Fantastic, your offer letter will arrive shortly. When you come in on your first day get settled in your office. You know, look around, go through the drawers in the file cabinet, find where everything is. We’ll set you up for lunch to make sure everything is going well. Welcome aboard!

This must be a script passed around like a scammy email chain to upper level execs – because I have personally heard it no less than 3 times in my career. Maybe I passed the litmus test and got those jobs precisely because I am a self starter, don’t need hand holding and like to work independently. Maybe I was easy because I wear my Special Agent badge on my sleeve like a scarlet letter – less work than other candidates would have been had they been hired.

It’s no way to intro someone to their job though.

Walk into said dark office early the first day after guestimating where to park because you wasn’t assigned a spot yet. People looking at you like you broke in the joint because no one was told you were hired.. No PC log in, no phone extension, no key to your own desk drawer?

No welcoming committee… or card on the desk signed by the team saying they are grateful to have someone to pick up the work they have been burdened with since the last chicken flew the coop…

I’m looking for examples – both good and bad, for a presentation I’m writing this weekend for THE Conference on attracting and retaining top talent.  What’s your story?

Oh… and if you would like to come to THE Conference, a whole day of business learning and fun in Wilkes-Barre, PA, with 6 tracks and 30 sessions for $99. –> Sign up, what are you waiting for? ~ SA Porter

Michael VanDervort told me he was sending a guy my way who wanted to discuss onboarding. A few tweets and emails later and we were on the phone. It was G.L. Hoffman, a serial entrepreneur and venture investor/operator/incubator/mentor. Two of his companies have traveled the entire success path from the garage to IPO. Currently, he is chairman of JobDig, and his blog can be found at WhatWouldDadSay.com or at JobDig.com. You’ll also find his thoughts all over U.S. News and World Report, Forbes, FastCompany, the Wall Street Journal and other business publications and newspapers.

Of note is his project LinkUp, a job search engine with a twist. What makes LinkUp better than other job websites like Monster or CareerBuilder?

The most significant difference between LinkUp and other job sites on the web is that we only list jobs from company websites. Companies interested in getting their jobs on LinkUp must send us the URL of their company website so we can link to them. This allows us to maintain a much higher quality database of jobs than you will find on any other job search site on the web today. There are no outdated jobs that have already been filled, no ads posted by recruiters and headhunters, and no identity thefts or work-at-home scams. Linkup will always generate the highest quality jobs available.

G.L. is quite personable and friendly. He travels a lot and is a never ending fountain of ideas which he has most recently taken to documenting in the form of Gruzzles from his command post in Minneapolis. He wanted to talk about the application of Gruzzles in the onboarding process. That morphed into many other topics of discussion. I had a suspicion Gruzzles might be ruling his life and that he was obsessively viewing everything concentrically.

When did you create the first one? What was it? What inspired you?

GL: I was exploring a new way of presenting a new business plan using simple graphs and language.  I was trying to take the executive summary idea to a new simpler level.  The task was to find if I could explain a new business with circles, with the connections being the differentators of the business.  The Gruzzle came out of this experience.

Are Gruzzles just a fad until you latch onto a new concept or are you completely obsessed with creating them as a lens to explore our existence?

GL: I am a bit obsessed on them now, just like I am when I get involved in a new company.  I think there is a commercial product and I am trying to figure out how to do it.  That is the fun part. What I am really obsessed about is our new job search engine called LINKUP.COM…it is the only place where someone can go to find jobs ONLY from company websites.

How do you take complex situations and questions and simplify them into a few intersecting circles?

GL: I am not sure to be perfectly honest.  I do know that trying to make connections amongst three disparate elements stimulates my own creativity, so I thought it might do the same for others.

Do you keep a notebook with you at all times or do you grab napkins in restaurants?

GL: I have notebooks all over.  Some I can do in five minutes, but most take a lot longer, days even.

Can you define Gruzzles into categories?

GL: A publisher contacted me and tried to tell me that there was a series like CHICKEN SOUP or DUMMIES in them.  I think there might be a place for a Gruzzles for Babyboomers, Golfers, Enrepreneurs and so forth.  Although I am finding much harder to create the narrow topics.

How do you think Gruzzles can help mankind?

GL: I don’t think they are going to cure cancer, but they might be a new way to communicate in a different, faster, funnier way.

How do you pick your next project? Or, do they pick you?

GL: Good question.  I am always receptive to new ideas, new concepts, new projects.  The challenge is in picking which one to spend the time on.  I am getting better at prioritizing, and knowing where and how to spend my time.

What will you be doing 6 months from now?

GL: Not ice fishing.

I also asked G.L. if Gruzzles keep him up at night. He said no but I’m not completely convinced. I see him up at all hours on Twitter.

What uses do you envision for Gruzzles? Inquiring minds want to know.

]]> http://karlaporter.com/interviews/what-gruzzles-you/feed 5 http://karlaporter.com/on-the-job/moving-on http://karlaporter.com/on-the-job/moving-on#comments Fri, 02 Oct 2009 04:49:44 +0000 Karla http://karlaporter.com/?p=413 So much time and mental energy is spent on battles that are not worth engaging in. Certainly, some personalities are more prone to frivolous verbal karate than others.  Think back and count the minutes and hours you have spent in debate, verbal duel and reproach of topics that a minute, hour, week, or year later did not matter. How much time have you lost?

Someone called me today to ask how to do it. How to move on, not take it personally, make wiser decisions about engagement in conflict, how to avoid it, how to choose which battles are worth it. I don’t think she expected what I told her.

Transitioning back to the U.S. after 11 years of work in Mexico and Spain I took an entry level customer service rep position at the 15th largest on shore call center with full confidence I wouldn’t be in the seat for long. They wouldn’t hire anyone in a management role that didn’t have call center experience.  The fact that a company of that size and importance didn’t have an onboarding or new manager training program is fodder for another post in the future – promise.

After having managed a vacation club (OK sure, it’s really timeshare) sales room of 50 sales people and closers on the  Mayan Riviera and a mega buku bucks budget, I was taking customer service calls about $4.00  products for the world’s largest food manufacturer tethered to my cubicle by the umbilical cord of a headset. I spoke with people who purchased frozen entrees and claimed chicken uteruses in their food, not enough peas, misleading photos on the packaging and every foreign object imaginable and unimaginable on their fork or in their mouth.

To say that it was not the job for me at that point in my career would be an understatement. But I made the choice to get my foot in the door. I was keenly aware of what I was doing, it was a strategy.  The place was only 5 minutes from my house! I gave myself 6 months to learn everything I possibly could about the biz and move up or out. It worked out exactly that way I intended and in 8 years I climbed up the rungs of the ladder 4 times. But that’s not really the point of the story.

What IS the point?

Learning the business was fun and challenging. I went way above and beyond product information and procedures. I was interested in growth, remember? Yet the majority of stint in the seat was taking those calls and after a very short time they started to get on my nerves. Tons of nice people called too but soon I was answering calls in my dreams and on remote control during the day. I quickly had had enough of that front line stuff…

One day I took my doodling to new heights while on the job. I cut black construction paper into small tombstone shapes and stacked them like a memo pad next to my PC. While listening to nasty, stupid, entitled, A-driver types I would grab a colorful gel pen and write the caller’s initials and an equally colorful epitaph.

“Loser logic got him nowhere”

“She proved that the customer is not always right”

“He accomplished his goal to irritate others”

“Incapable of a real life”

“She made chicken uteruses in food desirable”

“He financed college with free coupons”

A little additional glitter pen action and each offender of common sense was quickly and firmly tacked to my cubie wall graveyard. And then I was done with them. I put them out of my misery to their final resting place. It was cathartic and I could move on with a smile on my lips for the next mystery caller.

I shared other innovative methods of moving on too like reward from the voices in my head. This technique works awesomely. The voices ask me questions like,

“Do you really need to argue about this or would you rather a latte?”

“Is this relationship worth the effort or would your time be better spent checking Facebook?”

“Will this be important tomorrow?”

If the battle is that important to engage me it is revealed by being more important than having a latte and checking my friends status updates. That’s rarely the case.

What techniques do you use to deal with unwanted situations, make wiser decisions about engagement in conflict, or choose your battles carefully, or do you just dive in with eyes wide open?

P.S. Those little voodoo dolls work too

There was conversation on best practices, the influence and use of social media, the candidate experience, how to make more money, and how the industry is changing. That’s right.

I’m not going to Sumserize the content or Boorman you to death with details.. Just know that more than 50% of the unconference content was about the imminent change coming down the pike created by efficiencies brought on by technology and client expectations.

Before the unconference I blogged on Vulcan recruiting.  The unconference further served to validate the post. Recruiters will become holistic practitioners, adopt new skills, consult on  how to attract, hire, onboard and retain human capital. They will continue to drive HR technology and innovate its use.

Practitioners caught up in the daily grind, fabulous at what they do but not in tune with new tools  and expectations that are being driven by the economic upheavals of the day, are at a disadvantage because they will not be prepared for new recruiting. Just a phone and a contact list quickly are becoming “not the only tools you need”.

Get on board the change train and enjoy the ride.

Dorothy Beach, MBA CIR PHR got me thinking. She posted a question on the discussion board of the LinkedIn Social Media Recruiting Group asking for opinions on the effect of social media on recruiting in the far future, 5-20 years down the virtual highway. My mind immediately took a journey to Wish List Lane and Technology Square. If you repeat something enough times and really believe it that makes it reality, right?

In my vulcanesque way of thinking, most everyone on Earth will be digitally literate and have their own domain which will seamlessly be linked to the various networks they choose to participate in. Job seekers and passive candidates  open to opportunities will be able to open their networks to candidate searches so they can be found. Job seekers will no longer need to proactively apply to openings.

Companies will conduct searches not job seekers. Recruiters will be consultants to companies hiring and perform more of a job profile / company fit identification role, write the job keywords and parameters and set up the newfangled ATS which will be on a cloud. Software will be coded to meet the requirements of highly specialized queries and it will crawl to find candidates profiles base on the distance you wish to search and import them into your database where you will be able to further refine your search. Boolean strings will be old fashioned and systems will be user intuitive and friendly.

Recruiters will narrow the candidate pool by refining matches and conducting 1st virtual screenings, recommend the top 3 candidates to hiring managers, co-conduct the interviews and assist in the decision making ad placement process. Recruiters, in their expanded consultant role may see new hires through their first 3 months taking an active role in the new onboarding process.

What’s your vision?

Call after call I came across mediocrity where anything resembling an onboarding effort even exists. I asked the simple question, “Can you tell me about your onboarding program?” I was often met with silence, stumbling words or “Uhh”. I would have lost a lot of chips in a poker game, for I would have bet heftily that these well known local companies would have more than “employee orientation”. Even the one that received a few employer awards over the years has only the  meiotic trappings of a potential one.

OK, that’s here and it just goes to show I have work to do in the community with the HR Task Force. But, on a larger scale there are many fine examples of onboarding programs out there and that’s where the parallel comes in.

Ready?

Onboarding programs are like aircraft and the amenities and service that come with their size.

Utility Kit Aircraft

Walk out to the tarmac carrying your own bags, hoist them inside and watch the pilot doing the pre-flight check.  Strap yourself in and make sure you have a barf bag. There’s no room to move around and the ride is likely to often be bumpy.

Utility Kit type companies have the same system for new hires. You get walked to a desk or work area, fill out paperwork and fly by the seat of your pants. You will not have a comfy seat. If you’re not lucky enough to have a good bush pilot with a compass you’ll soon be lost and grabbing for that barf bag. The odds of having a development plan or receiving formal feedback on your performance is about the same as someone packing your parachute for you. The vending machine doesn’t work in the hall.

Private Jets

Improved headroom and a separate washroom define this category. Some models offer a flight attendant, the later models also have much-improved luggage space. There will be emergency cards in the seat pockets with instructions on self service oxygen and how to use your seat as a flotation device. Still, you keep wondering when you’ll arrive.

At companies of this caliber, the Office Manager can answer questions for you and help you with office supplies and paperwork. You’ll get introduced to the other staff on a walk around tour and have team meetings. Office gossip will likely be your onboarding and some of the guys will take you out to lunch and tell you who you can trust and about the flat 3% COLA yearly increase and lack of incentives and bonuses. You’ll have a lot of questions and anxiety about how things actually work and who exactly to ask. This feeling can last a long time and get in the way of employee satisfaction.

VIP Jets

These aircraft have spacious cabins, offering seating for 8 to 16 in first-class executive style. Full standing headroom, galley and in-flight service are standard. The luggage hold can accommodate 15 to 20 assorted-sized pieces. A car will take you out to the runway and an attendant will take your bags.

This is where formal onboarding programs start to appear.  You’ll have an orientation that will include danish in the boardroom and visits from suits. You’ll sign off on a ton of policies to include confidentiality, non-harassment and use of communications tools. You’ll watch a video on diversity and  be given time to sit in your office, in your comfy chair, to “get used to it”.

VIP Airliners

The ultimate aircraft for private jet travel. These airliners have been converted to accommodate smaller groups in VIP first-class executive seating. These aircraft are popular for heads of state, offering comfort and luxury with sleeping arrangements for the principal. They are the perfect aircraft for worldwide tours.

Companies who have arrived at this level of organizational development provide a reserved seat at every table for Human Resources and allow it to be highly effective. You’ll be mailed a corporate handbook, insurance forms,  and be scheduled for the next orientation at HQ, in person, by conference call or webinar. There will be a greeting from the LMS in your inbox with the link to log on to your onboarding agenda. It will include scheduled modules to be completed on the performance management system, policies, culture, corporate citizenship, benefits and others. You’ll complete your profile on the corporate web portal, be assigned a sponsor and attend a team presentation and integration session. You’ll enjoy the ride.

Notes:

• The size of a company may or may not reflect the amount of technology and resources it employs, to include someone in the HR seat.
  • It doesn’t have to reflect how it onboards new employees.
  • Where technology is absent, manual processes can be employed to perform identical functions in the onboarding process.
• Showing employees you care about them to the extent you have developed a program to set them up for success, instead of leaving them to cling to their seat to save themselves, is a huge way to lead by example, promote a healthy company culture, gain loyalty, ensure rapid productivity and increase longevity.