Dear Craigslist - Keep the Freaks Out by Charging Me For Job Postings...

Every tried to recruit on Craigslist?   It's like picking up the Saturday paper and hitting garage sales all morning long.  Results may vary by neighborhood, and it's less than predictable.   At one house, you pick up some new golf shirts still in the package, next stop - used socks in a garbage bag... for free...

Craigslist is the same dynamic in the employment space.  It's hit and miss, city by city, and also job by job.   I've had great success with posting certain positions in specific metro areas, then I run the same pitch in a different metro area - and nothing happens.  And I mean NOTHING...

If you've taken a spin around the job boards on Craigslist, you know one reason for this trend is there's a lot of junk posted there.  After all, the price is right in most metro areas - it's FREE.  The only barrier to posting is the effort - to take the time to list a position on the board.  That leads to a lot of multi-level marketing and work from home opportunities, most with a random-sounding hotmail address to reply to.    That drives a lot of professionals away.

Craigslist's response to the junk level?  Weed out the freaks by charging for employment ads.  From a recent Sacramento Bee article:

"The free ride on Craigslist is coming to an end.

The popular classified-advertising Web site -- and scourge of newspaper publishers everywhere -- said Thursday it will charge $25 for help-wanted ads in the Sacramento market starting Nov. 1.

Craigslist said it won't charge for odd jobs or "gigs." Nor will the fees apply to real estate, merchandise and other advertising categories.  A $25 fee for help-wanted ads is also coming to Orange County, Chicago and Portland, Ore. This will bring to 11 the number of markets where Craigslist charges for employment ads. In addition, Craigslist charges $10 for certain real estate ads in New York.

The fees don't represent a change in philosophy for Craigslist, which is a for-profit corporation but styles itself as a quirky nonprofit "community." Rather, the San Francisco-based site said the fees will weed out the "duplicate and illegitimate ads" and make the remaining listings more effective."

$25 is a bargain to remove the clutter.  I just wish Craigslist was more of a capitalist organization and charged for employment ads everywhere.  The result would be a more viable product and ultimately, a nice option in addition to the big boards like Monster.

A couple of weeks ago I was leaving the office and saw one of our managers sitting on the curb, waiting to make a transaction from Craigslist.  He was selling a leafblower, and had set up a time to meet a woman to trade cash for the aforementioned yard equipment.  I saw him the next morning and guess what?  Turns out the woman didn't show..  That's a shocker - a female leery of coming to a parking lot to pick up a leafblower from a free posting...  He's a good guy, but the lady probably thought about the child abuser stings on NBC and opted to pay full price at Lowe's.

Same deal with candidates.  Craigslist - charge me for postings, please!!!

 

Workplace Request - Don't Tase Me, Bro....

It had been over a month.  I kept waiting.  No one brought it up.

The phrase was destined to become a workplace classic.  Right up there with "Dude", "Where's the Beef?" and the best of the old school classics, "Word".

Finally, it happened today.  Someone uttered the words I expected a month ago.  What phrase am I speaking of?  You probably know, but if you don't, "Don't Tase Me, Bro!" is the phrase, spawned from the following circumstance:

"Here are the basics for the select few who haven't seen it on YouTube or aren't sporting a "Don't  Tase Me, Bro!" T-shirt. On Monday, Sept. 17, 21-year-old University of Florida telecommunications major, Meyer, attended a Kerry rally on campus in Gainesville, Fla. Meyer approached the microphone after Kerry stated he wouldn't accept any more questions but then agreed to listen to Meyer.

Meyer animatedly began asking about the 2004 election and why Kerry wasn't trying to impeach Bush. At that moment, the microphone was cut off and police began to escort Meyer out of the room. Meyer resisted the officers and ran back to the microphone, only to be thrown to the floor by six officers shortly thereafter.

Meyer continued to resist and the officers informed Meyer that if he refused to stop screaming for help, he would be Tasered. Meyer shouted, "Don't Tase me, bro!" in vain, and was Tasered. Meyers is being charged with resisting arrest with violence and disturbing the peace. He will receive a trial date in the near future."

I don't really care about the politics of the situation.  I just thought the phrase was cash money, and expected to hear it the next day.  Over a month later, I finally heard it in the office for the first time today, a throwaway comment as two conference call participants talked about fantasy football.

It had so much more potential.  T-Shirts, YouTube and mashups integrating MC Hammer all say so.  Why couldn't it have infected my workplace? 

Why Your Employees Don't Care About Company Results...

Of course, they should...

But do they?  If they don't think it impacts them?

As often is the case, sports provides a rare, unfiltered "window to the soul" when it comes to what is going through the minds of employees.  This week, Manny Ramirez, star outfielder for the Boston Red Sox, held court with the press and offered up the following calming words related to the "Sox" being on the verge of elimination, down 3-1 in the American League Championship Series (ALCS):

"Why panic?" Ramirez said. "If we don't do it, we'll come back next year and try again . . . If it doesn't happen, who cares? There's always next year. It's not the end of the world."

Nice... You can almost hear the Red Sox fan who drives a tow truck for 30K a year imploding...  First, the obvious observation - it's one thing to think it, another thing to say it.  But... a closer peek at Manny's situation indicates that apart from being covered 24/7 by the national media, he's similar in many ways to the ordinary employee:

1.  If the employee is getting paid and paid well, all must be OK in the world, right? -  Manny brings home about $20M a year, a reflection of his market value, and a solid indication when he goes to sleep at night that he can find employment elsewhere if this gig doesn't work out... If your employee is doing OK, there's no reason to think the world is ending...

2.  Employees focus on how they are doing first, without much thought to overall results - Ramirez is doing his part. He's batting .429 (9-for-21) with four home runs and 11 RBI in Boston's seven playoff games. He hit the third of the Red Sox's three consecutive homers in the sixth inning of Tuesday's 7-3 loss to the Indians.  If employees consider themselves the best at what they do, most of them sleep fine.

3.  Work/Life Balance means you can't be all hari-cari if you are doing your best - Like your most balanced employees, Manny has perspective on the results.  I'm not saying you should live like Manny - far from it.  But if you have a good family life, good health, etc., can you really be "do or die" every day?

Of course, there are a couple of key ways that Manny's situation is different from what we ordinarily talk about regarding employee engagement on company results:

1.  The series Manny is referring to isn't "do or die" - the Red Sox have great overall results - The ALCS that Manny is being flippant about is more like a RFP your company has out - it's an event in time that will help overall results, but won't likely be "make or break".   When you talk about your employees caring about overall results, you aren't talking about one RFP or project.  You're talking about the overall success of the company, profit/loss etc.

2.  Manny knows he's firmly tied to the bottom line with the Red Sox; your employees don't - All Manny has to do to know he is part of the financial success of the Red Sox is look in the stands and see the "24" jerseys (his number).   How does Fred in Finance know that his work on the 2008 forecast impacts the bottom line? 

Fred in Finance (and all like him) is the key for those of us wishing to make employees care about company results.  How can you link what he does to the overall results of the company and make him care, beyond the normal "will I have a job" and "is there room to be promoted" considerations?

For my money, we can publish financials, talk about trends, etc. in the hopes of engaging employees, but at the end of the day, only one thing matters - the ability of our managers and supervisors to identify and communicate the linkage between individual efforts and results.  Most managers can't do it.  Give it a try and role play the situation - it's ugly...

And that's why it's so hard to do.  And maybe why the Manny's of the world drive us crazy...

Can You Boost Team Spirit by Dropping the F-Bomb?...

I don't think I am the sensitive type.  If people are comfortable enough with me to get into their personal skin and start cussing like a sailor, I generally let it go.  Thanks for trusting me with that profanity-laced monologue about traffic or your ex-spouse.  We're good, as long as the profanity isn't directed at me...

But can I project my tolerance for the conversational F-bomb across the rest of the workforce I support? H#@* No!!  Away from work, I'd love to throw up weekly clips of Ari Gold from Entourage on this blog, but I'm not HBO.  I'm a HR blogger trying to build an online community, and there's no reason to lose 50% of my potential audience because they block my site at the first sign of a profane YouTube clip.

Some academics at the University of East Anglia (UK) think that makes me less than progressive.  The group recently published a study entitled "Swearing at work and permissive leadership culture: when anti-social becomes social and incivility is acceptable".  The study focused on the use of profanity in the workplace and assessed its implications for managers.  From Yahoo's coverage:

"They assessed that swearing would become more common as traditional taboos are broken down, but the key appeared to be knowing when such language was appropriate and when to turn to blind eye. [sic]

The pair said swearing in front of senior staff or customers should be seriously discouraged or banned, but in other circumstances it helped foster solidarity among employees and express frustration, stress or other feelings.

"Employees use swearing on a continuous basis, but not necessarily in a negative, abusive manner," said Baruch, who works in the university's business school in Norwich.

Banning swear words and reprimanding staff might represent strong leadership, but could remove key links between staff and impact on morale and motivation, he said.

"We hope that this study will serve not only to acknowledge the part that swearing plays in our work and our lives, but also to indicate that leaders sometimes need to 'think differently' and be open to intriguing ideas.

If lawsuits (see words used by Isiah Thomas) have taught us anything, it's that people have dramatically different thresholds regarding what they think is appropriate in the workplace and what they believe constitutes unprofessional behavior.   It's OK to feel comfortable with a co-worker(s) and drop some profane science on them, but do it at your own peril.  If the person hearing it thinks you are a caveman/cavewoman for using that language, you're much more likely to have issues with that person as a result, including an increased probability of taking a lawsuit naming you as a harasser.

Now get your <insert profane reference or clean alternative> back to work. 

HR Blog Power Rankings - Moving to Monthly Frequency...

Thanks to all readers and bloggers for your support of the HR Blog Power Rankings!  It has been a blast to do, and I'm happy to do it.  There's just this one thing though - every two weeks is too aggressive on the frequency front.   Now that we've done a solid launch, time to make the feedback just a little more scarce...

To make sure you don't get tired of it (and to make sure I don't get tired of doing it), we're moving the frequency to monthly.  With that in mind, see you the in the first half of November with the next round.  Keep writing and remember - Google Reader is watching, like the neighbor you wish would just look the other way once in a while when you come out for the morning paper (in your flip flops and Bon Jovi t-shirt)....

Early Christmas Ideas - For the blogger in your life....

Available at www.despair.com

   

The Carnival of HR - Coming to a MLB Front Office Near You....

..."I walk into the clubhouse and it's like walking into the Mayo Clinic.  We have four doctors, three therapists and five trainers.  Back when I broke in, we had one trainer who carried a bottle of rubbing alcohol and by the seventh inning he had drunk it all"...

--Tommy Lasorda, former manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers (quote from 1989)

It's October, and that can mean only one thing - the World Series is right around the corner.  Most of the  high payroll teams are gone (bye Yankees, Angels, Phillies and Cubs!), and the last big dollar franchise is on the ropes (Red Sox).   The probable teams for the series at this point?  The Rockies and the Indians, with total payrolls of $54M and $61M respectively.  That's 1/3 of the money clip required to field the Yankees and Red Sox...

So I'll start this edition of The Carnival of HR by observing that money doesn't buy you championship rings.  Having a strategy to build teams and develop talent does.  But you still have to have smart people to help you figure out how to build that team.    What Lasorda observed in 1989 pales in comparison to the size of a Major League Baseball front office of 2007.  Specialists abound, hatching plots and strategies in every niche, from how to determine the overall value of individual players to how to minimize the likelihood of players saying something stupid in front of the media.

How's the Carnival of HR fit in?   The participants in the carnival have transferable skills.  They could easily plug into the front office of a Major League Baseball franchise.  Here's how:

The Lawyers - When you're dealing with issues like steroids, a strong union, and the liability presented by a wild card like Big Poppi blogging, you need some legal muscle: 

-The Connecticut Employee Law Blog reminds us that there is risk in allowing players/employees to blog.  Always good to have a strategy before it gets out of hand...

-The Ohio Employer's Law Blog encourages all organizations to document all performance issues.  After the Michael Vick voided contract, the sports world could learn something from his counsel...

-Michael Moore at The PA Employment Law Blog explores the prospect of boomers retiring and the cost burden for their healthcare being shifted back to employers.  Yuck!  Have to ensure Medicare picks up the tab for retired players, lest their medical bills eat into the profits of the franchise...

The Capologists - Capologists figure out the best way to structure the payroll of the franchise.  How much money do we have?  What's the best way to spend it?  Who's worth a new contract and who's not?  Here's the team:

-Ann Bares at Compensation Force riffs on the need to be flexible with your salary ranges based on your talent strategy.  Whether you are building through the minor leagues or acquiring free agents, Ann has a range strategy...

-Evil HR Lady acknowledges that all talent is not equal.  Sometimes turnover is good, sometimes it's bad.  Sometimes you have to let that average performer walk out the door rather than spending the money to retain.  Free agent nation, baby!!!

The Trainer - Need an ultrasound or an ankle taped?  We've got the team.  See the following staff member for assistance:

-Michael Wolfe at The Career Revolution runs a tight ship with one exception.  He can't guarantee all the folks hanging around the training room at the stadium won't know the details of your condition.  After all, it's hard to protect PHI when you can see a member of his team taping somebody's wrist.  Next thing you know, it's in the papers via some beat reporter on a deadline.

The Therapist - How are you doing?  Lisa at HR Thoughts has the right perspective, meaning she could easily make the transition to figuring out why Rick Ankiel can't pitch anymore.

The Minor League Director - Somebody's got to be the advocate for the new employees in the minors, and in this franchise that person is Ask A Manager.  Her secret to making sure the newbies are comfortable?  She conducts entry interviews to make sure the new recruits aren't shell shocked and subsequent retention risks.

Promotions - We like the stadium to be a happy place, and on this team the person who handles that is Stephanie West Allen of Idealawg.  Keeping the stadium "light" through promotions is a good idea, especially when the team stinks.  Just avoid "free-bat" night during a losing streak...

Media Relations - Nobody wants to see a messy locker (jock strap hanging behind a player being interviewed, anyone?) or a monotone interview, so our franchise has the following team:

-Jayna Wiesemann helps players balance the need for personal expression versus neatness in a clip on organization skills...

-The Career Encouragement Blog helps those being interviewed to develop better relationships with the media through a novel concept - actually being FUN to interview.   

General Manager - I'd love to put myself in the front office, but there are better candidates.  Among those more qualified:

-Wally Bock at 3-Star Leadership waxes on the need to hire the best managers and coaches for your organization.  After all, you can have ping-pong tables, flat screens and free beer, but your players are out of there if the manager is a #$#@.

-Michael Wade of ExecuPundit - To lead effectively and encourage others to lead, you first have to know the reasons why people don't practice good leadership.  Once you know these, you at least have a shot to effectively coach others...

And that, my friends, is a front office team even the Devil Rays could love and afford....

The October 31st Carnival will be hosted by HRO Manager at HRO Manager

When Does HR Owe Contingency Search Firms a Fee?

If you are like me as a HR person, you're always concerned about recruiting fees.  The organization that pays no attention to the level of contingency search fees being paid is destined to look up and find their cost of hires to be 2X, 5X, even 10X what it should be.   That's a call to fully outsource your HR team.

The solution?  Step one - everyone on your HR team is a recruiter, so have them working openings.  Step two - get a formal referral program in place and put a meaningful bounty on talent coming in.  Step three - centralize or have some form of coordination regarding when search firms get involved with searches.  If you don't have centralized coordination, you'll look up and have three hiring managers telling you they are ready to hire a candidate referred from a search firm.  That's not bad if the talent is rare and you needed the help, but it's bad business to pay 30-40K in fees if you could have sourced the talent on your own.

With that being said, there's a lot of good recruiters out there, especially the ones that can help you fill specific niches you have no shot at filling on your own.   Still, you have many recruiters that will flood you with resumes, hoping one sticks and you'll be on the hook for a fee.  Not exactly value-added. 

How about this scenario?  A recruiter sends paper on a candidate to a company, the company doesn’t consider candidate; but eight months later the candidate is hired through the efforts of the internal recruiting team.  Do you owe the recruiter a fee?

Karen Mattonen recently broke this down from the recruiter's perspective at Jim Stroud 2.0:

"Most importantly the courts have also decided that there are four criteria to determine if a recruiter is going to get a fee…

The Recruiter must have a discussion regarding the applicant with the employer (written, or verbal, and based upon the written terms of the contract)

The Employer and Recruiter agrees to interviewing the candidate

The Candidate agrees to the interview

The Recruiter must help facilitate the interview process with the candidate and company"

That seems reasonable, but there are plenty of volume-oriented recruiters out there that will still demand a fee if they emailed a resume to you and the candidate ends up being hired.  With this in mind, I'm a big fan of having your own agreement ready for contingency search firms to sign and then have the following components included:

--Candidates Referred From Multiple Sources – Search Firm agrees no recruitment fee is due regarding referred candidates, who have applied or were sourced, via other sources by company (examples include but are not limited to:  Careers website, Internet recruiting websites, employee referrals, professional networking, professional associations, etc.).   Company agrees to evaluate circumstances and timing regarding candidate submittal from multiple sources and make equitable determinations on a case-by-case basis.

--Lifespan of Referrals - All referrals are valid for a period of six months from the date of the referral.   All referrals are subject to the multiple sources provision outlined above for subsequent openings within company during this time frame.

Most of the search firms that approach your department won't have an agreement ready for you to sign - they don't want to spend the time haggling.  While they may be taken aback that you have one ready for them to sign, add these bullets to your agreement and you'll eliminate much of the fuzzy areas, and still give your team the ability to fully source the position in question.

HR Victim Making 101 - Do People With Kids Get Special Treatment?

You know it's a slow news month around SHRM when the best they can do for the cover of HR Magazine is the following headline "Are You Too Family Friendly?"  Seriously - that's the cover/lead story?  Deb over at 8 Hours and a Lunch riffed on this article last week.  For a deeper analysis on related issues, see the following employee relations breakdown provided by Evil HR Lady.

If there's one thing HR people (not Deb and Evil, they're cool) can do, it's pick a new victim.  This month's winner via SHRM?  Those with all the spare energy in the world, maximum disposable income and the time to outwork you if they put their minds to it.  They're called childless employees.  Apparently, Mike Brady (Brady Bunch reference for you youngsters - look it up) is workplace enemy #1 to this group.  Even with Alice helping out around the house and Ms. Brady at home, Mike was always cutting out for Peter's science project and Jan's therapy sessions revolving around her issues with Marsha.   What about the team at work, Mike?

The New York Times picked up on the topic this weekend, but couldn't really muster any real analysis:

"If the boss allows an employee to leave early to take his children trick-or-treating (or to the doctor, or so the employee can watch a school play, etc.) is the boss being fair to everyone else who still has to work a full day?

Is it fair to offer a working mother a flexible schedule but not provide the same option to a woman without children?

A growing number of childless workers are answering “no” to questions like these, prompting HR magazine to ask employers in a cover story “Are You Too Family Friendly?”

It’s an issue because of the changing nature of the population in the United States.

Slightly more than one in four households, 26 percent, consisted of a person living alone in 2006, up from 17 percent in 1970,” Susan J. Wells writes. “Unmarried and single U.S. residents numbered 92 million in 2006, making up 42 percent of all people 18 and older.” That’s up from 89 million in 2005.

As a result, “family friendly” benefits are starting to generate a backlash among those people who do not have children."

(Yawn)...  We can't possible be wasting our time on this analysis, can we?  Even the childless who see people playing the child card to the hilt recognize they are witnessing individual behavior, not macro trends.  Take Deb's own analysis: 

"i'm single. i'm single and i have no children. and i work in HR. and let me tell you, sometimes it just burns me up how many people get away with using the kids as an easy excuse to get out of work. and it happens. believe me, it happens. how do i know it happens? because not all the parents require all that much time off. it's strange how some parents seem to be able to make arrangements when their child is sick, or schedule parent/teacher conferences for before or after work. but some parents? they've got to be out every other week. but again, i digress...."

Solid observations.  Individual behavior, not macro trends.  Sounds similar to the childless employee out for their own repeated illness week after week, after week.  Here's a thought - offer flexibility to all, then manage performance.  Rinse and repeat.  Take action in those situations where results aren't happening.  While you're building an environment that actually offers flexibility for results, you might stumble on a cultural model that Mike Brady, childless employees and even Generation Y desires.

As for me, while the childless are using the flexibility to mountain bike and hit the Xbox, I'll be in cross-town traffic to get to a doctor's appointment or to coach one of two baseball teams I'm responsible for.  Remind me who's disenfranchised again?

In our next installment of HR Victim Maker - Are candidates with average attractiveness and low communication skills being passed over for the best Sales roles?  We've got video!  Alice from the Brady Bunch went undercover, applied for multiple Account Executive roles and was denied every time!!  It must be true...

The Cost of Talent - Dice-K (Red Sox) vs. the 2007 Cleveland Indians Payroll

Paying a little more for talent is OK.  But diminishing returns follow to anyone, including an organization like the Yankees, who pays 3x as much for the same number of "employees" as their competitors.  Case in point - the Cleveland Indians, who crushed the Yankees with less than 1/3 of the New York payroll (61M to 195M).

Flash to Game 3 of the ACLS tonight.  The Red Sox, who paid a total of 100M to bring Dice-K to the states, sent the Japanese ace to the mound tonight to take back control of the series against guess who?  The Indians.  When you pay 100M, you're doing it so the ace can go to the hill and win the "must have" game. 

Result?  Indians 4 (61 million invested this year in total for the team), Red Sox 2 (100 million invested in Dice-K alone). 

Moral?  Grown talent from within and don't pay retail when you buy externally.  Retail is for suckers....