My own interpretation of the world of HR chock full of charm and snark for your reading enjoyment!
Do what I do. Find out what your employees problem is and solve it.
As a recruiter I spend a lot of time getting to know what your employees enjoy about their job, but the closer is always fixing what they don’t like about their job.
Do you know what your employees don’t like about their current job?
It really is that simple.
I had a really crappy day. A real bummer of a day. A terrible, no-good day. Someone said some really mean things to me and had me second guessing what kind of employee/recruiter/hr professional/person I am. Lucky me I have some wonderful co-workers and friends who had encouraging words for me. A few friends reminded me that those words were just one persons opinion and they don’t define me. I appreciate the support, but I still let this person get in my head and as I was responding to emails later in the evening one came across that deserved to be moved into the “smile file.” As I moved this email into the smile file I decided to read through all of my other smile file emails and by the time I was done I was laughing so hard I was crying, I had the biggest smile on my face, and I was reminded that many people have taken the time to let me know they appreciate my work.
I actually have two smile files: one in my email and a folder in my desk. The one in my email is obviously for emails I receive and the one in my desk is for thank you notes or other random things that make it my way. There’s a fun paper airplane in there, a button that made someone think of me, and of course handwritten thank you notes from candidates, employees, other NASHRM volunteers, as well as current and former co-workers. I needed these today. I needed to be reminded that I’m loved and appreciated and that I’m a hard worker and an excellent recruiter. I’m a tough girl, but today was rough and I needed these.
You need a smile file for days like these. Days where someone says something that you let crawl into your head and dwell. Days where you forget why you do what you love. You need a smile file for days where someone thinks its okay to make you feel like less than them.
Everyone should have a smile file! If you don’t have one I’m challenging you to make one today! Send me your email and I’ll send you something for your smile file!!
If it’s only an HR initiative, it will die.
If it’s only an HR initiative, it will die.
it. will. die.
I was taken aback when a very seasoned HR professional shared this phrase with me recently. Not so much because its a true or false statement, but because SHE works in HR and she said it… out loud. She 100% meant that statement too. I’ve been pretty busy so I pushed that statement to the side of my brain and I’ve carried on through a lot of work and a whole SHRM conference since, but it came back up this week during a couple of conversations.
I had a C-suite level person explaining to me an issue that they’ve seen time and time again. He summed it up like this “managers have work to do-maybe a product to deliver or a service to provide & they don’t care about HR. HR doesn’t care about the work managers have to get done, they just care about the HR side of things.” Yep. That’s how some people are viewing the HR function, which explains why if it’s only an HR initiative, it will die.
Another C-suite level executive told me (while discussing recruiting goals) that it had to be a collaborative effort. There’s no way HR could do it alone and no way the departments can do it without HR. Reinforcing yet again that if it’s only an HR initiative, it will die.
What do you think? Can an initiative be successful if it’s only an HR initiative?
In networking marketing we have a phrase that fuels everything we do: “The fortune is in the follow-up.” Basically when we say this we are encouraging our teammates or down-line to follow-up with prospects, don’t let the conversation or the interest die. People need more than one exposure to something before they are comfortable buying whatever it is or acting on whatever it is. It is the way my fellow network marketers drive their business and support their families and let me tell you, it works.
When I first joined a network marketing team other teammates were saying it so much that I became absolutely tired of it, but thinking about #SHRM16 coming to an end has me looking at that phrase in a new light. Because the fortune really is in the follow-up in everything we do. In this specific instance how are you going to use what you’ve learned here at the conference? You won’t if you treat it like “out of sight, out of mind” but if you put some follow-up to it you are way more likely to have some fortune from your experience here. Before you roll your eyes, let me just throw a couple of things out there for you. First, I’m on your side-I want you to be the best HR/business professional you can be. Second, before you do any of this please take time to recharge, unwind, and recover from the conference. You need to take care of you before you start executing some of these ideas! Personally I’m looking forward to spending a whole day by myself soon after being surrounded by 15,000 of my colleagues for 3 days. Back to the follow-up, let’s start with some easy ideas:
So that’s my simple list of follow up actions for you to use to get the most from your experience here in DC this week. I hope to hear from you throughout the year and can’t wait to hear about what you’re doing with the things you’ve learned at #SHRM16!!!
See y’all in New Orleans!
Conference wraps up tomorrow afternoon, but there’s still plenty to see and do! So what can you look forward to today? Here’s a quick list!
Don’t forget to sync those fitbit’s and check the #SHRM16 app for more great sessions and activities! I hope to see you around the conference today!
Day 2 of #SHRM16 is underway and I’m hearing a lot of good things and seeing some fun takeaways via social media for all levels of HR professionals.
Mike Rowe and Alan Mulally killed it yesterday at the opening session-I never thought a story about poo could be so entertaining and educational (in more than one way). I love Mike Rowe’s work to close the skills gap, it is absolutely intriguing to me as a recruiter. I’m never surprised at how often companies use the “skills gap” as a problem to blame the results of their subpar recruiting functions on. We throw around this term to protect our team and pretend like someone else created this problem for us, but guess who contributed to the skills gap? US! As recruiters and hr professionals we should be helping high schools and colleges understand what our employers need, before our employers need it!
Here’s the deal, its 2016. We have access to people like never before and it’s time to use it. If we can’t find the talent we need, its our own fault. We must take an active role in preparing the next generation of our employers workforce. How do we do that? We get to know what our future needs are and we get in the schools and start talking about it. Its not always glamorous, but someone has to do the job. If you think people view skills relevant and required for your industry as something they don’t want to do then fix it.Don’t just complain about it being a challenge! Revive it. Don’t misrepresent it, share the good, bad, and the ugly and let students know what all of their options are. If high school students are only hearing from engineering companies while they are deciding on what to do after high school, then you’re going to have a lot of students go off to get an engineering degree and then we will eventually have way more engineers than we can hire and not enough candidates for a variety of other positions.
So where I hail from a lot of people become teachers, nurses, or take up a career at the steel mill in town. I wondered why a majority of people chose 1 of those 3 options more than anything else, but looking back those are the professions we were exposed to the most through career days and that’s what the majority of our parents did. The exposure to the professions had a direct impact on the path we chose. It wasn’t necessarily the glamorous exposure of the professions that intrigued us either, it was the correlation to impacting something bigger that drew us in. No one wakes up and says I want to teach teenagers today, they usually have a revelation that they want to impact the lives of teenagers or instill an excitement about a particular subject in them. Without identifying the motivation behind the work, they are just teaching teenagers.
As Mike shared his story of his experience in the sewer with a full time sewer professional I kept thinking “how would I sell this job to a candidate?” Boy, have I got a job for you? You work underground and get a close up view of the inner workings of our wonderful city. You’ll have companions that won’t talk your ear off to keep you company through your shift and probably focused through your tasks.As most jobs do, this one comes with its own set of hazards, but nothing a rubber suit can’t protect you from. The residents of our city will undoubtedly appreciate your work and even view you as a hero because they understand the necessity of your work to keep s*#! flowing.
No. That’s not what I would do at all, but that’s what some of us are doing, which is causing us more problems beyond the skills gap. We are trying to sell made up glamour instead of acknowledging the realities of the positions we are trying to fill and hoping the right candidate will pick us. This approach is contributing to the skills gap and we aren’t even acknowledging it because we are just trying to make our field/company sound like a fun place to work that will pamper you so we are pretending like we are doing the right thing. Now we have people who have chosen a field based on the half truth we sold them in a specific field and now they are in a career they are unhappy with because another field they weren’t exposed to was probably a better fit for them. Instead, we should uncover the skills gap, shine a light on the cause of it, and get out there and educate people before they choose their professions.
Are you?
I am ready to get to DC and see some of my friends and get some running done in my favorite place in just a couple of days! So here’s all the things I’m doing in the 11th hour to get ready:
What did I forget? I’m sure I forgot something…
