Chapter 1.
Talent Is All We’ve Got
It’s harder than ever for people to find their dream job, yet the reality is that every day, over seven million positions go unfilled in the United States—way more than the number of people looking for jobs.1 This is good news for job seekers, but employers have the hard task of finding the right people for their organizations and getting them to stay. The American workforce will continue to grow for the foreseeable future, but it won’t be fast enough. To make matters worse, many new workers aren’t being trained for positions or industries where they’re desperately needed. We’re churning out too many history majors and not enough plumbers. Regardless, your organization may not need either. Thriving in the current marketplace requires understanding what skills those history majors have that could translate to your business—might they sync up with your organization’s need for detail-oriented individuals who can write policy manuals? The stakes are high and mutually beneficial; workers need employers, employers need workers, and everyone deserves respect and happiness.
Workers no longer pledge their allegiance and loyalty to their employers like they once did. There’s no earthly reason why they should. The secret to attracting and retaining talent boils down to that holiday chestnut: “Give them everything they need and some of what they want.” But what’s a want and what’s a need? It’s an inexact science. It varies for everyone and across industries. You’ll make headway as long as you take the issue seriously and really listen to what people are saying.
In the following scenario, Ashley and Odette represent the alpha and omega of the talent landscape: an eager acolyte and an ossified but capable workforce veteran. Their experiences have differed dramatically and shaped them uniquely, but they both listen to reason.
The Believers and the Doubters
Even with the lights shining in her eyes, obscuring much of the audience, Cherilynn could gauge the audience’s reaction from her vantage point onstage. It was an important part of public speaking—assessing your audience, knowing when they are rapt and when their attention is wandering. Cherilynn was practically in love with the young woman in the first row, who was attempting to film the whole presentation on her phone and take notes at the same time. She must not know that both the video and the PowerPoint deck would be posted on the conference website.
The woman’s eyes were trained on Cherilynn as she traversed the stage. It was a real ego boost; Cherilynn didn’t have a fan club at the office unless you counted the CEO’s dog, which occasionally roamed the halls looking for treats and snuggles. Now, with an HR enthusiast watching her every move, Cherilynn’s confidence soared as she glided through her presentation.
And then her clicker malfunctioned. She jabbed at it, trying to change the slide, but the presentation was stuck on a photo of a plumber with a large wrench gazing confidently at a dripping pipe. A snicker erupted from somewhere to the left of the young woman in the front. Cherilynn scanned the crowd. The offender looked to be an older woman in a dark outfit that did not fit the humid Orlando weather. Her arms were crossed and her glasses reflected the light from the stage. Cherilynn knew the type—a nonbeliever. An old-school “back in my day we didn’t have any EEO laws, and we liked it like that” type. Cherilynn whacked the clicker with the side of her hand, but the slide didn’t budge.
The ill-natured woman in the audience muttered something about technology, loud enough for everyone to hear. Cherilynn figured she was probably only here to take advantage of a free trip to Orlando, quite possibly smuggling three grandchildren and a daughter-in-law into her company-provided hotel room. She’d seen it before. If anyone were to check the woman’s giant handbag on her way out of the conference room, they’d probably find half a dozen granola bars and a fruit cup from the buffet.
A third whack of the clicker did the trick. The next slide popped up, and Cherilynn moved on to the war for talent and work-life balance.
Ashley owned up to being an HR geek. She thought of it as the compassionate side of business, where you got to know and work with the people who made a company successful. It made her somewhat unusual at school. Her college friends were busy making short documentaries about the uncontacted tribes of the Amazon and finding summer internships at hot tech start-ups, while she spent a significant portion of her time coordinating her school’s Business Student Association. Her latest project, apart from attending this conference, was lining up guest speakers for the group’s annual symposium. Cherilynn Fenton would be perfect! She was a futurist prepping a whole new generation on what the workplace would look like twenty years from now. Just like everything else, the HR field had trends and people had to stay on top of them. But Cherilynn’s fee was probably outrageous, and Ashley had no clue how to approach her.
The trip to the conference was the top prize of her university’s annual essay contest, and she wanted to make the most of it. Her ultimate goal was to be the CHRO for a Fortune 500 company. She loved the idea of helping a business find qualified people and encouraging them to live up to their potential. Engineers, software developers, accountants, or sous chefs. It didn’t matter. She would get to meet new people every day.
How does a 20-year-old college junior decide her fate lies in HR? It began for Ashley when she was 17. She had a part-time summer job in the office of a landscaping company. She was only supposed to answer phones and fill out stuff on the computer, but the employees’ schedules proved to be so erratic that she ended up doing whatever was needed. One particularly awful Thursday, a whole crew just up and left at the end of the day. The crew leader, Joe, claimed they were insubordinate and that he fired them. But everyone knew Joe had a temper, so he was no doubt partly to blame. It didn’t really matter. They had a packed schedule the next day, and they needed four guys, fast.
The office manager usually did the hiring (and firing), but she had jury duty. Ashley called the company owner, Phil, and he told her to place an ad online and start interviewing people at 6:00 a.m. the next morning. The idea was to find four people capable of operating a lawnmower and get them on the crew by 8:00 a.m. Phil said he’d come in and sign the paperwork.
The prospect of interviewing people both terrified and thrilled Ashley. She felt a little like an unprepared understudy who has to go onstage when the lead dancer twists an ankle. She had the ad placed by 7:00 p.m., got six responses by 10:00 p.m., and told them all to be at the office for an interview by 6:30 a.m. She stayed up until midnight googling “how to interview people for a job.”
The next morning, only four of the six interviewees showed up. Of those four, only two brought resumes and only two could start that day. She hired the pair that could start immediately, but she felt only semiconfident about one of them.
All her preparation from the online research—asking where they saw themselves in five years and describing a situation in which they had overcome adversity—was moot. The real issues were: Do you have a driver’s license? Can you operate a lawnmower and hedge clipper? Can you get through the workday without committing a felony?
The two new hires went out with Joe, who appeared that morning looking more contrite than usual. By 9:00 a.m., five more people responded to the ad and Ashley told them to get to the office ASAP. She hired two more people by noon. Phil strolled in at about 1:00 p.m. and signed the papers.
It was an object lesson in flying by the seat of her pants. Ashley was hooked.
Odette started working at Big John’s in the spring of 1983, when the ink on her divorce papers was barely dry. She was a secretary—the term admin was still over the horizon—with two young children at home. Her job involved answering the phone, scheduling meetings, and typing memos on an IBM Selectric. She was John Griskow’s “girl” at Big John’s, and she was pretty sure she got the job based on how she looked in a tight skirt, because her shorthand skills left something to be desired.
Odette put up with a lot from “Big John” over the years, all for the sake of her kids. Mr. Griskow—it was never John—was a typical boss: oblivious, chauvinistic, and condescending. Odette never exactly approved of his behavior, but what could she do? She needed the job. Griskow was fairly flexible—or at least he was out of the office so much he didn’t really know what was going on. She rolled her eyes at him behind his back when he told dumb-blonde jokes, and she bought his wife thoughtful birthday gifts and signed the cards “Love always, John.”
But 1983 was well over thirty years ago. She could have left or gone back to school once the kids were grown and gotten herself a better paying job. Truth was, she kind of liked the little fiefdom she had established at Big John’s. She was an efficient gatekeeper to the CEO, and Griskow trusted her. It would have been a pain to start over somewhere else.
Her job had evolved as the company grew. She was good with numbers, so she was in charge of payroll by the mid-1990s. Just as important as the actual checks was her tight lock on information. Griskow was adamant that no employee was ever to know what anyone else made. The reason was clear—he played favorites. Fortunately for Odette, she was one of them. She might have made more elsewhere, but she was frugal and lived within her means. She had paid her house off by the time she was 40, her car was old but reliable, and she seldom took vacations. Her only vice was a weekly trip with her kids to the neighborhood pizza joint. Her frugality was matched by Griskow’s. The administrative offices sported threadbare carpet, and the employee bathrooms were a time capsule from the 1960s.
By the turn of the millennium, she was Big John’s HR manager. She recruited employees, hired them, fired them, and oversaw compliance issues. She had three people working under her. Never in all those years did she take a class in HR management.
That she had convinced Griskow to foot the bill for this conference in Orlando was proof that she had enormous influence over him. The years hadn’t softened him at all; if anything, he had become even more creative in finding ways to pinch pennies.
Odette was using the trip as an excuse to take her granddaughters to Disney World. She wanted to make up for the fact that she hadn’t been able to take her own children when they were young. So she pitched the Orlando conference to Griskow as a way to stay abreast of legal issues in HR. His fear of expensive and time-consuming lawsuits was well known.
All she had to do was sit through the keynote address and a workshop on new EEO regulations, then it would be off to Magic Kingdom. She juggled a muffin while trying to pull her buzzing phone out of her purse, thinking it was a granddaughter telling her to hurry up.
Instead, it was Griskow telling her that two plant supervisors had just quit. Lovely. As she took her seat and the lights dimmed, she was suddenly overwhelmed with finding not one, but two plant supervisors before production nosedived. Odette knew why they had quit. They might have withstood the long hours and low salary if there had been other benefits—a great work environment, safe and modern facilities, a 401(k) plan that might have made retirement a reality someday. But Big John’s had none of those things. Her tenure as the HR manager had been one long stretch of lackluster candidates and high turnover. She assumed it was like that everywhere.
Cherilynn Fenton was exactly what Odette expected. Her suit was a strange shade of purple and her hairstyle smacked of Texas. She strutted across the stage firing off a barrage of facts intended to shock and awe the crowd:
Each doomsday statement was matched by a vivid image on the giant screen behind her: charts with choppy red lines zooming into the stratosphere. A photo of a revolving door with a happy, fit, gray-haired man waltzing out and a stoop-shouldered millennial in a hoodie grimly shuffling in. A young woman staring at a computer spreadsheet with a horrified expression on her face, as though she couldn’t understand the difference between the red and black numbers.
Odette rolled her eyes. The HR industry was built on fear; it funded shindigs like this one and perpetuated steep annual dues for professional organizations that claimed to “keep you on top of the latest developments in the industry.” Fear sold magazines, workshops, and books.
The reality was quite different in Odette’s eyes. People needed jobs, and Big John’s had positions to give. It was a workplace, not a nursery school, and if you couldn’t be there on time and do your job, that was your problem and no one else’s. She was living proof, having gone from penniless divorcee to owning her own home in less than twenty years—without spending a minute in college, no less.
Cherilynn Fenton cased the stage, as confident as a newly minted Dale Carnegie graduate. A young woman in the front row was actually filming the presentation on her phone. Odette would have bet her day pass to Disney World that the girl was majoring in HR management at an outrageously overpriced college, going into debt to learn something that she could learn on the job. Millennials had a weird fixation on education.
Odette had no idea where she would find two plant supervisors, or how Big John’s would make its quotas until she did.
The purple-suited speaker launched into a tirade about how few young people were choosing to be plumbers and electricians and how the skilled trades needed to do a better job of recruiting them into apprenticeships. The slide showed a grinning young man, grease artfully smeared on his cheek, happily hoisting a big wrench toward a leaky pipe.
The slide stuck. The woman on stage jabbed her clicker at it. Odette laughed—louder than she meant to. People nearby turned and scowled. “Technology, am I right?” she commented, snickering again. No one smiled. Honestly, people took these conferences so seriously.
On stage, the speaker got the picture to change and all went back to normal. There was more talk about “the war for talent” and employees’ desire for “work-life balance.” The photo showed a bunch of office workers doing yoga in a conference room. Please.
Herb, one of the former plant managers, hadn’t even been at the company for a year. What was his deal?
Odette’s phone buzzed with another text. Hourly absenteeism was at 8 percent for the day. That was high—even for a Monday. But it’s not like she could do anything about it from five states away. Nevertheless, the news put a damper on her mood. Griskow would expect a call at her earliest convenience.
Only one year until retirement; that was the plan. Twelve more months until she sailed through the office doors for the last time, like the man in the photo.
“Six million people are looking for jobs. Their skills don’t match those employers require. But companies still think they’ll find a needle in a haystack.”
Odette had to admit the purple woman had a point. Finding two plant supervisors would be like finding two needles in a haystack. And it was true—job applicants did not have the skills Big John’s needed. People applying for work in the office didn’t know how to create a spreadsheet, people applying for work in the warehouse had never seen a hi-lo, and people wanting the better-paying jobs in manufacturing had never even heard of a CNC machine.
Young people with no work history thought they could demand a job starting at $15 an hour. No one could deny the huge disconnect between what employers wanted and what job seekers expected.
Odette became more uncomfortable the longer the woman talked. She had given thirty-five years to Big John’s, more than half her life. She’d spent more time with Griskow than anyone else, and the company meant something to her—she had helped build it. Maybe it was wrong to think of it as only a job, a means to an end.
She knew that turnover was a huge problem at the company; it was expensive and it affected productivity. Sales had declined in the last few years. It was easy to dismiss as a cyclical phenomenon, but the truth was that “talent” (they used to call them “workers”) was hard to find. She wasn’t sure how to fix it. She didn’t want the company to go out of business because then it would be like she had given it her best years for nothing. Kind of like her marriage. Darn that speaker, stirring up feelings Odette had worked hard to tamp down.
Ashley loved the concept of employer branding. In fact, it would be a perfect topic for the symposium. She could create an employer branding program at the Lawnmore Landscaping Company and crush the competition. They could earn a reputation as the region’s best landscaping company to work for, and they could facilitate employee growth by expanding into patio installation, pond design, and deck building. It could be the subject of her senior thesis.
The memory on her phone was full, so she was forced to watch Cherilynn directly. Their connection was undeniable! Cherilynn looked her in the eye more than once. She wondered where she could get a suit in that same shade of purple. It really made a statement.
Cherilynn was invigorated by the applause following her presentation. Thankfully, the stuck slide was the only glitch. This was definitely one of the largest crowds she’d spoken to, and now that her keynote was over, she could relax for the rest of the conference. She’d be chairing a few smaller workshops, nothing more.
A small group gathered around her in the hubbub following her address. She wasn’t surprised to see the young woman approach her, but she was surprised to see the older woman in the dark clothing also come forward.
The first woman introduced herself as Ashley, an HR management major. She was adorably nervous and Cherilynn recognized in her a sense of engagement that would lead to success in her life.
“I really connected with what you said, especially the part about employer branding,” Ashley said. “It would make a fabulous topic for the symposium my school’s Business Association is hosting in September. Is there any way you might be interested in participating? I’m not really sure about the right way to ask.”
Cherilynn was impressed by Ashley’s firm handshake. “Let me give you my card. Shoot me an email next week and I’ll check my calendar.”
“Really? Okay!” Ashley was equal parts delighted and surprised.
Cherilynn turned to the other woman, who introduced herself as Odette. “I have to admit, your talk took me by surprise,” Odette said.
“Really?”
Odette considered her words carefully. “Two of my production supervisors quit this morning.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“I’m afraid my company is in real trouble. The way we used to do things isn’t working anymore.”
Cherilynn sensed a lot of history behind the statement.
“These are hard times for small manufacturing companies,” Odette said. She paused, distracted by a new thought. “When did ‘workers’ become ‘talent’?”
Cherilynn chuckled. “It’s a way of reminding ourselves that people are more than employees, that they’re individuals who bring unique assets to the table, assets that should be cultivated and used.”
Odette raised an eyebrow. “I’m not looking for a circus performer. I just need someone who can get the job done.”
“Tell you what,” Cherilynn said. “Come to my workshop on practical talent solutions this afternoon. I’d like to hear more about your situation.”
That would put a kink in Odette’s vacation plans. “I’ll see if I can fit it in my schedule,” she said. Griskow was texting her furiously, and she was wavering between putting him at ease and ignoring him. Truth is, they were both old dogs. She wasn’t sure she could change after so many years, and she wasn’t sure that Griskow would let her if she tried. Maybe it was time for something new, or maybe the heat was just getting to her. The enthusiasm that permeated the crowd at the conference—would she be able to bottle it up and take it home with her? It may take a little while, Odette knew, but eventually Mr. Griskow would come around. After all these years, she knew him best, and she knew he wanted his company to survive.
1. Eric Morath, “U.S. Job Openings Topped 7 Million for the First Time,” The Wall Street Journal, October 16, 2018, https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-job-openings-topped-7-million-this-summer-1539702755.