Good To Know: March 2022 🧑💻
A monthly round-up of things happening in hiring, D&I, and humanity.
Hey Everyone,
Welcome to Good to Know! If you are new here, I publish Good to Know on the last Tuesday of every month.
Unlike most posts, Good to Know is a round-up of things going on in hiring, D&I, and humanity with some of my comments. Its purpose is to showcase some of the great work that others are doing and learn from them.
Ben
🤓This week we have🤓
✍️What I wrote this month✍️
Identifying a toxic workplace🗑
Remember Applebees? 🍎🙅
Why has black enrollment fallen at Auburn? 🐅
🐤Solid Tweets🐤
Quick hits💥
✍️What I wrote this month✍️
This month was all about Job Descriptions. Like many of you, I’ve spent a good amount of time lately writing them so I looked into some best practices.
A Job Worth Describing🥰 - Is your job worth working?
What’s In It For Them?💼 - Using basic marketing techniques to improve job descriptions.
What Candidates Want🎁 - Looking at the data to determine what employees and candidates want.
Dominos🍕 Vs Applebees🍎 - A case study in job descriptions
Identifying a toxic workplace🗑
Spotting a potentially toxic work environment isn’t always easy….
The Huffington Post published, then republished, a piece listing the tell-tale signs of a toxic workplace.
Here’s their list:
1. Interviewers bad-mouth the person who had your job previously or the people you’ll be working with.
2. The hiring manager doesn’t want you to talk to anyone else on the team.
3. Interviewers refuse to admit to any of the company’s shortcomings.
4. The way they talk about success is cutthroat.
5. Recruiters are cagey about employment agreements you will need to sign when you start.
6. Everyone who works there seems like they are in terrible mood.
Sadly, I’ve experienced five of the six above.
Remember Applebees? 🍎🙅
Earlier this month I compared Applebees and Dominos’s job descriptions. Applebees didn’t do so hot.
Well, a few days later Wayne Pankratz, an operations executive for a large Applebee’s franchise ownership group, sent out a blast email. In that email, Pankratz celebrated higher gas prices since they would 1) force Applebees’s employees to work more hours at lower wages to maintain their standard of living and 2) put an additional financial strain on Applebee’s mom and pop competitors.
How was it received? According to Inc., not so great.
Once the email became public, reaction was immediate and angry, especially among the chain's employees. In fact, an Applebee's in Lawrence, Kansas was forced to shut down temporarily because three of its six managers quit their jobs after reading the email. As for Pankratz, his LinkedIn page has vanished, and his employer is at pains to disavow what he wrote. "Maybe he wrote it in the middle of the night. I don't know," AFC Brands spokesperson Scott Fischer told the Kansas City Star. "The main message here is that this in absolutely no way, shape, or form speaks to our policies or our culture, or anything like that with our brand."
Ironically Pankratz ends his email imploring his staff to “do things to make sure you are the employer of choice.” At this point, it’s clear that Pankratz has no idea what that means.
Whenever your spokesperson has to say, "Maybe he wrote it in the middle of the night. I don't know" it’s fair to assume that someone really messed up.
Sorry to interrupt but do you need to get better at hiring? Subscribe below!
Why has black enrollment fallen at Auburn? 🐅
Drake Pooley, who was the student body chairman of diversity at Auburn, wrote a great piece this fall about the declining enrollment of blacks at elite southern schools and what can be done about it.
In his piece Pooley clearly articulates the value of diversity in a way that I wish I could:
I know first hand as a white man that diversity improves the education of every student. I grew up in Houston, graduating from one of the most diverse high schools in America. With no single racial group exceeding 36 percent of the population, students tended to develop a sense of cultural humility, an understanding that their view of the world was but one perspective of many. It is difficult to learn this lesson at some of our elite public universities when the Black population is vanishingly small.
Keep your eye on Drake. He’s working on great things.
🐤Solid Tweets🐤
Can you describe your job in three words?
Want to send candidates running, here’s how!
American meritocracy isn’t so meritocratic.
“No one is perfect” is a great thing to remember when evaluating talent.
I work with several growth mode, remote companies. There’s not a hiring crunch for us.
Rejection as a service
Quick hits💥
How to shave weeks off your hiring cycle (because speed kills).
And Finally📈…
Would you mind sharing Lying to Ourselves with a friend or colleague if you find the posts valuable?
That’s it for me. We’ll be back next week. Thanks again for reading!