Tell Me What You Want..What You Really, Really Want…

In case you haven’t noticed there is a shortage of workers. It’s not just truck drivers and mechanics. It’s across the board, especially in those roles where traditionally we’ve seen people in the early to mid stages of their careers. The transportation/logistics industry is facing a huge challenge when it comes to attracting, retaining and developing talent. It’s an industry that demands long hours, often night and weekend hours. The work tends to be stressful, fast paced, unpredictable and people intensive. In other words, something is always going wrong. Most senior managers are still from the old school, even if they are not old guys. Old school says that you do what you have to do. You come in early, you stay until the work is done, you come back if you need to and the job takes priority. Old school guys may say that family comes first. But what they really means is that feeding the family and feeding them well comes first. Which means that work comes first.

Millennials see it differently. But not totally different. A recent study published in the Harvard Business Review reveals what is really important to millennials (https://hbr.org/2015/02/what-millennials-want-from-work-charted-across-the-world).

There are some interesting takeaways from this study:

_Millennials want to move up and become leaders . Primarily for financial rewards and influence/power. More so in Europe, North America and Asia/Pacific regions.

_When it comes to the type of manager Millennials want, it’s clear that in North America and Western Europe it’s about employee empowerment. Micro-management is out.

_Regarding Work Life Balance, Millennials in North America and Western Europe overwhelmingly place the priority on having “enough leisure time for my private life”. Flexible working hours comes in a close second.

_Life priorities for Millennials are spending time with family, learning new things and living a long, healthy life. Depending on how the questions are asked, I’m not sure that my generation, or my parents’ generation might not have had similar responses. What is telling is that at the bottom of the priority list for North American and Western Europeans is wealth. Becoming wealthy is a low priority for today’s Millennials. So even though they want to move up and become leaders for reasons of financial reward and influence, when it comes to life’s priorities wealth just isn’t that important.

These results are all part of a larger study (http://universumglobal.com/millennials/). There is a lot in the study and if you are really into understanding Millennials on a global scale, it’s worth your time. But for me, these four: career objectives, how to manage, work life balance and life priorities are the key issues which must be addressed by our industry. Talented Millennials have choices and they will choose to work in those industries and organizations where they have the best opportunities of achieving their personal and professional objectives. Next time, I’ll talk about where we are missing the mark and what can be done to make this industry more attractive to Millennials.

Dillon and Barney

A year ago I wrote about old dogs and end of life issues. (http://www.headhunterpov.net/2014/03/otto.html).

I noted that our old dog, Dillon had set a standard for tolerance that allowed for making a mess in the house as long as it was on the tile floor. Unfortunately, in recent months, old Dillon began having trouble keeping his accidents on the tile. He was almost 16 years old. His hearing and vision were just about gone. The vet said he was showing signs of dementia. A month ago he had a seizure which ended up with him at the “veterinary emergency room ” otherwise known as the most expensive place you can go in order to confirm that your dog just had a seizure. But you do what you have to do when it comes to your pets.

And you also do what you have to do when the quality of your pet’s life has deteriorated to the point where they are miserable. Even our younger dog had reached the point where he no longer wanted to be around Dillon. So Dillon took that last, long ride today. He was calm and seemed to know what it was about. He will be cremated and his ashes will set on the shelf next to his old pal Barney, the best dog ever (http://www.headhunterpov.net/2012/08/dogs.html).

If you ask me, right about now, somewhere in heaven there is a young Springer Spaniel chasing a young Bichon. If I didn’t believe that, I could never own a pet.

Don't Mess With Texas Women

I never thought much about getting a concealed handgun license (CHL). It just seemed like a lot of trouble. I know folks who have their CHL and they feel pretty good about it. I have guns in the house and in Texas you can carry a handgun in your vehicle even without a license. So I could not think of too many situations where carrying a concealed handgun would be all that necessary for me. And, I remember that football player, Plaxico Burress, who shot himself in the leg with his concealed handgun. That would be about my luck.

So I was not planning on getting my CHL until my wife decided that she wanted to start carrying a handgun. Arming my wife may not be the smartest thing I’ve ever done, but she pretty much had her mind made up. Some of her friends starting “packing” and so now it’s a “thing”. Initially I was just going to help her pick out a concealed carry gun and let her be my bodyguard. But, the guys at the range shamed me into getting a CHL. They are a tough crowd.

My wife picked out a little Glock 42, 380 caliber and she’s pretty good with it. She’s shot my guns and she’s not afraid of them. I went "new" old school and bought a little snub-nose revolver. But it is the latest super lightweight Ruger LCR 9MM and it fits in my pants pocket. It will get the job done. But I get to thinking about ol’ Plaxico and I’m not sure that I want to carry a gun in my pocket or anywhere else where it might shoot me and ask questions later.

We both passed our tests. My wife actually shot quite well and will now be armed just like the rest of her friends. The Galleria is safe. Bad guys beware. Texas women…big hair, big purses, big bang.

Horrible Hiring Practices

I’ve been really busy lately trying to fill jobs for our client companies. Too busy to invest much time in blogging. I wish I could say that all my efforts are paying off, but that’s just not how it works in the headhunting business. There are a lot of reasons why placements don’t happen and that is a great subject for a whole series of blogs. (I’ll get right to work on that as soon as I get some time.) But one of the big reasons jobs don’t get filled is that employers drive candidates away. Headhunters buffer the process to a degree, but we still see and feel the impact of bad interviewing and hiring practices. Candidates tell us all the time about the bad experiences they have with certain companies. We take note and shy away from these companies when they come asking for our help in filling positions.

News flash Mr. Employer...we are in a candidate short market. Good, high quality candidates are hard to come by. When you find one, don’t blow it with a bad hiring process. I recently read an article by Liz Ryan, CEO & Founder of The Human Workplace. I think Ms. Ryan nails it.


Ten Horrible Hiring Practices That Drive Great Candidates Away
By Liz Ryan, CEO & Founder, The Human Workplace

If you were the CEO of a company and you needed to hire some people, how would you do it? You'd start by thinking carefully about what you needed in a new hire, of course. You'd write a friendly and inviting job ad. You'd publish the job ad and wait for resumes to fly in the door from interested job-seekers. You'd tell your employees, customers, vendors and fans about the job opening and encourage them to spread the word, too.

When the resumes started to come in, you'd acknowledge every one of them with a warm and human reply. Technology made that an easy task about thirty-five years ago! You'd interview some of the candidates and send a thoughtful "no thanks" message to the rest. You'd think "All of these folks are humans. They took the time to respond to my job ad, so the least I can do is ask my teammates to take a few seconds out of their day to acknowledge that effort. In our company, all we want to do is cultivate friends and fans. We don't want to have enemies. "Some of these people who didn't get this job may come to work for us later. All of them can buy our products or recommend them. This hiring process is important to us and to the people who applied for jobs with our company.

"I'm going to take it seriously, and treat every person who responded to our job ad like a valued collaborator -- because that's what each of them is!" You would take good care of the candidates who made it to the interview stage. You'd be respectful of their time. You'd treat them like gold! You would keep the human element in the center of your hiring process, because you're a human being and you're a smart and decent person. Why doesn't every hiring process work that way? Here are ten stupid and self-destructive hiring processes that drive great job candidates away from employers every day.

Who gets hurt when smart people decide not to work at certain organizations because their hiring processes are so broken that good people stay away? The shareholders get hurt, and so do the customers who would benefit if the company were able to hire great people. The current employees get hurt. I can't wait until shareholders and Board members wake up and smell the coffee, and replace a CEO or two who are too lazy or out-of-it to realize that if you can't recruit good people, your business can't thrive.

Here are ten ways foolish organizations drive great job candidates away with a stick instead of making it fun and easy to enter their recruiting pipeline. Do any of these horrible hiring practices sound familiar?:

Darth Vader Job Ads

Who would write a job that talks about the qualities The Selected Candidate should possess, like "The Selected Candidate will have twenty years of experience with Facebook ad promotion," rather than talking to the candidates directly, a la "You could be a great fit for this job if you like working with people on the phone"?
The formal and dismissive way we write job ads screams "Whoever the Selected Candidate is, bucko, it ain't your sorry ass!" We begin insulting candidates right away, in our job ads. Why? That's the first way employers drive talented candidates away.

Black Holes And Auto-Responder Smackdowns

People invest time -- sometimes hours -- in their responses to posted job ads. Then weeks later they receive terse auto-responder email messages that say "Your materials have been received." How long would it take to make that message friendly and personal -- one minute?
Godzilla companies can't bring themselves to do it. Too many of them tell candidates "If we want to talk to you, we know where to find you. If you don't hear from us, you can drop dead for all we care."
Shameful!
Smart employers ditch their talent-repelling Black Hole automated recruiting portals and screen resumes a smarter way. People do not reduce down to keywords, as you know because you grew up here on earth. Applicant Tracking Systems, the worst use of technology to solve a human problem that the world has ever seen, are on their way out. No one is shedding any tears over their demise!
People who have never looked at the recruiting process with fresh eyes and have no desire to will say "It is impossible to screen 5000 resumes without technology!" It is insanely easy to screen resumes, You will use a few simple Logical Gates to keep the entire world from responding to your job ad.
What is a Logical Gate? Read about Recruiting with a Human Voice to find out!

Take Another Test, Climb Another Hill

Some broken recruiting processes come from the view "We are so overwhelmed with talented candidates,we have to invest all of our energy in screening out the extra people." That couldn't be more false!
It's hard to find good people, so why do we subject job-seekers to honesty tests, writing tests, math tests and questionnaires before we've even met them? It's time to stop!

You Just Wait a Spell

At Human Workplace we teach employers that no one who enters a recruiting pipeline should go more than a week between communications. If people are waiting for you to schedule interviews, talk to them. If they've been interviewed and they're waiting to hear back from you, talk to them again.
Pick up the phone. Send a friendly email. They are people! If a company leaves you waiting for two weeks without communication, they've already told what you mean to them, and you mean diddly squat. Run away!

I'll Ask the Questions, Thank You

Some foolish organizations believe that the purpose of an interview is for them to ask the questions and for you to sit like a Sheepie Job Seeker and bleat out answers, then remain silent until the next question.
What forty-year-old adult is going to sit still for that kind of treatment? No one who could help your company, that's for sure!

Your Future Paycheck Is None of Your Business

Why don't more employers put the hiring salary range in the job ad? You already know why - they want to hedge their bets. In case they get lucky and somebody with the perfect experience who hasn't kept abreast of market pay rates should walk in and be willing to do the job for peanuts, they want to keep their options open! That's unethical. Start publishing your salary range in every job ad if you want talented and marketable people to apply.

Your Salary History Is Our Business

How much nerve would it take to tell a job-seeker that you can't tell them the salary range for the job they're interviewing for, and then turn around and ask them what they earned at every job they've ever had?
"I will give you my past salaries, my darling, when you show me the spreadsheet that displays your leadership team's current salaries and bonus schedules. What? You consider that confidential information? Good, so you understand -- my salary history is confidential, too!"

We Just Need One More Thing From You - $20,000 of Free Consulting

Interviewing candidates is great. Asking them or commanding them to go home and write a free marketing plan for you is scummy and immoral. Anyway, what doofus thinks that a person can create a marketing plan without knowing tons about what the company has already done and what its goals are? If your managers are telling job-seekers to work for free during the interview process, make them stop.

You Think I Have Time To Waste On You?

Before any job offer goes out, a hiring manager needs to call a job-seeker or sit down with him or her and say "We're moving toward a job offer. What would it take to get you to join us? Let's talk about everything that is important to you." If your managers don't know how to conduct a meeting like that, you can show them. Everybody's muscles will grow!

You Got The Offer - What Else Do You Want?

In the Recruiting with a Human Voice protocol we teach to employers, there is a post-job-offer telephone call or face-to-face meeting whose purpose is to make sure everyone in the mix is comfortable with everything. The hopefully-new-employee gets to ask tons of questions. They get to make sure that their upcoming vacation dates will work for your company.
They get to know everything they need to know to be comfortable signing the offer letter and coming to work in a couple of weeks. They get to see their workstation if they haven't already, meet the team and generally make themselves comfortable with you, and vice versa.
No organization will ever love a person more than they do when they're trying to recruit that person. That's the point in the process when you need to show the love -- but then again, you need to show the love all the way through!
Luckily, it isn't hard to do. More and more employers are seeing the link between passion and performance every day.
Step into the new millennium with a new mindset for recruiting, and remember what we tell employers and job-seekers on both sides of the hiring equation: If they don't get you, they don't deserve you!

The Color of Conversation

My wife does a lot of volunteer work. One of the organizations she works with supports and promotes Performing Arts for young folks in the area. It’s a good program and a lot of kids participate. Every year they have an art contest. Awards are given for the best work in various categories and by grade level. This year the organization decided to kick it up a notch and brought in judges from university art departments in the area. Last week we were guests at a private dinner for some of the judges and their friends from the North Texas art scene. A dozen of us sat at a long table and talked about a variety of subjects. It was a eclectic group to say the least. Certainly more artsy and politically liberal than most people I interact with on a daily basis. Frankly, I enjoyed it immensely.

One of the guests was an older African American gentleman. When I say older, I mean almost my age. He was originally from a small town in the area, but had gone on to do big things with his life. His family was still here and he was now spending more time “back home”, living mostly out in the country on a small farm he purchased some years ago. As these things tend to go, people shared what they wanted to share about their lives. And if they pay attention to one another and display genuine interest, their guards come down and the subject matter becomes more serious. Things they do not usually talk about, at least not deeply, get talked about. So we ended up discussing politics, education, poverty, religion, sex and even race.

My new friend held very strong opinions as to why we are where we are racially in this country. He believes that racism is alive and well thanks to white greed, white programs and white religion. I oversimplify, but this truly is the bottom-line of his report. And there is a lot of truth in what he says. The enslavement of black Africans was largely about economics. Racism became a key ingredient in rationalizing the "peculiar" institution of slavery. But make no mistake about it, if the Africans had not been so productive working in the tobacco, sugar and cotton fields; America would look much different today. Who knows? We might still be a British colony or a collection of Indian nations.

And the “white programs” of welfare in the 60’s and forced integration in the 70’s have given us ghettos filled with generations of people who only know survival within “the system” and see no way out of “the system”. Increasingly, black “haves” lead very different lives from the black “have-nots”. Many of those who escaped the welfare trap, or whose families never fell into that trap, have a legitimate shot at the American dream. They still face challenges because of race, no question. Being black in America isn’t easy. But, being black and poor and trapped in “the system” is something else all together.

Then there is “white religion”. The religion that my friend alleges initiated, promoted and prolonged the enslavement of his ancestors. The record is there. It happened. Sermons were preached. Scriptures were read into the Congressional record. Many Christians claimed that slavery was part of God’s design for order in the universe and that blacks were destined to inferiority because Ham saw his father Noah’s nakedness. (Genesis 9: 18-29; After building an Ark and weathering a global flood, Noah gets drunk and then gets naked. Haven’t we all? Ham sees him with no clothes on and is cursed. So some claim that Blacks descended from Ham and are, therefore, inferior. Makes perfect sense…right?).

So my friend concludes that Christianity has blood on its hands when it comes to the circumstances in which so many black people find themselves in 21st Century America. I get it, I really do. But, I can only listen to so much. The “rest of the story” is out there and I had to say something. The rest of the story is that true Christians ultimately stepped up and were the driving force behind the abolition of slavery. First in Europe and later in the United States. Christians may have played a key role in supporting the institution of slavery in this country. But, given the economics of slavery, it would have happened with or without the endorsement of some Christian groups. The abolishment of slavery, on the other hand, would not have happened without Christians leading the cause.

As I laid out my case for the positive role Christianity played in the abolishment of slavery and in the civil rights movement, my friend conceded those points and nodded in agreement. He then proceeded to tell me that as a young boy he saw a cross burning. This was in the Sixties here in North Texas. His father got a call late one night from a friend. He loaded up the kids and drove over to the friend’s house and there in the front yard a cross was burning, the light of the fire reflecting a second cross in the home’s front window. Down the street, white men were sitting on parked cars, sipping beer, holding torches still aflame. The family in that house piled into his father’s car. He still doesn’t know how they got so many people into that car. They drove away and that was that. No story, no police report, just another sad episode in the history of race relations in this nation.

At the end of the evening, we all hugged and thanked each other for the wonderful conversation and fellowship. We did not see eye-to-eye on every issue, but we did look each other in the eye and listened. It’s not hard to understand why whites and blacks see race differently. It’s just hard to understand why we don’t talk about it more often and more honestly.

Jus In Bello

By now you’ve probably heard the uproar over Michael Moore’s “snipers are cowards” comment regarding the movie “America Sniper”. Some other Hollywood types and left-leaners have questioned the story’s glorification of Chris Kyle, THE American Sniper. He was from Texas, he killed the bad guys, he believed in God and he was not always politically correct. I’ll take that kind of guy on my team any day.

I get it that there are at least two sides to every story. When one looks at the photos of Hiroshima and Nagasaki after the bombs were dropped, one must ask “Was this really necessary?”. Could we have defeated the Nazi’s without fire-bombing Dresden? Did Sherman have to burn most of Georgia and South Carolina near the end of the Civil War. Why are innocent people killed in war and why do we choose to call it collateral damage? Robert E. Lee penned these words in a letter to his wife:
"What a cruel thing is war: to separate and destroy families and friends, and mar the purest joys and happiness God has granted us in this world; to fill our hearts with hatred instead of love for our neighbors, and to devastate the fair face of this beautiful world.”


“Just War Theory” (jus bellum iustum) postulates that war, while very terrible, is not always the worst option. There may be responsibilities so important, atrocities which can be prevented or outcomes so undesirable they justify war (Quinlen/Guthrie, “The Just War Tradition”). “Jus In Bello” (right conduct in war) is a key part of Just War Theory. Military necessity is a key principle when it comes to “right conduct in war”. Essentially, it says that an attack or action must be intended to help in the military defeat of the enemy; it must be an attack on a military objective, and the harm caused to civilians or civilian property must be proportional and not excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated. This principle is meant to limit excessive and unnecessary death and destruction.

I will grant that one might fairly debate the military necessity of dropping the big ones on Japan or fire-bombing Dresden. (I would come down firmly on the side of those being the right calls by the way.) But I don’t see much room even for debate on the use of snipers. This would seem to clearly fall well within the bounds of military necessity. And those bounds become even broader when fighting an enemy whose “Jus In Bello” is based on “Holy” War Theory. For it would appear that to some of our enemies, all is fair and just in their “Holy” War.

I cannot understand why some of our fellow Americans, even some of our leaders, are so critical of those who fight and shed blood and die for us. I think it’s because sometimes those heroes must also kill for us. And killing is a dirty business. That’s part of the job we send them out to do. It’s a terrible thing to take another human life. But sometimes it’s necessary and justified. And, in my opinion it’s more than OK, in fact it’s our duty and responsibility, to respect and honor those who fight our wars.

A Thousand Million Questions

The New Year is still “new” but for me it’s already starting to feel like something more than just new. 2015 is starting to feel like one of those “defining moment” years: 1929, 1941, 1963, 1968, 1984, 2001, 2008. I think 2015 might just end up on that list. It is shaping up to be a year of questions that will challenge us. But it will be the answers that define us. And that’s where this year could be something special.

My 2015 predictions are already off to a rocky start with oil prices falling below my $50 prediction only a few days after I went out on that limb. So I hesitate to make more predictions, but the big questions are out there and many are likely to be answered this year. Those “big questions” include:

_1 How will the civilized world deal with radical Islam? It would appear that perhaps we’ve finally reached the point of “enough is enough”. But what does that mean and how does it translate into action? We’ve run out of time. 2015 is the year of decision.

_2 What is the future of Obamacare? Supreme Court decisions may answer that question. If the Affordable Care Act goes back to the drawing board, it is likely dead. Then what?

_3 What happens with Immigration Reform? The status quo is unsustainable. So something is likely to pass this year. It’s another one of those “we’ve run out of time” issues.

_4 What directions are to be taken by our two major political parties? Both realize that they have to move back toward the center. They cannot wait until 2016 to make those moves. 2016 may end up being the year that goes down in the history books as one of “moderation” in politics, but the seeds will be planted in 2015.

_5 What will be the final answer on Gay Marriage? The Supreme Court has agreed to hear cases on this issue. Instead of silence, they will speak. I said that I am hesitant to make further predictions, but I predict that they will rule against those states who have banned gay marriage. Conservatives will scream, but conservative politicians will be glad that this one is finally settled.

_6 Where will energy prices go? This is a huge question. In the short-run, cheaper energy helps our economy. But in the long-run if prices are so low that foreign producers regain market share and domestic production capacity goes into decline; the balance of power shifts further to those who control our energy supply.

_7 Will we invest in our future? Infrastructure and education in this country are broken. It’s probably a reach to think that both areas will be addressed in 2015, but we really are running out of time here. I think there is bi-partisan support for doing something on infrastructure. And the Obama administration’s proposal to offer “free” community college education opportunities is worthy of discussion and is likely to receive a lot of support from business and industry.

Certainly there are a thousand, million other questions and some of them are near the top of the list. Global warming, race relations, the Federal deficit, the tax code, whether or not college athletes in major sports should be paid and is it really “all about that bass”? And, no doubt, something will happened that elevates some other question to the top of the list of potential game changers. However it turns out, 2015 is likely to be one of those unforgettable years.


Why do we never get an answer
When we're knocking at the door?
With a thousand million questions
About hate and death and war.

It's where we stop and look around us
There is nothing that we need.
In a world of persecution
That is burning in its greed.

-“Question”, Moody Blues song, lyrics by Justin Hayward.