Fistful of Talent

That Jet Plane Sound You Hear Is An Opportunity - That Will Probably Be Squandered...

First up, let me say this: I'm a huge fan of people coming to America from other countries to better themselves.  After all, if my family hadn't immigrated back in the day, I'd be hanging out in low-end suburbs of Dublin, plus I'm involved in arranging for sponsorship of many foreign nationals as they navigate their way through the visa/immigration process.  I'm in the software biz, yo!

But let's talk in real terms about the following Workforce article that notes that America is seeing a dramatic 'outflux' of talented foreign nationals leaving the states for their homeland due to a lack of opportunity.  From Workforce:

"A 2009 survey by financial firm HSBC revealed that 23 percent of expats in the United States and 44 percent in the United Kingdom were considering going home because of the global economy.  Although they originate from several countries, these expats from the U.S. and U.K. cited limited career prospects as the top reason for returning home.
 
Back in the U.S., the story is particularly startling, with one expert contending that the tide of expats heading home has reached historic proportions. “For the first time in American history, expats are leaving,” says Vivek Wadhwa, senior research associate with the Labor and Worklife Program at Harvard Law School. “For the last decade or so, there’s been a massive outflux of talent, particularly to India and China. These are typically skilled professionals in the prime of their careers.”
 
Wadhwa says between 50,000 and 75,000 Indian and Chinese professionals went back home in the last 20 years. Those numbers will soon more than double. “There will be another 100,000 to India and 100,000 to China in the next five years,” he says. “These people are driving innovations in their home countries that will become competitors to America.”

Is that bad news or good news?  Maybe a little of both.

First the bad news.  America never wins when talented people from other countries go home.  Never.  The list of people who have come to America and made bigger contributions to our country than most 4th generation Yankees is long and distinguished.

However, coming off a major period of change that saw millions of Americans lose jobs to outsourcing, maybe there's a silver lining.  Is it possible that those Americans could seek retraining and be prepared to fill the spots when the economy rebounds and new jobs are created?

Wishful thinking?  Probably. In the global world we now live in, it's never that easy.

LinkedIn Profiles - More Accurate Than Resumes (Sad But True...)

JLee and I are going to be at the Social Recruiting Summit in the Twin Cities in May - see more details here.  She'll be leading some 15 minute, mamby-pamby quick hit session on mobile recruiting, while I'll be hanging out on the front row, working all day long and doing what hosts do - alternating between Starbucks and Gatorade while trying to be clever when introducing speakers who shut down the hotel bar the night before.

Five bucks to the first person at the Social Recruiting Summit that goes Tyler Durden on me:

Tyler Durden (You): How’s that working out for you?

Narrator (Me): What?

Tyler Durden (You): Being clever.

Narrator (Me): Great.

Tyler Durden (You): Keep it up then.

As I was looking at the lineup of speakers for the Twin Cities, I thought about this little nugget from the first SRS that was held on the Google campus in 2009.

"LinkedIn profiles maintained by a candidate are more accurate than the Resume maintained by the same candidate...:

Think about that one for a second.  Wait for it - there you go - the clarity and realization that if you're truly looking for "what's up" with a candidate, you need to rely on the LinkedIn profile.  Why is that true?  Because there's a community of co-workers, friends and past colleagues that always have access to the LinkedIn profile, and there's no such community with constant visibility to a random resume the candidate sends in, and you have no means to circulate the resume to that type of community to fact check.

The result?  As Reid Hoffman discussed at the Social Recruiting summit in Spring 2009 - people won't lie in public via LinkedIn.  With that in mind, the core elements at play in most LinkedIn profiles - the titles, the dates, etc. - are always going to be more accurate than the resume.

Here's the tricky part - when you're looking for a candidate to unfold what they did at ACME Inc., the LinkedIn profile doesn't usually include the 5-6 bullet points you're usually used to seeing on the resume, right?  That's a key component to understanding the context of what they did.

With that in mind, is the day coming (from an accuracy and honesty perspective) when we'll ask candidates to update their LinkedIn profiles with more detailed information on what they did at ACME?

If you have over 100 contacts on LinkedIn, I'd doubt you'll lie in a big way.  Too much crowd-sourcing going on...

Long live the LinkedIn Kool-Aid drinkers like me... What'd you expect?  Me to rip them like you ripped The Ladders in the comments of this post? Like Rome, you're the mob.

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...

Be Money Like Mikey From Swingers... Get Commitment on The Salary BEFORE the Offer...

I was reading Tolan's riff last week on the surprise BMW in the offer process, then JLee's piece in draft that ran earlier this week on her style for making an offer to candidates.

I thought for a second about changing the name of the blog to "fistful of offers" or "accept this offer or your cat gets it", but I thought that would be over the top.  So instead, I'm going to use the second post today to throw my two common cents into the discussion on offers and money.

Here's my add - anytime I think I can get away with it, I'm prequalifying the candidate like a cheap mortgage company on whether they would accept my likely offer.  Here's how it works:

-hook candidate through sourcing and email/initial phone contact that it's more money than Mikey from Swingers...

-have a great phone screen, then as a last order of business, give them a range with 5-10K in variability plus the bonus level.

-tell them that's what I can afford to pay, then let them know that if they don't feel it's probable they could accept comp in that range, we owe it to each other to move on.

-when I get to the offer, remind them of that conversation.

Boom.  I just solved your crappy close rate.  OK, I'm joking, I didn't really solve anything.  But it's an idea...

For me, it's worked pretty well.  I usually restrict the range down a little bit so if I decide or need to pop them with another 5-10K, I can do it and look like a charmer.

So, that's my big idea.  Close the money side of the deal before you make the offer. It won't save you from what Tim Tolan went through with a freaking BMW, but if you ask someone for commitment and their word, it's hard for most people to play games once the official offer rolls around.

PS - You are so money, baby... and you don't even know it... 

Talent Getting Old Is Kinda Sad Sometimes...

First up, this is KD writing this and I'm over 40 (I know, I play a lot younger - I get that a lot), so spare me the hate mail.

Talent getting old is tough on a team.  Take the case of Tim Sackett, who turned 40 over the weekend and whose significant other (that's "wife" for those of you with your head in the Tiger Woods gutter) was nice enough to send me the photo appearing to the right to mark the occasion. 

Let's take a look at this photo and examine the downward slide of Tim Sackett since he once was rocking the beer keg in East Lansing with Jud Heathcote:

Hair - Tim's gone to the buzz cut.  He's clearly given up, like my late Grandpa Harry, who used to take a nap on the floor during a lunch break from work due to his bad back.  I used to rub that hair as he tried to sleep on the floor and I would marvel at how bristle-ly it was.  If I ever meet Tim face to face, I'll be reminded of Grandpa Harry.  Cool.

Travel Preference- Let's just say Tim's not cosmo enough to have a Eurorail pass.  He's in Vegas in this picture, like every other 40 year-old you know, so that's not Paris in the background.  If we swung the camera to the right, we'd probably see his Entourage-like posse, except the recruiters who work for him would be standing in for Eric, Johnny Drama and Turtle.  They didn't have a choice, Tim made them come, and he calls the shots at HRU.   That's what you do when you're old, Gex X style.  You find some Gen Y types to boss around; that and wonder when boomers Bill Kutik, John Sumser and John Hollon are going to retire so you can take your rightful place in the talent world's Hall of Superheros. 

Camera-Strap - Seriously, can you get any more white, 40 and midwestern?  Again, he's given up.  Why even bother to hide you're a tourist when you are 40+ and visiting the Strip?  He'll have the strap in the same place when he hits the $5 tables downtown later.  He'll tell you that's the "real" Vegas, to show his Mikey from Swingers sensibility.  He'll soon be playing alone at those tables, since he'll repeat the six Oceans 11 quotes he knows repeatedly, even driving off the grandmas who think he looks like their son.

Buffet-Pass- Look at his left hand.  He's bought a 3-day buffet pass so he doesn't have to deal with the stress of trying to get comped at the $5 tables downtown.  Not before he went to check out the buffet visually, however, just to make sure there was banana pudding on the bar.  He's adamant about that. That's why he's the boss.

We here at FOT are proud to provide a workplace where age doesn't matter, even if you're cranky, cynical and shout out things in your blog post like you're my crazy uncle Steven at the Christmas get together.  Things like this or that.

Happy Birthday, Tim.  God bless the saint known to the world as Kim Sackett.

FOTv 7.0 - Monster Sucks Up Hotjobs... Film at 11....

FOTv is back, and in this episode KD, JLee and Tim Sackett are breaking down the Monster.com acquisition of Yahoo HotJobs, with nuggets related to the following:

• Should HR and Recruiting pros care about the death of HotJobs?
• How to know if you suck... 
• Are big job boards dead?
• Why JLee watches Jersey Shore..
• What's the next acquisition for Monster or CareerBuilder?
• Why Tim Sackett is a proponent of Soccer Moms.

Only at FOT can you weave "The Situation", inappropriate t-shirts and job boards.  Hit us in the comments and tell us what you think...

FOTv 7.0 - Monster Eats HotJobs from fistful of talent on Vimeo.

You Really Made That Much? Bring me Your W-2...

I riffed a lot last year about the unwillingness of some managers to negotiate on what they were willing to pay for a position at both the HR Capitalist and FOT.  I think managers ought to enter into pay conversations with some form of flexibility, but if you're not flexible, at least be inflexible based on some relevant factors - not because you think you've got the power and the individual ought to accept whatever you need to offer. That stinks, and it's going to boomerrang back at you when the economy recovers...

It's the power in the hands of the employer that leads some people to say you should never tell an employer what you make.  Interesting concept, but fundamentally flawed, since employers like me will likely move on if you don't care enough to give me a number. 

Here's a bigger question - how do you validate what the candidate says they're making now or have made in the past?  The first way to get into that is to ask them what they need from a compensation perspective.  That's a softer way to get into the question, and my favorite, low impact way to ask is, "So what's it going to take from a money standpoint to get you to move?". 

Other best practices - use your career site to ask for two data points - 1) what the candidate's current salary is, and 2) what the candidate's expected salary is.

So, let's say you ask one or both of those questions face to face, but you're still unsure if the candidate is being totally honest with you.  What can you do to verify they made what they say they did?

Ask for the W-2 for the year(s) in question.  Welcome to Thunderdome, kids.  It's a hardcore tactic, but in going to lunch last week with a Sales candidate, I was reminded why I love recruiting sales pros.

I didn't have an online application from the candidate in question (sourced directly by me!), so I asked the "what's it going to take' question.  Like a true sales pro, the candidate in question actually tells me, "Well, I W-2'd $xxx,000 last year.

I laughed - after playing so many games through the years on the compensation front, I forgot for a brief time period how transparent Sales Pro candidates can be.  Why the transparency?  I think it's because a lot of sales pros, if they have any experience at all, actually expect that the sales manager in question is going to ask them for their W-2. The phrase "transparent results" also comes to mind.

Welcome to the hardcore recruiting world of recruiting sales pros.. The rest of the candidate pool could probably learn something from that. Mix it up next week and ask a non-sales candidate to bring their W-2 to their first interview.  Just to mix it up and get the blood circulating...

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...

Referrals: Better from Employees or LinkedIn Contacts?

Employee referrals: You love them, can't live without them.  I know, me too.  I love it when a team member serves up a candidate who turns out to be a great fit for an open spot.  Everybody wins - the company with a great addition, the employee with a fat referral bonus check and the new team member who found a good gig with someone they know.

Of course, here's the dirty little secret.  Lots of employee referrals are bad. 

You know the referral source I'm talking about.  The employee who refers everyone they know because they're trying to be nice to their friends, or maybe they're just trying to get paid.  Like the employee who is on such a bad referral streak that you call him "Mr. 0 for 20" because he's referred 20 candidates, and not one of them sniffed a job.  If you see a lead in again like "I met Janet at quarter draft night, and I think she'd be a great fit for us..," you're going postal.

That's why when it comes to referrals, LinkedIn referrals are better overall than employee referrals.

The math and science of this comparison is pretty simple.  Employees refer friends.  LinkedIn contacts tend to refer people who do what they do for a living, because that's the type of network they build out on LinkedIn.  As a result, on average, LinkedIn referrals are much higher quality that employee referrals.

Of course, the work required to get to a hire in LinkedIn is a barrier to most HR people I know.  It takes hard work - you've got to message a lot of people, because the response rate to your call for help won't be sky high on LinkedIn.  As a result, most HR pros with recruiting responsibilities never fully adopt to living the LinkedIn referral lifestyle.

So, you'd rather take what comes in the employee referral bucket and not grind away to market your openings to people you find in LinkedIn?  That's OK.

Lazy, but OK.  Have fun sorting through the people Johnny met at the bar.  Good luck with your hiring.  I hope your post and pray, farmer-like recruiting goes really well.

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...

How You Quit Your Job - Things That Make Me Go Hmmm...

I love the dance that begins once someone has accepted your offer and you're now talking about a start date in the new role.  Especially if they're employed.  Here's the usual intervals and what they mean to me.  I'm sure you've got some adjustments to these definitions:

For Those Currently Working:

-No Notice Needed, I can start in under a week - Your employer's either walking you out because that's their policy for a position like yours, or your position in the company is so damaged that walking out without notice won't harm your reputation further. (old school note - back in the dot.com days, it could have meant an option grant at your new company was being issued that week....) 

-One Week - Your employer doesn't have a "walk them out" policy, but everyone thinks it better if you wrap things up and get out at the end of the week.  No reason for you to hang around and tell everyone about your new gig.

-Two Weeks - Because that's what everyone has been told by Ms. Manners that it needs to be.  Both your candidate and the current employer.  Usually a good thing from your perspective for the candidate, because they are picking honor over expediency.

-Three Weeks - For a professional involved in a lot of stuff, it's almost impossible to wrap in two weeks.  That's why three weeks is the new two weeks for professional positions with a lot of responsibility.  This means your candidate is doing the right thing by their current employer.  Your hiring managers won't like it (ASAP please), but they'll respect it.

-Four Weeks - This means your candidate is pretty attached to their employer, and it's 50/50 whether they'll show up on the report date.  Touch base early and often, because the probability is abnormally high they're not coming.

For Those Currently Not Working:

-Report Immediately - They're ready to work.  The expected response.

-One Week - They're catching up on past seasons of "Lost" via DVD sets.

-Two Weeks - They really aren't ready to go back to work, but know they need to.  To delay it as much as possible, they ask for the norm...

-Three Weeks - They're going to cram in a trip before they change their lifestyle of sleeping until 10am.

-Four Weeks - Hey Nostradamus, they're still actively interviewing, hoping they can land a better gig before they have to report... Nice...

3 weeks is the new 2 weeks for those currently employed.  Like C&C Music Factory, anything else makes me go hmmmmmm.

HP and Mark Hurd - Why You Look at the Myers-Briggs and DISC Profiles of Your Team...

You know why people spend so much time and money on tests like the Myers-Briggs and the DISC profile?  Because what makes you successful today won't necessarily make you successful tomorrow, and one way to hedge against that risk is to have a balanced team that complements each other..

Case in point - the freakish execution skills of Carli's successor at HP, Mark Hurrd.  In a crazy case of what have you done for me lately "what will you do for me once you're done executing this plan like a freaking master", people are already starting to wonder aloud if Hurd's got the right innovation DNA to drive HP into new products and services once he's done ringing the cash register across the current slate of printers and services.

More on the brass knuckles of Mark Hurd from earlier this year at the New York Times:

"So it took a true outsider, in Mark V. Hurd, to engineer H.P.’s resurrection and to create the world’s largest technology company. Mr. Hurd, hired four years ago in the wake of Carleton S. Fiorina’s tumultuous departure as chief executive, forced a steady, boring diet of performance benchmarks, heavy-handed cost-cutting and data-mining down H.P.’s corporate throat.

“Silicon Valley is not known for creating lean organizations, and he’s as good as we have ever seen,” said Michael S. Malone, a historian who wrote “Bill and Dave,” a book about the company’s renowned co-founders, William Hewlett and David Packard. “He’s taught a lesson in what big-time corporate management looks like.”

But with the most brutal cuts behind it, H.P. faces a fresh set of challenges as the second stage of Mr. Hurd’s tenure begins. Most pressing is widespread concern that Mr. Hurd has built an inflexible, solipsistic giant so obsessed with schematics and data-driven fiscal machinations that it has lost the ability to deliver that prized and perennial Silicon Valley trick: to surprise and astound.

Although H.P. is trying to expand its presence in businesses like personal computers and printers, some critics argue that those markets have little left to give. The company could also use more imaginative thinking to bolster its developing line of software products and services.

In short, what may be missing in the formidable intellectual and strategic artillery that Mr. Hurd brings to bear at H.P. is creative inspiration. Or, as Mr. Malone puts it, “I am not sure Mark has built an H.P. that can go through the natural changes that accompany the technology industry as the company has in the past.”

Only in the crazy culture that is the American Publicly Traded Company would such execution be seen as a potential weakness.  So, let's say Hurd's DISC/Myers Briggs shows he's a ruthless executor and nothing more.  At some point, the board's got to evaluate his direct reports and see if a #2 can emerge to complement the DNA that's missing in Hurd.

Interesting is the fact that Hurd's penchant for execution is usually the DNA that is seen in COO's of publicly traded companies, leaving the vision thing for the CEO.  Assuming HP's COO isn't the visionary type, you have to wonder aloud what type of organizational structure could emerge at HP that would allow Hurd to be himself and address the supposed innovation gap. 

A Chief Innovation Officer, perhaps?  Maybe Hurd could just change his image and start wearing a black mock turtleneck to change the perception.

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...

Listen Homeboy, Don't Mean to Bust Your Bubble...

But treating relatives of employees like normal candidates ain't nothing but trouble!

Apologies to the Fresh Prince, Will Smith.  I watched Hancock last night, so you get what you get...

Employees have relatives.  They love their relatives.  We love them for that - after all, they're good people.  There's just this one little problem - feedback's impossible when it comes to taking a relative out of your hiring process.  First up, most organizations struggle with frank, honest feedback to candidates about why they were not selected.  Add to the mix a high-performing employee who would love to see the person they love experience the same career Nirvana as them, and.... let's just say you generally end up with a failure to communicate that makes Bill and Hillary Clinton in the months following Lewinsky-gate seem downright chatty.

As for the referring party, it's hard to be objective.  No one knows that better than me.  Consider the following story from KD's career:

The year is 2002.  I'm a VP of HR over about 3,000 employees in my unit of a Fortune 500 company.  As a part of this unit, I have big staffing needs for big call centers with lots of entry-level jobs that pay $10-12 an hour.  You know the type of environments - the one where you have to roll a new hire class of 20 people through every two weeks..

At the same time, I had a great friend that I'll call Chuck.  Chuck was a good friend who I consider to be family, so he fits my definition of a relative.  Chuck had the skills - communication and smarts - to be president if he wanted.  Unfortunately, his wealthy family (we came from different sides of the tracks, yo) had failed to play hardball with him in his 20's when he floated between jobs - they kept providing income for large intervals where he was unemployed.  As a result, Chuck would start a new career, be excited about it, but when the invariable grind of getting it done came, he would quit.  Since his family never turned off the money faucet, there were no ramifications to his habit and he floated between jobs.

Enter KD.  During one of the periods between jobs, Chuck approached me about working at my company.  I thought the job was low risk enough in the call center that I put him in the 4 week training class and made him an employee - the recruiter who worked for me was thrilled with him as a candidate and he blew everyone away in the training class.  So far, so good.

Then they got out of training.  On the first incoming call on the floor of the call center, Chuck took off his head set, set it down and walked out of the building.  The manager called me and said, "KD, Chuck just freaking walked out.  It was like the trailer to a movie or something".

Damn.  That left a mark.  And I wasn't surprised.  Double damn.

My point is that the road to allowing relatives (which Chuck was to me for all practical purposes) to be entered into to your hiring process is paved with potholes.  I knew Chuck's limitations but still wanted to help.  I put him in, just like our employees put their relatives in.

Feedback to KD about Chuck after the walkout?  Minimal.  That would have been like telling Vader you didn't like the color of the Death Star, right?

Just like feedback to your employees on relatives who aren't selected as part of your process.  It's tough.  That's OK, the public humiliation for me was enough, thank you very much...

Words from the master:

"but it just goes to show, not trying to bust your bubble,
but relatives as candidates ain't nothing but trouble.
so the next time an employee tries to give you the play,
just remember my rhymes and get the **** away.

**Disclaimer: If you're in as a relative and performing at a high level, good for you.  I like that.  I'm just sayin' you're the exception...