by Janine Nicole Dennis | Feb 13, 2015 | Mobile, Sponsored Post
Campaign/FTC disclosure: I will receive compensation for promoting this campaign. I only work with companies I feel have great products, services and offerings. In accordance with my blog disclosure statement, I will only work with and showcase products and/or companies I believe my readers will benefit from. Freedome VPN has hired me as a brand ambassador for this campaign because of my influence on social media and knowledge of cybersecurity concerns. I am not formally employed by Freedome VPN. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.
Image Courtesy of Freedome VPN
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How can you win?
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I hope you like the product as much as I do. Good luck on winning the iPad and online privacy for one year!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wr3Hnh837ew
by Janine Nicole Dennis | Feb 11, 2015 | Career, Featured, Talent Acquisition, Talent Management
As someone who worked in Talent Acquisition for most of her career, I was the person responsible for ensuring the continued progression of thousands of people’s careers. I made offers that meant people could feed their families and others that catapulted people to the executive suite, I negotiated great packages and sometimes had to sell the not-so-attractive offers. I was an agent of opportunity always on the hunt for the best person that met the company’s needs. With all of this workforce good I was doing, it occurred to me that many of my colleagues and I were often closing better career deals for the people we served than for ourselves.
If you have worked in Talent Acquisition you know it is not an easy job. As a function we are responsible for making sure that every department is adequately staffed. From the Janitor to the CFO, we are charged with keeping the halls filled with talent with little to no disruption to the business. In my experience, I have had varying requisition loads. I have handled as little as 6 reqs at anytime and upwards of 175 when I worked for someone who was blatantly trying to drown me- but I digress. My point is this job isn’t for the faint of heart and yet there is often a lack of interest and focus in creating a career path for the very same professionals who dedicate themselves to doing it for others.
If you’re a TA Specialist or Internal Recruiter in a company, where do you go next? The path isn’t always clear or it doesn’t exist. In some organizations, TA Specialists move to TA Leads or Senior TA Specialists and eventually to TA Manager if they shake the right hands- but where else can their skills be utilized? It has been the great paradox of my existence in TA to realize my opportunities were non-existent while remaining excited about the opportunities and salary increases I was able to offer others.
A breakthrough…
Alas, I have met someone who understands the need to develop her Talent Acquisition team. Last week while attending the Take The Interview Talent Acquisition Summit/#truNewYork, I had the pleasure of sitting in on a track led by Ali Wong of NBC Universal. She heads up the Talent Acquisition function there and is changing the game for the Talent Acquisition professionals on her team. During her track, she spoke about how she is helping her team get out of the rut of just filling requisitions and on to thinking about how they personally want to impact the business. She’s not telling her team, “sorry, there is no career path” or “we’d love to see you in leadership, but…”. She is insisting that ever recruiter, sourcer, and coordinator have a clear understanding of how they impact the business; while allowing them to constantly learn, develop and be exposed to the people that can advocate for their career progression.
At NBC Universal, Recruiters are responsible for the mentorship and career progression of the sourcers and coordinators who support them. I have always been perplexed by organizations that went as far to create these talent acquisition teams composed of a recruiter, sourcer and coordinator only to remove the recruiter from having any input into the development and performance management for the roles that support them daily. Frankly, it’s a missed opportunity for the sourcers and coordinators to be mentored by someone in the role they will eventually have and it robs the recruiter of key leadership experience that will be needed as they progress up the ranks.
Back to Ali, she holds her team accountable for results and business impact. None of the ridiculous rumination about time-to-fill and other baseline headaches. She has a clear standard and that is to produce what the internal customers need and she will develop you so you can move on to do the things you want to do in the company, Conversely, if you cannot work up to her standard or find that the job is not what you wanted-she encourages you to move to another area of the company where your talents would be better served.
Changing the game…
If you can’t tell, I am more than impressed with the way she leads her team. Her leadership is not one to admire superficially, but it is backed by results. Her team consistently meets and exceeds their targets. They are “game changers” as she calls them.
Anyone can hire recruiters or a TA team and deploy them to frantically fill all of the positions in a company. However, it takes time, thought and effort to build and deploy a team that love what they do, produce and make an impact. Oh and by the way, she doesn’t care where the work gets done as long as it gets done- a nod and a wink for telework. TA Specialists, Recruiters, Sourcers, Coordinators, TA Assistants need career love too. If you are going to hold them responsible for bringing in the talent you are going to have to invest in them as well. Moreover, ensure that they are lead by someone who understands the value and importance of their work- who also relentlessly pushes them to find their passion. That passion will not only make them happier in their work, but it will come through when prospective candidates meet with these people to size up your company.
I was also reminded by colleagues at the summit that the recruitment and/or talent acquisition function will cease to exist in the next 10 years, so while we still have it-let’s show a little career love to the guys and gals in the trenches making it happen one job at a time.
by Janine Nicole Dennis | Feb 4, 2015 | Business, Career, Featured, Human Resources, Talent Management
Courtesy of Pixabay.com
There is nothing more reassuring to a jobseeker than hearing that opportunity abounds in the company you are interviewing with. It isn’t the most important aspect for everyone, but for a good majority- it is the defining factor next to compensation and other candidate bait. There’s very little reason for candidates to doubt your claim of endless upward mobility. That is until they get burned. When they start a job and find out the yellow brick road to career greatness is more like quicksand; it leads to initial disappointment-but they haven’t lost hope in every employer yet. They start to search again and find another seemingly good company. To ensure that they don’t make the same mistake again, they ask your recruiter better questions during the interview process. They join your company with hope and promise beneath their wings; but this time there is a new set of tricks that halt their career progression. Now, it hits the candidate like a ton of bricks that there’s something wrong. Either they are really bad at choosing companies or they aren’t as great as they thought. To put it plainly it is utterly frustrating.
At a time where retention and talent management are all the rage, you would think companies would be more intentional about looking at practices that may be undermining their efforts.Whatever your sentiment is about how employees progress in the company, you have to agree that the following practices are pretty lame and counterproductive to your talent management strategy.
1) Bogus Job Postings– Here we have those highly-coveted positions where you have quietly identified your candidate of choice, but decide to waste your employees’ time, energy and emotions as they fawn over a job they have no possibility of attaining. The worst part about this is the imposition you put both your recruiters and candidates in. Both parties know how it’s going to turn out, but instead they have to go through the motions because you want it to appear that you conducted a competitive search.
2) Sneak-Attack Promotions- When you feel the need to confidentially promote employees followed by a celebrity-worthy press release announcing your decision- morale is going to plummet. It doesn’t say very much about your leadership ability, when you don’t think enough of your team to give them a chance to apply and interview for positions they are qualified to do.
3) Hold em’ and Fold em’- Are your managers undermining your employees’ ability to transfer by creating performance issues and personality narratives that never existed? This is typical when opportunity presents internally, but the manager does everything in their power to keep the employee from progressing further by sharing off-the-record performance fodder that influences the selection process. The problem with this is the employee catches on eventually and realizes they’ve been blacklisted.
4) The Relic on the Shelf- Poor tenured employee who has done well in becoming the go-to gal or guy in their department, but can’t seem to get any further. So you mean to tell me that this person who has been with the company for 30+ years with nary a bad performance review and happens to be fluent in the company rules, norms and culture is suddenly not good enough for any other opportunities in the organization or even their own department? Stop the madness!
5) Give Me More… more education, more experience, more skills, a third arm, the stem cells from your first child- I get it-you don’t have time to train and you need them up and running like yesterday. How do more KSA’s help when you haven’t established what is absolutely essential to your operation? In addition, why is it necessary when you have promoted and continue to promote people with no credentials? If you’re going to ask someone to go back to school or learn more, the request needs to be consistent and operationally-warranted. Last time, I checked Jesus Christ already has a job.
Here you have five scenarios where there is likely a disconnect between your intention and practice. The moral of the talent management story is this: if someone isn’t performing well, don’t promote them. However, have the decency to have a conversation about how they can fix it. When they do fix it, don’t hold their past performance mistakes and deficits over their head indefinitely. Strike a balance between what you want and what is needed. You may think you “need” someone with a PH.D and the ability to read minds for that receptionist role, but does it have to be so?
For God’s sake be thankful for your tenured employees, if not for them many of your triumphs and financial gains would not be possible. If they aren’t trained to the standard of the current workforce, blame yourself for not investing in them and insisting that they continue to grow professionally. Speaking of growth, stop hiding and withholding opportunity from your workers. Be transparent about present and upcoming opportunities. Allow your employees to apply for internal opportunities aligned with their backgrounds and interests. The best case scenario is you could find out you have been missing out on some unknown strengths of your employees. The worst case…you hire the right person and your employee carries on knowing that you at least gave them a chance.
Lastly, no more bogus searches. External and internal candidates alike know when you are full of sh%&! Stop putting out external postings knowing you want a qualified internal candidate and stop posting internal positions knowing there’s a VIP in mind. Interviewing for a job is stressful and we have all been there. There is nothing considerate about making someone go through the scrutiny that is synonymous with the interview and selection process for no reason. Being honest about opportunity is just one more way of building rapport with your employees. It also ensures that prospective employees aren’t deterred from joining your company because you haven’t committed to a consistent and fair talent management strategy.
by Janine Nicole Dennis | Jan 20, 2015 | Business, Compliance, Featured, HR Policy
Courtesy of Flickr.com
For you among the crowd that have been involved with audits whereby an infraction was found and you had to pay up- it cuts deep. It stings even worse when in hindsight you recognize that you weren’t proactive and missed something that has now cost the company money. The ultimate question from the top will always be: “how did this happen?” How will you answer: “I don’t know”, “I’m sorry”, “It was a mistake”. Mistakes happen. However, when your mistakes are preventable and they cost your company money that could have been used for other endeavors-HR is going to take some heat and rightfully so.
Take a small to mid-size business (SMB) for instance. You are a business that makes a specific coating for tanks used by the US Military and your federal contract is worth 2.5 million dollars. You have other clients too and they keep you solvent, but this federal contract keeps you afloat. Now consider this: you have not run a pay equity analysis in a few years. As such, one of your mid-level employees has just had a compensation discussion with their boss that turned ugly and in return alerts both OFCCP and DOL of discriminatory compensation actions. You (HR) receive a notice from DOL asking for your entire compensation history for the past three years. Their review of females and minorities corroborate the narrative supplied by your employee- which leads to an onsite audit. Over the course of a year, they find there are plentiful pay equity violations that result in a fine of $700,000. Ouch! Fines of this magnitude can sink a business or at a minimum leave an indelible wound.
Do you remember the Astra-Zeneca DOL Settlement of 2011? Women were found to make at least $1,700 less than their male counterparts doing the same job at AZ. 124 women were awarded a $250,000 settlement. In return, AZ promised to review pay practices and fix any problems.
Could Self-Audits have helped Astra-Zeneca?
Yes. Had they been reviewing their compensation policies and practices regularly they would have seen issues warranting attention and revision before this became a class-action lawsuit. Self-auditing or mock audits can save you and the company from hefty fines, awkward conversations and/or having to close your doors.
Here are some tips on implementing self-auditing as a practice:
- Depending on how often you can expect to be audited by outside agencies, set up an internal audit schedule.
- Create an internal audit team to review your practice against your policy and procedures. Where possible, it is ideal to have someone outside the group being audited conduct the audit for objectivity purposes and for a fresh pair of eyes.
- Summarize findings and create a threats and opportunities analysis to see where you need to improve. “Threats’ in this context would be items that are inconsistent with your policy and violate the law. “Opportunities” are areas where you do well in complying with policy, but there is potential for violating the law.
- Get your team involved. Ask them to conduct their own random spot checks. This holds everyone accountable for the consistency of following procedure and allows you to get ahead of potential issues.
- Train your team on communication during an audit. Saying the wrong thing or too much during an audit can be detrimental your success. Ensuring that each of your team members understands what to expect and how to respond can be helpful for when they are faced with a real auditor.
When it comes to your business, ignorance isn’t bliss. Don’t be afraid to self-audit. It is far better for you or your peers internally to point out your faults than any regulatory agency. Become informed about where your fall short and tighten up your practices. You will thank yourself and the executive team will thank you for saving their money.
by Janine Nicole Dennis | Jan 13, 2015 | Featured, Human Resources, OFCCP, Policy
Courtesy of Wikipedia
By the fall of 2013, those of us in the federal contractor community were made aware of some significant changes coming down from the OFCCP. In good old OFCCP fashion, we were inundated with several new directives that were proposed with very little guidance to employers. Of course all of the major employment law firms went to town developing webinars and the like. Unfortunately, those did little to ease employer’s pains and added to the growing number of contractors in a vegetative state over the new compliance requirements. In January of 2014, I went to a conference in San Francisco to give a concurrent session as well as lead a roundtable on diversity and inclusion. During my roundtable, I asked for a show of hands as I attempted to ascertain how many federal contractors I had at the table.
What I found fascinating was all of the participants were federal contractors and when asked if they started reviewing and planning to comply by March 24th of 2014 as stipulated-they all gave me a resounding “no”. I attempted not to look astonished but nevertheless I continued sharing tidbits about things I was doing to get ahead of the new outreach and recruitment efforts analysis requirements. They all swore they were going to be on top of it when they returned to the office. I certainly hope that was true.
That was then and this is now…
We are now nearly one year into the new compliance and I still hear murmurs of companies not getting in OFCCP shape. If you haven’t started or are taking your sweet time- wake up! The audit list now has 22 items you will be responsible for. Get ahead of it now and lessen your pain when you inevitably receive your notice.
My fellow HR colleagues usually hate me for this-but I believe that much of the pain felt in complying with OFCCP regulations is due to how we approach it. When you see these regulations as onerous ( and I agree some of it is) and fail to see what you get in return for your compliance (which is government money)- you will ultimately procrastinate in doing what is needed. If you treat hiring of minorities, females, individuals with disabilities and veterans as quotas, you will always be in a rut of trying to explain why your AAP goals don’t budge year to year. When you receive government money it is only right that you be held to a higher standard with regard to how you do business. If you take a little bit at a time and approach the requirements as both a business imperative and priority-it will become less burdensome.
Here are five pieces of OFCCP compliance that employers are slacking on:
1) Is your outreach and recruitment efforts rooted in quality or quantity ? You need to be consistently auditing your diversity outreach and recruitment process to see what works and what doesn’t. If you identify outreach activities that aren’t yielding candidates or hires- you need to be proactive and cease utilizing that outreach.
2) Have you revised your self-identification forms yet? According to the new regulations, you need to be asking applicants to self-identify both pre and post offer. This includes updates to include self-identification for Individuals with Disabilities (IWD). Get your OMB-Approved form here.
3) How are you handling reasonable accommodation requests during the hiring process? Be sure that your ATS works well with assistive devices and technologies in an effort to ensure that individuals with disabilities are give equal opportunity to apply and be considered for vacancies.
4) Have they added your EO clause to all subcontracts? Get purchasing involved! This is another requirement that contractors are overlooking. Equal Opportunity clauses must be added to subcontracts, along with language that explains subcontractors obligations as a federal contractor.
5) What’s your hiring benchmark? The 7% goal for IWDs’ is a lofty goal for many businesses. My advice is set your benchmark and make sure it is attainable. If you set it at 5-6% you are just slightly below 7% and it looks admirable that you attempted to get close. It remains to be seen whether contractors will be penalized for playing it safe here.
Now that you have some food for thought, prepare yourself by doing mock audits. Also, encourage your recruitment teams to regularly audit their activities and raise any issues ahead of time so you can tweak things prior to an onsite or offsite audit. Good luck!
