Of course, we gave them eight. Maybe nine. I’m not sure. Counting isn’t really our “thing”.

With Tim Sackett on the mic as the moderator, and Laurie Ruettimann, Jennifer McClure, and me (Meredith Soleau) on the panel – you can pretty much predict the session was about to turn into a Chelsea Handler show.

We. Were. Freaking. Hilarious.

THE UNPAID INTERNSHIP

Laurie pointed out that unpaid internships are soon to be a thing of the past. Recent court legislation is ruling in the favor of interns who were not paid, and this means we should stop getting HR work done for free.

So, if they aren’t going to pay you, and you do actual work – they should be paying you. Even if it is minimum wage, they need to pay up or shut up.

Internships looks great on resumes, and not all companies have budgets to pay an intern. So what’s someone looking for experience supposed to do? I have a solution! Ask someone to be your HR mentor. I was recently asked to be a mentor a college student. And at first I was all, “What’s in this for me?” and then I was all, “I don’t have to pay him, and he can follow me around and learn stuff. And when I teach things, I get better at things.” So ask someone to be your mentor. You can put it on a resume. Just call it a “Mentorship”. But don’t really do any work. Just go learn all the things.

Problem. Solved.

VOLUNTEER FOR YOUR LOCAL SHRM CHAPTER

I found my HR job through my local SHRM chapter. It’s all about who you know, right? So know some people that may want to hire you.

The best way to get to know people is to sit on committees. I was the Social Chair for our SHRM chapter for two years. It sucked! I thought it would be fun to plan golf outings and parties, but it really isn’t. And when your real job gets in the way of your SHRM volunteer job, you realize it has gone too far. So I stepped down. I just didn’t have the time anymore. But if I had some young bucks ready to help me, it would have been awesome, and I would have moved mountains to help this person find a job.

FIND YOUR TARGET COMPANY & ACTUALLY TARGET IT

Jennifer spoke to the group about finding a target company. She super hates it when someone is asking her to help them find a job, and she asks them where they want to work, and they just say, “In HR.”

Give us some ideas when you’re looking. Say things like, “I really like this XYZ Software firm. I want to do HR there.” Telling other HR Pros where you want to work specifically makes us think about other companies (similar to that company) that maybe you didn’t even know about.

And? Once you know your target companies, you know who you need to be tracking down on LinkedIn. Their HR person!

ASK YOUR DAD FOR HELP

Tim Sackett is the master of asking his parents for help. In his case, it was his mom. He runs her company now.

However, Laurie pointed out that networking with your parents’ friends is a really good idea. You can meet them at the golf course, at parties, or wherever parent-types hang out. Tell them you are seeking employment, and then beg them to send you leads. If no one knows you’re looking, no one will help you. Your job is finding a job, and sometimes word of mouth is the best way to do it.

Note: If you name drop people – ask them if it’s okay first.

GO WHERE THE JOBS ARE LOCATED

Want to work in oil? Don’t really care, you just need a job?

GREAT! North Dakota has jobs for you! [email subscribers click through to see video]

Jennifer points out that they’re looking for warm bodies, but we think it’s cold there. So pack a coat!

BARTENDERS MAKE THE BEST HR PROS

When I interviewed, it came down to the final two candidates, and the other candidate had experience as an intern for The Toledo Zoo. Which? That’s like a super popular zoo, you guys.

I had experience… as a bartender.

So I took that experience, and turned it into, “Hey! I have more people skills! And I can talk to anyone! And sober people are way easier to talk to than drunk people!”

Someone asked me if I still feel the same way about sober people during the session.

No comment.

FOLLOW THE MONEY

Laurie is super smart. She wants you all to read, read, read.

You can tell who is hiring when you read. What industry is taking a sudden boom? Did someone just go public? Who is winning awards? What company just received a massive grant? These people are going to spend that money. And lots of times, they spend it on people.

Laurie wants you to follow the money, and really get a job you want. Don’t just take the first offer. Follow that money!

Although sometimes you take a job making a baby amount of money and you end up really liking it and they promote you over and over (at least that’s what happened to me).

NAIL THE INTERVIEW

Jennifer began this with the one HR trick question. Do you know what it is? “Tell me something about yourself.”

TELL ME SOMETHING COOL. DON’T BE LAME.

Tim Sackett says you need a story. Like a 30 second pitch. His is about how he was raised by women. Mine is about how I was supposed to be a famous country music singer, but my parents made me go to college instead. Laurie super likes cats. But we all have something interesting to say.

So say something to Jen’s questions besides, “Uh… well… I am President of my business fraternity…”

Yeah, yeah, we will get to that. You put it on your resume. We want something not on that resume. You need to entertain us. Make us like you!

And also – as bad as it is – we are humans. And humans judge people by the way they look. So Laurie wants you all to find bras that fit. Because nothing is more distracting in that first five seconds we meet than staring at your boobie-muffin-top.

So, in conclusion, to get a job you need to:

• Entertain us
• Find some jobs
• And wear the proper underwear

Yep. That about covers it.

I doubt we’ll be asked back again next year. But I hope we are. For the kids…

(drops mic)

YouTube link here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6E0rm5KZdZg

And I totally held the camera. So there.

This is training for you – the HR/Talent pro.  Book this on your calendar and consume it.

However, this was not first time I had heard that sentence.

In fact – I heard it from her husband a while back when talking about the Clinton Global Initiative (or CGI).  The context of President Clinton’s statement was that now that he wasn’t President he could “afford to pay attention to the trend lines and not worry about the headlines.”

I thought that was one of the best summaries of what is killing us across the board in business – and in HR.

We Can’t Wait

Unfortunately for us and our own politicians – including our Presidents – we are continually focused on the headlines.  Our jobs depend on managing the “now” not working on the “then.”  We can’t wait for success.  Voters and bosses want you to focus on results tomorrow – not results in 5 years.

How many of you work on strategies and plans with a 5-year horizon?  How many of your daily activities are focused on a two-week, two-month, two quarter horizons?  I’m guessing the majority of your tasks are shorter term issues – focused on the headlines from the last staff meeting and not the major trends that will eventually crop up as emergencies in 5 years.

Social Media Fuels “Today-ism”

As I thought about President Clinton’s statement (and now Ms. Clinton’s) I couldn’t help but feel that social media – especially twitter – is fueling this need to address what we think is important and critical because it is popular in our feed today.  It is difficult to see 10, 20, 30 tweets go by on recruiting, retention, engagement, etc. – and not feel like you HAVE to do something with them.  It must be important, why else would there be so much on social media about it?

But if you think about it, working on solving problems that are in the headlines is all about solving problems in the past.  Anything that is in a headline today – is yesterday’s news.

Your real focus should be those things that will affect your company in the future.

Today AND Tomorrow

I know you can’t focus 100% of your time on the trend lines – no one can.  But I recommend you break your to-do list into two columns…

Column 1 = Headline Work

Column 2 = Trend Line Work

Today work and tomorrow work.

We ALL have to focus some of our work on the trend lines if we ever expect

Why do we have to wait until we don’t HAVE to worry about headlines to focus on trend lines?  Why can’t we just manage the balance better?

1. Paid Sick Leave: Solving a Health Issue or Another Burden on Employers? A number of states and cities across the country have recently passed bills that require employers to provide paid sick days, sparking much debate among employers, advocates and legislators.

2. Fox Searchlight loses key ruling in intern labor lawsuit. Fox Searchlight Pictures has lost a key ruling in its long-running legal fight with former interns who worked on movie productions without pay.

3. Bill Gates Joins LinkedIn. Bill Gates made his LinkedIn debut this past Thursday morning as one of the network’s super influencers.

4. Four Lies People Tell Themselves About Retirement.  With proper planning and focus, you can be well on your way to achieving the retirement of your dreams.

5. In Need of a CEO, Lululemon Posts a Job Description. After their current CEO stepped down early last week, Lululemon did what any employer in need of talent would do — they post a job ad.

Have a great week, FOT Nation!

Backstory: One of baseball’s unwritten rules is that they try to police themselves when a member of another team steps out of line. You hit our batter, we’ll hit yours. Show up our pitcher after a home run, and you’re likely to get drilled in the future. Hurt one of our players on a cheap play, be ready to duck.

All of this was on display the other night in Arizona, as the Dodgers and Diamondbacks traded three beanballs, stemming from a two year old fight. From ESPN:

The bad blood between the Dodgers and Diamondbacks dates back to September 2011, when (Clayton) Kershaw and (Don) Mattingly were both ejected after Kershaw, upset with some showboating after a home run the night before, hit Gerardo Parra with a pitch.

The Dodgers say the score (still) remains unsettled because Diamondbacks pitcher Ian Kennedy hit pitcher Zack Greinke high on the left shoulder in the seventh inning. The Dodgers thought the issue should have been over after Greinke hit Miguel Montero in the seventh inning in retaliation for Yasiel Puig’s beaning an inning earlier.

…The Diamondbacks reportedly were upset Tuesday because Greinke appeared to miss Montero with two pitches before one of them hit him squarely in the numbers on his back. Some people interpret baseball’s unwritten code to say that a pitcher gets only one pitch to try to retaliate.

Mattingly said they should have taken it up with home-plate umpire Clint Fagan for not throwing Greinke out of the game after the first errant pitch. “If you’re mad at the umpire, throw at the umpire,” Mattingly said.

Mattingly makes the right point. Should the umpires have gotten involved earlier? When do you let the employees figure it out for themselves and when do you handle it? In this case, the umpires did not eject anyone until the third beaning. The umpires apparently were fine letting the Diamondbacks hit the Dodgers in retaliation once, but not twice.

Finally, they had to step in when the teams stepped over that line. Six ejections that night and fines and suspensions are all coming.

Do you have unwritten rules in your workplace that allow for employees to figure out disagreements? I am not advocating beaning Larry for not making a fresh pot of coffee, but is there something? In my first job, we used to decide who got the worst assignments by battling it out with rock-paper-scissors. Do you have anything?

Lastly, I think it is hilarious that Greinke wanted to hit the opposing player so badly that he tried three times in a row before he got it done.

You know what’s really cool about the readers of FOT?  When we ask for something, the FOT Nation always comes through — always. We try and not pimp you constantly with vendor crap. We provide good content and webinars for FREE.  You guys always respond in a matter that blows the FOT team away!  Always!  The truth is we are HR and talent pros just like you.  We write and produce content because we love it — not because Kris pays us.

I need something from you FOT Nation.

On Monday June 17th at 2:30pm in The Hive at the 2013 SHRM annual conference in Chicago – FOT will be live!  SHRM is kind of scared about this. They only gave us 30 minutes because they really don’t want the ‘normal’ SHRM attendees to hear what we have to say about the HR and Talent profession. SHRM is nervous. We didn’t give them an outline or a PowerPoint presentation. We didn’t get the content pre-approved.  They have no idea what we are going to do… [insert dark laughter]

Our first title for the 30 minute session was:

3 Things SHRM Doesn’t Want FOT To Tell You About HR

That got rejected unless we took out the ‘SHRM’.  That makes a lot of sense “3 Things ‘X’ Doesn’t Want FOT To Tell You About HR”!

Our second vanilla title was accepted:

The 3 Best Things You’ll Bring Back from SHRM – FOT’s Gift to HR Pros

Yep – FOT will be celebrating Christmas in June – we’re giving out gifts. Our best advice and best ideas from the insiders at FOT.  Stuff we use in our own shops that we think you’re probably not using, but should be. We should be charging for this session, but again, not SHRM approved behavior.

FOT Nation, here’s the only thing you need to do… Show Up!  Our plan is turn our 30 minutes of fame at SHRM into an Hour of fame and bump the next presenter because the demand will be so crazy with questions and thousands of you filling The SHRM Hive!

Bring a friend (or three!),  this will be the single most talked about presentation at SHRM National in 2013. Come help us Occupy The Hive!

Also, be sure to document the fun on Instagram using the hashtag #FOTNation.

- Tim and the team at FOT

To get your pics to display on the FOT blog feed, simply tag any photo you post to Instagram with #FOTNation. The feed is hashtag specific and will only pull those pics with #FOTNation attached. We encourage you — our valued readers — to share pics from conferences (e.g. #SHRM2013) and your daily HR/personal life. You’re in HR so we shouldn’t have to say this, but here it goes…

The FOT Social Media Policy: Respect the feed i.e. keep it clean, keep it relevant and please don’t be that guy/gal that makes us have to take it down.

Spread the word, #FOTNation.

And if you Instagram, follow us via @fistfuloftalent. We WILL follow you back.

So… Why aren’t more college students on LinkedIn?

1.  College students already have a social network. 

If you are an older professional like me, think back to your own initial experience with LinkedIn.  For many of us, it was a unique way to keep up with a wide but loose network of colleagues, former colleagues, and business contacts.  There was a little bit of excitement every time we got an invitation from an old contact, as it confirmed that people remembered who we were and wanted to continue building a professional relationship.

Read the whole post over at MyEdu’s blog Higher Calling: Driving a Return on Education (an FOT Favorite).

Host:  Kris Dunn

Producer: Holland Dombeck

Music:

intro  - The Mighty Mighty Bosstones “Someday I Suppose”

close – The Black Keys “Tighten Up”

Can’t see the player below? Click here to listen now.

All episodes available on iTunes [click for archives]