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

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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?

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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”?

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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? 

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 is 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!

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

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$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

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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?

 

Adoption of HR & Recruiting is NOT Hard! #iNFLUENCE19

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Hey, gang! I’m out this week spending some time at iCIMS Influence event. It’s part analyst event, part iCIMS customer event. Basically, bring a bunch of recruiting nerds together, that think alike, and see if some cool stuff happens. Turns out, no matter where you are in the world of TA, we all basically have the same problems! We need to fill jobs.

One of the topics that came up is the adoption of the recruiting technology we purchase. How do we get higher user adoption, etc? A very classic issue that won’t go away and there’s all this wonderful research around how we should ‘gamify’ and ‘reward’ and tell folks how great they are, even when they aren’t!

I get that ‘forcing’ someone to do something they don’t want to do, does not have great long term success! Especially in an ultra-low unemployment market. I get that we want our recruiters to have a great experience and love their jobs. I get that we want candidates to have a great experience and love our companies. I. Get. All. Of. That.

So, can get real for a second?

The adoption of technology is not difficult. It’s actually a super easy concept. Here are the 4 steps:

1. Integrate your actual work processes within the technology so that work can’t be completed without using the technology. I.E., Workarounds will not show up on data, virtually meaning, the work did not happen.

2. Do you believe the technology you purchased actually makes you a better organization? If so, then it is a condition of employment that we/you/they use the technology to make our organization more successful. Yes, Karen, that means you’ll have to change and use the new system, even though you’ve used the old way for 32 straight years. If you decide not to use the technology that will make our organization more successful, we will find someone who will. Period.

3. Part of technology adoption is a continued desire to test and innovate, so ensure our technology is still our most successful choice, or maybe something better has come along and we need to adapt and adjust. So, we’ll have an actual measure around testing potential new technology to replace or enhance our stack.

4. Repeat steps 1-3 on an ongoing basis.

Numbers one and two should be very clear to you. Great process design fully utilizes your tech. Great performance management ensures your people use the tech.

Number three is the one some folks will decide isn’t needed, but here’s why it’s critical! Billy decides your tech sucks and his way is better and Billy goes rogue. You tell Billy that a decision, above his pay grade, has been made that to ensure the success of our organization we are going to utilize the technology we’ve purchased to its fullest capabilities (step 1).

You also let Billy know that he will not be forced to use this technology, and we will certainly miss having him around the office. (step 2). But, Billy, we have another option for you, because we love you and value you, we want you to work the tech we have 100%, but we have a side project that we want you to test, and maybe, this side project will demonstrate to our decision-makers there is a better, more effective way to run our process (step 3).

Adoption is maintained. Billy is helping us get better. All is right with the world.

The adoption of technology is not a technology problem, it’s a leadership communication problem, and it’s easily solved.

 

What we say versus What we want in a Job!

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My wife always tells me it’s actions, not words that make a difference. You can say all of this great stuff, but if you do nothing, it’s meaningless. I think we would all agree with this.

So, when we hear graduating students, candidates, and employees tell us what they really want is “Meaningful Work” in their careers, we have to understand that those are “Words”! Not actions, just words. A new study from Olivet Nazarene University Meaningful Work Survey asked this question and, predictably, found this:

So, yeah, 90% of us believe that meaningful work is critical for our career and happiness. Sounds about right, those ‘words’ tend to always come out when we talk about our dream job, etc.

Then the study asked another question. It was basically, given your current career, job, etc. what is the one thing that would make it better? An action. But, remember those words!? What you would believe would make their career/job better should be “more meaningful work”! 90% of you idiots just answered that is was super important for your career and happiness!

Here’s what they actually said:

Show. Me. The. Money!!!!

Yep, you know I love this! “We just a job that saves puppies! That would make me so happy!” Oh, wait, saving puppies only pays $23,000 per year!?! Yeah, screw those puppies! I want to work for a private equity firm! I’m a boat, bitch!

Want to retain your employees? Stop trying to make your employees believe that the rubber vomit you’re manufacturing matters and pay them more and give them flexibility! Stop asshole managers from treating their people bad! And magically, you’ll have high retention and your people will love working for you, even though you don’t save puppies!

I get it, deep down, we all want to do something that changes the world for good. We want to help others, and save puppies. And the concept of meaningful work does really matter, given all other things, like compensation, flexibility, great leaders and co-workers, etc. are equal.

If I can make six figures a year saving puppies, I’m saving puppies. You’re saving puppies. We are all saving puppies!

But it doesn’t, so our actions speak way louder than our words when it comes to career choices and change. Meaningful work is not the most important thing for people in their careers. Its something to consider, but don’t get too caught up in believing it’s going to fix all of your employee experience issues!

Is There Really a Problem with the phrase – “Ok Boomer!”?

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You’ve probably heard it by now, the phrase “Ok Boomer!” Which blew up (cool graph showing how fast here)recently when Chloe Swarbick, a 25-year-old MP and spokesperson for New Zeeland’s Green Party. She was speaking to New Zeeland’s Parliament about climate change when she got heckled by an older member. Her response is below in the video (it happens at- :31 on the video) –

So, let me start by saying Ageism is undoubtedly a very real and serious issue we are facing in workplaces! I’ve written many posts on Ageism in hiring and selection, and I’ve witnessed hiring managers, executives, TA pros, and HR pros who show their ageism bias time and time again at organizations large and small.

The only people we hate to hire more than fat people are old people!

So, on the outset, you would feel that this is just one more form of Ageism. It’s definitely a slam and derogatory towards older thinking for sure! “Ok Boomer” is the same thing as saying “Ok Kid” when someone younger says something you think is naive at best. Chloe is talking science and she’s passionate about the climate, and she knows she’s surrounded by older members who don’t have much care for this issue.

Also, let’s put into the context of how “we” (media, speakers, leaders, trainers, etc.) basically spent the better part of a decade talking down to Millennials for believing their snowflakes (another trigger word) and not having a clue about real life. Gen Z comes along and they are just getting thrown into the Millennials bucket by most folks that don’t have a clue these are actually two very separate generations.

So, Chloe and Gen Z are fed up! When we get fed up, when we feel like no one is listening to us, we usually react in frustration and most of us say stuff that we believe will get the attention of the audience that we want to listen. Many times what we say is offensive to some, like, “Ok Boomer!” Okay, you dumb old person who won’t listen to real science and facts and you keep pissing away the future because you’re almost dead and don’t care!

I’m not a fan of name-calling, on either side. I don’t like it when we try to throw an entire generation into a bucket, because the moment you do that you meet someone from that generation that believes in the exact same things you do, and might even be doing more to fight for those beliefs than you are. Chloe knows this, but she was in a passionate speech to save her planet and some stupid person decided to interject and interrupt her and she came after them in a brilliant way to shut them down immediately and return to her speech. Go for her!

If you’re going to play the game, you better come ready, because the person you try to embarrass might come back on you in a much better way! That “Boomer” wasn’t ready and like “the kids” like to say, he got “served”! Okay, the kids haven’t said that for about a decade, but I’m GenX I basically only use historical pop culture references.

Want Better Work Teams? Hire More Women!

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There is a Harvard Business Review study by Professors Anita Woolley and Thomas Malone, in which the researchers studied how team/group diversification would impact overall team intelligence (you can view their explanation of the findings in Defend Your Research: What Makes A Team Smarter? More Women).

Big surprise to all us husbands, they found that teams with more women are smarter!  From the article:

“The standard argument is that diversity is good and you should have both men and women in a group. But so far, the data show the more women, the better.  We have early evidence that performance may flatten out at the extreme end—that there should be a little gender diversity rather than all women.

You do realize you’re saying that groups with women are smarter than groups with men? 

Yes. And you can tell I’m hesitating a little. It’s not that I don’t trust the data. I do. It’s just that part of that finding can be explained by differences in social sensitivity, which we found is also important to group performance. Many studies have shown that women tend to score higher on tests of social sensitivity than men do. So what is really important is to have people who are high in social sensitivity, whether they are men or women.” 

So, why didn’t the study find that regardless of women or men, the group with just the smartest 10 people was the smartest group?   Conventional wisdom would say give me the 10 smartest people and I’ll have the smartest team.  Here’s the problem, in almost any example in real life, this doesn’t work out. Take the top 5 scorers in the NBA in any given year, put them on one team, and they’ll almost always get beat by another team that was put together as a “team”.

There are many ingredients that need to come together to make a great team. and yes, intelligence is one, but it takes more than just intelligence, and those other items are why women performed better in this study.  Here are some of the factors that the researchers pointed to why women dominated teams performed better:

  • Communication: women team members tend to listen more to each other
  • Constructive Criticism: women tend to share criticism more constructively than men
  • Open to other ideas: the women had open minds about others’ ideas and theories
  • Authority: the women weren’t as autocratic as their male counterparts

What this study really does is speak more about team dynamics and what makes a team successful than the differences between men and women.  The researchers also found that extreme diversification, i.e., all women or all men teams performed the worst of all so some level of gender diversification is needed for high performance.

Not in a position to fire all of your male employees and hire more women?! Not to worry, the ingredients aren’t secret, but the training of the soft skills needed to be successful might be more work than just “de-manning” your company and moving forward.

Is Time or Money More Valuable?

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You might have seen this in the news that Estonia has started experimenting with a new way to punish speeding drivers. Instead of making them pay a fine for speeding, they are giving them an option to ‘take a timeout’ instead for 45 minutes to an hour, right then and there. Which brings up the question, what is more, valuable to these drivers, their time or their money?

From the article:

Drivers caught speeding along the road between Tallinn and the town of Rapla were stopped and given a choice. They could pay a fine, as normal, or take a “timeout” instead, waiting for 45 minutes or an hour, depending on how fast they were going when stopped.

The aim of the experiment is to see how drivers perceive speeding, and whether lost time may be a stronger deterrent than lost money.

Early results of this pilot program are unclear, as it seems that those who can pay the fine will, while those who would be hit harder by a financial fine will tend to take the timeout.

These types of tests are what we should be doing with our own employees within organizations. Everyone has different values of certain things, but we tend to build rewards and punishment programs all the same. Do well and you’ll get a $500 bonus! Or do well and you’ll get an extra day off!

Rarely do we build them where we give people the option – do you want more time or more money as your reward, or on the flip side, for your punishment do you want money or time taken away?

I’ve used both and not one is 100% correct. I’ve had goals set that would reward is something was met, but also if it wasn’t met then the person or team would have to come in and work extra time. I can tell you, no one liked coming in extra to meet their goals. So, making some work extra, for the same pay, seems to be a big deterrent, but also a pretty crappy work experience.

On the flip side, being able to take more time off is really liked by some, but not all. You’ll have some folks who actually really enjoy coming into work, and taking a bunch of extra time off gives them anxiety to be away from the office.

Is there a magic solution? 

The one thing I see that consistently has the biggest impact on a positive employee experience in any environment I’ve worked in is simply flexibility. Treat employees like adults and let them integrate their life with their work and make the choices they need to make to make both work as effectively as possible.

Sounds easy, it’s super hard and complicated in real life! Because it’s complicated, we tend to do the opposite and have a bunch of rules, which then just makes it miserable for everyone. I prefer to give the flexibility, but and then take care of the outlier issues that crop up. We believe there will be many issues, but it’s fewer than you think.

One easy way to control for all of this is to have really great, non-subjective, measures of success. The reality is if someone working for me is successful, then they should have the freedom to have the flexibility they desire.  What I know is time and money are both valuable depending on the situation you are currently in, and those values can change daily for some people.