Be Careful What You Wish For... We're Ba-ack

We're Back
Feathers single handedly quadrupled our listeners
Ghost Jobs
Warren pisses of NJ, AR, FL, VA and a ton of other listeners
You pick the title - Be careful what you wish for OR JCT steps in it again

Transcript

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Announcer 0:02

Had you actually read the email, you would know that the podcast you are about to listen to could contain explicit language and offensive content. These HR experts' views are not representative of their past, present, or future employers. If you've ever heard, my manager is unfair to me, I need you to reset my HR portal password, or get I right at my employee for crying too much. Welcome to our portal. Welcome to HR.

Feathers 1:20

Low tech. We're low tech. I wasn't gonna illegally download it, so I'll just uh poach it that way. No one's mine. Wow, that was awful. We're showing our age and like how low tech we are.

Warren 1:35

I I don't know. I think I think kids today or kids today, people today will know the reference. And if you don't that's poltergeist too, they're back. I don't know what year it was, like early mid eighties.

Feathers 1:52

I don't even know.

Warren 1:53

Oh, you're one year off. 86.

Feathers 1:56

86.

Warren 1:58

So things I have my mental roller.

Feathers 2:00

The things in my mental rolodex.

Warren 2:02

See, my mental Rolodex is so full of the most useless shit, I can be great at Jeopardy, but ask me well, ask me something that's important.

Feathers 2:13

Warren, that's been your whole life.

Warren 2:15

That's been my entire life, exactly.

Feathers 2:18

Unless it's about California law, then you're an expert, right?

Warren 2:22

You know, uh no.

Feathers 2:26

How about we just go backwards? How about let's get the show started?

Warren 2:29

Yeah, let's get the show started. So welcome to Jaded HR, the podcast by two HR professionals who don't have a clue about anything they're doing at any given time. Hey fucking Warren.

Feathers 2:41

And this is feathers.

Warren 2:43

Alrighty.

Feathers 2:44

I we are back, and uh I wouldn't say we're back and better than ever, but I think we're just back and older and more confused. Bring me my pudding. Basically. I want a green jello. I want a green jello today.

Warren 3:02

It's been too long. And actually, the last time we recorded, you and I were doing the same thing, watching a baseball game while we're recording the same teams playing the same uh uh maybe different result. Uh uh this time the bad guys won. The good guys did not win this one, so anywho, let's see here. Where was I? So, anyhow, got a couple well, first before we get started, as always, we need to thank our original jaded HR rock star, Hallie, who continues to support us on Patreon. We need more Patreon supporters, we need more reviews. We need y'all to keep telling your friends about us so that uh you can spread the word. We're not gonna become millionaires in any way, shape, or form, but hey, we're we're having fun.

Feathers 3:51

Well, speaking of that, before we recorded tonight, I was out with some friends and I did drop knowledge that I I'm on a podcast, and the looks in their faces are like, what? So we might have added like quadrupled our listenership to like nine.

Warren 4:06

Oh, hey, maybe maybe we'll get a couple other people. We we need more listeners from your your area. So yeah. But you know, I I last week, the first week we had I had a little family issue going on. The second week I was on vacation, and I just saw on LinkedIn that while I was in wonderful Orlando, I was not visiting the mouse, I was at Universal. But uh in Orlando, Sherm was having some sort of convention there, and and that seems to be Sherm's new thing. They're not seemingly at least pushing all the certifications unless they finally got the clue. Hey, Warren's already certified. You don't need to send them three million emails a week about getting a certification. Uh, but uh how they were doing you you still get those?

Feathers 4:52

Yeah, and I'm and I'm certified.

Warren 4:55

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. But I don't see those as much. I really don't know.

Feathers 5:01

But I'm really behind on my CE, so hopefully I keep that certification.

Warren 5:07

Ooh, I'm one hour away and I don't need to uh recertify till June, so I need to find one more I'll I'll have it probably in uh in some time at some point, but yeah. But um I'm I'm really behind. Well, uh I I promised my wife I wouldn't talk about this, but fuck it, I will. So uh sorry, wife. Yeah, you and I are both HR certified, and and uh those are not easy exams by any stretch of the imagination, whether it's the SHERM or the HRCI. Like I said, I've taken them all at least once. They're not easy tests, but I will say my wife just passed her CPP certified payroll professional through to the AMA. And now I don't know heads or tails of payroll, but she passed it on the first time, but that test is just people want to complain about the Sherm exams and the HRCI exams. This one is a beast. It and they're asking you questions that are specific to hospitals and and police officers and this and that, and like, why do you have to get so in the weeds with some of these uh questions? I mean, as I I almost thought I should get my FCP or whatever, the lower level payroll exam after just helping her study for the past six months. Why do you need to know some of these things? Why do you make it so granular? I think it's another thing that they probably like the fact that you know they only have a 40% pass rate on the first try or whatever that stat is. And I I just don't uh I don't get it, and I don't know why they have to make these exams so extra so hard. And while I'm thinking about it, think of the the HR exams, the these exams aren't really they're not applicable. They're really not applicable to most people. Uh you know, they ask about you have an HR department of a hundred type people, and this person, you know, I'm thinking I'm never gonna work in that type of environment. This doesn't apply to me as I as I'm doing these uh the studying and the exams, but I know it. I memorized it for the purpose.

Feathers 7:22

It it's simple. We work in HR. I can answer every question inside the exam in two words. It depends. It depends. That should be option E on each of the it's is it gray? Yeah, it's gray. So yeah, no, no, yeah, let's go, let's go brainstorm it. But no, it's gotta be A, B, or C, D or whatever. Whatever it is. Yeah, no, it's not always how it works out.

Warren 7:45

Yeah, it depends. And the yeah, the preparation.

Feathers 7:48

I've never had a I've never had a single investigation follow the exact same flow. I've never had an LOA. I've never had like any of those situations, I mean, maybe LOAs. Maybe. But like an investigation, something like that, no, they've never gone the same.

Warren 8:04

You take it where the investigation leads you. You have the general direction you want to go, but oh, John Doe said this. Well, I need to find out more about that. Or, you know, have to uh you don't have to, you know, do the the Sherm way, I guess you should say. But anyways, I I just found that interesting. I I came back. I hadn't been on LinkedIn for two weeks, and I got back on just tonight, actually, to look for some show materials. I hadn't prepared at all for our show, but our our listeners demand that we be back. So we're all four of you. Thank you. We're demanding we be back. Uh so anyway.

Feathers 8:44

Swaziland, Swaziland, we're back. Swaziland.

Warren 8:47

Well, you know, we're we're out of the top 25, but we are now 49 in Swaziland. I did look that up. We're we've moved down to 49.

Feathers 8:57

Um closer to our ages, so that works.

Warren 9:01

Yeah, so pick it up, Swaziland. Get uh get some get some of your buddies up here uh listening. So, yeah. And you know, they have a different their country has a different name. Even though Apple Podcasts refers to it as Swaziland, it's a it's a uh it goes by different names. So maybe that's not they're not reaching out to us uh because we're we're butchering their country name. But anyone in that whole South Africa region, uh, let us know. Love to hear from you. Anybody in the world. Anyone in the world. And I I will go back to the book.

Feathers 9:34

Anybody in the Krim in the Kremlin, maybe we can help you out.

Warren 9:38

I'll do some investigations for you. Oh, they're the ones good at investigations. We have ways of making good talk. You will not be late again tomorrow. Do you want to see our children again? Be on time, god damn it.

Feathers 9:55

Would you like your bread re your bread rations? Oh man.

Warren 10:01

Oh, going to hell.

Feathers 10:03

Yeah, what's you what do you have for us, Warren?

Warren 10:05

Well you hear uh a lot about ghosting, whether it's candidates ghosting companies or companies ghosting candidates. Ghosting seems to be the whole trendy word going on right now.

Feathers 10:22

Well, so here we go. So you're hold on, you're you're married, so you don't you don't fully get ghosting. When you're my age and dating, you understand ghosting a whole lot more because you do it and you also receive it, so it's just like, oh, whatever. I got ghosted. Move on.

Warren 10:40

I get cold-shouldered. I get I get not talked to for a week, and when I do, it's just uh and uh No, you're you're ghosting a solicitors, you're the opposite.

Feathers 10:51

You're bringing on.

Warren 10:53

Yeah. I haven't had any much much solicitor drama lately. Oh, I will have to say, because of my two-week hiatus, I just got rid of my solicitor. I said, nope, not interested. Gone, so I'm not going. I am not gonna be continuing to to play my little sick and demented games, at least with this dude. Maybe when I have more time again in the future, I will pick another one too. But it has to be someone who calls me for something completely ridiculous, like the director of call center or whatever it was that he was going after. So I just emailed him. I'm done, I this is not gonna work. I just let him off the hook and he sent me another email which I didn't reply to. But anyways, going going back to ghosting, I I've seen it all over social media and things, and then on my LinkedIn trip today, I saw Susan Lucas talking about ghosting, but this is a new type of ghosting, posting ghost jobs. And ghost jobs being jobs you either have no intention of filling or or or something along those lines. And uh apparently this is people are getting fed up and frustrated with it that oh this job doesn't really exist, it's a ghost job, or or things like that. But a after doing my time in recruiting and being in HR, I have done more than my fair share of posting quote unquote ghost jobs. And there's any number of reasons you actually do it, legitimate reasons. You know, some of it I call it fishing. You know, maybe we'll we'd like to have someone like this. If we find them, maybe we'll hire them, but if we don't, we'll be just fine anyway. Uh fishing, that we, you know, we would hire someone we found like a perfect candidate. Or another reason, in my world, we you know, we have proposals that we're bidding on and we want to get ahead of the game, so we start posting before we win the the contract, we start posting to build a resume pipeline so that when hopefully we win the contract, we are hitting the ground rolling. So we we'll we'll post those sometimes. But people seem to think you're just out there posting jobs for no apparent just to some people said just to make it look like the company's growing and hiring and busy. I I can't see that. That's never been a reason I've posted a quote unquote ghost job. But uh you know, I I'm sure there are other multiple reasons why you would post a a job that really doesn't exist. Or sometimes I've done this before, I'm posting a job thinking full well it will exist, it'll be there, and something happens and it we decide we're just gonna pull the job, we're not gonna hire anybody at all. That's happened any number of times that we that we posted a job, but what what do you think about is is it a bunch of do about nothing, or what do you what are your general thoughts on ghost jobs? Then do us HR hashtag.

Feathers 14:01

I mean full transparency, I've never fucking heard of this before. Uh like I'm like I'm on the Google over here while we're talking, going, this is really a thing, and I have twenty six million hits on ghost job meaning thanks to the Lugal.

Warren 14:20

I've seen it on the Tiki Talks, I've seen it on Instagram about people just and these people are going fucking insane. I applied to this job, and that doesn't even really first. How do you know it doesn't exist? You know, you just cause you didn't get hired doesn't mean somebody it doesn't exist.

Feathers 14:38

I I mean there's a myriad of reasons why you post jobs and you pull jobs down, and and right, there are some times that and I think in my career when I recruited that you would post something with no intent of potentially filling it externally, but you're pulling like sometimes I would kick I would post a position and have a database full of names that I was ready to call if a position did open up, like I had a candidate list, especially when you're talking about manufacturing and warehousing, you need to have a database full of names to be ready because those people will jump for 25 cents, and I don't blame them, I would too. It's a hard that's a hard job. Like I I tip my hat to those people that pick your products in Amazon, all the all their places you order from. That's it's not the easiest thing to do. So yeah, I mean, but to your point, how do you how do you know? Like if I'm posting a job, I I don't know. I'm now I'm rambling because I'm trying to get wrap my head around how would you possibly know? And like boo fucking who, you didn't get the job.

Warren 15:42

Go apply for another one. I mean, there's more jobs out there than there are human beings available, something like that. Get a CDL.

Feathers 15:51

You'll never be able to not have a job unless you can't fucking drive.

Warren 15:56

Which after driving 12 hours each way to Florida and back, there are a hell of a lot of people that can't freaking drive.

Feathers 16:05

That's your own problem, Griswold. Like if you're at airplanes.

Warren 16:10

Well, no, I yeah, airplane. I I'm on a fixed budget and the driving was was better, but uh I'll go side uh sidebar here. I I have my mental ranking of the worst drivers in the countries. I've driven it all over the country. I love driving, I love going places, and when I go places, I love to drive versus fly. I like to see the world. Well, my list after this last week has changed. So number one, far and away, worst drivers in the United States, New Jersey. Period, end of story. You are professionals, everybody else's rank amateurs. Number two, Arkansas. I don't know if it's just that y'all don't know how to drive in Arkansas, or your roads are just so shitty that you can't help but drive badly because Arkansas has also the worst roads in Interstate 40 through Arkansas. Oh my god, just uh forget about it. But Florida, they've got they've got it, I think they get their own special categories. They take bad driving to like an Olympic sport. It it's competitive bad driving in Florida. We're riding the bus from our hotel to the the theme park, and this car comes off the interstate, shoots across in front of our bus, trying to make a left-hand turn immediately. And I was like, I mean, geez, people, and just the things I saw in Florida. Florida, you your bad driving's just on a different level altogether. Like I said, it's competitive bad driving down there.

Feathers 17:42

So congratulations, Florida. I mean, we can just lean into the stereotype. It's either Heaven's waiting room, so they're old or not sure what they're doing, or they're all Yankees have just moved to Florida. Yes. Yes, so I think you hit I think we hit all the stereotypes. Like there goes our jersey leaders listenership, which was probably like a person in itself. GP exactly. Yeah.

Warren 18:07

Yeah. Uh anyways.

Feathers 18:09

Yeah, no, the investigations we don't do no investigations. You're fired. Get out. You're fired. Yeah. You're in you're under the Meadowlands. Yeah, we don't deal with that. We already have like 25 attorneys.

Warren 18:23

We have the perfect solution for the problem you didn't know you had.

Feathers 18:27

Let me tell you about it. Yeah.

Warren 18:29

Yeah, that's great. So my my next story, and I'm going to file this. I I came up with two different names for the story. So if you remember like watching if you watch Bullwinkle cartoons when they'd have a cartoon and they'd name it It's This or This back in the day. So the title of this can be Be Careful What You Ask For, or JCT steps in it again. So you can pick your own title at the end after hearing this story. And this is a little bit older, like I said, but JCT had a charm, and I yeah, I was on the phone with you. I was going to go pay him a visit while I was up in Alexandria. I was on Duke Street up there, and maybe I'll be I'll be back up there later this week, so maybe I'll have a chance to do it again this week.

Feathers 19:15

But just get a poster board and just write hashtag jaded HR on it and just stand out there in the middle of the street.

Warren 19:22

Jaded HR loves JCT. Well, well, Johnny caught a lot of slack, and I don't know where he said this at, but the online presence seems to think he was bragging about this situation. So an employee came early. I'll just read the art part of the article that I have cut and paste of. The idea came to Johnny Taylor Jr. early last year after one of his employees made a case that her technology position could be done from anywhere. She wanted to leave Virginia, where she held a job at the Society for Human Resource Management, a professional association based in Alexandria. She asked to work remotely in North Carolina. Then a light bulb went off, said Mr. Taylor, in the uh the association's chief executive. Instead of having the employee work in another state, we outsourced her job to India, where his organization is saving around 40% in labor costs, he said. So she wanted her job outsourced, and damn it. Or remote. You don't get much more remote than that, but you pay my moving fees.

Feathers 20:35

I need to relocate.

Warren 20:40

Yeah, ask for that too. But so JCT caught all sorts of hell everywhere, from Twitter to LinkedIn, everywhere, about this. And and I honestly I see it two ways. First, yeah, i i some things are better left thought but not said, which is my problem. But when you're at the caliber of JCT, maybe you should not share that story so openly, especially when you are the leader for the Society for Human Resource Management. And so if you're whatever company that isn't HR related, then it probably matters a hell of a lot less. But on the Sherm side of the table, I'm thinking, well, you know, it is not to have the person work remotely, they'd have to establish themselves as a business in North Carolina, get all the wonderful insurances and all that. So it's it's not an easy deal. It's not hard, but it's not easy, and sometimes it's not worth the the trouble. We've seen that throughout the the pandemic with people used to work in whatever state and move to another state. And sometimes they don't even tell the employer, hey, I moved, but you need to be registered and have all the appropriate insurances and do all the the right things with that state if that person's working there. So that that would be in the defense. Of Sherm. In the defense of the employee, maybe there could have been a better conversation held about it and why, and if Sherm explained to the person, hey, we're we're just not going to register in North Carolina versus adding another state. And I don't know what other states they might be registered in, but maybe if they were registered in Texas, hey, if you're moving to Texas, amen, have fun. But if you're moving to North Carolina, and the last thing we need is another damn Virginian in North Carolina. So but uh There goes my retirement plans. Yeah. Well, oh no. Anything north of Fredericksburg. You can't be north of Fredericksburg. I'll I'll delineate that. Or even including Fredericksburg. I don't know. Anyways, but there are legitimate reasons. But for Johnny C. Taylor to seemingly brag about this in whatever interview he did, you know, of course, you want to save money. You want to outsource jobs to India. And if you're in a situation where your job can be outsourced, you need to take that into consideration. And unfortunately, especially IT positions are are you know, customer service, IT, things like that that are well known for being outsourced to India. Yeah, might wanna might want to think twice about that. But yeah, I I understand why the outrage I do, but I don't think it's as big of a deal as as people made it out to be. So anyhow. That's about all I've got for today. Anything going on i in your world? I'm like, no, thankfully. Hey. Yeah. Yeah, I'm I'm looking forward to some things not going on in my world very soon. I just I'm just Yeah. Be done with some things. So anyway, I think that's a good place to call it a day. And I was I was d debating whether this would be a shorty or not, and I think we'll just call this a full episode. We we drag it, we dragged it out over 24 minutes. That works for me. We can we can like in middle school widen the margins or narrow the margins and increase the the line spacing so you can make it out to however many pages. You said middle school? I did that in college. Yeah, uh all the way through. But man, kids today with ChatGPT, they can do all their work so easily. But anyhow. Before we close everything out, I want to thank the underscore orchestra for the use of our theme song, Devil with the Devil, and uh Andrew Culpa is our voice artist. Please support the show. Check our link tree in the show notes. I know very few of you do, but I just updated some of the links in the link tree. So give that a look, leave us a review, tell a friend, and as always, um well, our best practice, be careful what you wish for. Uh because you might just get it. But uh as always, I'm Warren. And this is Feathers. And we're helping you survive HR one what the fuck moment at a time.