John resigned and left a couple of weeks ago. It was on good terms, but you recruited John and feel some of the sting. After all, you needed him in that role and went out and got him. He left you hanging - he left for what he considers a better opportunity before spending a year at your company. Free Agent Nation my #$$. What ever happened to working through the bumps? Cue the music from the Godfather... Then, t...

If you look around long enough in your life - especially if you have kids - you'll see a pattern emerge. People are trying to coach others as much as they can, but they default to non-specific feedback that is unhelpful at best and counter-productive at worst. Want some examples? Sweet! Here you go: 'Try Harder' 'You Just Need To Work More' 'Focus' 'Be Patient' 'Give Them What They Want' Read t...

And they ask you about the game you claim you got Drop science now, why not? You start to sweat and fret, it gets hot How'd you get into this spot? You played yourself... Yo, yo, you played yourself... --Ice-T You know where I'm going with this if you clicked through, right? Difficult hiring managers. Not to be confused with those who suck. Or maybe that's the same thing - I'll let you decid...

Nothing happens without sales. Treat your salespeople right, because unless they kill something, nobody eats. For the reasons stated above, it's not wrong for the leaders of your company to want to transform your culture into a sales machine. The problem happens when people who weren't hired to sell suddenly find themselves with quotas, but no idea of what to do next. I was reminded of the perils of leaders...

Yeah, I said it. In my darkest moments, I’m a bit of a skeptic. And I think unlimited PTO might just be a scam to not pay out accrued vacation and sick time. With me? Against me? As with most things, the truth probably lies somewhere in the middle. Here’s 5 things I know about vacation/sick time and the connection to the concept of unlimited PTO: Unlimited PTO is limitless in its attraction as a...

It's a profession with limited barriers to entry and literally a million agency/corporate positions available. It's a profession where the hardest workers and the most entrepreneurial usually get the best results. It's a profession looked at with disdain by many candidates who are sick of hearing from members of said profession. SO - Anyone can be a recruiter, right? I bring this up for the following...

Sometime after your first year with your company, you start to settle in. All the onboarding is complete, the honeymoon is over and you've accurately assessed your job as a mix of positives and negatives. If you're still there and not on the market after a year, that generally means you're content. Hopefully you're learning and things are starting to click related to your role and how you can have success...

There's this old idea that non-competes and most types of NDA/IP agreements are either flimsy or negotiable. While that may true in some cases, my experience is that you can get sleepy/lazy related to how you consider these as an HR Leader. My experience as an HR leader recruiting high level candidates with non-competes/NDAs/IP agreements is as follows - they mean nothing until they do, then in a giant pissing conte...

If there's a big problem in corporate America, it's that we say 'Yes' too much at times. Yes to that request.. Yes, I can help you.. Yes, I'd be happy to be part of your project team... Yes, your response to my request is fine... There's a whole lot of yes going around. The problem? Only about 1/2 of the 'yes' responses are followed up with action that is representative of all of us living u...

There are 1.8 million truck drivers in the U.S., making it one of the largest occupations in the country. There are tens of thousands of truck drivers in most major metropolitan areas. Also, not really represented in the chart above - most rural areas that lost light manufacturing or textile mills at the end of the last century transitioned a bunch of male workers from manufacturing to driving trucks, because it was th...