Ashley: Hi, everyone. Thank you for joining us today. We are super excited for another session with Lori. These are my favorites of the month to join in on so thank you for joining us today. We'll give everybody a couple of minutes to get started but we do love our chat interactions so if you wanna tell us where you're from in the chat, we love to see where our audience is. I'm in Houston, Texas right now. It's kinda gloomy and cold for us. Everybody's bundled up. It's a cool 68 degrees. Oh, we have some Florida...are you in Florida or Chicago right now, Lori? I always ask.

Lori: I'm in Florida at the moment. This is probably the last one that I'll be in Florida for. And then we head back to Chicago. Oh, I see Sylvia from Chicago. Chicago for the summer in April 9th or 10th. Something like...and then we'll be there all summer. Except for when I'm in Vegas. Anyone coming to SHRM annual conference in Vegas? GoCo and I were just talking about how we can coordinate our efforts there. Noelle is coming.

Ashley: Yeah, I'm excited.

Lori: Evelyn is hoping to. We'd love to see you guys there. That would be great.

Ashley: We love to come up with super fun booths. If anyone was there last year, I hope you stopped and got some coffee from us. We were filling everyone up with our cold brewed coffee. We were filling my team up. I was like, "I need to cut myself off." That stuff was very strong with caffeine but we'll come up with something else fun to do this year.

Lori: Yeah, let's see. What's good in Vegas? I'm trying to think. Yep, one of the food network people...no, I'm kidding. There are so many...have Gordon Ramsey come and run a Hell's Kitchen. No, I'm...

Ashley: I can do that. I mean, I would...

Lori: I'm sure he's, like...Stephanie, yeah. I don't think so. All right, well...

Ashley: Cool. It looks like people are tapering off joining. So, some housekeeping, the usual spiel at the beginning. Like I said, we love to chat so keep posting in there during the session. We'll do Q&A at the end a little bit throughout if we can. So, make sure you use the Q&A feature as well. Questions tend to get lost in the chat. We'll also give you a SHRM code at the end if you are here for credits. So, we'll read that out at the end so stay tuned. And we will share a copy of the recording and the slides with you after the session, most likely in email tomorrow so we have time to pull everything together. So, any things we mention today, like, we'll send links to Lori's old programs with us. Old, like, the past couple of months we've had them. So recent programs with us. And I'll get that out to you tomorrow or the next day. So, looks like it's about to taper off. So, Lori, if you wanna take it away, we can get started so we have plenty of time for questions at the end.

Lori: Perfect.

Ashley: The code is just for SHRM but, Lori, maybe as you pull things up, you can give the usual instructions on how to use the SHRM code.

Lori: How to do it for HRCI, absolutely. Amal, we will...I will explain to you how to make it work for HRCI. It is no problem. So, let's jump in. And what we're gonna be talking about today is recruiting. And we know that everyone finds hiring people a challenging market. I like to say right now that it is akin to the real-estate market being a buyer's market. It is absolutely a candidate's market right now. And they are driving what is going on in the recruiting space. So, as we get started, I want...and everybody, just so you know, we are gonna send the slides out tomorrow. So, you'll have a copy of all of this as we get into it. But I'd love to start with this quote from Steve Jobs which I think is so true of the candidate experience today. It doesn't make sense to hire smart people and tell them what to do. We want you to hire the smart people so that they can bring new ideas to your organization, not tell you what to do in a bossy, obnoxious way but bring in new ideas, bring in new ways that you can think about and reinvigorate your business.

Now some of you...of course I can't see all your faces. May be sitting there rolling your eyes at me thinking, "Oh, yeah. My management team's gonna think that's a great idea." But let me tell you. Not only will it serve your business well but it will allow you to get the best and the brightest that are out there to really drive your organization forward. So, let's look at a little bit of what's changed in the last couple of years because things have certainly changed.

You know, what's not here are the holes. Okay. Anyway, we won't worry about that. In 2021, almost 70% of separations in business were all voluntary. People are out there looking to make changes. What we know now is that people are two and a half times more likely to apply for work that is remote. I know that our GoCo team...a couple sit in Houston, a couple sit in Austin and one person sits in Dallas. That's the way more and more businesses are being run today. And we'll talk about that a little bit in a minute. And finally, a data point that is really important to talk to your leadership team about is that pre-pandemic 1 in 67 jobs were remote. Today one in seven are remote. Now understand that when businesses say that, they don't mean it's necessarily 40 hours a week, always remote, never see each other, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. What I think we're seeing a lot in the world today is hybrid and flexibility. Now some of you may have certain businesses that's just never gonna work with hybrid.

Maybe you run a daycare center. Maybe you run a nursing home. Well, it isn't gonna do you a lot of good if you have people working from their house. So, it really depends on the industry. It depends on the kind of work being done. But where possible, we know that our people expect us to give them some level of flexibility. Now I'd like to take a quick pause here just so I know who we are working with because we have almost 200 people on this call live. If we can do the first poll, I would love to know what is your role in human resources. Are you at the administrator/coordinator level? Are you a generalist? Do you have a title of a manager or maybe you manage others? Maybe you're a director or above. And I know a lot of you may be office managers. You may be accounting professionals. You may not devote your career to HR and maybe some of you are just altogether other and had nothing else to do today.

So, let's just see. I see that Carrie's an HR generalist. Let's see...maybe when we get 70%, 75% of the attendees, we can go ahead. So Teresta [SP] says that she is an HR clerk. So that would be the admin/coordinator level. So that's great. Oh, hi, Karen. I see Karen Hawkins is here. She has been a dear, old...not old. I don't wanna say old, Karen. A dear friend of mine for a very long time. So, some people are putting it there. But essentially, we've got managers and directors a little over 50% but 35% of you are also generalists and administrators. So, this is really helpful and great to know. I love all my HR-department-of-one friends out there. And this is perfect as we go forward just so that I can tailor my comments a little bit to where you are in your careers.

Okay. So, let's get that to here. Perfect. Share. Okay. So, when I look at recruiting, I like to look at it at three pieces to the puzzle. The first is attracting people to our business. That has to be a big part of what you're doing. The idea of converting them is making sure they pick you because a lot of candidates today have three or four offers on the table. I had someone about two weeks ago that we wanted so badly and she picked another job. She was weighing two offers. And then finally, I will tell you that the easiest way or the easiest thing to think about in the world of recruiting is retaining your top talent, making sure that you don't lose them to begin with. So, let's talk about these different components.

Now because of this format, I'm gonna just give you a few minute overview about me and my background. I see a few of my friends here who've seen this before but I'm gonna go ahead and share it.

Man: Meet Lori Kleiman of HR Topics. Lori's HR story begins in 1981 when she packed her bags for college at the University of Illinois expecting to get a business degree and become an accountant just like her dad. But numbers weren't her thing so with her degree in industrial sociology, Lori started her career as human resources director in her family's commercial photography business employing 250 team members in 5 states. Working her way up to VP of operations, she learned the business of people.

Lori: Unfortunately, technology made the worlds of commercial photography obsolete. So, I started my own HR consulting firm for small businesses growing that enterprise to seven employees working fulltime in my home and just under a million dollars in sales. But that wasn't sustainable so...

Man: In 2007, Arthur J. Gallagher purchased Lori's consulting company. The entire team moved into the Gallagher Benefit Services operation and took the business model of HR consulting to small business nationwide. Lori was a mentor to HR operations in Gallagher offices in Houston, Baton Rouge, East Florida and more. But corporate life wasn't for Lori and as much as Gallagher was great for her and the business, Lori left in 2013 and returned to her entrepreneurial work. Her new organization, HR Topics works to support HR professionals and small businesses with actionable tools and tips to drive results. And to back up all the experience, Lori has a master's in HR and holds SPHR and SHRM SCP certifications.

Lori: So, whether your background is in a small family business, entrepreneurship or large corporations, I just want to make sure that you know I've been there and done that and I understand the HR challenges you're faced with every day. Now let's get on with today's program.

So, let's do just that and talk about the three ways we are going to look at...come on. Move on. Don't start over. Hold on. There we go. The three ways we're gonna divide up this content. And the first is setting expectations. We're going to spend the most amount of time on building an ongoing pipeline. And this is a place where GoCo and I, Ashley especially and I are just so in sync of how to do this. She's got some great suggestions as well. And then finally wrapping up as I said with retaining the best. So, let's start with setting expectations and what you need to do internally in your organization for a successful recruiting process.

So many times I hear from people, "I don't have enough time to add this to my equation." I have a manager that I had four open positions for this...even just the beginning part of this year and he basically told me he didn't have enough time to interview. And my answer then was, "Well, then I don't have time to screen candidates. So, you just let me know when your calendar opens up and I'll get to work for you." But when we hear this quote, I don't have enough time, I love a quote by H. Jackson Brown Junior who says, "You have exactly the same number of hours in the day that were given to Hellen Keller, Michelangelo, Mother Theresa, Thomas Jefferson and Albert Einstein." I believe that as HR professionals, we allow other people to hijack our time. And so, part of what we have to do is really know where we need to spend our time. And often in recruiting it's a lot about only talking to the candidates that make sense, automatically filtering people out when you can and there's a lot of technology that can help you do that.

Now as we talk about expectations, I love to share this job ad. And I found this online somewhere a year or two ago. I don't remember exactly. But look at this. And we all had managers come to us and say, "I want to find somebody Harvard educated who's done modeling work on the side. Must be fluent in three languages to manage a retail staff." They're an outdoor equipment store so you must also ski, board sail and know boating. I mean, come on. And then by the way, we're going to pay a whopping $30,000 a year. So, as we talk about setting expectations, I want you at the beginning of every job search to really sit with your hiring managers and reflect on what do we really need. When they tell you, "We need a college degree," do they really need a college degree? I'm going to suggest that 90% of the time they don't really need that. They might like that. They might think that's good but what are those skills that are really critical?

And at the same time, we talk about setting expectations, what is your business willing to pay? Because it may be that your pay ranges are the middle of the market and that is absolutely fine. Middle of the market is going to get you great employees who do their jobs really, really well. But likely, it's not going to get you a Harvard graduate. It's likely not going to get you somebody with 10 years of experience. But if six years of experience are great, then it'll work just fine. Now the other conversation I like to have when we talk about setting expectations is talking to managers when they want to tell you that somebody needs to be a good culture fit. What does culture fit really mean? Often, it's discrimination in disguise because often saying, "I want someone who's a really good fit," means someone who's just like the rest of our team. And not only does that create issues with diversity and equity but it also creates issues with lack of creativity because what brings businesses up are lots of different people, lots of different thought processes and lots of different personalities.

So, as we talk about setting expectations, really think about what does culture fit mean. Now I only do a little bit of consulting anymore but the people I do consulting for are major philanthropists. They give away tons of money. It is not a fit for me to hire people that are all about making profit, that are all about investment success. That just isn't a match with what we do as an organization. So, you want to make sure there's some level of culture fit but at the same time, you don't want something that's just driving more of the same all the time. And really setting the expectation with managers upfront that perfection is truly a roadblock to success. If they keep waiting...I just extended an offer last night to someone for the same manager who didn't seem to have enough time that we have been searching for...since October for this role. It is absolutely ridiculous. He played this game of, "I wanna see one more person. I wanna see..." There is a point in recruiting where you've got to make a decision about the candidate pool you have in front of you.

And the final expectation to tee up with your leadership team from the very beginning is that when you find that candidate, you have got to be ready to move. You have got to be...I typically send offer letters within three to five hours of a final interview. If somebody really likes somebody, the good candidates are getting multiple offers. And so, you don't have time with someone that you like to say, "We're gonna get back to you in another three to five days." Now one of my tips in recruiting...and I'm gonna share with you now and then we'll move on to the next section, is when I start a search, the first thing I do is have the manager block time on their calendar two to three weeks later. I tell them that they must give me a half day window and as I meet candidates I like, I start filling up those time slots. Because if you wait until you do all the screening and then you go to the manager and say, "I've got four or five people I want you to meet," they're gonna be busy for the next week. Maybe the next 10 days, maybe the next 2 weeks.

And then you're gonna start losing candidates. So, my final tip on setting expectations is this idea of blocking time really early in the process for your managers to interview the people once you start to find them and you're ready to go.

Let me get back to the slides. So, let's jump over now to our next section which is gonna be all about the ongoing pipeline. This is the most important part of the recruiting process, is creating that ongoing pipeline. And the reason that Ashley and I from GoCo are so in sync on what we're going to do here is because...I'm gonna actually skip a slide. It is really a marketing activity. As a recruiter, you need to be always working. And we're gonna talk about some different ways to do that. Now these two programs that I have here, MailChimp and Constant Contact, there is nothing magical about these but they are typical marketing programs that you can often access for free. And what they allow you to do is stay in touch with candidates on an ongoing basis. So, I'm gonna talk a little bit more about that as we go on.

Now I do wanna give you an opportunity. We are going to email you...today's Tuesday. So, I'll email you by the end of the week with a lot of different things but this...if you want to go to this QR code...you can take a picture of it right now. You will automatically get some of my HR tools. So, if you'd like any of those, feel free. If not, I'm going to email you later this week with some recruiting tools and from there, you are welcome to stay engaged with me or not. That's totally up to you.

But getting back to building your pipeline. It really needs to be about branding your business. And this is where you are going to take a step back and think about what do people in the community or industry we are trying to attract think about our business. And some of the ways you can do this is first of all make sure your website is always updated. We know that the first thing candidates do is they go to your website and they wanna check out your business. Make sure that somewhere on there you have a career page and that that career page has smiling, happy employees, that it lists all of your benefits. I personally am not a huge fan of putting every single open role on your career page because you too often forget to take them down. But you may be in a business where you have positions that you are always looking for people. Maybe customer service. Maybe it's line workers if you're a factory. Maybe shipping and receiving if you run, you know, a logistics company. Whatever it is, you can go ahead and put those always looking for positions out on your career page.

If you're good at maintaining that career page, go ahead and list every open position. But it's critical that you've got a social media presence. And I encourage you to make sure that you've got an employer hashtag and that you are out there tagging employees who look happy at work as you go. Now I can't...throw in the chat...we have...we can do this. We have enough people. Throw in the chat if...oh, sure. Everybody wants the...so while we do this...thank you, Karen. Here's this back. Throw in the chat if you have...if you check Glassdoor at least once a month to see what people are doing, talking about your business. Oh, Heidi checks it daily. Amal says, "Absolutely." Jillian looks weekly. And I think that's pretty...Alexandria, three times a day. I'm not sure what you have going on out there. Maybe you're from a very big business. Yeah, Susanne, I would add it to your list. Usually once a month...I mean, it depends how big your business is. But make sure...Anthony, once a quarter is probably fine if you're a small business.

But it looks like many of you at least are engaged out there and know that checking it is a pretty good idea. So, make sure...and what I do, I ask employees that I know and like and I know they like us to please put a Glassdoor review for us. I actively seek them out. Now what do I mean by employee identification? So, I have kind of a funny story of when my daughter was in college and she went to Tulane in New Orleans. And she goes to college and every day her first couple of weeks I'm hearing, "Oh, my, I just got a text message. If we run to the gymnasium, we get a free T-shirt. If we go to the quad, they're giving away baseball hats. If we go here, they're giving away a water bottle." Every day there were two or three opportunities for her to go get free Tulane stuff. And I thought to myself, "What on Earth is this all about?" Well, spring break her freshman year, she comes home with three Tulane kids from all over the country to go to Chicago and they went downtown and they were exploring the city and all those kinds of things. And what do you think they left my house in every single day?

They had on Tulane swag and... or they were carrying a Tulane water bottle or they had a Tulane backpack. Tulane couldn't pay for the advertising they were getting all over the city of Chicago for these kids to be running around in these clothes. And so, I took that lesson and thought to myself, "Well, what about our companies? Why don't we make sure to outfit our employees so that when they are at a little league game, when they are their religious functions, when they are, you know, at a networking event, whatever it is, whatever they're out there doing..." I don't care if they're grocery shopping. You want them to be in your company's T-shirt, baseball hat, bringing the water bottle. That is the ultimate level of branding that doesn't cost your company one penny.

So really next time you get pushback from leadership of why are we buying all these T-shirts or baseball hats or whatever, I believe it's one of the most inexpensive ways you can...and people are only going to wear it...there you go, Rebeca. Even at the dentist's office. You just never know and they're only gonna wear it if they're proud of your company and thrilled that they work there. So, moving on.

The other thing you want to make sure you're doing is building relationships in your community. Are you out at senior centers? Do you know how many people have retired these days that are absolutely active, great people that might be interested in coming to work in an easy job in your company? Are you really connecting with professors and adjunct faculty at a college in your area. And I say that not because you want them sending you their best students. I think there is nothing better for a job interview than a 16-week college course. Who is showing up on time? Who's paying attention? Whose homework is turned in on time? You really want to engage with professors in a way that you volunteer to come lecture in their classes. You volunteer that they can bring their classes and have a tour at your company. I am not a believer in going through college campuses' job placement office. You want to be getting the best and brightest.

So that's sort of the idea around there. What do I mean by partner organizations? If you are actively...some of you, it looks like, are actively recruiting all day every day. Who else...where do the people you want to hire go? So let me give you an example. I worked with an outdoor retail association. I speak a lot at different association meetings. So, there were all these retail store owners. And they wanted to hire athletic people that were interested in outdoor activities. That's part of where that ad came from. Whether it's hiking or cross-country skiing or, you know, any of these kinds of things. So, I said, "Well, here's an idea. What if we go to the local workout places, the local gyms and ask them if we can put a sign up that our store is hiring, parttime, fulltime, all sorts of opportunities? And in exchange, we will put flyers about their gym at our checkout." Where can you partner with other organizations that would be a win-win for both of you that would allow you to get in front of the people that you want to meet? So that's that whole idea.

And then the final idea is your own employees. You know, really at the end of the day, do you have a great referral program so that you are rewarding employees that really do the best for you? Yeah. My final tip...and then we're...the next piece isn't really branding but we're gonna talk in a minute. But my final tip is what do I mean by observation in the real world. Yes, Susanne, that's great. Referral programs. Observation in the real world is all about being out there and paying attention when someone at Target, when somebody at the grocery store gives you great service, hand them a business card. Hey, I really appreciate how much time and effort you took with me. Can you...if you're ever looking for another position, I'd love to talk. That kind of thing goes a really long way. Now the...here's an example. So, this is from another outdoor thing. This is the back of somebody's business card. And look at this. It says go far, a career like no other. Seeking candidates with persistence, personality, passion and problem-solving ability.

And so, opportunities are always available in sales, marketing and customer service. Why not put this on the back of business cards and give it to all your employees? Now here's another one that I really liked from Ted's Montana Grill. Premium, polished, professional and cool. Apply today. Now what I love about this is right there they say, "Why work for Ted's?" And they give you all the benefits of why you should work for them. Another one I saw at...this is a local...somebody here was from Sarasota. You certainly know First Watch. But at their checkout, they have little cards that say, "No night shifts, ever." Because they're only open breakfast till lunch. Apply now. How cute is it to text the word bacon to 2,500? So, make it easy for these candidates to apply. Be creative. Find ways for them to engage with your business. Now as we...let me find out one more question. Let's do the next poll, if we can.

I'd like to know who is certified. So, the aPHR level is gonna be for those of you that are administrators or coordinators. You may not be certified yet but that is the level you'd be going for. The PHR or SHRM-CP is where we typically see people take it when they're the generalist level. SPHR or SHRM...Julian's saying it disappeared. So, I don't know if other people can see the poll. You may not be certified yet. And do let us know if you're not even interested in HR certification because I won't talk too much more about it.

Ashley: It should still be there. It sometimes hides on other screens but it looks like we're creeping up just about 70% so I'll close it in, like, three, two, one.

Lori: Cool.

Ashley: And let me show the results.

Lori: Great. So about 40% of you are not certified yet. I'm passionate about HR certification. We've got a lot of people, PHR, HPR...oh, Angela's currently going through the class. Yay, Angela. Because we do...I do teach the class. So, we can talk about certification and a master's degree at the end. I'm gonna ask you to put some of those questions in the Q&A and if we have time, we'll get to them. But let's get back to...what I really believe is critical in building your pipeline is writing an amazing ad. I do not believe for one second that you plunk a job description up on a job board and call that an ad, okay. An ad... the word ad comes from marketing, right. We're gonna advertise our role. So, we're gonna start by getting someone excited to apply. We're gonna have a hook that keeps them reading. Then we're gonna give them the details and finally, way at the bottom, the overview and the qualifications because at the end of the day, if they kept reading, they're likely qualified.

So, I'm gonna show you an example from my recruiting class. And I know that this is gonna be hard to read but this is what somebody sent me an ad and said, "Basically, why aren't I getting anyone to apply?" We're looking for enthusiastic marketing specialist to help us in overall marketing efforts. You'll be an integral part of the development and execution. Well, we can probably tell that from the title marketing professional, right. This doesn't really tell us why on this ad we want to apply. So, after we talked and after I got my hands on it, this is how the ad started afterward. Are you a skilled marketing professional ready to take your career to the next level? Are you ready to be the go-to person for all our marketing needs? Are you looking for an organization that values your experience? If so, keep reading.

Okay, so the idea is I'm grabbing them. I want somebody that will take the reins on marketing and run with it. I want somebody who's sitting in a midlevel marketing job that isn't being respected. That's how I get...you want somebody who values your experience. Now at the bottom I said, "You will join our team as an integral part of the development and execution of marketing plans, okay." So, see how just the difference...she ran the ad with my corrections and filled the job within a week. She had more candidates than she knew what to do with. Now at the end, you know, you can see we still give the qualifications. We still give the responsibilities. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But we hook them first to get them excited.

Now here's an interesting fact about writing ads. How many words would you guess a good job ad has in it? Everybody just throw a number in the chat. How many words do you think? Oh, Asheena [SP], that's not enough. Okay. So, the correct answer...some of you are getting up there, 500 to 800 words. So, April...well, 750 is at the top end, 400 might work. But you wanna make sure you're giving them enough information that the detail-oriented person is getting what they need but you don't bore them to death. I always put information about the company at the very end. Unless you are a super interesting, well-known...maybe you're Coca-Cola...okay, put it at the top. But otherwise, really think about what the candidate wants to know so they will go forward and apply.

Next step...oh, I gotta click over here. I've got two screens going. What do you think the typical apply rate is for an ad? So, of all the people who read it, how many people actually apply? I have an ad running right now that over 3,000 people...great guesses. Great guesses. It is 8.5%. And if you mention your benefits, you can increase that. But here's my moral. I don't want people applying that are not gonna be interested or not qualified. So, I have been known...if I have a job, I... about 15 years ago in my own consulting company, I had to do recruiting for a startup, frozen pizza manufacturer. So, for this job, people had to work in 40-degree temperatures. I mean, that's where they were gonna work all day. That was the first line of our ad. Do you love being outside in the middle of winter? Would it be okay with you to earn a little extra money working in a virtual freezer? And then we held the interviews in that facility. Yes, we sat there all day long in downed coats.

But you know what? So, Alexandra is saying test sells in engineering are similar. Put that right at the top of your ad because you know what? You don't want people applying that don't like cold weather. It's a waste of your time, it's a waste of their time. Okay. So just some thoughts on writing ads. So, let's only spend about another 10 minutes looking at retaining top talent. I see we do have questions. So, if you can put any questions you have in the Q&A, we will do our best to answer all of them. I love what Kelly's saying. Right. If you recruit for rooftop work, you better put that right at the top of your ad.

So, what do employees really want today? Typically, they are looking for an environment that values who they are. They wanna have a relationship with their managers that give them feedback. Employees are not afraid to hear that they need to do better. They just want to know if they need to do better. We know that they are looking to make connections, personal connections at work and they are willing to be committed to your organization and they want to understand that the work they're doing is meaningful. Now meaningful doesn't always mean the greater good for the rest of the world. Meaningful work can simply mean that you make it possible for others to succeed in your company, that by doing your job on time, you allow other people to be successful as well. So really make sure that your leadership team understands that without these people in place...I mean, these things in place, people are not gonna stick around. They have way too many options.

And we know that there are best practices to making sure these things happen. First, a great way to start is realistic job previews. If you've got one of these bizarre jobs, have somebody come in for half day and shadow another employee. Have somebody just make sure that when you're going to the interview room, you're touring them through so that they see some of this stuff. We could do an entire session on strategic onboarding. Ashley, maybe we should later this year. So, I'm not gonna get too deep into that. But onboarding should literally be a three-month process. You need to make sure that you are checking in with people, that they have what they need and that you are there for them to make sure they succeed which brings us right to training and development. We already know that employees want to be growing on the job. And so, providing different ways for them to learn different things is really critical.

They do want fair pay. They don't need to always be the highest paid that they can be anywhere and if you love...if you have a company where people love to work, just fair pay is great. Oh, good. I see that Kaylie and Ashley are telling us that GoCo has tons about onboarding in their system. Coaching and membership, mentorship for sure. The difference between the two...Kimberly, if you can put that in the Q&A, I'd really appreciate it. Coaching and membership, mentorship is different. Coaching is directing people how to get to a certain place. Mentorship is learning from others. And it's typically a more...right, Alexandria. I was gonna say a two-way relationship where the mentor learns just as much from the mentee.

And then as I just talked about inclusion and growth. But all of this means that we have got to upskill our managers. But why didn't that come up? Wait. Where's that slide? Hold on. Well, we're not gonna worry about it. I see this slide here. So, I'm gonna not have you stare...that is so weird, at that white screen. Upskilling managers is all about being deliberate to teach your managers how to do these things. Now one more question I wanna ask you and I want you to throw it in the chat. When do you think most employees quit their job? Tell me when you think most people quit their job. Turkesa [SP] says under 30 days. Susie, first 90, within the 3 months, at their annual review. All right. Everybody's got great guesses. I'm gonna tell you what science shows us. The time...am I not sharing? I think I'm not sharing. Sorry about that. It doesn't matter. It's just a nice-looking picture.

But the time we know most people quit their jobs is at a major life event. So, when somebody gets married, when somebody's going to a class reunion. Think about what happens at a class reunion. The first thing people get asked, "Oh, what are you doing?" Everybody's comparing themselves to who's successful, who's not successful. What about a big birthday? I don't mind admitting I'm gonna turn 60 this summer. Well, you start to think. What have I accomplished? Am I where I want to be? So, this goes with this idea of upskilling your managers. Make sure they're on the lookout for these events happening and they're talking to their employees about it. Nothing we do or encourage you to do to retain top talent has to cost a fortune. Employees want the right tools. We've talked a lot about training and coaching, just paying attention to your employees, listening to them and being the kind of leaders that serve others.

One of the best things you can do is make sure that you are recognizing people loud and proud. And yes, people want to have some amount of fun during their work day. It doesn't mean every minute has to be a party. But it does mean that there should be some fun in, you know, the month, let's just say. Now a lot of you may have thought over the last 50 minutes, "What is this woman talking about. My organization is never going to go for this." And that is true. You need to make sure that you work in an organization where your management, your leadership and organizational structure will support employees. And that means trusting people, empowering people to make decisions, creating relationships across functional areas and listening to what your people want done.

So, with that, I'm gonna leave you with my contact information but we will reach out to you as well. Ashley's going to send you...and Kaylie, sorry. All the slides tomorrow. And what I would love to do now is take our questions. So, Ashley, it's okay. I can just...do you wanna just go through?

Ashley: Do you wanna take a glance through while you're organizing your thoughts there? I can go ahead and share our SHRM code if that works.

Lori: Perfect. And while she's doing that, let me explain. Those of you who are PHR or SPHR certified...so you have your certification with HRCI. You can just go to HRCI and self-report. There's a button in there that says, "Self-report." Put in educational program and then just put in tips and tricks of recruiting. And you can put approved by SHRM and this SHRM number and it will be good for one hour of HRCI credit as well. So, feel free to do that.

So let me answer...Setu [SP], I hope that's your name. I'm sorry. How do we bring in the culture quotient in the job description or recruitment? I actually have two ways. So, in recruiting, if you've got a culture that's fabulous and engaging and... I put it right out there, right at the beginning of your ad. As far as the job description, I actually have a client that we created job descriptions where right under the overview of the job we have the company's mission and, in the box, next to it, we say how this position supports our mission. And people have really liked that. We're very deliberate about connecting the two. So those are two ways. Hopefully that answers your question.

So, I don't see any other. So, Sarah's saying, "How do you recognize developed culture?" That's a whole different ball of wax. And actually, I've got some great culture experts if you want to do a webinar on culture. But Sarah, one thing I'm really good at is saying what I'm not, like, an expert in. I'm an expert in a lot of stuff. Culture and culture development really isn't one of them. So, I'm gonna defer...Ashley, somebody speaking on culture is gonna be great in HR Florida this year.

Ashley: Oh, great.

Lori: Carol Ring. So, I might introduce you to her.

Ashley: [crosstalk 00:54:25] I just wanted to call out Alexandra's comment about...I like to work with marketing on videos with people doing the job and with an icon adding the benefits. And I actually have a session that I speak on about how marketing and HR can work together. We did it for Lori's group. But yeah, relying on your marketing team to help with a lot of this stuff, to help with recruiting, making sure your website's polished, it benefits both teams. So definitely call on your marketing team.

Lori: Yeah. It's great. And Ashley and I have given each other and shared so many ideas since we've gotten it. We actually met a year ago at the SHRM Talent Conference. And we've shared so many ideas. So, tap into your marketing people for sure. So, it looks like the last question is all about having a master's in human resources versus...the person is asking what do I classify. I mean, a master's degree is just a master's degree. There's nothing really to classify. Certification is altogether different. And what certification does is it shows your present or future employer that you are committed to the field of human resources and that you know your stuff and that you put the effort in. Almost every industry today has certifications. And so, getting certified in human resources, I believe, is almost essential. If you look at most HR job ads, they ask for certification. And a lot of the reason is just because it's a validation of your HR skills. So, I teach all the certification classes for HRCI and SHRM. The basic...oh, Violet, I'll answer that one.

The PHR, SPHR, SHRM-CP, SHRM-SCP and I just started teaching the a certification, aPHR which is for new people. Violet, great question. I would say of our class attendees, probably 80% do pay out of pocket because so many people are getting certification for the goal of getting a new job. I mean, it's just that simple. But many companies, you know, will pay for it if they have a generous training and development budget. So, you just...it sort of depends where you are.

Oh, I love what Alexandria does. On the calendar invite for candidates, they're putting a link to their CEO podcast. So, Krystal Gale says her old firm paid for her prep course. Karen is recommending...well, they do a training payback. So, I do get a lot of people if they pass, they can get their money back. Yeah. Raney, that's a great thing. If your company wants to take on more, they should pay for it. Absolutely, Heidi. I believe companies should be paying for SHRM memberships. The value that you're getting out of a SHRM membership supports their entire organization. Oh, Jennifer, that's great too. Your SHRM foundation grant. A lot of the local chapters give out grants to study. And Nancy says they paid for half. So, they're all different options. Kashmira has an interesting thing. So, they...usually applications will only ask about SHRM. If you are PHR or SPHR certified and the application is only asking about SHRM, I would still say yes because your certification is absolutely equal to the other certification.

But a master's degree is not equal to certification. That one has nothing to do with the other. One is level of education and the other is certification.

All right. So, Ashley, I think that takes us right about to the top of the hour. Sorry, guys. I got something in my eye. It was so great being with you here again.

Ashley: Likewise. One of my favorite events of the month is our session with Lori and we have one more coming up next month about retaining the talent that you recruit with all of the things that you've learned today. So, we'll make sure that you get that. You'll get the slide, a copy to the recording, everything you need from today, we'll make sure is emailed out. And we hope you join us for next time and thank you again so much for being here, Lori. And we hope everyone comes back for our next session.

Lori: Thanks, everyone. Bye, bye.

Ashley: Bye.