Cringeworthy Mistakes w/ Tim Sackett – The Shaker Green Room at RecFest USA, Ep. 12

[Music] who are you and why are you here today uh I got invited to be here no my name is Tim sacket like I don’t I wrote the talent fix I run Staffing been in ta for 25 years been writing every single day on the blog um so I think that’s kind of probably why found my way to you that’s not how we met right I mean I can’t tell you how much it brightens my day to get that what’s Tim thinking about today email I change that right mix it up I think I think I think the tech is such that you can but anyway do you Tim do you uh you’re presenting here at recfest talk about uh what your presentation is focused on really the five things I think we consistently mess up in the corporate ta world and then like what would be my fixes so it’s things like how we measure success um like now you technology we constantly hear like our my team want to adopt the technology I have and blah blah blah so it’s it’s like the common pitfalls that a TA leader runs into consistently so it’s basically a presentation you could have given back in 2007 basically moving on moving on uh you have you have a book coming out soon talk about talk about the book or you did yeah Talent fix volume two um it’s basically a book that if I would come in to run your ta shop a toz what would I do how would what you know what kinds of things what process what technology what employment branding um in a you know a condensed version as you can um the volume two piece is I I added like 40% new to the the first one um did some things like the white guy’s guide to diversity hiring um you know hire more pretty people like I got a little more aggressive with this one um maybe I’m just like less afraid to be canned or fired or to end the day right Little Light reading so you’ve been at this a long time as I have uh 2024 we we’re ready to turn the page on the year what stood out to you surprised you disappointed you encouraged you what stood out from last year you know I think there was so much talk about the AI stuff we I mean that’s all we’ve talked about I think I’m disappointed in the feature set that’s there everyone has about the same five features there’s not a lot of new I’m hoping as we go out to the fall conference season that we’ll find some newer things that we haven’t I’ve seen a couple early like kind of beta things but for the most part it’s like oh gen you can write a better email you can like write a better job description like it’s all stuff that we saw a year ago that’s basically the same stuff now now again we know the amount of money and time that takes to build stuff so everything hit so fast when chat GPT hit and everybody expected stuff to turn over overnight that’s just not reality in product um but I am a little like surprised that we haven’t seen like some outof the Box stuff that we’re like we’re all talking about and we’re not we’re talking about the same five features yeah yeah the good news is it’s not Terminator and and but it’s but it’s also more turns out AI actually isn’t going to kill us yeah I saw one today was if if a’ 70s disco club was all Lionel Messi and everyone in the club is Lionel Messi so somewhere in between it’ll it’ll work out I know that you have a lot of clients and people that trust in you to to know what you’re talking about what is the biggest challenge companies have had in the last 10 12 months I think it stems from how how difficult it was to hire post pandemic and even coming in right we had super low unemployment coming in y so you have this extended period of time of really low unemployment and what it caused hiring managers to do is just not really performance manage well they were like they were just happy to have a warm body and now all of a sudden we come into this time when you’re like hey we need our best and brightest we’re going to get leaner and yet they still aren’t performance managing really well like we just haven’t and we have so many new Millennial gen Z leaders and we just haven’t trained them and so I look at it and I think the core issue that most organizations when I like I go and work with like a TA leader or a chro usually their technolog is fine I mean it could get better right um their process is fine it could get better their Performance Management is sucks it’s so bad and they’re just so worried that they’re like well if I do this Tina will quit and like so like give get a better Tina right like they’re just so they’re so nervous to Performance manage anybody and like I saw a stat recently was like 70% of leaders are uncomfortable having a direct conversation with one of their direct reports MH and that speaks to that youngness of leadership that you’re like hey I I’m so uncomfortable with Performance Management that I’m actually have anxiety to have a real direct conversation about how you’re performing like that’s it’s crazy yeah so just to be clear Tina is a fictional character there’s no one out you know who you are no trigger no trigger for Tina out there so we’re we’re heading into 2025 a new year uh what do you expect to Come Away with for next year what are you looking forward to what kind of Trends are you keeping your eye on you know I I think at the end of the day like AI is going to um reduce the footprint of ta in terms of headcount um we we know that’s already happening we see that we’re going to continue to see that I’m really like looking forward to this evolution of well what does a recruiter like we’ve talked about Talent ADV and being strategic and all this crap for a decade more right so what is the future of recruiting what ises that what does that recruiter really look like if I have 80% of that job that can be done by AI 247 365 better yeah now what do you do as a recruiter and I’m actually excited about that I think that that recruiter becomes a true Talent adviser can really start to dig in can really start to increase the talent on a team um really understand their hiring manager limitations and the the dynamic of a team so what do you not have on your team what do you continue to over hire for under hire for how do we really get back and start to increase the talent level in an organization because now all of a sudden we we actually have real capacity and we have t like recruiters that can actually spend that time we’ve talked about like again like this forever and it’s like hey can we now what does the future of recruiting look like and by the way I think it’s the vendor Community has to define a lot of that yeah because you come in and they go oh no we’re not here to replace recruiters which is BS um we know that um but so if you’re going to replace recruiters tell the recruiting leaders now what the recruiters should be doing and show them what they should be doing teach them the way we we continue on the vendor side overestimate the sophistication of a TA leader and I don’t say that to disparage those are my people I love the TA people but they’re in the they’re in the weeds they’re in the fire every day and then we come in as a vendors and we go oh my God they’re so smart they know everything no they don’t teach them they want to learn they want to learn about AI they want to learn how it can help them they want to learn how to perform in manage better they want to learn about data and how to be a better bi specialist like teach them so it sounds like at least for 20% of them you’re you’re bullish and optimistic for the future um it would behoove me as as two fellow middle-aged white guys not to ask about diversity are you bullish bearish on the future of of dni we’re seeing companies bailing on it we’re seeing companies getting out of the political uh aspect of it what do you what do you see for the future of it shockingly as a white dude um I I think we’ve completely screwed up like de and um and here’s my thing if you so you had recr is in white guys mess something else up okay if we had recruiting and recruiting wasn’t giving us enough of the inclusion that we needed of the mix that we needed whatever that was we decided to start another recruiting diversity recruiting and I put in my book like hey I don’t think we should have diversity recruiting and and it’s controversial because I’m like what other function in the world where you go hey you know what Finance isn’t working well we’re going to start a second Finance like division we would never do that you have to we have to make recruiting work the way it should work we have to make sure that it’s inclusive that it’s doing all the things that we should be doing starting a second level of recruiting isn’t the answer and we’ve shown that now for a decade it’s not working um and so I think we have to hold our recruiting leaders HR leaders and our Executives responsible for actually running a function the proper way Tim thanks for hanging out uh we appreciate your fans for letting us uh talk to you for a few minutes for our listeners and viewers that want to connect with you learn more where should they go you can Google Tim sck I there’s another Tim sacket he’s a truck driver chaplain in Minnesota I’m not that guy it’d be amazing does he have a daily blog like you do if if I was like Tim sack recruiter guy during the day and then the weekends I’m truck driver chaplain that would be a much better story for us you have to have a monkey though yeah you have to have a monkey I sold all of his SEO so or you can go to LinkedIn on tims.com you know thanks Tim good to see you and enjoy the rest of the show man [Music]