thinks that Starbucks and other companies that enforce uniforms should standardize their uniforms and not allow anything other than a standard option since it is easier to manage and can raise many issues. He says that you can support diversity and other causes and keep a plain uniform.

22:00 – “Print the shirts” -KD

23:30 – Time for this week’s special guest! Jonathan Zoob from Fountain has joined Tim for the second half of this week’s episode to talk about hourly hiring.

25:00 – Tim and Zoob talk about their bucket list to sit courtside at an NBA game. They’re both Golden State Warriors fans!

27:00 – Back to business talk. Tim discusses hearing about pre-pandemic struggles to hire hourly workers and he asks Zoob what is going to change about hiring hourly workers.

30:00 – Tim asks Zoob why companies should use different systems for hourly workers.

32:30 – Are new hiring practices for hourly workers causing companies to lose the traditional experience of finding the best candidate? Zoob discusses how his company’s work allows non-HR professionals to find more and better candidates.

34:30 – Tim brings up issues about hiring to create a diverse workforce and how training hiring leaders may not be enough. Zoob discusses how often those doing hiring won’t get diversity and bias training.

36:00 – What do Fountain’s clients see getting better when using the Fountain system? Zoob says their time to hire decreases significantly.

37:15 – Tim asks Zoob how fast time to hire should be and Zoob answers that companies must engage candidates in the application process to really get them to stay interested.

39:00 – Last question of the day: will mass hiring start to happen without interviewing in the coming years?

40:20 – Find Jonathan at fountain.com for a demo or on LinkedIn!

Resources:

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

5 Traits That Make Your HR Business Partner Great!

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I use to think the title ‘HR Partner’ was played out and it probably was for a time.  There was a point a few years ago when every HR Pro had to change their title from HR Manager, HR Director, etc., to HR Partner.  It always made me feel like we were all apart of a bad cowboy movie, ‘Giddy up, Partner!’

I’ve actually grown to really like the “Partner” in the title of an HR Professional.  While many HR Pros just changed their title, I’ve met some great ‘Partners’ in HR who have changed their game, to match their title change.

What makes a Great HR Partner Great?  Here are 5 things I think makes them game-changers:

1. Great HR Partners know your business.  Now, wait.  I didn’t say they ‘knew their own business’, they know the business of who they support. But wait, there’s more!  They know the business of who they support, the way the person or team they support knows it. Say what?!  It’s not good enough to know the business of your organization.  You have to know how those you support know and support the business.

That could be different, based on the leader.  One leader might be ultra-conservative in their business practices, another risky. A great HR Partner knows how to support them in the way those they support, want to be supported – while still being able to do the HR part of their job.

2.  Great HR Partners have a short-term memory. Great baseball pitchers don’t remember one pitch to the next.  Each pitch is new. Each pitch has the potential for success.  If they remembered each pitch, the last one, that was hit for a home run, would cloud their judgment about the next pitch.

Great HR Partners are willing to change their mind and try new things.  They don’t carry around their experiences like a suitcase, pulling them out and throwing them on the table each time those they support want to try something new.  Don’t forget about your failures, but also don’t let your failures stop you from trying again.

3. Great HR Partners allow risk.  A great HR Partner is able and willing to accept that organizations have risk.  It is not the job of HR to eliminate risk, it is the job of HR to advise of risk, then find ways to help those they support, their partners, to achieve the optimal results in spite of those risks.  Far too many HR Partners attempt to eliminate risk and become the ‘No’ police.  Great HR Partners know when to say “No” and when to say “Yes”.

4. Great HR Partners don’t pass blame.  If you are a great HR partner and you work with great partners, you will all support each other in the decision making process.  A great HR Partner will never pass blame but will accept their share as being one of those who supported the decision to move forward.

This doesn’t mean you become a doormat.  Behind closed doors, with your partners, you hash out what there is to hash out.  When the doors open – all partners support the final decision that is made.  A Great HR Partner will have the influence to ensure they can, and will, support that decision when those doors open up.

5. Great HR Partners don’t wait to be asked.  A great partner in any capacity is going to support those they support with every skill they have available to them.  In HR we have people skills – so when those who we support have issues, we offer up our ideas on what we can do to help the team.  Great HR Partners don’t stop at HR advice!  In a time of brainstorming and problem solving the idea that goes unshared, is the worst kind of idea.

I might not know operations, and I will say that up front, but I’m going to put myself out there and tell my partners that eliminating the rubber grommets on the bottom of the widget is a bad idea because while it saves us $.13 per unit, it also makes our product slide around and that ultimately will piss off the customer.

Being an ‘HR Partner’ has very little to do with HR.  Those you support expect you have the HR expertise. What they don’t expect is how great of a ‘partner’ you can be.  Great HR Partners focus on the partnership, not on the HR.

E18 – The HR Famous Podcast – @TorinEllis Going All-in On D&I in 2020!

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If you only listen to one podcast this week – it must be this one! If you’ve never listened to a podcast, you must listen to this one. Torin is amazing and this is real conversation.

The HR Famous Crew welcomes in author, SiriusXM radio host, and D&I Talent Strategy expert, Torin Ellis, to talk about how and what organizations can do in light of recent events surrounding the George Floyd killing. Torin delivers both practical advice for organizational leaders, but also directly to HR and TA leaders who have been struggling to move their D&I strategy forward in light of pandemic budget cuts, during what might be the most important time in recent history to be all-in on D&I.

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

1:50 – Welcome to the pod, our special guest Torin Ellis! Jlee and Torin are tired, guys!

2:45 – Tim emceed the Transform HR virtual conference last week so he too is tired.

3:30 – Check out Torin’s podcast Crazy and The King!

5:30 – Is Baltimore different from the rest of Maryland? Jlee’s husband thinks so but Torin defends the great city Baltimore.

7:00 – First topic of the episode: virtual conferencing! Tim discusses Transform HR and the great experience he had last week emceeing the conference.

9:00 – Torin discusses his experience as a keynote speaker at Transform HR the past 2 years and praises the conference for allowing him to use his platform as a keynote speaker to raise awareness and money for causes and to bring humanity to the conference.

12:20 – Insider report: Torin scratched his entire keynote presentation the night before the conference!

13:30 – Tim asks Torin about how he thinks the current the Black Lives Matter movements and protests will affect D&I campaigns within corporations. Torin remains optimistic but wants substantive movement moving forward.

16:00 – Although Nike is often praised for their response to social issues, Nike board member Peter Henry, has said that only 8% of Nike’s VPs are black. Tim references The Prof G Show podcast episode “Slow Thinking”.

18:30 – Jlee and Torin are surprised by Peter Henry’s thought that he didn’t expect a social movement like what we’re seeing today for another ten years. Torin thinks that maybe Henry’s maturity is causing him to be a little out of touch with younger people.

21:20 – Jlee brings up a recent experience she had with a black female team member about being reached out to a lot in the past week by white friends. She asks Torin about the burden and exhaustion black people and other POC are feeling and how to work through it.

23:40 – Torin responds by discussing the bad timing by these people to ask for guidance by their black peers. He recommends for non-black people to go to each other and figure out why such discrimination has happened for many years.

28:00 – Torin encourages everyone to read White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo and The Color of Law by Richard Rothstein. Check them out to learn how to be a better ally to POC and about the systemic racism built into every system of our lives in the United States.

32:00 – The topics shift to discuss budget cuts in D&I departments. Tim asks Torin how to see growth in D&I in this time of reductions. Torin believes that organizations that cut their D&I departments now will be behind for many years to come.

34:45 – Tim brings up small changes that organizations can make to promote D&I. Torin advises recruiting from a wider range of schools and breaking the norm from current recruiting patterns.

40:00 – Find Torin on all social media platforms @torinellis and at torinellis.com. Also, check out his show on SiriusXM Channel 126 on Sundays at 1 pm!

Ugh! Being an Inclusive Employer is a Lot of Work!

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It seems like being an ‘inclusive’ employer would be super easy! You just accept everyone! Can’t we all just get along!?

The reality is, being an inclusive employer is hard, because being inclusive isn’t about accepting everyone. What!? Oh, great, Tim has finally lost his mind, buckle-up!

I wrote a post about Jeff Bezos’s annual letter and how he lays out a great framework for how organizations and leaders should management performance. Many people liked the post, but there was also a strong reaction from a lot of people who hate Amazon’s culture.

They hear and read media accounts of Amazon being a bad place to work. About Amazon’s hard-charging, work a ton of hours, you don’t have a great work-life balance, etc. Some people go to work for Amazon and tell themselves during the interview process that “yeah, I’ve heard the stories, but I’m different, I want this, I want to be a part of a giant brand like Amazon, I can handle it because it’s a great step in my career.”

That’s when they find out they actually lack self-insight and they should never listen to their inner voice because it lies to them!

So, what does this have to do with ‘inclusion’?

If you truly believe in inclusion, you then believe that Amazon is a great place to work, for those who desire that type of culture. It might not be a culture you would ever choose to work. Amazon actually likes the people that self-select out! It makes their job easier because they don’t want you anyway!

If you stand up and shout Amazon is an awful employer, you don’t understand inclusion. No one forces you to got to work at Amazon, and Amazon does not hide who they are. In fact, Amazon might actually be the best company on the planet to show exactly who they are as an employer and what you’re signing up for if you decide to go to work there.

Amazon is giant and the vast majority of its employees love working for them. Those employees thrive in that environment. It’s what they were looking for. It’s how they are wired. If you put them into another what you might consider, ’employee-friendly’ environment, they would hate it and fail.

Inclusion is hard because it forces you to think in a way that theoretically every environment is potentially a good fit for the right person. We struggle because in our minds something that is opposite of what we want must be bad. Because it’s so hard for us to even consider someone else might actually love an environment we hate.

Being an ‘inclusive’ employer is about accepting all types of people (race, gender, religion, etc.), but it’s also about only accepting all of those people who actually fit the culture you have established. That’s the hard part! Amazon accepts everyone, but you better be ready to go a thousand miles an hour and never stop.

Being an inclusive employer is hard because if it’s done right, it’s not just about being an accepting employer of all, it’s about being accepting and then only picking those candidates who actually fit your culture. The outcome can be awesome. The work to get there can be overwhelming. And if done incorrectly you go from being inclusive to exclusive.

Working Outside of Your Time Zone Sucks!

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For most of my adult life, I’ve worked mostly in the timezone I lived in. So, when I worked in the mountain or central time zones I lived in those time zones. For the vast majority of my career, I’ve worked in the Eastern time zone. I’m not trying to be time zone conceded, but I think most business people live on EST.

If you ranked the top five most workable time zones, globally, I think most people would have it something like:

  1. EST or GMT-4 (New York, D.C., Boston)
  2. GMT+1 (the UK)
  3. WST or GMT-7 (LA, Seattle, San Fran)
  4. GMT+8 (Singapore)
  5. CST or GMT-5 (Chicago/Houston/DFW)

What do you think? Agree, disagree, don’t care.

For a couple of weeks, I decided to work from home from St. George, UT (GMT-6). My team is all EST, so I was two hours “behind” them. I usually get to work around 7:30 am, which meant text messages, Teams notifications, emails, etc. started around 5:30 am.

I had a choice to make. Sleep and work like a normal person and get going around 8 am “my time” at where I was at, or totally just keep my companies EST working time. I decided to try and live normally in Utah, but it was strange. Being two hours off most of your team means you feel like you’re playing catch up all day, and then they get done around 5 pm and you have two hours with almost no interaction at the end of your day.

With more and more organizations going to work at home “forever” and allowing people to work remotely wherever they want, I see this issue increasing. I know global organizations have been doing this for a long time and for many this is a new concept. You’re right, it’s not new.

It just sucks!

I’m sure you get used to scheduling meetings in the middle of the day so it works for everyone or working late into the evening or early morning for those leaders with teams on the opposite side of the world, but when the majority of your team is in one timezone and you are in another, it’s easy to feel like you’re missing out.

It’s probably more difficult for those who have worked in one timezone and then move to another, versus all of those people that worked in a different timezone since the beginning. If it’s all you know, it’s all you know.

So, I’m wondering. How do you cope with living and working in a different timezone than the majority of your team? How do you stay connected and not feel like you’ve missed out? Hit me in the comments with your strategies.

When is the time to work hard?

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“Never! Work smarter not harder!”

Shut it. I wasn’t talking to you idiot.

I tend to try and surround myself with people who are “hard” workers. Who sees stuff that needs to be done and they just do it. In fact, they can’t even turn themselves off if they wanted to. Maybe all the work that you, or I, or they do isn’t “hard”, however, you define hard work, but it’s work and it needs to get done.

Every successful person I know is a hard worker.

Being a hard worker doesn’t mean you almost always work more than everyone else, but when work needs to get done, they get it done. But, don’t discount time and success, most successful people work more and harder than none successful people. It’s super rare to find a lazy successful person.

At what point in your life should you work the hardest? 

No, it’s not all the time, unless you’re young, then yes, when you are young you should be working hard all the time! That is the time to build the foundation. That is the time you have the most energy. That is the time when you have the least to lose.

The time in your life when you should be working the hardest is when you are young. 18-35 years of age, should be a work fest, followed by brief interludes of some trips and stuff.

I often get into conversations with young people who want to retire young, be super successful, but they have yet to work 50 hours in a full week in their life! They should be working 80-100 hours per week. This is the time you can work that amount and make it count.

But girls (and boys) just want to have fun, Tim!

Yeah, you know what’s not fun? Being a greeter at a mass retail store at 68 years old because you can’t pay your rent. The world is a young person’s game because you are fun. You have the time, the energy, you as nice looking as you’ll ever be, you have the fresh young person smell, all of the world wants more of you!

To be successful you must work hard. Part of that success comes from working hard all the time when you are young. As you age and gain experience, you begin to find out when exactly you need to turn it on and when you can shut it down for a bit. If you’re young and you think you already know when to shut it down, you’re a moron, or at the very least you are only getting to a fraction of the success that you are capable of.

If you just graduated high school or college this month, it’s not the time for a break, your life is just beginning. Right now, today is the exact time you should be working hardest and you should be doing it all the time!

 

#CoronaDiaries – What if white dudes could no longer interview!?

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I had a great week professionally in the midst of a very disturbing time personally with everything going on in the world. The Transform Virtual Recruitment Marketing Conference took place this week and it was amazing! My friend and world-class speaker Torin Ellis keynoted and completely destroyed! As always he got my mind running!

You can view Torin’s full keynote and my Q&A with him by going to:

https://resources.symphonytalent.com/transform-event

As well as all the great presentations and content that happened throughout the day. Many organizations are trying virtual conferences, but the team at Symphony Talent/Smashfly just put everyone on notice with what they did with TransformRM Virtual!