Dear Hiring Managers: Stop hating on millenials

I have had more than 1 hiring manager who's recently put down millennials as employees. This highly irritates me, and they need to knock it off. I am not a millennial, so I personally have no dog directly in this fight. However, here are least two reasons why it needs to cease.

1. It's stereotyping

What if I said all people who are (insert race, gender, or ethic label here) have some alleged bad quality? First, it's very unlikely that this would be true. Second, we perceive such an over-generalization as unfair, as well we should.

2. They are the workforce of the future

Whether you love that or hate it, you need to suck it up and find ways to adapt. Yes, you have to adapt. Every generation leaves its stamp on the workforce. You can either bemoan what impact you think the millennials will have, or you can embrace it and use their skills to further grow and develop your workplace. The choice is up to you.

I have started call out our staff when they say derogatory things about millennials. You are either the problem or the solution. In this instance, which are you?

When a simile is both amazing accurate and completely frightening- Update

Last week our Executive Director called a same day meeting for all departments transitioning to the other company 1/1/17. HR was also invited. None one knew (or at least would admit) what the meeting was about. At the meeting the Executive Director announced that the transition is on hold until further notice due to some legal issues that must be resolved. Yes, two weeks before it was to take place, and after countless hours of work throughout both organizations, issues that should have been long ago foreseen and addressed have come to light. There is no timeline on when, or if, the transition will ever take place. Customers of our company, this was not our best use of your funds.

My feelings aren't hurt at all

All of the positions at my company have minimum qualifications. As the name implies, these are things that you must have to be considered. If you don't have them, we can't interview you, let alone hire you. Part of my job is to make sure candidates selected to interview do meet these requirements.

While I was off last week, a hiring manager gave her list of candidates to be interviewed to my coworker. When I got back, my coworker told me she thought one of them didn't possess the minimum qualifications, and thus she had held off on scheduling that person's interview. I reviewed the applicant's submission, and I concurred. To make sure I wasn't missing anything, I asked my boss for her thoughts. She agreed too. I e-mailed the hiring manager and told her that unfortunately we couldn't interview this person due to his lack of qualifications and I referenced the minimum requirements from the job description.

She responded and said she thought the person could be a good fit and that she really wanted to interview him. Right before I left work yesterday, my boss and I met with the HR director, aka my boss's boss. She affirmed our decision and asked me to e-mail the hiring manager again, and to restate why the person can't be interviewed.This morning I sent that e-mail. The hiring manager wrote back and said "(blogger) I disagree. All future discussions will be with (HR director)." Obviously this was rude, and it's also not proper to exclude me from the conversation since I am the recruiter working this job. But were my feelings hurt? Not a bit. In fact, I did a happy dance at my desk. I don't have to beat a dead horse anymore, and my HR director is handling it. Now, if I could only figure out how to reproduce this success with more people, my job would be all the more pleasant.

When a simile is both amazing accurate and completely frightening

My employer is undergoing some rather large structural changes. One of these is that our Customer Service & IT departments will become part of another company at the beginning of 2017. This is unprecedented for us, and obviously there has been a lot of concern among the impacted employees as to how this will look in the end. You'd hope that there had been lots of time put into planning for this transition before it was announced. You would, of course, be wrong. The head of HR for the other organization made the following comment Friday "It's like we're flying the plane while we're still building it." He is exactly correct. It was both amazing accurate and completely frightening. To further his comparison, I'd say we're in for a bumpy ride. My department will be undergoing the same transition some time next year. Perhaps by then it will be smoother, but I'm not placing any bets on it.

Proof that God loves us- both big ways and small

God loves each and every one of us. It's a fact. And while we "know" that, how often do we recognize the many, many ways he shows us? Yesterday I had two examples that reminded me of how God shows His love to us in ways both large and small.

First, the small way. I had a meeting cancelled. Any time a meeting is cancelled, I see it as proof that God loves me. First of all, because who likes meetings? Secondly, it is insanely busy in my job right now, and the cancellation freed up time for me to do other things that direly needed attention.

The second was larger. I lost a soon-to-be-hired employee's paperwork. All of it- application, background screen release, interview notes, the whole shebang. Some of it I could ask the candidate to resubmit, but some of it was irreplaceable. Not good. Before going into full blown panic mode, I took a walk. While on the walk I prayed that I would find it. When I got back to the office, I asked one of my coworkers if I had mixed the documents in with the payroll data I had reviewed for her. Nope. Not long after that I grabbed the folder for another job I am working to fill. It was almost as if the pages in the file miraculously parted, displaying all the items I was seeking. What a relief!

I am so very thankful for the many ways God shows His love to me, including the above. May I continually remember to look and be thankful for them.

Super Shady Surveillance

Friday morning my boss asked me if the phone had rang in the conference room where I was conducting interviews the day before.  I said it hadn't. She said "It must have been (coworker)". When coworker arrived, my boss asked her. She said that it had. She answered, but no one was there. She also said that as soon as that happened, another member of the team who is director level unplugged the phone from the wall! My boss then explained the situation.

It seems that at that building, there is a feature you can enable on the phone. You then call from another room, say nothing making whoever answers hang up, and then the phone is on conference unknown to the occupants of the room. You hear everything that's being said. Yes, that's some super shady surveillance. Just think, you could listen into a round of interviews for which you are a candidate and know all the questions in advance. You could also secretly learn about confidential management and HR discussions.  I'm not sure how this was discovered, but the cat is out of the bag now. When the phone administrator was contacted, she said "that's not possible." She was told it has happened. So now part of my interview prep when I'm at the building is to unplug the phone before we begin. Imagine what would happen if people put as much energy and creativity into legitimate ways of getting ahead as they do things like this.

Sometimes things are part of a bigger plan

One of my friends recently got a jetski. That is fantastic news as I get enjoy the fun of riding without the cost of ownership. I will admit to being honked, though, that I had to buy my own life jacket (a must when jetskiing) and state park gate pass (the closest boat ramp). In my opinion, the former is the responsibility of the jetski owner, and for the latter, we could just meet before entering the park rather than each of us purchasing a pass. But I didn't gripe, because, oh yeah, I get to jetski for free.

Fast forward to last weekend when I realized there was a bigger reason I bought both of those, unbeknownst to me. My family spent last weekend at an area lake. We rented a cabin for 2 nights and went boating. The lake is part of another state park, and my park pass came in very handy. The life jacket also got extensive usage while we were tubing. The boat we rented had life jackets, but the style of mine was much more comfortable to wear while performing that activity. I told my mom that the purchase of these items was part of a bigger plan of which I was not aware at the time. So often life is like that. Things happen that we don't love at the time, but (sometimes much) later when we look back, we realized it was all part of a larger plan that we just couldn't see then.