While it might be wasted on Junior, it actually is a great saying, proven true in both sports and the real world.  It draws on our attraction to “scrappiness.”  Less talented scrappy employees work hard and never go prima donna.  Think Kerri Strug in 1996, sticking the landing after crushing her ankle on the previous vault, or Spud Webb, the 5’7” guard who won the 1986 NBA slam dunk contest.  We like scrappy, and we hate lazy talent.

Case in point:  ESPN wrote a story titled, The Waste Land of Randy Moss.  When you see that title, you’re glad you’re not Randy Moss, the super NFL receiver who retired last year and is now trying to make a comeback.  Kids, don’t let someone call you a wasteland.  In print.  On a national sports news website.  From the story:

There’s a line from the Robert DeNiro movie “A Bronx Tale” that I’ve never forgotten.  In the movie, DeNiro, as Lorenzo, tells his sometimes-troubled teenage son Calogero, “The saddest thing in life is wasted talent.”  If Randy Moss understood that, he’d be the greatest football player ever.

… the painfully obvious arch in Moss’ phenomenal career is that his desire and effort are purely situational.  (Although) ESPN NFL analyst Cris Carter… praised Moss’ conditioning, he also readily admitted that Moss’ overwhelming athleticism doesn’t completely mask his most damaging trait—“He has more ‘quit’ in him than any other superstar I’ve ever met.”

 …Moss abruptly retired last year because no one was interested in signing a player with situational dedication.

Situational dedication is my new favorite term—it perfectly captures what we dislike about talented people who mail it in.  No scrappiness, no hard work, only occasional flashes of brilliance that you can’t count on.  Unfortunately, you have talented people like this on your team right now.  Because they are not getting called out on a national website, though, here are some profiles to help you identify them:

• Playground—Needs to be picked to be on the “good team” to work hard. Put her on a team where she needs to bring up others, and she pouts and quits.
• Good Times—will work when the team is winning, but is a team cancer when things go south.  He ruins his manager’s career and then quits.
• Spotlight—needs constant attention from others.  Will work hard when she gets it, but quits if others are getting kudos.
• Climber—will do a job for a while, have some success, but then want the next role, often before he is ready.  Performs in spurts, then quits.

You’ll know these people because their reputations vary widely across the company.  Put ten leaders in the room to discuss staff allocations, and three think the person is great, three think the person is a quitter, and the remaining four, who have not managed the person, lock up with indecision.

We hear things like, “The team with the best talent wins,” but we all know that is false.  Situational desire and effort make a huge difference in how effective any individual or group performs.  To combat it, carefully position the prima donnas while you keep looking for the next scrappy player.

#44: Fistful of Talent: Hear directly from HR and recruiting professionals about their industry as well as what they want in a desirable employee.

Check out the rest of the list here.

Hosts: Kris Dunn and Dawn Burke

Producer: Holland Dombeck

Music:

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

interview – Cypress Hill – “Rock Superstar”

outro – The Beastie Boys – “Egg Man”

00:47 - Kris Dunn and Dawn Burke take a trip down memory lane and relive their path to careers in HR.

04:06 - Professor Steve Boese joins us for a special segment – “Words of Wisdom with Professor Boese”

11:58 - The News with KD and Dawn, Bad Apple: Could the Error of Exploitation Be Near Its End?

16:38 - Word from our sponsor: Workforce.com.

17:39 - Interview with Sondra Solovay from Workplace Answers.

32:52 - The big finish – The CYA Report gang discuss what they learned from today’s show.

Want to uncover your hidden biases?  Visit Harvard’s Project Implicit and take their test today.

Having slides, play areas, toys, and amazingly designed offices is certainly the trend these days amongst companies that are serious about creating great places to work and there is good reason for it. Investing in an awesome office space draws more media attention and more recruits, makes employees feel happy, appreciated, and proud, and sparks creativity and ownership. All awesome things.

So why aren’t more companies ditching the cubicles and pimping out their offices?

Because it’s freaking expensive, time consuming, and an uphill battle. People think, “damn I’d like to give my employees an atmosphere like that” but then they come up against reality and all of a sudden those boring, light-grey cubicles don’t look so bad after all.

Let’s think about it from the point where Boss-Man thinks, “damn, I’d like to have a life-size tree house in my office.” In order to go from idea to pimpin’ he has to…

• Get over the initial sticker shock and cough up the $100,000 it’s going to cost.
• Find an architecture/design company who can think this big. In my experience when you tell the typical architecture firm that you want to create a “fun” office they come back with maroon desks and some art work. Very few firms in the country are successful at truly pimping out an office. Kahler Slater is the best one I know of but whoever did the tree house for Red Frog deserves a shout-out too.
• Convince the landlord that adding a tree house to her office space is a good idea and get approval to do so.
• Spend a ton of time explaining to the corporate lawyers that the benefits of a tree house far outweigh the possibility that an employee will fall from a branch and sue the company.

It’s hard work creating an office space this crazy but the companies that pull it off understand that being over-the-top sends a very clear message to their current and future employees. By saying nothing at all, the sheer magnitude of the office space screams “Look at how much I’m willing to invest in creating an awesome work environment. If you think this is over-the-top imagine how much time and money I’m willing to invest in you.”

That’s powerful stuff but only the most dedicated companies’ end up being able to pull it off.  Is yours one of them?

Dateline: Chicago

Headline:  ‘Facebook and Job Performance: New study finds social networking site profile pages can be an indicator of future job success.’

The Chicago Tribune article describing the findings of a Northwestern University study, led by Management Professor Donald Kluemper, that attempted to test the theory that quick, 10-minute scans of a job candidate’s Facebook profile would be a better indicator of eventual job performance than the typical behavioral and IQ tests that many companies administer as part of the screening process.

What did the study find?

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

Yes, it’s free.

Yes, it’s easy.

I have answered those questions repeatedly over the last week.  I know, I’m a sourcer, what am I doing using a posting tool?  If you’ve ever talked with me at all about sourcing strategy, I do believe you need to post jobs as well as search for candidates.  I started using Bullhorn Reach – in a test scenario back in August. In January, I stopped testing and transitioned the product to our research assistant Billi, who, to say the least, was ecstatic.

Why ecstatic?  Let’s go back to free….and easy.  Easy because you can literally cut and paste your information in and keep rolling.  If it takes you 5 minutes to post a job on Bullhorn Reach, you’re doing it wrong.  It should take 2.

So here’s why we like BullhornReach:

• It hits our Big 3 of Social Media: Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.  Fingers crossed it folds in something for Google+ soon.  It did recently add the capability to post LinkedIn groups.  We don’t use that, but we’ve got a different process on how we like to interact with LinkedIn groups.
• It re-posts on a schedule of our choosing.  Re-posting is huge, because you never know when your candidate will be looking within social media for job postings, and its fluid medium, so re-posting gives you a better shot of being seen.
• It will post our job to an additional set of networks – like Oodle.  And if you know Oodle, you know it posts to Facebook Marketplace.  Also hits another favorite, SimplyHired.
• We can post to our Company Facebook page and my personal page at the same time, or we can opt to just post to our Company page.  My friends and family are quite thankful that I’ve given them a reprieve from the job opp’s I’m sourcing.
• If you’re having a proverbial brain freeze and can’t think of a snappy 120 character lead for your tweet, BullhornReach will help you out with sample tweets.

But it gets better….

• BullhornReach encourages immediate engagement.  I’m fairly sensitive to using social media for job postings, especially when job posts go out through accounts with my name on them.  If a candidate applies via Bullhorn, I immediately get an email with their resume attached, that goes into our ATS, and I get back to the candidate.
• BullhornReach tracks stats including click throughs and puts them in a pretty graphic we can use in our weekly meetings.  We do love stats, it’s important for us to see what’s working and what’s not.
• BullhornReach pores through the networks you’ve uploaded and lets you know about potential candidates.
• As we post more and more jobs on BullhornReach, we’re getting an incredible insight into which jobs get the best online response.  It actually surprises us sometimes which positions get the most hits.

Now – just some brief advice about posting to Twitter.  Think about your audience.  If I’m looking for CPA’s in DC Metro I’m going to do some research first on Twitter and find profiles of likely candidates and maybe even seek out the feeds of local associations for these professionals.  Sure – I can approach them directly, but initially I’m looking to get some assistance in making my post viral and using their networks.   Doesn’t take much time and can be accomplished by directly searching Twitter, or one of the many twitter directories or just use a search string on Google or Bing like this:

site:twitter.com intitle:cpa “washington, dc”

There is a bonus item for the jobseeker…they can go directly to BullhornReach here and search the site for jobs.  If you’ve been looking for a solution that’s free and easy and really makes social job posting painless, try BullhornReach.  Even if it’s just because Billi and I like it.

Bonnie and Clyde.  Cleveland and Lebron. Peanut Butter and Chocolate.  Jay-Z and Rick Rubin.  Shaq and Kobe.  Chris Bosh and a box of tissues. Some great combinations that just seem to belong together.  If you know me, you know that I think Sports and HR/Talent Management belong together in the same way. ~Kris Dunn

The long national nightmare is over. Take comfort dear readers, the latest chapter in the saga known as ‘The 8 Man Rotation’ is back.Get your copy over here! It’s been a year since the first edition of the world’s leading ’HR and Sports’ E-book was issued, and the response, enthusiasm, and general excitement that accompanied that effort had led to the next installment, the second season if you will. ~Steve Boese

In what is probably the most anticipated eBook release of 2012 the The 8 Man Rotation crew (Matt Stollack, Steve Boese, Lance Haun, Kris Dunnand I) today release to the world version two of our most famous HR/Sports related blog posts of 2011:  The 8 Man Rotation – the 2011 Season.   The forward is written by two of our HR friends and great writers in their own right - Trish McFarlane and William Tincup – who get to poke fun at our obsession with the weird combination of sports and HR that we just won’t give up writing about. ~Tim Sackett

Sticks and Balls. For most people, sports… the doing and the talking about… is just as important to our culture as art. Loving sports is not about gender… meaning, guys are NOT modern day cavemen because all they do is mainline ESPN and sports talk shows. IMHO, loving sports is about relating to our fellow men and women. For example, what team do you root for / against? ~William Tincup

Download Your Copy Today

Our topic for the taping was implicit bias, which is the bias you don’t know that you have, but the rest of the world instantly recognizes when you do something stupid like love someone’s resume, love them on the phone but then say “something just didn’t click” when you meet them in person.

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

Apart from actual contest itself, won by the New York Football Giants, the Super Bowl has also become the pinnacle event for big brands, marketers, and advertising agencies. In fact the Super Bowl has become well, the Super Bowl for the ad game. The stakes are very high in this game too, while not playing for rings, trophies, and the chance to say ‘I’m going to Disney World’, brands and their agencies need to make an impact to see a positive return on an investment estimated to run about $3.5 million for the average 30-second national spot.

And as the size and spectacle of the Super Bowl has steadily grown over the years, dialing up the pressure on players, coaches, and marketers alike, the growth of social media and networking has elevated watching, critiquing, evaluating, and opining about the commercials to unprecedented levels. Now, just watching the game and the commercials over a few chicken wings and some brewskis is not a complete experience, many of us tweet along with the big plays and the splashy commercials as well, providing brands and marketers real-time reaction and visceral feedback on the big-money spots. While kind of fun for viewers of the show, I’ll bet there are at least a few nervous moments in the homes of Ad agency execs and CMO’s from the big brands that advertise during the game.

So apart from the New York fighting Elis, who else won the Super Bowl?

Was it Chrysler with the Clint Eastwood ‘Halftime in America’ take? Perhaps Budweiser with one of its spots? Or maybe the Go Daddy piece worked for you, (It’s fine to admit it, we won’t judge you. Well, maybe a little).

How about an ad that aired during the game, but only in the tiny, 15,000 or so household market of North Platte, Nebraska? The ad, a simple 30-second spot for Old Milwaukee Beer with comedian Will Ferrell featured Ferrell in a pair of shorts, walking through a wheat field toward the camera. From off screen a can of Old Milwaukee is tossed to him; and just as he opens it, the commercial ends abruptly, mid-pitch, (video of the ad is below, email and RSS subscribers click through).

What is the big deal about this short, slightly goofy, cost about $1500 to air, and hardly shown to anyone actually watching the game commercial?

Well by many accounts the Old Milwaukee spot was one of the most successful of the entire night. According to Business Week:

Yet despite its tiny TV audience, the Old Milwaukee ad managed to outperform some of the nationally broadcast Super Bowl commercials in an increasingly important metric of Super Bowl advertising bragging rights: chatter on social-media networks. According to a study by the Boston-based advertising agency Mullen, Ferrell’s Old Milwaukee ad has so far generated 1,640 mentions on Twitter. That’s significantly more buzz than was created by some of the national Super Bowl spots, including ones for Cadillac (which generated 345 Tweets), Century 21 (520 Tweets), Lexus (922 Tweets), CareerBuilder (1,001 tweets), and Hulu (1,191 Tweets).

Imagine the conversations that probably happened after the game among execs and ad agencies from some of the big names that in a way were ‘beaten’ by Ferrell spot. The $1500 ad buy from an obscure brand that aired live only in North Platte was apparently outperforming (in one increasingly important metric, social media chatter), the multi-million dollar investments by some of the world’s biggest brands. Great for Old Milwaukee, maybe not so great for the good folks at Cadillac or CareerBuilder.

Why does this matter to you, after all you’re not buying or creating TV ads? You are just looking to find the right talent to fill your open slots and maintain a decent candidate pipeline for future needs.

When taken along with reports of P&G’s recent announcement of plans to layoff up to 1,600 staff many in marketing roles as the company plans to a redistribute some of the traditional marketing budget towards social venues such as Google and Facebook, and the increase in recruitment advertising spend on professional and social networks and away from traditional agencies and job boards; the Old Milwaukee ad offers a bit of a lesson and also signals a warning.

The lesson?

That with some intelligence, wit, and a little bit of luck, social clearly offers at least the opportunity for the little guys to not only compete with the big guys, but to surpass them.

The warning?

That your CHRO or CEO or CFO, (anyone with a ‘C’ really), takes a look at your next budget request for anything related to employment marketing, job advertising, agency recruiting, or travel to recruiting events and asks you why you need the same (or more) as you got last year when Will Ferrell and Old Milwaukee can do it right for only practically nothing.

You probably need to have an answer for that question, and if you don’t have one just yet, perhaps the good people of North Platte can help you out. They know a thing or two about viral marketing.

I could almost call you a 1%-er.  You’ve arrived, both in educational background and the disposable income that follows it.  You’ve got so much disposable income that you actually make choices about what you eat based on how humanely the animals you eat are treated before their… er…. special day.  Hey, I get it – I’m married to a lady that was a vegetarian for 5 years, and since I don’t cook that made me a vegetarian as well.   It felt good to say that I didn’t eat animals.  If you can’t say that, it has to feel good to say the only chicken you’ll eat has to be “free-range” instead – humanely treated and able to roam around.  A smile on their beak.  And a higher price when it’s time to go to market.

Congrads on eating free-range chicken, 1%-er – you know who you are.  BUT – make no mistake, most of the world doesn’t have the cash to be moral when it comes to chicken.  They just need protein.  The chickens provide a nice source of that.

A bigger question is this – if you support the concept of free-range chicken, do you support the concept of “free-range employees”?  A new tool called the ROC Restaurant Review aims to give us all visibility into the lives the hired help leads at our favorite casual dining chains.  Here’s a taste of what they’re after from BusinessWeek:

“If you want to be served by a waiter likely to make at least $5 an hour before tips, head to the sushi chain Todai, Danny Meyer’s Union Square Hospitality Group, or Craft Restaurants, owned by Tom Colicchio of Top Chef fame. Or maybe you don’t want a line cook going to work with a cold (and sneezing on your lunch). In that case your best bets are In-N-Out Burger, Chipotle Mexican Grill (CMG), or Five Guys Burgers and Fries.

Those are some of the recommendations in a new dining guide that’s more Mother Jones than Michelin, putting mouthwatering descriptions of foie gras and roasted poussinon the back burner in favor of criteria such as how much the line cooks and servers are paid and whether their employers offer them chances to rise up the ranks. “Consumers will now routinely ask if they are eating free-range chicken,” says Saru Jayaraman, co-director of Restaurant Opportunities Center United, the New York-based workers’ rights group that wrote ROC National Diners’ Guide 2012: A Consumer Guide on the Working Conditions of American Restaurants. “Well, we want them to ask if their servers are getting paid sick days, too.”

The ratings are based on info gathered from owners, managers and employees from 186 of the largest fast food, fast-casual and fine dining chains across the U.S.  As you might expect, the ROC group is using the data to lobby national and state legislators for mandatory sick leave for all workers.

It’s hard to be a HR pro and say that you’re OK with the government mandating sick time, but I have to say I’m open to that idea – more so than I would like to admit as a business owner.  But, the problem with mandatory sick time policies lies in how companies that are doing most things right are treated.  Offer a pool of PTO days for employees to use for vacation and sick time?  The government generally doesn’t get that approach has benefits that a forced march to coding time-off as sick time doesn’t – and you might actually have to add more days to your overall policy if you want to keep doing business as usual.   That’s no good.  There’s also the inconvenient truth that the most cost you add to a business unit, the fewer of them there are going to be.

But back to the question – do you care enough about “free-range employees” to drive by one of the major fast-food chains and pay a premium for 5 Guys?  That’s really the question, and it holds double meaning for the “free-range chicken” crowd.

Do you care enough to only eat at those establishments?  I doubt it.  Hit me with a comment below when you get out of your oversized SUV to go into Wal-Mart for your weekly shopping trip.   I’d love a picture of that Widespread Panic sticker on the back of the SUV while you’re at it.

1st World Problems – for sure.