Your Weekly Dose of HR Tech: @TryVantagePoint – Virtual Reality Harassment Training!

Posted on December 10, 2019 by Tim Sackett

Today on the Weekly Dose I take a look at the HR technology startup VantagePoint. VantagePoint is a virtual reality(VR) learning technology company that has produced both sexual harassment and diversity and inclusion training, as well as a training metrics dashboard to go along with their VR training.

I’m not sure we are even close to what VR can become in the HR world. Clearly, there is a great use case for it in training and we see organizations are beginning to start testing it, but to this point, it’s still rather uncommon in most organizations. In fact, it’s uncommon in almost every part of our lives. Only 2% of people in the world have ever even tried it! But, it’s growing like crazy, basically doubling in usage every year.

All that said, it’s actually super cool and fun! Now, if you ever had put on a VR headset and did a fly through the grand canyon, or taken a trip on a roller coaster, you could probably see how that might get old, are nauseating, very quickly! If you have watched a live NBA game from the first row at half-court, through VR goggles, you start to understand how totally awesome it can be!

VantagePoint’s CEO, Morgan Mercer, was early in on the VR tech and it’s potential use to train our employees in how to be better with sexual harassment and has also added in content for D&I as well. VR is only part of what VantagePoint is about. Doing great VR means you have to have great content for your employees to get emersed in. Ultimately, VR is the training delivery tool, but what VantagePoint understands is you better deliver great engaging content is you want great training.

What do I live about VantagePoint?

– When you go through harassment training with VR goggles and headphones on, you feel like you are witnessing harassment happening, live, right in front of you. You’re uncomfortable. You want to do something. The fact is, doing training in virtual reality forces the user to be totally focused unlike any other kind of training I’ve ever done.

– VantagePoint has figured out, as LOD and HR pros we don’t really want to mess around with hardware (VR goggles, etc.). So, part of their strategy is to just bring everything to you, have a person on-site, and take away any pain or frustration that might go along with that side of training. You just have them show up, and they take your employees through the training. (You can also do it on your own if you like)

– The harassment training isn’t just watching this stuff happen on VR. The user also gets calls on a pop-up looking iPhone with a call from HR telling the user what they did right or wrong, etc. If you get something wrong, you get thrown back into the experience to do more work.

– I love that you can measure not only the compliance side of the training, but you can also see who is actually getting it, and who isn’t with the metrics dashboard they’ve developed.

We all know we can and have to do better when it comes to sexual harassment training in our workplaces. Traditional, classroom-style training just doesn’t seem to cut it, because it doesn’t grab the attention of the audience. No matter how well done. VantagePoint has figured out a better delivery tool, and one that will be commonplace in the very near future when it comes to all kinds of training.

The price point is actually less expensive then I thought it would be, and I would think most organizations of every size will be able to afford the VantagePoint VR training. I do think Morgan, and her team, are just scratching the surface of what’s possible when it comes to this kind of training in our workplaces. But, great VR content is also labor-intensive to pull off well.

I would definitely recommend a demo, especially if you’re looking for a great alternative to traditional harassment and D&I training. This is training that your employees will definitely remember and pay attention to!

The #1 Holiday Gift For Recruiting and TA pros Worldwide!

Posted on December 9, 2019 by Tim Sackett

When I worked at Applebee’s in HR we talked about terminations as giving someone a “gift”. Every time I tell someone this, they kind of chuckle. “Yeah! Great ‘gift’ I get fired!”

Of course, there’s an explanation.

Imagine you are working in your dream job (whatever that job might be). You love your job. You love the people you work with. You feel valued. You do great work. The hours work well for you. The location works well for you. You have a really good balance. You are in your dream job.

Now, imagine the opposite. You hate your job. You can’t even stand getting out of bed in the morning, knowing you have to go to ‘that’ job. You don’t like the people you work for. You can’t stand your leadership team. It’s too far away from home. Nothing seems to be right. As such, you probably aren’t giving 100%. You probably aren’t performing at your best. You will probably be fired.

The person who is miserable and not performing in their job needs a gift. That gift is we stop kidding ourselves that this will work out and we terminate them so that they now have the time and motivation to go find that dream job! A job they love! We all deserve that gift! Our life is so much better when we are working at a job we love. It’s a true gift.

So, what’s the #1 gift for Recruiting and TA Pros!?

No, it’s not to terminate them!

It’s to buy my book! The Talent Fix! Yay! It’s back in stock over at Amazon just in time for the holidays, and you can order it in bulk right now! If you want to buy signed copies for your team – send me a note (timsackett@comcast.net) and we can work out the details! I’ll even personalize them with funny messages if you send me what you want to say!

Dear Tina,

I can’t think of a more amazing recruiter who has ever graced the

earth. The world is a better place because you’re in it. Last night,

I wept with joy from the idea of “you”!

Tim (but really fancy signature type “Tim”)

You like what I did there!? 😉 It’s really the gift that keeps giving all year long!

Also, you should probably fire some folks who aren’t performing well and hate their job! They will not consider it a gift in the moment, but if they are lucky enough to find that awesome dream job, a job they love, eventually they might come to see it as the best gift they were ever given!

You’re Going to Jail because of your LinkedIn Profile Pic!

Posted on December 6, 2019 by Tim Sackett

Breaking News from down under! An Australian woman lied on her resume and used a fake picture on her LinkedIn profile and those facts were used in a trial where she was sentenced to over a year in jail! Let’s face it Australia is kind of like the Florida of countries.

From the article:

Veronica Hilda Theriault, 46, was convicted Tuesday of deception, dishonesty, and abuse of public office, relating to her 2017 application for the chief information officer role, which came with an annual salary of 270,000 Australian dollars (US$185,000).

Theriault worked in the position with South Australia’s Department of the Premier and Cabinet for over a month and earned about 33,000 Australian dollars ($22,500) before being fired.

She pleaded guilty to all charges and received a 25-month sentence with a non-parole period of a year…The court heard that she submitted a fraudulent resume to the department with false information relating to her education and prior employment. After she was granted an interview, she also posed as a previous employer during a reference check, in which she “gave glowing feedback” about her own performance.

But the lies didn’t end there. In earlier submissions, the court heard that Theriault used a photo of supermodel Kate Upton as her LinkedIn profile photo, according to CNN affiliate 7 News.

Can you imagine if we put people in jail for lying on their resume or using doppelganger photos on their LinkedIn profile!?! Half of our employees would be in jail!

Well, don’t think it can’t happen in the US! This position was for the Australian government. Turns out, if you lie to the government when getting a job, you might end up in jail! Not only in Australia but pretty much every country! I can only imagine how many employees of the US government, state and local governments, who have access to secret level information who have ‘exaggerated’ on their resume! It has to be upwards of 20% or more.

Now, this person flat out lied and probably has some severe mental issues. Which begs the question, how the heck could this happen for such a high-level position?

Quite simply, Malcolm Gladwell wrote an entire book (Talking to Strangers) about this simple idea. We all, all of us, default to truth. We believe what people are telling us, and we are awful at spotting liars. The higher the level of position, the worse we get. “Oh, she has an outstanding resume and background and education and she looks just like Kate Upton! She must be telling us the truth!”

We. Are. Stupid.

Once we actually come to grips with this fact, we might get slightly better at talent selection and interviewing. We assume everyone is telling us the truth when we interview them. We rarely believe someone is lying. “Oh, they wouldn’t lie, they really want this position! And I know her cousin, and she goes to church, and…” We are all biased in this same way. We do not want to believe someone would lie to us.

I think it would actually do some good if we started putting people in jail or lying on their resume, or at the very least for using LinkedIn profile pics that look nothing like you do now! “Oh, Hi…you’re “Tim”!? I didn’t recognize you, I mean immediately!” (Internal voice – “with that extra 25 pounds and no hair, from your LI profile pic that is clearly ten years old!)

I want to be the HR leader at court for the case where we’re trying to put someone away for their stupid, fake LI profile pic! That’s the pinnacle of HR!

How Would a College Education be Different if you Were an Investor?!

Posted on December 4, 2019 by Tim Sackett

There’s a concept that is starting to gain some steam in college tuition funding called “Income Share Agreements”. The basis of these agreements is pretty much “I” (the investor) pays “you” (the student) to go to college and get an education. Once you graduate and get a job, I take some of your annual salary for an agreed-upon time.

From the Washington Post:

In an ISA, a student borrows nothing but rather has his or her education supported by an investor, in return for a contract to pay a specified percentage of income for a fixed number of years after graduation. Rates and time vary with the discipline of the degree achieved and the amount of tuition assistance the student obtained.

An ISA is dramatically more student-friendly than a loan. All the risk shifts from the student to the investing entity; if a career starts slowly, or not at all, the student’s obligation drops or goes to zero. Think of an ISA as equity instead of debt, or as working one’s way through college — after college.

I like this alternative to student loans because it puts much of the risk on the investor and away from the student. Also, if higher education institutions get involved with these kinds of investment funds, it truly puts accountability back on their organization to ensure they are producing graduates who are desired and prepared.

Purdue University has been doing a ton of testing with these types of agreements:

Although the very nature of ISAs protects the participant, early adopters such as Purdue have built in safeguards. A user-friendly computer simulator provides quick, transparent comparisons with various public and private loan options. No investee pays anything for the first six months after graduation or until annual income exceeds $20,000. For those graduates who get off to fast career starts, a ceiling of 250 percent of the dollars that purchased their education limits total repayment.

All of this gets you to think about what might be possible if we walked away from traditional student loan programs altogether!

What if…

The amount of your investment into a student returned more than you could make on the stock market?
Students had to present themselves, as high schoolers, to investment groups to get funding for university?
Investors and investing groups were only willing to fund students in careers where they could get a good return on investment? Say goodbye to history majors!
College students had to meet with their investors and explain why they got a “C” and missed class because they were drunk!?
Organizations and HR Departments started investing in potential future talent in a very real way!?

I love disruption to traditional things we have come to believe just can’t be changed. This isn’t perfect and there are a lot of questions, but it’s worth testing and trying. What we know is traditional student loan programs are not working at all! Something has to change.

I’m GenX and a Capitalist, so I love the accountability of both the investor having to make sound, prudent investment decisions around who they feel is most likely to give them a great return on investment, and the student’s accountability of understanding there’s a cost/benefit to your career choices and what it will cost to pay back those choices.

What do you think? Would you allow one of your kids to get into one of these arrangements, or would you have been willing to do this in college? I think I would have had very few people want to invest in me, but those who did would have been paid back in spades!

The 12 Steps to Recovery for Being a Passionate Asshole!

Posted on December 3, 2019 by Tim Sackett

I wrote a post titled, “The 5 Things HR Leaders Need to Know About Developing Employees“. In that post I had a paragraph:

When I was young in my career, I was very ‘passionate’. That’s what I liked calling it – passionate. I think the leaders I worked with called it, “career derailer”. It took a lot for me to understand what I thought was a strength, was really a major weakness. Some people never will gain this insight. They’ll continue to believe they’re just passionate when in reality they’re really just an asshole.

I then had a reader send me a message and basically said, “This is me!” And I was like, “That was me too!” And then we kissed. Okay, we didn’t kiss, but it’s great to find another like yourself in the wild!

The reality is, I’m a recovering Passionate Asshole.

What’s a “Passionate Asshole” are asking yourself? Here’s my definition –

“A passionate asshole is a person who feels like they are more about the success of the company than anyone else. I mean everyone else. They care more than everyone! And because we care so much, we treat people poorly who we feel don’t care as much as us!”

Passionate assholes truly believe in every part of their being they’re great employees. You will not be able to tell us any differently. They are usually high performing in their jobs, which also justifies even more that they care more. But, in all of this, they leave a wake of bad feelings and come across like your everyday basic asshole.

You know at least one of these people. They’re usually younger in the 24-35-year-old range. Too early in their career to have had some major setbacks and high confidence in their abilities.

Here are the 12 Steps of Recovery for Passionate Assholes:

Step 1: Realization that your an Asshole, not the best employee ever hired in the history of the universe. This realization doesn’t actually fix the passionate asshole, but without it, you have no chance.

Step 2: You understand that while being a passionate asshole feels great, this isn’t going to further your career and get you to your ultimate goal.

Step 3: Professionally they have knocked down in a major way. I was fired. Not because I was doing the job, but because I was leaving a wake of bodies and destruction in the path of doing my job. You don’t have to be fired, demotion might also work, but usually, it’s getting canned.

Step 4: Some you truly respect needs to tell you you’re not a good employee, but an asshole, during a time you’re actually listening.

Step 5: Find a leader and organization that will embrace you for who you’re trying to become, knowing who you truly are. You don’t go from Passionate Asshole to model employee overnight! It’s not a light switch.

Step 6: Time. This is a progression. You begin to realize some of your passionate asshole triggers. You begin to use your powers for good and not to blow people up who you feel aren’t worthy of oxygen. Baby steps. One day at a time.

Step 7: You stop making bad career moves based on the passionate asshole beast inside of you, telling you moving to the ‘next’ role is really the solution to what you’re feeling.

Step 8: We make a list of people we’ve destroyed while being passionate assholes. Yes, even the people you don’t like!

Step 9: Reach out to the people you’ve destroyed and make amends. Many of these people have ended up being my best professional contacts now late in life. Turns out, adults are actually pretty good a forgiving and want to establish relationships with people who are honest and have self-insight.

Step 10: We are able to tell people we’re sorry for being a passionate asshole when find ourselves being a passionate asshole, and not also seeing the passion within them and what they also bring to the organization is a value to not only us but to the organization as a whole.

Step 11: You begin to reflect, instead of reacting as a first response. Passionate assholes love to react quickly! We’re passionate, we’re ready at all times, so our initial thought is not to think, but react decisively. You’ve reached step 11 when your first thought is to no longer react like a crazy person!

Step 12: You begin to reach out to other passionate assholes and help them realize how they’re destroying their careers and don’t even know it. You begin mentoring.

I know I’ll never stop being a Passionate Asshole. It’s a personality flaw, and even when you change, you never fully change. But, I now understand when I’m being that person, can usually stop myself mid-passionate asshole blow up, and realize there are better ways to communicate and act.

It’s the Wednesday Before Turkey Day! Let Marie Kondo help you clean your desk!

Posted on November 27, 2019 by Tim Sackett

I’m a dude and like most dudes I know, I’m not super organized. I don’t think I’m sloppy, but that’s mostly due to some heavy training by Mrs. Sackett (like decades of training!). The thing is, once you get used to organization, you really notice when things are not organized!

One of the recent pop culture phenomenon’s recently has been that of Marie Kondo. Kondo is the queen of organization! It’s the Wednesday before you leave for that great long Thanksgiving weekend and quite frankly all you want to do is tidy up and get on with your extended holiday! So, I found a video on how to organize and tidy up your desk the Marie Kondo way!

Send me the pics of your desk after you follow her method!

Have a great holiday extended weekend if you’re in the states! See you all back here next Monday!

True or False: Corporate Recruiters Fear Agency Recruiters?

Posted on November 26, 2019 by Tim Sackett

True or False? It’s a common belief, in most Talent and HR circles, that most corporate recruiters fear agency recruiters. Go ahead and argue if you would like, but it seems a little silly.

The reality is, true recruiting professionals don’t fear amateurs.

It’s like a really great professional Photographer. They charge money because they offer something someone is willing to pay for. Professional photographers don’t fear the mom at the soccer game with her $2,000 dollar camera and $5,000 dollar lens. Who cares that you have the equipment if you don’t know how to use it!? Pros don’t fear amateurs.

So, if you are a really good corporate recruiter who knows how to really recruit and source talent, agency recruiters don’t scare you, because you know your stuff! That’s the problem, though, right? The reason so many people feel the title of this post is true is because we all know so many corporate recruiters, who really don’t know how to recruit. They aren’t pros, they’re amateurs. Amateurs fear professionals when it comes to meeting head to head in competition.

The best professionals love it when a talented amateur tries to play at their level. These types of individuals help to push both parties to do the best work they can. Or, at least, they should! A great agency recruiter should push an average corporate recruiter to want to get better. An amateur agency recruiter will starve, that’s why you only see amateurs in the agency ranks for a very short period of time. If they aren’t good, they don’t eat! That is why on average, agency recruiters tend to have more recruiting skills than corporate recruiters. Agency folks aren’t full salary. How they are compensated forces them to have better skills, on average, of they are out of job.

So, how do corporate recruiters ensure they become professionals? Well, I love Malcolm Gladwell, so I’ll steal a little of his 10,000-hour concept (and go ahead and tell me it’s B.S. – I don’t care, I like it and I’ve seen it work). You must make yourself a true recruiting professional! You need to invest time and development in yourself, in the recruiting industry, to become a pro. That means as a corporate recruiter, you focus on recruiting, not becoming an HR Pros. What?! Most corporate recruiters are corporate recruiters because that’s their path to get into a straight HR position. Their endgame is not recruiting, it’s HR. That’s a problem because they are not fully vested in the recruiting game. This is an amateur move.

The reality is, those who get promoted are usually professional at something. Become a great recruiting pro and the powers-that-be will take notice, and you’ll find yourself in positions you never thought possible. True professionals don’t worry about promotions, they worry about becoming a better pro at their craft.

The next time you start feeling yourself pushed by an agency recruiter, don’t curse them for what they do, embrace them for what they push you to become — a better recruiter!

Do you believe your HR leadership style is that of a “coach”?

Posted on November 25, 2019 by Tim Sackett

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, 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?

Don’t Go to College! You Could Make $2 Million Over Your Lifetime!

Posted on November 22, 2019 by Tim Sackett

$2.7 Million is a lot of money (the average high someone in college will make over a forty-year career). Marketwatch released the list of the top colleges and your potential return on investment. Nowadays, going to college is an investment, for most four-year degrees you’ll pay at least six figures and it has many parents and students wondering if it’s really worth it!

Here’s the list:

You’ll notice the top return on investment schools are some big names: Harvard, Stanford, MIT, and Georgetown. But there are also some that are not as well known: Albany College, US Merchant Marines, Babson!?

In fact, number twelve on the list isn’t even a four-year college, but a two-year nursing program from St. Paul’s School of Nursing in New York, where graduates can expect to earn $1.8 million over a forty-year career!

Which begs the question, do you need to go to a private, Ivy league, big-name university to make a great living? No. But, it certainly helps ensure you will.

While the top average forty-year return is $2.7 million, that equates to about $67,500 a year, most students going to any college today believe they’ll make more than $67,500 per year eventually in their career, especially those going to an Ivy League school! Probably most kids going to a state four-year school believe the same thing!

Two-year college programs and certificate programs that faired really well in lifetime earnings where mostly nursing and IT, and many of the technical trade schools (electricians, plumbers, pipefitters, etc.). Depending on the market and school, many of these two-year or under programs were right on par with the lifetime earnings of their four-year degree counterparts.

So, what does this all mean?

– Should kids still go to college? It totally depends on the kid and what they want to do in life! But, if you have a kid who doesn’t know, for gosh sakes don’t throw money away on a college education that might never use! Make them actually work for a bit after high school. Have them take a “gap year” and travel or volunteer, before investing such an enormous amount of money.

– We’ve failed our kids when it comes to occupations they can be proud of. I’m a Recruiter. It’s worked out great for me and my family. I’ve put two through college and one is on the way. I also have encouraged them not to be a Recruiter! Why? Because we always want our kids to be better than us. If I was a surgeon, I would want my kid to be a brain surgeon. If I was an Accountant, I would want my kid to be a CFO. We push them to be something we believe is better than we are. With this ‘evolution’ we’ve totally steered our kids away from great professions and occupations that they can make a great living at and have a wonderful life.

– We’ve failed college students in believing they’ll make way more money than they actually will. Go on any campus in the U.S. and ask students how much they expect to make 5 years out of college and all of them will tell you more than $67,500. That was the highest average of all schools and all degrees!

I get it, I’m part of the problem with my own kids, but we need to change our culture around work. I hate we are now selling this bullsh*t around ‘meaningful work’! We are making kids believe that if there isn’t meaning to your work then it’s crap. No! No, it’s not! It’s valuable to put in a great day’s work, that might not have some bigger meaning then you just got paid and now can provide for yourself and your family! That’s a great thing!

Ok, I’m done – Boomer out! (I’m actually not a Boomer, but it seemed an appropriate end!)

Reimagining HR and TA Leadership

Posted on November 21, 2019 by Tim Sackett

I’ve been thinking about this concept for the past few weeks. It keeps coming back to me and I can’t shake it. I talk about HR and TA technology a ton. When I look into the future of HR and TA technology I see a world where so much of the tactical work we do now is done through AI, Machine Learning (ML) and flat out just next-level automation.

I don’t find anyone who will argue this. I still see a bunch of consultant-types who will say “AI will not replace jobs!” Yeah, that’s wrong, it’s going to replace a whole bunch of jobs, and it will also create some jobs. The problem is the jobs it replaces, those folks are nowhere near the skill-talent we need for the jobs that will be created!

The thing is, when we think about traditional leadership, it’s usually about increased ‘responsibility’. You know what that means? More headcount! I was the head of HR for an organization where I had 25 direct reports, but I took this new gig because I now have 50 direct reports and more headcount means more money, which means a better, higher-level leadership position.

Play along with this idea. You’re working for an organization and you currently have 200 people that report up into your organization. You decide you’re going to be the most innovative HR/TA leader in the entire world, so you go all-in on technology and innovative practices. About two years into this endeavor you find, because of all the capacity you’ve been able to increase, you’re functional headcount is now only 125.

Is that a better leadership position (125)? Or is the 200 person function a better leadership position?

Of course, the more innovative function you created at 125 headcount is better, but traditional leaders will always be pulled to the higher headcount. We tell ourselves that the more modern, innovative shop is better, and then we get a call that someone has a shop with 225 and we are pulled to the “larger” job.

We have a fundamental problem across all leadership right now. Leaders view success as empire-building, not empire shrinking. Of course, we want to work for growing organizations, but at the same time, most of us work in bloated, traditional, task-oriented shops, that need to be totally overhauled through technology and innovation. We think we run lean, but we still have three people in recruiting operations setting up interviews. We think we’re run a high-tech modern organization but we have twenty sourcing pros mining databases all day.

Great modern leaders are not about more, they are about less. How can we get to great, by using the least amount of resources possible? Don’t tell me that’s your philosophy because I see you. I see how your team works. I see so much of what actually gets done, still being done by human hands, when for a fraction of the cost there are technologies that can do it better, faster, and cheaper.

It’s a super hard paradigm shift in leadership. Less is more. We tell our teams this, but we don’t think it applies to us. As a leader, traditionally, we are always taught to try and get more. Don’t let them take headcount away from you, you’ll never get it back, add headcount whenever you can!

Modern technologies are giving us the opportunity to shrink the manpower we need. And it will force the question, what kind of leader are you? Empire-builder or Empire-shrinker?

The Tim Sackett Project

TA & HR Expert, Dad, Backup Point Guard on my over 40 men's team