I’ve written before about past responsibilities I’ve had as a sourcer.  During telecom’s peak in 2000, my company proactively searched job boards to retain staff that were testing the waters for new careers.  That was a time when a candidate could post a resume and within 24 hours be interviewing or on a plane to a first round face-to-face.  The candidate hunt was aggressive.

These days, just creating a LinkedIn profile can get you into trouble as this executive found out.

If you’re going to create a profile on LinkedIn, just for the heck of it, here are some guidelines:

Read the “Settings” section – you can do important things in that section like turning off your activity broadcasts.  Why would you do that? Because then everyone you’re connected to will not be aware of who you’ve connected to or updates you’ve made to your profile.  Consider yourself in stealth mode.

Don’t say you’re looking for “career opportunities”…. unless you’re an active jobseeker.  People, even your trusted workmates, infer what they will.  Some recruiters might not contact you if that’s not visible, then others, like me, will still reach out to see if the opportunity I have is something you would consider.  Yet, all the while, you’re not jumping up and down with a sign saying “I’m on the market…look at me…look at me!”

Do you want to have a public profile? It’s a consideration.  I want you to have one – but that’s me speaking as a sourcer.  You don’t have to, and quite honestly I can still view your private profile within LinkedIn.  If you do choose to have a public profile – this option is edit-able in “settings” and you can choose how much information you reveal to Joe Sourcer.

Watch your level of detail.  A LinkedIn profile screams “I’m on the hunt” when it has the level of detail of a resume.  Yes – this flies in the face of what I really want you to do – again –  as a sourcer I want you to use every professional keyword you can to describe yourself… but there are alternatives if you’re really just testing the waters.  You can embed a link to your resume or link to your blog or an alternate profile site.  Something that on the surface looks like a link but with exploration yields more professional information… I’m good with that.

Inputting lots of dates? Be accurate.  You never know when someone is going to wonder why your graduation date doesn’t mesh with your resume or you messed up when you were actually laid off.

Tread lightly as you venture on to professional networking sites… look at the full picture and the impact it can have on your career.  That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be there, but you should upload information thoughtfully and not like a bull in a china shop.

Hosts: Kris Dunn and Dawn Burke

Interview Segment: Tim Sackett 

Producer: Holland Dombeck

Music:

intro – The Mighty Mighty Bosstones – “Someday I Suppose”

interview – Cypress Hill – “Rock Superstar”

outro – The Beastie Boys – “Egg Man”

bonus compilation – KD & Bon Jovi – “Living in Sin”

00:40 - Kris Dunn and Dawn Burke discuss DB’s alter rockstar alter ego.

03:09 - Your hosts weigh in on 1. Domestic Partners Finding Some Tax Relief on Health Benefits

and 2. Employer’s Adding Automatic Enrollment to DC Plans , in today’s news.

16:20 - Word from our sponsor: Worforce.com.

17:22 - Interview with David Wilkins, VP of Research at Taleo.

30:08 - The big finish – The CYA Report gang discuss what they learned from today’s show.

Anyway, don’t worry; I’m not trying to de-humanize human resources.  Instead, I’m talking about finding that perfect employee metric.  But I’m fairly sure that if I put the word “metric” in the heading, I’ll lose most of this audience.

You already know what your internal HR metrics are.  Cost per hire, turnover cost, days to fill, training completion – these are all things that you know and track.  As you should; they’re invaluable to managing your own department.  They will also glaze the eyes of anyone outside of your department.

The quest for you is to find the perfect employee metric, that thing that compares your employees in a way that your organization will embrace.  That magic number that helps both you and the rest of the organization understand people, and figure out how much of your talent is actually “talented”.

When I was the HR guy for a chain of oil change centers, the magic metric was “ticket”.  This was the average invoice for the hour, or day, or week, as needed.  You could attribute that number to the individual who cashed out the customer, or average it to the entire lube center.  “Ticket” was a language that everyone in operations spoke already and proved incredibly helpful for me as the HR guy in calling out biases.  Every month or so, a District Manager would come to me asking to fire a Service Center Manager who “just isn’t getting it done.”  That conversation could be quickly short-circuited when I pulled up the operations dashboard for the day, and asked the District Manager why he had a problem with a guy running a $63 ticket! (Remember, a basic oil change costs $32)  Or, on the flip side, I could empirically say that a manager running a $38 ticket was not, in fact, getting much of anything done.  It is completely non-judgmental – either the manager (or individual employee) is making sales, or they’re not.

I’m new to my current job, so I’ve spent some time searching for the ideal metric here.  So far, my favorite is “penetration” (Meredith, stop giggling).  We place about the same amount of our clients’ product on the shelf of each grocery store we work in.  So, if our penetration – the total value of our products as a percent of overall store sales – is 6.3% of the sales at one store, and 4.8% at another, I’m going to be very interested in what is going wrong at the second store.  It could be that a new Kroger opened up across the street, or it could be that the on-site employee just decided that the shelf coupons would stay in her car this month.

As you look for your own organization’s magic metric, it should be:

• Created and tracked by someone outside of HR.  When you call up someone in ops and ask them why it’s high or low, it can’t be something that only you can see in the HRIS.  You’ll notice that I had to explain an awful lot about my business for each of these metrics – that’s a good thing.
• Objective.  Managers have favorites and have excuses for those favorites.
• Timely.  Management by P&L is necessary, but if you only rely on a P&L, your managers will only know that they had an issue a month and a half later when the books close.  Find something that you or managers can react to soon after it happens
• Something which the employee can personally impact.  No one likes to be held accountable for things they didn’t do.  If the customer added to the specification at the last minute, the project manager can’t get dinged for missing the old deadline.
• Tied to profitability.  I’m thrilled that when customers call the 800 number, they always give your store 5 out of 5.  However, if those 5’s don’t translate into increased revenues, we’re going to have a hard time keeping the doors open so we can keep those customers happy.

What’s your number?

Editor’s Note -  Steve Gifford, MBA, SPHR, is the Director of Human Resources for Eurpac Service, Inc., a national grocery and retail brokerage.  His first HR job was in the US Army during his second tour in Iraq, where every employee in his client group carried an automatic weapon.  It helps him keep the problems of retail employees, who show up to work late, in perspective..

I am not sure exactly when these kinds of personalized ads started popping up on the professional networking site, but over the weekend while I was scoping out who had viewed my profile, connecting with like minded HR and Technology professionals and contributing to industry discussion and dialogue, I noticed the ad to the right. Like a moth to a flame, or a bargain-hunting performance car shopper to Ashley Schaeffer Imports, I couldn’t help but notice my own mug staring back out at me from LinkedIn’s right margin.

Read the whole post at Steve Boese’s HR Technology (an FOT contributor blog)

For the sake of this post, I’m broadening the definition of religion to include all organized religions, atheists, agnostics, scientologists, indigenous religions, etc., etc., etc. Meaning, for anyone who believes in GOD in whatever way and all those that who don’t in whatever way. So, pretty much all human beings. And all workplaces… from SMB, to Federal to publicly traded to non-profits, etc. All!

Ready, Set, GO! What if…

• What if atheists would only employ other atheists?
• What if Jewish folks could screen out Muslim folks solely based on religious preference?
• What if Mormons would only promote other Mormons? Because they were Mormons.
• What if your Catholic boss only gave raises to folks who sported a cross in their cube?
• What if performance reviews also included knowledge of The Bible?
• What if to be considered for the leadership team of your organization, you had to be a “Born Again” Christian?
• What if compensation was tied to volunteerism with your church?
• What if you could bonus employees based on religious recruitment efforts?
• What if you could ask a candidate to prove how much they believe during interviews?
• What if you could fire someone for being an agnostic?

And so on, and so on, and so on… you get the idea of the scenarios… religion, in whatever form, is: noticed, appreciated, incentivized, etc. In this new world, work and religion are one.

How weird would that be?

Let’s go further…

Would “similar” religious beliefs at work be a good thing? What would our HR world look like if we could hire similar people? Imagine an entire workplace of Methodist employees. The values of the Methodist religion deeply woven in to the values of the firm, into each and every hiring decision, every HR process, everything HR related touched by the Methodist faith. Methodist, Methodist, Methodist. Would that organization have more HR problems or less HR problems? Would that organization outperform competitors? Make more profit, etc?

Conversely, what if “dissimilar” religious preference was valued? Meaning, everyone comes to the table with whatever they believe in (or not) and the organization celebrates said differences. Opposite to the imaginary Methodist workplace above. This organization would hire folks based on religion but from a portfolio perspective. They would want as many differing views as possible. Think: strength in diversity. Same questions as above… Would that organization have more HR problems or less HR problems? Would that organization outperform competitors? Make more profit, etc?

Again, this is a “what if” article… Can we imagine a world so different from our day to day?

Lastly, would you like leading / managing HR in a decidedly more religious work environment?

But there’s one thing that would cause a lot of people to blink.  For every 10 people who took the time to comment that they loved it, there were at least two that didn’t care for the style at all.

Read the whole post over at Kris Dunn’s The HR Capitalist (an FOT contributor blog)

I know I’ve said many times I’m not sure what I’d do without my iPhone…the reality is I used to live and work without a smartphone, email, Facebook, etc…because I’m OLD.

As I read about Jake’s experience I remembered how much I used to write letters.  When I was in college my boyfriend (and now husband) graduated and went to work in a different city.  We didn’t have the money for daily phone calls, so instead we wrote daily letters to each other.  I’ve kept all those letters, as did he, and someday I’m sure we’ll enjoy looking back at our lives during that period of time.  Posts and tweets perhaps will live on forever as well, but I bet they won’t be as fun to go back and read.

Is there a lesson in Jake’s experiment for HR pros?  Would I be writing this if there weren’t?

Corporate HR folks have a tough job but sometimes I think we make it tougher because of email, texts and social media overkill.  I’ve sent the emotional response via email and wished I could pull it back after all hell broke loose.  What about the candidate who is overexposed and therefore not employable due to his social media presence?  When’s the last time you got up and went to have a tough conversation vs. sending an email or worse yet, a text?

I met with a VP of HR recently and was supposed to spend 30 minutes with him.  After an hour and a half I told him I knew he had work to do as did I.  We were talking about the outside perception of his company, how he almost lost a star employee and the ongoing development of his HR team.  This wasn’t a planned conversation – but it happened because we were face-to-face and really talking.  When I was leaving he said, “You’re not what I expected”, meaning I wasn’t a typical recruiter or HR consultant.  I took the compliment and smiled.  He has since scheduled lunch to talk more in depth about his ideas around developing his HR team.

In our current reality of 140 characters, responding to texts quickly and the expectation of being reachable 24/7, are you REALLY connecting with your employees and customers?

It’s tough – because if you’re not in the virtual and social space you’re not “with it”…but don’t forget how to write a letter or have a face-to-face conversation.  Having the ability to connect in our virtual world AND keep grounded in the real world may just bring comments like, “Wow – you’re so much more than I expected”.  Isn’t that what every HR pro would love to hear?

We’d like to  give a special FOT shout out to Stuart,  for taking the time to riff on KD’s post. Check out the strip and subscribe to 1.00 FTE to receive other hilarious impressions of corporate life, daily.

Do it.

A very attractive and intelligent woman came in for an interview. She aced it. I would totally buy a car from this woman.  I was ready to make her an offer when a Salesman stopped by my office to talk to me.

  Meredith, is her dad a lawyer or something in town?

  Yes, he actually sent me her resume. Why?

  Just Google her name. It’s important you do this before you make a hiring decision about her.

And there she was.

Her huge personalities were glaring back at me. I was absolutely entranced by the whole thing. I had never spoken to an adult film star before this point. I had always assumed you would know if someone had a past like this by the way they talk, but I couldn’t tell at all.  And now I was faced with a decision. Could I really hire someone who has flashed her personalities to millions?

Nope. I cannot hire her.

How can I hire her after she was recognized by a Salesman? How will her quality of life be working here with everyone Googling her name non-stop? The IT Manager will go out of his mind trying to block it all. And what sort of legal problems are going to arise from this hire with my current employees? What if a customer acts inappropriately to her?

I understand that I work at a car dealership, and we’re not hiring altar boys. But that’s exactly the point. These are fun-loving car salesmen. I don’t need to confuse them by hiring someone who puts us at risk for a lawsuit.

I know what you’re going to tell me:

• I should trust my employees to act like professionals around her.  I don’t.
• I should give someone a second chance at decent employment. I won’t.
• It’s illegal not to hire her. It’s not.

I am going to stand by my decision to not hire her. I plan to tell her father that I found someone else, and I’ll thank him for sending her my way.

I will not hire a former adult film star.  Her assets put our assets at risk.

• We Expect You To Be A Magician:  We call you up, give you the jobs specs (which by the way is usually one of our toughest jobs to fill), and as soon as you start telling us how long it will take to find candidates, we stop listening.  Why?  Because we think you have this secret crystal ball that you look into to magically conjure up candidates or that you’ve got a bunch of candidates sitting right there with you in your office just waiting to take the job.  You tell us it will take 2 weeks?  We hear 2 days.
• We Show Off:  Let’s face it – most HR Pros think that bringing in a recruiter somehow reflects poorly on them and they want to prove otherwise.  So we show off.  You think you know the market, Mr. Recruiter?  Ha, let me tell you how WE find candidates.  Or we say things like “we have some great candidates already, we’re just looking for you to help us round out the field and give us some good comparators.”  Or we try to prove just how good we really are by listing off our staffing fills from the last 10 years.  Also, did I tell you, I once scored 4 touchdowns in a single game?
• We Nickel and Dime You:  This is my favorite (and I have to admit, I’ve done it myself).  Clearly we’re calling you because we have a hole that we’re not capable of filling ourselves.  So once we’ve told you we expect you to pull a rabbit out of a hat and have wowed you with stories of our recruiting prowess, we go after your fee.  25% fee?  How about 20%?  20% fee?  How about 15%?  The number doesn’t really matter when we’re negotiating with you – we’re just looking for a “win” so we can go back and tell our HR pals that we knocked down the agency fee by X%.  Meanwhile, what we don’t know is that 5% fee knockdown is probably the difference between having an experienced recruiter work on your opening instead of the new grad we’re going to get now!
• We Use You As A Scapegoat:  Yes, you sent us 5 really qualified candidates, fully vetted them and gave us the full rundown on the timing of their other job prospects.  But we took 2 weeks to get them in for an interview and surprise, surprise, we lost them.  Rather than telling our internal stakeholders that we dropped the ball we take the easy road and blame the recruiter.  Doesn’t matter really what we say you did or didn’t do, we just say “the recruiter messed up.”
• We Never Call You Back:  I’m sure this has to be the personal favorite of every recruiter out there.  After putting in hours of hard work sourcing, prepping and debriefing candidates, we give you the ol’ high school break-up move.  We avoid your calls until you get the picture.  No explanation, no discussion, we just fade away into the sunset leaving you to figure out what to tell your candidates.

That is, until we have another tough job to fill and we call you up and start the whole process over again.