Fistful of Talent

As American as Apple Pie - Double Time and a Half...

It's the Fourth of July (almost) - which means my yard is dead (I live in the Southeast), we are under a drought warning and I am off work (as are many) for the day.  Time for a listing of things as American as apple pie as a hat tip to Uncle Sam...

Note - This is not a "top" list, just top of mind things with Talent type items mixed in - so don't flame me too hard for the sentimental things I have left off..

Some truly Apple Pie American items:

1.  Double Time and a Half - Have to work today?  Have some of the hourly folks at your company working in a call center, etc.?  If you are a even slightly progressive company, you asked for volunteers to work the limited staffing you needed by offering the normal holiday pay plus OT on top of that, resulting a concoction affectionately known as 2.5 times pay or double time and a half.  Only in America.

2.  Kid Rock in Concert on the Fourth of July - Only in America can a suburban kid from Detroit attack the rock/rap game and emerge as Kid Rock, complete with a height challenged sidekick (he passed away a couple of years back), Harley riding base player and at a minority female drummer.  Diversity at its best.  How can HR people not tip their hat to that?  Plus, the band is great.  Add in some US flags, him doing an unplugged version of our national anthem, and you've got gold.  Comes to mind because I saw him on the 4th of July in Birmingham a few years back...

3.  Baseball and Fireworks - preferably together.

4.  The Cookout - Can you honestly tell me you aren't going to one or having a small one of your own on the fourth?  There's something comforting about being around people (whether you like them or not - I'm lucky since I do) and a grill.

5.  Packaging your day off on the Fourth with a Personal or Vacation Day to make a four-day weekend - Made harder this year by the holiday on Saturday (there should be a law), packing the fourth with other days off to create a mini-vacation is more American than some of the activities listed above.  Enjoy your long weekend, or at the very least if you can't package it all up due to the holiday falling on a Saturday, cue up some Kid Rock at work ....   

Editor's Note: By day, Kris Dunn is the VP of People at DAXKO, a cool software firm dedicated to providing solutions to the best membership-driven organizations in America. At night, he morphs into a blogger at The HR Capitalist and the Founder and Executive Editor of Fistful of Talent. That makes him a career VP of HR, a blogger, a dad and a hoops junkie, the order of which changes based on his mood. Tweet him @kris_dunn...

It's the Fourth of July (almost) - which means my yard is dead (I live in the Southeast), we are under a drought warning and I am off work (as are many) for the day.  Time for a listing of things as American as apple pie as a hat tip to Uncle Sam...

Note - This is not a "top" list, just top of mind things with Talent type items mixed in - so don't flame me too hard for the sentimental things I have left off..

Some truly Apple Pie American items:

1.  Double Time and a Half - Have to work today?  Have some of the hourly folks at your company working in a call center, etc.?  If you are a even slightly progressive company, you asked for volunteers to work the limited staffing you needed by offering the normal holiday pay plus OT on top of that, resulting a concoction affectionately known as 2.5 times pay or double time and a half.  Only in America.

2.  Kid Rock in Concert on the Fourth of July - Only in America can a suburban kid from Detroit attack the rock/rap game and emerge as Kid Rock, complete with a height challenged sidekick (he passed away a couple of years back), Harley riding base player and at a minority female drummer.  Diversity at its best.  How can HR people not tip their hat to that?  Plus, the band is great.  Add in some US flags, him doing an unplugged version of our national anthem, and you've got gold.  Comes to mind because I saw him on the 4th of July in Birmingham a few years back...

3.  Baseball and Fireworks - preferably together.

4.  The Cookout - Can you honestly tell me you aren't going to one or having a small one of your own on the fourth?  There's something comforting about being around people (whether you like them or not - I'm lucky since I do) and a grill.

5.  Packaging your day off on the Fourth with a Personal or Vacation Day to make a four-day weekend - Made harder this year by the holiday on Saturday (there should be a law), packing the fourth with other days off to create a mini-vacation is more American than some of the activities listed above.  Enjoy your long weekend, or at the very least if you can't package it all up due to the holiday falling on a Saturday, cue up some Kid Rock at work ....   

Editor's Note: By day, Kris Dunn is the VP of People at DAXKO, a cool software firm dedicated to providing solutions to the best membership-driven organizations in America. At night, he morphs into a blogger at The HR Capitalist and the Founder and Executive Editor of Fistful of Talent. That makes him a career VP of HR, a blogger, a dad and a hoops junkie, the order of which changes based on his mood. Tweet him @kris_dunn...

SHRM09 Wrap Up... The SHRM's Recovery + Rebuild - Yes We Can?

So imagine this - day two of the SHRM09 conference and I'm having lunch with my FOT pals. You know, we're sitting around and shooting the breeze, making fun of the HR people who would walk by us... and then Kris mentions how he remembered seeing the images of very place we were sitting post Hurricane Katrina lined with rows and rows of cots. Thousands of displaced New Orleans residents. The chaos and disruption. Nice lunch time topic, right? But to be real for a minute... it kind of made me pause, giving me a bit of a reality check about where we were sitting because in all honesty, I had forgotten just what the New Orleans Convention Center served as four years ago.

Remember the Hurricane Katrina aftermath? Up to 20,000 displaced residents called the convention center home while rescue efforts were underway. 20,000 people. And there we were, thousands of HR pros gathered together to do some learning and networking at SHRM09 in the very same place where people were huddled in masses because they'd been displaced by Katrina. Is it just me, or is there something about the whole situation that makes you pause?

SHRM doing the conference in New Orleans isn't just a coincidence. It's a concerted decision made to help revitalize a city which still hasn't fully recovered. As much as I have criticized SHRM in the past (here, here and here), I do give the organization its props for this move because when you have 10,000 or so people descend upon the city for anywhere between three and seven days? That's a lot of money going into the pockets of New Orleans and its residents. Then you also have volunteer activities SHRM has lined up for conference attendees to help revitalize housing in New Orleans. 60+ attendees participated each day in the volunteer activities because cynical as we may be, HR people at the end of the day are actually nice and want to make a difference.

The work to revitalize New Orleans is ongoing, four years later. On my flight into town for the conference, this was amplified for me as I had the fortune of sitting next to Obama's appointee for Gulf Coast rebuilding efforts and in the rows around us were staffers for Senator Landrieu from Louisiana who were also doing recovery related work. I got to talking with my airplane passengers and of course they asked why I was heading to New Orleans... and for them, the idea of 10,000 or so professionals congregating in New Orleans for a conference - in June/July? It was amazing because let's face it - it's muggy, it's uncomfortable, it isn't glamorous by any means. But the contribution it makes to a city like New Orleans? It's big. And for that... I have to applaud SHRM.

When I reflect about the state of SHRM, in some ways, I kind of feel like it's almost as if SHRM is experiencing a rebirth and recovery of its own as well. A new CEO at the helm, a more visible and influential COO driving a lot of new initiatives to bring SHRM into modernity (or some semblance of it)... but as we are seeing with New Orleans, recovery doesn't happen over night. You need some dedicated people in place - idealists who are in it because they really believe in the cause. And that's what I'm seeing with SHRM and this conference in particular - dedicated (and very gracious) hosts, volunteers and staff members, and equally if not even more dedicated members/attendees. No doubt that there's still work to do... but when you see the state of affairs up close and personal, your perspective changes just slightly. And shocking as it may sound, I'm a little more optimistic about the rebuild and recovery than I have been in the past.

Editor's Note- Jessica Lee is a Sr. Employment Manager for APCO Worldwide, a global PR firm in D.C. Like most upscale HR pros, she spends half of her time on recruiting, the other half on ER, Training and OD.  When she's not hammering a candidate to determine Motivational Fit, she's thinking about the future of HR, and wondering how she can avoid using the job boards to fill the next spot in her organization...

SHRM09 - Newsflash! Gerry Crispin Knows A Lot More About Recruiting Than You and I...

Hang around the uber recruiter sites like ERE and Recruitingblogs.com, and you'll quickly learn that Gerry Crispin is well regarded in the staffing and recruiting industry.  For those of you that don't know Gerry, he teams with Mark Mehler to form the personality behind CareerXroads and the CareerXroads colloquium.

Mark and Gerry have worked for and with corporations of all sizes in career planning and placement, contract recruiting, executive search, recruitment advertising and human resource management. After years working on the front lines of recruiting, these two saw a new potential in the Internet and in 1994 came together to create CareerXroads.

CareerXroads is a lot of things to a lot of people.  Take a look at the site and see what they're doing - very interesting, part think tank, part interactive focus group, part working club and more - good stuff.  I was lucky enough to take in my first Gerry Crispin presentation at SHRM09. 

I'm glad I did.  Crispin's got so much knowledge, he's no longer trying to prove it, which is the highest complement I can provide.  He's easy like Sunday morning, which is the second highest complement I can provide to a presenter at a conference like SHRM.  That's the package that delivers some of the best information regarding the state of the staffing and recruiting scene that I've heard.

Gerry's a master at giving you glimpses of data, then wrapping it up in a way you can get your head around.  For example, here's one of the key takeaways I got from what what he shared.  Topic is "what candidates want when they come to your recruiting site":

• I (meaning the candidate) recognize people like me..

• I understand why people join your company...

• I got the information I need to make a decision on my career...

• I was treated with respect, regardless of my status....

Damn.  That's pretty good.  It's easy to say that's common sense, but when you hear it with the context of the research and thousands of conversations that have gone into developing that view, you realize you have no shot to have the perspective of Crispin in this area.

Crispin = Depth. Approachability. Authenticity.  Not a bad combo...

So....if you can afford it and can get invited, you join the colloquium. If you can't do that, you figure out where Gerry's going to speak and go see him.

BONUS TRACK - If you've never met Gerry or heard him speak, here's a clip of Gerry addressing the crowd at the SHRM09 tweetup in New Orleans, which he sponsored in part. 

 

Crispin at Tweetup from Fistful of Talent on Vimeo.

A Blogging Panel at SHRM Mean's It's Time for the Jerry Springer Show...

Oh yeah... It's almost time for the blogger's panel at SHRM today (11:30 Central).. Which can only mean one thing:

"Let's get ready to Rumbleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee"!

The session name for our event, officially cleaned up by the SHRM marketing team, is "HR Bloggers:  Who are these people and why should I care?"

It should read: "The HR Bloggers: Damn, There Are a Lot of Type A's on that Stage...Is There Enough Oxygen?"

Consider the cast:

Laurie Ruettimann -   Former corporate HR, now Punk Rock HR.  Go read the site.  If she decides to bring the "A" game with snark, it could get ugly early.  She can turn on the charm or the punk...  It's the difference between a corporate retreat or the Springer show referenced in the title.

Jessica Lee - Editor of Fistful of Talent, HR practitioner and sole gal at Jessica Lee Writes.  Once made an FOT staffer cry with her quality demands.  "I don't care how you make it happen, just make it brilliant in 600 words or less".  If I've heard that once, I've heard it 1,000 times around the FOT office.  Can turnover problems at Fistful be far behind?  Am I going to have to return to run the show like Steve Jobs?

Lance Haun - He's Your HR Guy, he's my HR guy.  Met him for the first time at the conference, GREAT guy.  I'm thinking he's capable of a brutal sneak attack as a result.  I've got my eye on him for that reason alone... You're not fooling anyone with that, "Hey, I'm a nice guy.. What's the Trailblazers score?" act, Lance....  I'm onto you brother...

Kris Dunn - That's me, KD, in the city surrounded by the sea.  True story, I was out to dinner with some industry friends on Monday and they informed me that the movie that most typified my personality was "Up", which I'm thinking is a kid's movie about hope, imagination, etc.  I thought I was more sinister than that, which means I'm going to have to prove it to the world.  I'll be hyped up like the Eminem wannabe you see on Springer in the sleeveless T with 3 Red Bulls in his system.

So that's your lineup.  What could go wrong?  I'm going to suggest we start the session with a nice game of musical chairs just to get the blood going a bit...

The only thing that will keep this thing between the ditches? The panel will be live-streamed to anyone who wants it and will also be video-archived for the rest of history...

PS - check back here around game time at 11:30 Central today.  I'll have a post up with the live stream...

SHRM09 - Will the Best "About Me" Profile at SHRM Please Stand Up?

Not sure if you saw it yesterday, but William J. Tincup, partner (his name's on it, right?) at human capital marketing firm Starr Tincup, did a vendor floor review for us at SHRM 2009 in a taped interview.  He started cussing like Samuel L. Jackson on "Snakes on a Plane" when describing the 2009 climate.  "I am about ***** **** tired of this **** ****** economy in 2009"....(Note - it was funny, but wasn't that funny - check out the video if you haven't already)

As I mentioned at the end of the vendor floor review with William, I found www.jpie.com shortly after JWT launched JPIE (his blog), and his old "about me" profile at Starr Tincup remains one of the premiere pieces of literature created by an American born in the 20th Century.  Check it out - It was that good.  JWT was kind enough to bring it out of the National Archives for a past celebration of JPIE.  Also check out JWT's mellow new profile here, and browse the Starr Tincup website as well, which proves they drink the Kool-Aid since it's based on the Ning platform.

Just showing the SHRM09 love where it's due.  Even if he tried to wreck my cable access show...

SHRM09 - Vendor Floor Mantra - 2009? Let's Talk About 2010...

Our coverage of SHRM09 wouldn't be complete without a rundown of the vendor floor, so rather than show you ugly footage of people carrying more swag than one human deserves, I thought I'd leave the breakdown to my friend William Tincup of Starr Tincup.  Good that he joined a firm with his name in it...

Starr Tincup is a marketing firm for companies who sell human capital solutions. They offer marketing strategy, marketing execution, media sourcing and staffing services. Unlike general agencies, Starr Tincup is all about human capital— they've worked with hundreds of companies in the space. Check 'em out at http://www.starrtincup.com/.

Check out the video below of my convo with William Tincup about what's going on in the vendor space at SHRM09.  WARNING:  Language not edited.  They like to be edgy at the ST, and that includes their approach to interviewing...

PS - here's WJT's old profile - it's money.....

KD + William Tincup from Fistful of Talent on Vimeo.

SHRM09 - DAXKO (home of the Capitalist) Named As a Top 50 Place to Work...

Cool news from SHRM09 - the company I work for, DAXKO, was recognized as one of the top 50 best small and medium companies to work for in America by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) and the Great Place to Work Institute, Inc. (GPTW). Winners were announced Monday at SHRM’s 61st Annual Conference in New Orleans.

DAXKO ranked 10th in the small employer category, which is great. The commitment that is behind all the good stuff that led to the award is a big reason I chose to join the DAXKO team 3 months ago. I'm a newbie so no credit goes to me, although like any free agent worth their salt, I'm looking forward to helping a clear winner defend its title moving forward.. :)

Jennifer McClure, a part of the Fistful of Talent team, was kind enough to sit down in the video below with Dave Gray, our CEO and cultural architect, and Concetta Lewis, a member of our people team, to talk about what makes DAXKO different and leads to the team recognition.

Way to go DAXKO!

DAXKO - Great Place to Work from Fistful of Talent on Vimeo.

Learning to Develop Executive Presence Means Don't Chew Gum on Camera - Live from SHRM 2009

Welcome to the big HR show! Yep, along with Jennifer McClure and Kris Dunn, I'm at the annual SHRM Conference and Exposition in good 'ole New Orleans on behalf of Fistful of Talent.

Now, we know that there are many of y'all at home and work wishing you were here with us crazy kids... so for your enjoyment, we thought we'd do a little something different and bring our video cameras back out to deliver some of the speakers (and little of ourselves) directly to you who couldn't be here in New Orleans. First up? Kris Dunn and I touch base with each other and Dianna Booher who taught a Monday afternoon "mega session" on creating executive presence and communicating with confidence in the C-suite. Dianna is the president of Booher Consultants which is based out of Grapevine, Texas and has written many business books over her 25 year career.

Before you hit that play button though - be forewarned about the video that followers because little 'ole me? Well, I'm not yet C-suite. So, executive presence tip number one, which I obviously haven't mastered yet... do not chew gum while on camera! Doh! Hey. I'm still learning folks. Executive presence tip number two? Don't record video clips after a full day of being around thousands of HR pros. It makes you (or maybe just me?) a little goofy. And the outtakes are plenty proof. But hey, that's what the conference is about. Soak up the knowledge, develop and grow. (Email subscribers, click through to watch.)

SHRM09 - Dianna Booher from Fistful of Talent on Vimeo.

More to come, friends, after other sessions... plus, in case you didn't hear, we'll be streaming our session on Wednesday LIVE! China Gorman, COO of SHRM will be moderating a panel session with fellow bloggers Lance Haun of Your HR Guy, Laurie Ruettimann of Punk Rock HR, KD and moi on HR bloggers - who we are, and why on earth anyone should care. The big message? Why HR leaders should be paying attention to social media and the blogosphere in order to be more effective pros. Stay tuned...

PS: You can also check out Jennifer McClure's wrap up on the session on her blog Cincy Recruiter's World.

From the SHRM09 Floor - WARNING: Taking Presentation Advice Literally May Be Hazardous to the Health of Your Talent Career...

One of the nice things about most of the presenters at SHRM is they've got some passion about the topic they're presenting on. They're not HR practitioners in my classic definition of the word, but they've got passion.

Case in point - I took in a solid presentation on Monday from Jeremy Eskenazi on Consultative Staffing and Recruiting Strategies for HR Generalists. Jeremy had some good stuff and it was clear he was passionate about helping recruiters and HR generalists become consultants - check out my twitter stream from Monday for the play by play.

The only issue? If you listen closely to what Jeremy advocates, a less-experienced HR pro might become a lot more formal than the culture they operate in can tolerate - and that might clip a young pro's career at an early stage.. It's all about context and acting like you have more experience than you actually do...

Jessica Lee and I discuss below - also included in the clip is me catching up with Jeremy and asking him how to make a push for Service Level Agreements (known as SLAs to those of you that have been around big company America) in a less formal way that doesn't get you killed/fired.

SHRM09 - On SLAs and Boxing Hiring Manager In... from Fistful of Talent on Vimeo.

Tough Love: The First 100 Days of the Obama Administration

Fans and critics alike agree on one thing: President Obama means business. And his business is change. Change is practically smacking American employers in the face. For better or worse, the Obama Administration promises to bring dramatic changes to the American workplace and the courtrooms tasked with enforcing labor and employment laws. Employers must brace themselves for the new administration's "tough love" or prepare for the financial consequences.

Before Obama's ascent to presidency, the labor movement had made significant strides. First, they passed the Americans with Disabilities Act Amendments Act of 2008, which made it easier for individuals to qualify as "disabled" under the ADA. Next, they were rewarded with various provisions in the lengthy Family and Medical Leave Act regulations, including two types of leave for family members of military personnel. Even pre-Obama, employers had drawn the short end of the stick.

While employers were desperately attempting to adjust to this new landscape, the new administration launched its employee-friendly campaign. President Obama's first official act was the passage of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which makes the statute of limitations period for pay discrimination claims under various anti-discrimination laws run anew with each paycheck. President Obama also extended COBRA funding obligations for employers and provided protection for whistleblowers of economic stimulus funds abuse.

These changes are just the tip of the iceberg. The labor movement has expressed its firm commitment to ensuring the successful passage of numerous Obama-backed employee-friendly proposals. Employers would be wise to prepare for their inevitable passage from debatable "proposals" into binding "law." Here are some of the changes headed your way:

• The controversial Employee Free Choice Act will eliminate secret ballot elections, require bargaining for initial contracts to begin within 10 days of certification, provide mandatory binding arbitration, and increase penalties for employers.
• The Working Families Flexibility Act will require all employers to negotiate shift timing and duration as well as jobsite assignment with their employees.
• The Arbitration Fairness Act will invalidate employment-related pre-dispute arbitration agreements.
• The Paycheck Fairness Act will require employers asserting the reason-other-than-sex affirmative defense under the Equal Pay Act to prove that any pay disparity was caused by a job-related reason.
• The Family Friendly Workplace Act will authorize private employers to provide compensatory time-off in lieu of overtime.
• Various proposals (H.R. 824; H.R. 1723; H.R. 2132; H.R. 2161) will dramatically expand the FMLA.

There's more - here are some proposals that are ripe for "revival" by the Obama Administration:

• The RESPECT Act will make it more difficult to exclude "supervisory" employees from union membership.
• The FOREWARN Act will make the WARN Act applicable to smaller employers and smaller layoffs and increase employers' notice requirements.
• The Employment Non-Discrimination Act will prohibit employment discrimination based on sexual orientation.
• In case some of these proposals fail, the "catch-all" provisions of the anticipated Civil Rights Act will ensure that some, if not all, of the intended goals are met.

These employee-friendly proposals are looming on the horizon. Employers must educate themselves and be proactive to ensure that their workplace is Obama-compliant and poised to survive upcoming changes. Change is coming. The question is - do you feel lucky?

Editor's Note - Don't Feed the Vendors is a new series at FOT.  The goal of the DFTV series?  We get hammered by third parties who want to write at FOT, so we give them a challenge.  Write something cool and significant we can learn from/talk about in the FOT style, and you can roll with the FOT crew.  Try to sell our readership your product and/or provide a whitepaper, and we'll openly mock your company in public for not understanding the DNA of our readership.  Many inquire, few follow through once they learn they can't post a workup of their latest "research".  For those that make the cut, we'll offer up associate FOT membership as part of the Don't Feed the Vendors stable.

David Ritter is chair and Gray Mateo is a member of the Labor & Employment Practice Group at Neal, Gerber & Eisenberg LLP. David guides management to make solid business decisions when it comes to their employees. He enjoys representing clients in the areas of employment discrimination, noncompete, trade secret and restrictive covenants, employment torts and all other litigation related to the employment relationship. Gray also represents management in a variety of labor and employment matters, including the defense of claims arising under the FLSA, the NLRA, the FMLA, the ADA, Title VII and their state law counterparts (call Gray for a translation of acronyms). Neal, Gerber & Eisenberg LLP is a Chicago-based law firm of nearly 200 attorneys spanning 22 practice areas. Website: www.ngelaw.com.