Clearly, The Wrong People Are Leading HR: Differentiate Yourself

▼Brain-Dead Hiring Practices To Ditch: Part 2▼ 

⬆ From High Cost of Security Clearance Racism To Negligent Ineptitude ⬆▼ Images Hyperlinked▼

MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS | 2022 EDITION | VOLUME 24

 

 

  

At the end of every year, clueless, mostly overpaid, and out of touch execs opine on blockchain, AI, IoT, security, and other trends while HR trend predictors alike bask in fantasy. Most of them expect swift delivery of services they depend on. Yet few ever consider the job search process as similar to stopping at a gas station, recharging their electric/hybrid vehicles, or making a run to a supermarket or grocery store with minimal delays.

 

You don't want to be held up in any of those places, — do you?

 

You have a life to live, family and love ones to fend for, pick up, spend time with; people to see, and things to do, — don't you?

 

So, why do you remain addicted to wasting job seekers' time with (buggy) portals that shouldn't even exist, silly assessments and tests (Indeed.com a prime example), login and account registration requirements and burdens, application forms that duplicate information already provided on CV/resumé and infinitely dumb (even if popular) onerous steps, trends, like requiring candidates to record videos while YOU conveniently remain anonymous?

 

Even Squid Game recruitment is smarter, more efficient, and responsive. And Front Man, many would argue, is a better HR leader, — even if retention is another matter.

The rest comes down to responsiveness and respect for the humanity, dignity, and plight of individual candidates. As well as a matter of process. Being unresponsive is your worst tactic when you're busy trying to convince the world that there's a hiring crunch or skills gap. And speaking of respect, pro tip:

Condescending JDs (job descriptions) aside, experienced jobseekers and  consultants will likely ignore (low) pay rates (on subject lines) because hiring is a two-way street.

Nobody likes to be boxed in so early in any job search process or interactive phase, unless one has no salary history, negotiation experience, or self-esteem. So, factor that in, recruiters and hiring managers, or risk losing good candidates.

 

Whether via email, the press, or social media, most HR leaders simply ignore critique, criticism, and simply don't engage. Clearly, because they can afford to. Why should employers consider their role in the employee exodus?

 

Smart (HR) leaders with mature, human-centered, highly effective talent acquisition and talent retention IQ or processes who understand the core reasons behind the so-called 'Great Resignation' (image hyperlinked) don't do that.

 

As Slate Magazine correctly notes:

 

Companies Are Desperate for Workers. Why Aren’t They Doing the One Thing That Will Attract Them?...They’re also not approaching their hiring processes with the seriousness or urgency that this market demands. 

The advanced problem-solving skills, if not common sense diagnosis in response to Slate Magazine:

Clearly, the wrong people are doing the hiring, and leading HR. And in the United States in particular, this, much like national politics and the level of tolerated buffoonery in Washington, has become a national security issue. Except, few have yet to connect the dots even as ignorant voters keep piling and voting in the wrong, inept people into positions of leadership.

 

Indeed, from a strictly problem solving standpoint, nailing this aspect of HR and organizational effectiveness is more critical than joining the remote work bandwagon, because another issue often not discussed is how both the outsourcing of HR overseas, plus HR leaders working remotely makes nonstrategic HR leaders and profit-driven firms even more aloof as they enable remote work abuse that actually weakens already fragile democracies like America's, thanks to North Korea and friends exploiting American remote work and nearshoring greed.

If you're an HR leader or manager who has never heard of a coffin home (image + details above left), or privileged person soon to be promoted to HR manager or leader, you're likely to exacerbate Western remote work idiocy. Unless you have a conscience. Put differently:

While it helps to travel, know Asians, Africans, and what a coffin home is or live in one however briefly, the bottom line — to those business leaders and hiring managers who care about human dignity — is this:

Most people just can't afford remote work.

Not if you expect serious, high quality work from them. Or, are willing to pay their home-office costs upfront. No joke.

Live with them. See the conditions they are coping with; the little space or no privacy they have.

And guess who gets it apart from the Canadians, who are deservedly eating America's lunch? The world's richest and most successful Youtuber! Mr. Beast attracts talent with this simple but fair and pragmatic offer: 

📌 “Relocation for those coming in from outside the area including travel and company-provided housing for the first 90 days.”

Here is an employer doing the very minimum to guarantee that once hired, one doesn't have to throw away all that hard-earned money at expensive rent, hotels and motels, but makes it easy, just as the Canadians above, for the employee to feel happier, if not easily retainable by HR. 

Outside of the $20,000, relocation average in America, $4,000 “all-inclusive” (whatever that means) gimmicks leaves candidates with no cars or barely penniless as they start a new job, homeless. And if the latter reality sounds foreign to you, then once again, you're too aloof to be hiring.

 

Currently, American human resources has reached peak remote work. Yet the last class of leaders one expects to diagnose this problem are the selfsame HR leaders benefiting from America's seriously broken human resources and hiring.

The Biggest Problem With Remote Work ⬆ +Getting Remote Job Hiring Right▼

About 90% of U.S. job offers I get by the bucket load via email and phone calls tend to be remote.

Yet, it's as if nobody told unimaginative organizations that not all candidates want a remote job, or can professionally handle team videoconferencing and Zoom meetings simply due to the type of accommodation (arrangement or configuration) they have.

On returning to the U.S. after almost two decades in Europe and Asia, I put an unmistakable note atop my public CV/resumé making it clear: I'm only on the market for Onsite (Day 1) local or paid relocation roles right now. No WFH (work from home), hybrid, or 'initial' remote roles.

Apart from clearly not bothering to read a single line before calling with unsuitable offers, in many cases, both U.S. recruiters and their outsourced Indian counterparts working from home lacked the kind of professionalism and high performance Clearlink's CEO James Clarke controversially picked up on above. (click image). Plus, hiring managers tend to be even more aloof.

From time theft to drugs and near criminal negligence, rampant abuse of remote work by both HR workers and employees is observable throughout the United States in particular. Yet few, including those in the media profiting from it, are highlighting this issue.

I have personally been on customer service calls with native-speaking incoherent Americans clearly under the influence. Meanwhile, most New Yorkers will attest to the stench of marijuana all over the Metro. The point being that if these are the kind of people you're hiring, one doesn't need a huge imagination to predict performance once given the opportunity to work remotely and unsupervised.

Yet, unlike the Chinese, Middle Easterners, some Europeans and Africans who have flown me in for consulting — all expenses paid — who get it, not only was I bombarded with remote job offers, most firms and clients were often either naïvely or foolishly expecting the candidate far away in a different State to magically appear at the jobsite, or offering ridiculously unrealistic 'relocation assistance' that'd leave anyone stuck at an airport before they even arrive in a new city and become homeless.

Remember the heartwarming BBC Korea interview?

Unexpected distraction is not the only issue with poorly thought out remote work in America.

Unlike countries, cities, and city-states with well-developed public transport networks (Singapore, Hong Kong, Sweden, Japan, China), expecting Americans with no cars or worse housing than the BBC guest (above) to either do remote WFH or take an onsite (day 1) job far away without any negotiation regarding commute support, relocation assistance or package, is not stinginess. It is precisely the failure of imagination fueling the high burnout rates expected to lead to even more resignations in the stressful cybersecurity industry.

I know tech workers who have not only skipped remote work offers due to round-the-clock distraction being part of their housing or family situation but also, as even I once did ahead of a 6-panel presentation/interview in a different time zone, rent(ed) expensive hotels (and/or meeting rooms) for events.

You'd think some U.S. top execs (CHROs, CEOs, hiring managers, etc.) never got the memo. Yet Ellen DeGeneres unpacked it. 

As I told a snobby, tactically-minded Indian recruiter who made me what I called a 'coercive offer' on behalf of one of America's banking giants: So, we can either do this the right way in the interest of [bank's] customers, users, employees; third parties. Or, you can hire cheap, and get high turnovers, plus more data breaches. Client's loss.

This was a client who'd wisely chosen to have its cyber defense team working on-prem, — relocation paid, he claimed.

Except, attitude is everything. And turning off consultants/professionals is the last thing you want your recruiters to do.

Especially, if you've properly trained your recruiters to close rather than engage in power plays with candidates who have options.

A relocation package or relocation assistance is not a (budgetary) wall. It's an opportunity to creatively negotiate to get talent from Point A to Point B in as dignified a manner as possible, and in close proximity to the job. Particularly, if strategically, your organization favors onsite work over remote. And by the way, living in China, I witnessed that every time I was at Huawei's sprawling Shenzhen campus and apartments, with almost every diverse foreign face imaginable. 

Handle remote over onsite/relocation hiring unimaginatively, and you needlessly exacerbate both self-inflicted 'talent crunch' and joblessness. Effectively, prolonging the latter even for top talent. Even if U.S. journalists jump on the talent shortage/great resignation oversimplification bandwagon unaware that at a core strategic level, the root cause is simply that organizations aren't thinking at a practical level about what really is America's remote work fail. Much like the 'LinkedIn Mandatory' fail.

So, as you can see, if I'm overpaid, self-centered, and comfortably “working remotely”, why care about “reforming HR” or improving the hiring process?

 

Why not just ignore every critique, maintain the current network of application blackholes, and simply pile on more stupid HR tech like remote work surveillance just to impress the CEO and other stakeholders everything is under control?

 

What smart Chinese employers and candidates know that you still don't (in America) is: Your application forms and hiring process is stupidly long, intolerable, and outdated. That, plus the whole cover letter thing.

 

Regardless how 'normal' they appear to your circle of aloof HR colleagues, stunningly stupid hiring practices have made the United States a laughing stock. From business to politics, journalism, defense industry and other Western leadership establishment, and beyond, ineptitude is rampant, reflecting the selfsame lack of imagination HR currently suffers.

 

Suffering from chronic short-term pragmatism and dangerous data dictatorship, the industry, Western HR pros online in particular, love(s) posing insular questions and circulating theories regarding hiring quality — while sidestepping candidates and the candidate experience — having nothing to do with the sort of strategic hiring China does, and which I witnessed over 16 years there.

Like Elon Musk's Twitter, just because your ATS or platform still attracts users with no distinctively satisfying alternative(s) doesn't mean you'd doing things right as you treat jobseekers as expendable, and prospective employers as VIP.

Aloof HR or developers who don't think in terms of the “30 second apply” are dinosaurs soon to be annihilated by competition that is obsessed with saving jobseekers time. If your platform demands too many clicks, several pages, and is greedy about hoarding data or getting unnecessary data right (like insisting on exact company names based on pre-loaded datasets instead of simply giving the user the freedom to type into a field and move on).

This too, is 21st-century Candidate Experience and UX common sense, which I address in-depth both at #3 further below (a MUST-READ), as well the hyperlinked originals.

Yet, until I advise them — I've been doing innovative, disruptive strategic HR consulting since leaving AT&T in the 1990s — the blind spots are as mind-boggling as failing to seek to study why for example, a country like Taiwan maintains a COVID-19 pandemic death toll of 7 or under 10, while a richer, better-resourced U.S. raced to exceed 500,000. Or simply, counterintuitive reasons why the U.S. has become such a target-rich ransomware market for cybercriminals in particular.

 

 

Speaking of failing to study, there are 1.4 billion Mainland Chinese alone.

 

How do you think they still manage to hire faster than Americans?

 

The average American recruiter or hiring manager, the type obsessed with portals, ATS, and the kind of data greed I speak of below, never heard of China's 3-Second Rule:

 

 

Job applicants routinely search by job title, city, and skills. When the results of the search are shown, the candidate merely clicks, APPLY TO ALL, and their pre-loaded profile is sent to the company’s resume management page located at the job board. This means that a candidate can apply to multiple jobs, as many as the page shows, in 3 seconds or less.

 

 

The outgoing Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General John Hyten recently called for 'speed' to combat the 'pacing threat' China poses. Yet, I doubt he had HR in mind, or has wondered about the debilitating inefficiency of government hiring sites in both the U.S. and allied countries. Because, by the above yardstick alone, China will continue to outpace the U.S., Canada, UK, Australia and other allies whose HR processes I've tested, and can confirm are designed to trap candidates in time-consuming stupor that the Chinese don't tolerate.

Further, the same rigid, often condescending HR leaders responsible for the current Applicant Tracking-suffocated system — this active threat to national security — not only do not value and prioritize hiring strategic minds over their ever complicated archaic HR processes, but critically, often also never even knew under under 6% of Chinese employers, knowing their candidates too well, actually even use ATS:

 

 

The Insignificance of Applicants Tracking Systems in China

 

 

Remember that less than 6% of employers in China utilize applicant tracking systems. So candidates are never encouraged to reply to an apply-link in the job content (often called “link-back”). This means that over 99% of job postings are void a link-back. Instead, companies rely on candidates utilizing their pre-submitted profile stored at each job board.

 

Further, to those who may have scoffed at the data dictatorship bit, here's an excerpt from MIT's Technology Review:

 

The dictatorship of data ensnares even the best of them. Google runs everything according to data. That strategy has led to much of its success. But it also trips up the company from time to time. Its cofounders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, long insisted on knowing all job candidates’ SAT scores and their grade point averages when they graduated from college. In their thinking, the first number measured potential and the second measured achievement. Accomplished managers in their 40s were hounded for the scores, to their outright bafflement. The company even continued to demand the numbers long after its internal studies showed no correlation between the scores and job performance.

 

Google ought to know better, to resist being seduced by data’s false charms. The measure leaves little room for change in a person’s life. It counts book smarts at the expense of knowledge. And it may not reflect the qualifications of people from the humanities, where know-how may be less quantifiable than in science and engineering. Google’s obsession with such data for HR purposes is especially queer considering that the company’s founders are products of Montessori schools, which emphasize learning, not grades. By Google’s standards, neither Bill Gates nor Mark Zuckerberg nor Steve Jobs would have been hired, since they lack college degrees.

 

 

Pro-European data ethicists be informed: I just returned to Europe after over 17 years in China in particular, and Asia Pacific in general. And British recruitment remain as data-dictatorial as badly EU-wide hiring lacks diversity perspective, and is often shamelessly aloof when it comes to inclusion, despite assumptions made in well-meaning arguments by some Europeans. (Click or tap image). Indeed, far from tokenizing Black employees, prospects or candidates, most EU career websites don't even pretend using images, to telegraph diversity and inclusion. Too lost in algorithmic bias to care.

 

Hence, the perspicacious but optimistic Black applicant is unambiguously aware long before joining — that is, if even welcomed — that they may not belong.

 

And we know how Tidjane Thiam, Banking’s sole Black C.E.O. made Credit Suisse profitable again, only to be rejected by the Swiss as an outsider, ultimately speeding its collapse. All of such misguided, brain-dead, data dictatorship-driven recruitment has deep national security implications for a currently under-performing, distracted and weakened West in the face of a ruthless CCP-run China, with an equally inattentive HR acting as enablers of the latter unawares. On multiple fronts.

So, one can dodge diversity all they want, but can't escape Jack Teixeira, Snowden, and Manning as the ROOT CAUSE Analysis vs. Cognitive Diversity gap here begins with the same type of people deciding what the problem and solution is, all while repeatedly hiring people just like them.

It's one America. But some of us come from cultures where our parents would literally disown or punch us where it hurts the most, — just for dishonoring the family's name. Be they of Indian or African origin, this is why seeing the suspect (Jack Teixeira) and his parents exchange entitled “'love you”(s) during legal proceedings was sickening knowing there are better-qualified, trustworthy minorities who try without success for years to get security clearance jobs often thrown away to the wrong people. In this case, to yet another privileged white boy/person from the University of Edward Snowden who called himself “OG” and thought he knew better than everybody else.

And someday, when/IF the United States ever gets smarter and humbler, people will learn that: 📌 There is security in Diversity. Until then, Jack Douglas Teixeira is what America gets for being dismissive about the USA's grossly dysfunctional/racist HR approach, which while being equally nonstrategic, indecisive and smug about cybersecurity much like HR, keeps hiring Insider Threat/Privileged User Abuse characters/candidates who now come in with their entitled MAGA cult gun hubris and gun violence mindset acting like they know better than everybody else in established journalism, defense, security, politics, and geopolitics as they seek to impose their anarchic worldview, without a single concern for global security and national security consequences. That said, #iTHiNKLabs Research is very thorough about China's persistent IP theft and espionage. Hence, why it's smart to catch the weekly episodes.

 

Nevertheless, there are UK government sites we shan't name that encourage foreigners or minorities to apply (online) that won't allow you to click Next and proceed to finish your application, unless you input a NIN (national insurance number). Equivalent of the U.S. SSN (social security number).

 

Further, when major UK media outlets recently made a big deal about how the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge had advertised a job seeking a
housemaid good at 'maintaining confidentiality' they all seemingly missed the fundamental problem with the ad. Its uncompromising eligibility requirement that all applicants be UK citizens or already have a right to work in the UK.

 

Even the China I know isn't that ideological, impractical, nor does it recruit that way.

 

What if the one ideal strategic hire you seek is out of the UK citizen pool?

What if the West currently, actually HAD 21st Century leaders up to the threats NATO and the free world faces, from business to geopolitical, to geostrategic. Not 5 consecutive American-born Presidents with a naïve mindset that created, led to, and continues to allow Putin's genocide in Ukraine and other autocratic threats to fester and drag on?

Think none of that has anything to do with HR?

 

No wonder China's HR game is more sophisticated than your limited geostrategic acumen. And your country (likely Western) will continue to be behind the smart HR curve. From artificial intelligence to cybersecurity.

 

Pause and ask yourself: Containment or not, what do I know about, or can be learned from, the massive formidable foreign talent behind Huawei's success? Or how China continues to successfully poach foreign talent, whether for AI or its infamous military buildup?

Americans, as ever, are too preoccupied, indeed too obsessed, with dysfunction to even learn basic, if not reap strategic HR lessons and benefits from Russia.

Always remember: Both China's Great Wall and the Berlin Wall FAILED.

So, if 2.7 million+ immigrants enter the United States, what are you doing wrong about finding talent? Is Wall idiocy and zero (government and business) leadership vision to blame for failure for not leveraging all that for U.S. national security?

Australia is busy luring Britain's junior nurses and physicians. Canada wants to bring in 1.5 million immigrants by 2025. 

Even in #iTHiNKLab's Solutions for America and the West's Failed, Racist, Business-As-Usual Haiti Policy is a migrant opportunity Americans aren't tapping into. And the Japanese are no different, despite their urgent population decline crisis.

Meanwhile, Trumpist (MAGA) Americans are obsessed with building walls, turning away both (economic) migrants and refugees, both of whom — with competent policy in place — have highly strategic national security use beyond any anti-diversity rot you'll hear or see on social media.

Smart HR leaders understand the daftness of xenophobia. Even if Steve Jobs was too busy to sufficiently address or debunk unimaginative xenophobe's 'close the borders' obsessions. Your job, should you chose to competently perform it, is to zoom out.

For smart organizations “missing the skills to restructure their businesses and manage” disruption (per Gartner here) — and more specifically, those prepared to be as effective as Huawei's talent acquisition has been, relative to the Chinese tech giant's goals — who now realize they missed the memo, the top 3 challenges in talent acquisition that will matter most in the next decade isn't AI, automation, HR Tech hype, or glorified yearly HR predictions. It's simply ditching the limited thinking of “talent shortage” evangelists (click above), and instead, getting these strategic questions right:

 

① How to make terms like talent shortage, talent crunch, talent crisis, skills gap inapplicable to YOUR organization?

 

② How to attract and close top talent or strategic hires like the Chinese and the Middle Easterners (Saudis and Emiratis in particular) do?

 

③ And how can YOU, as a CHRO, hiring manager, recruiter or HR exec get out of the way of your own DX (Digital Transformation) goals by addressing the Friction + Stinginess = Turnoff problem originally addressed in What CxOs & Recruiters Don't Get About Security (Part 1) incorporated below?

The article above (click/tap) — After 20 years of hiring, I refuse to look at resumes that have this common yet outdated section — is a perfect example of hiring managers getting in the way of corporate DX, HR, future of work goals. The tone and obvious assumptions behind it aside, it's bad enough to have an online job application black hole you're proud of.

 

What's more, it's the same tone behind some of the worst, most dictatorial and patronizing job descriptions out there.

 

Except, in the age of the millennial, forgetting that hiring is a two-way street is suicide. 

 

The tone of job descriptions matter. The attitude of hiring managers, matter.

 

Deporting tech expats over minor errors à la Sweden is dumb.

 

Problem is, HR is an island. In the United States, in particular.

Easy to forget you need talent as much as candidates need a job when you don't know what you don't know about process management, which is addressed below. Click or tap the image above when ready.

 

So, key to your HR success this decade and beyond?

 

Get your process management in order. And make sure smart, well-trained, ethical people are handling and leading all hiring and human resource efforts.

 

A company considering me for a VP of HR Operations recently contacted me after — true to my Indeed.com warning that I had no time for the silly tests and assessments so early in the application process — I ignored requests to complete them.

 

Despite the answers already being on my CV/resumé, they attempt staying anonymous by using Indeed's email system, writing after the clichés:

 

I would like to send your information over to my team for review. Please message me a phone number that is US based and can receive text messages so that I can submit you. Also please clarify for me if you are in New York or have a green card. After patiently and politely responding while refusing to give them the mobile number they obviously want, because I'm no cybersecurity slouch, they write back:

 

Unfortunately, they won't accept the submission without a US based number that can receive text messages. They have also just changed the name of the position to Senior HR Operations with the same qualifications needed. Once you have a number that will submit for us I can go ahead and have your information processed. Thank you.

 

Whereupon I responded:

 

So, "they" can stay inept and aloof while we use them as an example of what's wrong with American HR today.

 

Whether you have 'fast track' in your name or not as the company in question, the easiest way to lose top talent or simply, good candidates is playing 'cloak and dagger' while demanding private information that can be easily sold or abused. A classic example of no human touch, literally.

 

Unlearn, or relearn process management if you seriously want to improve or fix your quality of hire issues.

 

Starting now, adopt a negotiative approach with prospects and candidates across the board, and you'll reap dividends and differentiate yourself, as many a great talent is lost that way. Guide below:

Like startup founders/entrepreneurs who never get out of the building to test and taste market realities, the earlier you get off the island and realize you're actually not in a position to boss around candidates and prospects, the humbler and better-adjusted you become, — whatever your business and hiring goals.

 

The same applies to those outsourcing hiring offshore (let's leave countries unnamed) to poorly trained recruiters who neither have the power to negotiate terms nor understand the culture, mindset, diversity at play, or level of tolerance for BS (like leading busy applicants to useless Applicant Tracking/job portals and sign-up screens while your competitors offer a simplified, to-the-point Single-page Upload CV/resumé & Submit page/form) among experienced candidates or HiPos.

 

Whether you're a well-established brand or not, when you're offering below-market compensation, perks and no pragmatism, yet sound like the hiring manager further above, you've already lost to competitors playing a smarter, more negotiative game attracting top talent. And you'll continue that trend in the next decade until you change, or go out of business.

Consider this recent but all too frequent exchange:

 

Me, responding to a job offer: 

Thanks. I just left the States but happy to help if relocation (or, airfare + accommodation) is on offer. USC.

 

Vishal the recruiter:

Hi [TT]
Thanks for responding. I am afraid that won’t be possible as we are unable to provide you relocation. Let me know if that somehow works for you and we can discuss further regarding the position. Thank you, Vishal.

 

Me: 

Vishal, it's very simple: I'm very flexible and been working with recruiters since the' 90s. But I don't work for stingy clients or firms.

 

Vishal the recruiter:

I understand what you are asking is completely fair, it would be really convenient for a candidate if he/she is provided relocation. It’s just that we are not authorized to provide those expenditures. However, I might be able to provide you the rate you are looking for. Let me know your expectation.

A Chinese or Middle Eastern hiring manager or recruiter intent on closing will engage in a different way. By actually addressing the money issue at play. Even African companies have done that with me.

 

By contrast, brain-dead, stingy, patronizing North American hiring will keep you stuck in reverse like the hundreds of amateur “for profit” consulting firms and stingy clients stuck on “local hire” preference who contact top talent only to fizzle because he or she mentioned relocation assistance or visa sponsorship. The point being NOT what CAN'T BE DONE, but whether it's even up for serious discussion, with recruiters, talent acquisition managers or hiring managers demonstrating flexibility.

 

HR professionals can't fix a problem they're unwilling to be honest about. But a few honest ones talk to me. And I tell it like it is, as the first step to diagnosing and solving complex problems.

 

So here's the free version of what ethical HR execs and CxOs who go on to quietly fix things get from me:

 

Compelling evidence that there is in fact NO cyber skills shortage, like my initial three, was published long before the Forrester report on which the above feature is based, was released.

 

First solution is problem acknowledgment: 3-Step Guide To Fixing The 'Talent Shortage' Myth:

For those who'd rather read on than click/tap now, the point is not that there isn't a skills gap problem. The core argument simply put, is that across the board, this is a self-inflicted HR/hiring problem. And if you're in the industry and don't like it, remember: The HR industry is well-known for its ubiquitous CV/resumé, cover letter, job interview and other career advice content.

 

In this case, it is prudent to take constructive advice.

 

Unless you're a fan of consequential cyber attacks, — followed by terminations, customer defections, stock downgrades, brand reputational damage, or worse, the bankruptcy or death of your business and would rather continue to brain-dead hiring practices that turn off or turn away the best talent and attract the worst.

For one thing, only Chinese recruiters seem smart enough to use social media (like Twitter, not LinkedIn hype or noise) to ACTIVELY target & recruit talent based on their posts or tweets. American, and indeed Western HR, seem obsessed with over-'complexifying' hiring, complaining endlessly about talent shortage & ASSUMING every 'cyber talent' wants remote work. In short, you're doing it all wrong.

Further, regarding cover letters — including social media cover letters — Monster.com will tell you what both sharp-eyed and honest HR pros already know: “Recruiters don’t read cover letters and hiring managers don’t have time to—they only spend six seconds reading your resume as it is...Not to mention, considering how big of a role social media is playing in the recruiting process, the cover letter is very likely becoming obsolete. A recent study by the Society For Human Resource Management (SHRM) found that 84% of employers use social media to recruit job applicants. Why? It’s quicker, saves productivity and revenue, and it allows companies to scout A-grade talent that may not be actively looking for a job.”

 

So why insist on inefficiency?

 

Some hiring processes may insist on it as a matter of habit. Yet the best (social media) cover letters still don't matter if budget, location, or eligibility to work are sticking points. So my advise to both candidates and HR pros is: Don't allow others to waste your time, and don't waste others time either. As Peter Drucker said: “There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.”

Speaking of which, aloof Ackman below is yet to learn how his self-appointed “anti-woke” crusade against DEI weakens both U.S. national security and HR. See #iTHiNKLabs Episode 304 for insight.

Former U.S. presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg rightly acknowledged: “Systemic racism is a white problem.” But at a time when Google is beset by ethical issues, sexual harassment, hate speech, and employee defections and other internal friction, it pays to appreciate how a lack of cognitive diversity, genuine diversity, as well as adulteration of the “gender gap” argument won't help you long-term.

 

To differentiate your organization, meticulously study and act on the below:

HR is not a sales job. And this being the free version, I expatiate on that in paid consultation.

 

But no matter what your filter bubble, conferences you attend, or network suggests, everything is not business. Those who treat life as such also tend to get lost in the overlap between HR and recruiting functions. So, rather than solving the above 2, they become fixated on the current megatrends of AI and automation, to feed their corporate greed, at the expense of ethical concerns. Click/Tap:

Apart from the Harvard research above (click/tap), most of the bad to worst hiring decisions, including consequences like small-scale to headline grabbing data breach or egregious insider threat incidents, as well as questionable business decisions involving collaborations with repressive regimes to worsen their stranglehold on helpless civilians among other atrocities, are being led by unscrupulous HR firms, vendors, CxOs and personnel profiting from the peddling of the myth of the skills gap, even as they provide technical assistance.

 

Not surprisingly, IBM is right up there with the likes of Google:

And while I personally like many of these firms, Google's own employee civil war is reminder that people build systems, and shape cultures. That, consummate professionals who happen to be highly competent security technoIogists ARE admittedly an endangered species.

 

However, that, plus corporate greed is no excuse for unscrupulous CxOs and recruiters to myopically hire unscrupulous talent, with HR Tech vendors, cybersecurity certificates and training 'schools'/pretenders as mere strategic sales components of a profit-making machine that doesn't actually deliver despite millions and billions spent on IT security infrastructure.

 

If you want to bridge the so-called skills gap, actually READ through the solutions. And as you implement them, you'll have better luck attracting and retaining quality talent, plus buy-in. Or pay professionals like myself to do it meticulously for you, rather than going online looking to avoid divergent views, as there are companies implementing my solutions. And you may be relieved to find in many cases, that their corporate culture isn't perfect either.

In one tweet featuring hashtags like “#skillsgap #cyberskills” which only reinforce the myth, I was responded to a 'skills gap' believer who had just retweeted my How Small Businesses Can Beat Hackers piece.

 

As usual, the below (#5) must have made made her uncomfortable, because in most cases, as with #3 and 4 above, these are bottom line-driven recruiters, HR execs and CxOs committing the cardinal mistake of not engaging, just when precisely that will correct their blindsidedness.

 

Finally, for those of us who know a thing or two about how the (Mainland) Chinese and perhaps coincidentally, oil-rich Middle Eastern nations headed by repressive regimes hire, stinginess and prohibitive digital friction in the application process, by comparison, is a major self-inflicted wound. Not just in U.S. recruitment but any organization making their process long and data intensive.

 

A needless, self-inflicted error that leaves the organization in question at a strategic disadvantage; then parroting the skills gap line. Why would a clearheaded organization — including government agencies, the worst offenders — do what smart organizations globally don't? Inept management.

Friction + Stinginess = Turnoff.

 

All the employer branding and candidate experience lip service won't attract the very talent you seek — some of them, highly trainable and much better than your current upskilling pool — if you or your client offer no Visa Sponsorship and/or Relocation Assistance whatsoever.

 

Stinginess, as well as data-greedy, frequently hacked portals or Applicant Tracking Systems (click/tap above) will never fill your “talent gap” for a whole lot of practical reasons that organizations staffed by highly imaginative people have no problems comprehending.

 

The one factor that attracts the largest, most trainable pool is money and flexibility.

 

Money literally talks in that, whereas a reasonable candidate may understand legal restrictions on hiring for example foreign-based talent, one of my own worst career moves was facilitated by how easy the client, on top of sponsoring my visa, made my entire relocation. From Chinese to African consulting, I've experienced it. And it is why skills gap whiners focused on local hire get no sympathy.

Whatever the validity of the above — countries supposedly “best at attracting and nurturing talented workers” — as an American who happens to be black, I have found Canada and even the U.S. lacking when abroad, the stringency of EU employment regulation notwithstanding. Although to be fair, with tech workers living the American Dream in Canada, the latter is better off.

 

Further, applicants with options don't want their time wasted by greedy and frequently hacked HR Tech that leak sensitive data forcing them to replicate data already on their CV/resumé while recruiters forget that hiring is a two-way street.

 

As with #3 above, cynical and intransigent HR execs and recruiters benefiting from the status quo, and clueless CxOs who wrongly assume risk intelligence translates to risk maturity may not want to hear the above. Particularly from a a renowned Artificial Intelligence pioneers or experts who makes HR professionals uncomfortable (click/tap spider man image above), and with automation, advanced manufacturing/RPA, AI, and the shift to e-commerce dramatically changing the very nature and future of work.

 

But if serious about fixing your “skills gap” problem, act on the foregoing. Because, needless to say, cyber attacks will worsen, you or your business partners will likely be breached many times over, and those not bankrupted or forced to close shop as a result will find this self-inflicted problem more worthy of one's best focus than talk about the future of work. Albeit in the interim, walking and chewing gum simultaneously is recommended, as is the resource for bursting one's filter bubble, below.

 

 

In closing, nothing beats seismic change and disruption like a culture of cognitive diversity driven by long-term pragmatism and next-level strategic execution nimble and clear-headed enough to pivot on the fly. So, thanks to COVID-19, after a year of failed leadership particularly in the West — including, by CHROs too wedded to convention — the Gartner insight below, it must be said, only scratches the surfaces.

 

 

In other words, like empty talk about the future of work (to be decided in 2021 or not), so long as the frictions identified above remain unresolved, China will indeed over take the U.S. by 2028, and organizations most in need of building critical skills and competencies, will remain underutilized, underperforming, unprepared sitting ducks (or hack victims) turning off or bleeding the very talent and leaders needed to mitigate emerging risks and uncertainties ahead.

 

For consultation, contact me here. Or, feel free to follow and engage here.

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⬆ Keys To Retaining Top Talent: COVID-19 ‘Great Resignation’ Edition ⬆

Hiring Mistakes in the Age of Big Data

 

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