New HR selection criteria

Just so you know, new selection criteria have been sent to our HR lieutenants for all job interviews.  This new policy reflects our on-going concern to hire top shelf candidates who will blend with our corporate culture.  This is a sample of the questions we now toss during interviews:

1. Do you share the belief that money is evil?  If so, show me what's inside your wallet.

2. Are you a registered member of  any political party whose purpose is to destroy the supply-and-demand economy in favour of a state-controlled system run by unionized bureaucrats?

3. Is that a red square pinned on your jacket?  Tell us more about this.

4. Is we report stellar earnings at the end of this quarter, how would you feel about this?

5. Are your parents or any close relative member of a registered union such the CSN or the FTQ?

6. What kind of books do you enjoy to read?  Karl who?

7. Have you ever traveled to China, the former USSR or Cuba?  Who did you meet with over there?

8. How comfortable are you with wealth?  Do you share the viewpoint that behind every fortune lies a hidden crime?

9. Tell us more about your friends, what do you talk about when you gather over a drink?

10. Are you on Facebook?  Yes?  This is great, it shows you are forward thinking person.  Now, tell us your ID.

What a way to start 2011

I bumped into one of my way-too-many VP this morning in the coffee room, he said he was interviewing a DBA with 10 years of experience who was interested in a position at CGI. Feeling full of energy - and wearing my favorite crossword-puzzle tie - I said I wanted to talk to this young fellow who I'm sure would be impressed to talk the CEO in person.

The guy was in his early 30s, had solid experience with Oracle and a bunch of other database-related technology. The resume looked good, meaning I could sell this guy with a fat margin to a client. But something wasn't right, and I could not pinpoint what it was. No, it was not body piercings.

I go, young man why do you want to work at CGI?

The guy goes, well it's a good company and it's making the headlines on a regular basis, new contracts, stock is up, I mean this is where I'd like to be.

I go, let me ask you a question junior, this is not your first job right? You are experienced, like Jimi used to say. What happened with your former employer?

The guy goes, name's Mitchell sir. My previous employer was a good one but my career was not going in the direction that I wanted to go. We are leaving in good terms.

I go, junior I hope I'm breaking any news to you, but you're not really managing your so-called career, I hope you know that by now right? A career is just a linear sequence of different tasks, and your employer is the one calling the shots. Anyway, what was your prior salary?

The guy says, I was making $55 000 and among my benefits I had...

Knowing where this loaded train of crap was heading, I cut short to the point and go, junior I'm offering you $50 000, and consider this a generous offer.

The guy goes, what, you're offering less than I was doing before?

I go, that's right young man, I'm not paying what the stupid market is paying, I always bid under the current price, therefore I lower my average member salary.

The guy goes, I'm worth more than 50K, I know what my skills are and if you're not willing to pay me at least $55K I'll just go elsewhere.

At that point an uncomfortable silence took place in the windowless meeting room. I just stared at the young candidate, computing how much earning he could provide me with until the end of the quarter.

After less than a minute, junior gave up. All right, $50K is a deal.

I go, let's settle for $48K then. HR will bring you the paperwork in the next 15 minutes and you'll be ready to start. You should be billable to a project within the next hour or - what's his name - Mr. VP here will take the loss personally. Right?

The VP was sweating like hell and the young DBA was livid, he goes, we had a deal for $50K, how come you're lowering your offer?

I stood up and pushed my chair. $47K, last offer.

I swear I could hear his blood pressure rising when he acknowledged. All right, all right, I get it. Where do I sign?

I gave a pat on the VP's stiff shoulder who was sitting next to me and probably mortified to hear my negotiation skills. You see, this is how we manage business here. Have a great day.

Next in line.

On Terminating Employees

It's one of those situations that can be awkward, stressful, charged with emotions or simply matter-of-fact and easy to do. Terminating an employee is a process by which you drop an expense which largely offsets gain or potential gain. But before you accuse me of being a hardboiled accountant who sacks anyone on the bench after 20 days, I must admit that there are countless situations where an employee must be shown the door even though the numbers favor the firm strictly speaking. Humans are humans.

When you announce to someone that he/she will no longer be on the payroll, the reaction will depend on the individual personality, the gender and of course on the age of the person. This is where as an executive you divert the river of shit to HR and get the hell out as soon as you can. After all, you pay those social-science suckers to do this kind of bull.

When firing someone who is around 60, he/she will thank you for an early retirement opportunity, will get his/her boxes done and will take the next flight to Myrtle Beach. That's the easy case.

When firing someone who is 50, especially a low-ranking one, that person will quietly leave the office, go home and he will have a quiet dinner with his wife without announcing the news, and then go into the garage, sit in the car, start the engine, and then leave the car run without opening the garage door. Make sure Legal is on the battle deck to handle incoming litigations afterward.

For someone who is 40, that person will leave your office after the blow, go to his desk and will e-mail his friends asking "I've been fired, is there anyone you know who has an open position, will take a lower salary if necessary I have a wife, 3 kids to feed and a '94 Taurus". Expect that person to steal toilet paper on his way out.

For someone who is 30 or under, that person will take his smartphone while you talk to him, and he will post a message on his Facebook page about you being an old fart and that he's looking for a management position now he was acquired some much experience with your firm. He will then show you the smartphone screen where you can see how many of his on-line friends "like this". Kids can be cruel sometimes.

If the person - whatever the age - is a woman, make sure HR has a box of tissues with just one or two left. You don't want your remaining staff to endure an hour of pitiful cries leading to pointless observations and remarks, something a full box of tissue can trigger. The shorter the sniffing, the better.

I also found that having foreign people in HR is a big plus. People being fired will keep complaints to a minimum if the HR person on the other side of the table is non-expressive and barely speaks English. Please sign here. Thank you.

Montreal's CGI completes Stanley takeover

We did it. I gotta say it took more time and efforts than initially planned, but now I’m proud to say that CGI has reach the 31,000 employees – I mean members – milestone.

Anyway, we’re dispatching a HR commando to Stanley’s former HQ to start the abduction process. A swat team of accountants is also on the way to seize all financial information that might have been left out during our due diligence process – I instructed our team NOT to have breakfast that morning, so everyone feels a bit edgy.

We learned a lot since we banged AMS back in 2003, our HR/accountant gladiators have been trained accordingly and it is my objective that the Stanley’s integration takes much less time. We need to process acquisitions faster, we can’t reach the profitable growth nirvana if we spend our days filling out paperwork.

I spent so much time with Stanley’s financials that I have become one with their numbers. We are so intimate now I can tell you how much each of their employees are making. Pop up a name, I’ll tell you their salary, how much was spent on training, how much each got last year. Serge thought I was joking and he put me to the test. John Kleine? $58 850 USD, $450 in training, got a 4% raise last year, billed $102 048.30 last financial year, $621.02 paid on expense reports. Denise Caufield? She’s fucking expensive, $95 120 but she’ll get no raise for the next 5 years – but don’t tell her that.

What doe John and Denis look like, asked Serge. I go, I don’t know but this is irrelevant. What matter is that – what’s their name again - will be part of our profitable growth plan, and their small contribution to our bottom line will fuel our next acquisition.

Speaking of which, I am meeting with bank officials this week to goose our credit line. I’m also thinking of issuing bonds yielding 0.05% that our members would be obligated to sell door to door like cult members. At night, not during normal business hour, I don’t want to impact our BU earnings. Look, I work for this great company and we need money to spread the profitable growth gospel, care to buy some great bonds to fuel our next merger?

The Relentless Pursuit of Unhappiness

Here's another nugget of management wisdom for all managers-wannabe out there, and it's free so consider yourself very lucky. This advice goes pretty much against what management textbooks are saying, but it is the absolute truth. Never doubt The Roach. Ready?

Here it is: Employees do not have to be happy for your business to be efficient and profitable, in fact the state of happiness has to be avoided. Are you stunned now? If you're still with me at this point and you're not looking frantically for a Prozac in your drawer or purse, read on.

Generally speaking, employees' state of mind can be categorized on the following scale: happy, disillusioned, disgruntled.

Of course you don't want your staff to be totally disgruntled, because at that point they are updating their resumes and actively calling competitors to see if there are openings. Simply put, your revenues might tank during the next quarter because of their resignation. That is bad. Sure, you'll always be able to find other deadbeats to fill the spot, cheaper ones probably, but I gotta admit it's a lot of work to hire someone, and this activity cannot be billed to any client. The attention of any decent manager should be on delivering outstanding financial results, not interviewing Gen Y slackers who are just shopping around for perks.

The ideal balance is between disillusioned and disgruntled, simply because employees are not pissed off enough to go shop elsewhere, they still plan to remain employed by you, but at the same time they are not happy due to (insert your favourite reason here). It's a limbo state with just the right dose of unhappiness.

This stage to me is the perfect balance, as employees do not cost too much and yet they are billable to customers and provide a nice fat revenue stream. Your HR team should be able to provide you with the standard salary let's say for an analyst with 10 years of experience, for instance $60K. You then must pay between $50K and $55K, no more than that, so the analyst will be slightly pissed off but $5K is not enough for him to jump ships. You see what I mean? Of course you need to publicly say that you are offering salaries that are "in line with market conditions", which is the BS line that gets you covered. Nobody wants to be in line with market conditions, there's always this spread.

If you continue to go on the scale, you enter a state where employees are basically happy. Salaries are above market conditions, work is fun, they have nothing to complain about. This is really really bad from a management standpoint, because this means your staff is costing you too much. Sure, your turnover rate might dip below 5%, but trust me this is not the way to build profitable growth. You cannot short happiness. It's just a bleeding hole that requires attention. You need to trim the benefits and raises the next quarter and enforce new policies to reduce expenditure.

Once you understand this very basic concept, you'll understand why all the retards on Glassdoor systematically complain about their salaries / conditions / environment. They're blowing off steam, they vent their frustrations but they are not sending their resumes. The subtext is that their manager is actually doing a fine job - hence they work for a great company. Go buy their stock now.

The truth about HR people

I have this love/hate relationship with HR people. On one end, they are the perfect team to implement processes, maintain a tight grip on salaries and ensure that everything is done according to the rules. On the other end, they have a life of their own and they tend to impose their own biased perspective to CEOs. Let me give you an example.

Hewitt Associates, another collection of HR minded people, recently polled a couple of companies in Canada to determine the "best employers" in the country. Amazingly enough, the greatest company of all time is not in the list. First, read about their work here and check out the so-called list here.

So according to these "experts", MickeyD is a better employer than CGI. Sure, it takes less time to go at McD from a burger flipper to night manager than from a distinguished CGI consultant to a distinguished CGI director. Go work under the golden arch, please.

Hewitt has some good points through. Money quote: One of the determinants of engagement is a willingness to remain with one's current employer, so when there are fewer options, many employees are glad to stay put and hang on to the job they have.

In other words, your job sucks but since there are less and less options, you simply accept the fact that your professional life is a black hole and your subconscious takes care of the rest. You lower your expectations about your current job to sub-ground levels, and disappointment vanishes.

Yet another good nugget:

Organizations with high engagement stated that their employees exhibited the following behaviours during the recent downturn:

• Support for improving productivity. Employers reported, for instance, that employees endorsed the introduction of new technologies and processes. They were ready to make changes to help improve the business.
• Willingness to make trade-offs. In several cases, for example, employees opted for reduced salaries and/or hours of work for all staff rather than see some co-workers laid-off.
• High trust and confidence in leaders. Employees really believed that their leaders were the right people to confront and overcome the challenges faced in tough times.

The balance of power between employees and leaders is a delicate one. If employees gain too much power you end up with unions and your organization enters a vegetative state. If leaders have too much power you... well you achieve control and this is the path to profitable growth.

CGI to hire Robert Pattison (Part 1)

Serge came to me with this idea, he sometimes has this uncontrollable urge to do something for CGI. So he came into my office this morning, suggesting that CGI hires some kind of rock star to prove to youngsters that IT is the way to go for a career. As you all know, pushing teenagers to do a degree in computer science is harder nowadays than asking a government not to create deficits.

So Serge said, we should hire Robert Pattison, he may not know a lot about computers but we could find him a good spot at CGI. I go, who the fuck is Robert Pattison, he is a quarterback or something? Serge rolls his eyes, Mike you don’t know jack about popular culture, he’s a movie star man, he’s the hottest ticket you can have for a teenage flick. You should watch Entertainment Tonight more often, he’s the lead actor in the Twilight movies. So I go, a new Twilight Zone series?

Serge sighs, as to demonstrate my cluelessness about the entertainment news that he knows so much about. Mike, he said, I’m a Imdb Pro user and I met his agent at a cocktail party and he told me that Robert wanted to take a break from acting. You know, just to take some fresh air. Since he’s extremely popular with teenagers and young adults, CGI could hit a home run by hiring this guy. IT will suddenly be cool again and we will party like it is 1999 all over again.

I had to admit Serge had a point. Having a movie star aboard could appeal to young people looking for career options. If they go get a degree in computer science, CGI could hire them cheap afterward and tag them on a high-profit gig. I go, Serge tell me, what this Robert guy looks like. Serge opens his briefcase and shows me the picture above.

I go, what the fuck, is this the dickhead you want me to hire? Jesus-Christ, look at this guy for 2 seconds will you, he looks totally baked, sure he’d be the perfect candidate if they do a remake of Still Smokin but this bum doesn't fit into a serious IT project.

Serge goes, his agent says he looks pretty decent if we can keep fun stuff away from him. Moreover, we would hire him for what – couple of months – just enough time for him to chill and for us to leverage his presence at CGI. It’s a win-win situation.

Serge enjoys busting my balls when he knows he has a point. So I go, well give me the phone number of this agent, I’ll call him later today and we’ll see what we can do. Criminey, look again at this guy, he probably burns one after shooting a take.

What a day it’ll be. I’ll let you know how it goes.

Implementing sacrifice-based management

If you can control people’s mind, you can push them to do virtually anything. Let’s say you’re the supreme leader of a population and you’re able to convince them that the current drought is due to some fussy god who didn’t receive his/her quarterly share of sacrifice, then it’s relatively easy to convince some hapless farmer to give his young daughter, who is then pushed into an active volcano and vaporized instantly. If the drought persists, repeat the process with someone more chubby as gods seem to favor high-fat content.

If the rain comes, then you can claim the gods are happy and that you are pretty effective in dealing with this kind of situation, and this reinforces the trust between you and the population.

Note to CGI managers: DO NOT throw resources into active volcanoes, they instantly become unbillable and HR must be notified.

My point is that one of the skill you need to develop – as a manager – is how to convince your staff to make sacrifices for the greater good. Greater good being anything that does not benefit your employees. When I talk about growing CGI to 100,000 employees, this is a good example of a greater good.

Now, how do you implement this? How can you push your people toward making great efforts without having any kind of reward attached to it? How can this achieved with minimal efforts from your part?

The idea of sacrifice is the business model of any organized religion, so a closer examination of religion management as a service industry would be beneficial. I think the core idea is to manage hope without promising anything tangible. Be vague, yet paint an idealistic portrait or an improbable future, people like that. Nobody saw the Garden of Eden, the literature on the subject is scarce and they have no Web site. Yet, people believe in it.

Let’s say you manage a couple of guys who are fed up with the way CGI acts toward them. First, acknowledge their frustration, this creates an initial bond with you and them. Next, talk to them about what the company could be in the future. Promise anything that doesn’t sound too wacky. Like, they could be part of a special group which might report directly to the business unit top VP. This is all bull of course, but this will bait them into believe that they are worthwhile. People desperately want hope. Once they are in this psychological state, they can be manipulated managed to perform a bunch of dull tasks without being paid for doing it.

If you are able to take your staff to this stage, make sure you maintain minimal communication with them. Since nothing will happen, it’s best for you to keep a low profile. Ignore their calls, forward their e-mails to a spam box. If they corner you, tell them that you highly appreciate their efforts and this will likely influence their performance review. Tell them that upper management will likely do something “soon” about whatever you promised. The whole idea is to maintain hope.

Obviously the scam cannot be maintained indefinitely, so at some point you’ll need to tell them that the “special project” has been discarded by upper management but that is was nevertheless a “clever idea” and they have been “visible” to some very influential people at CGI. Repeat the process with different buzzwords.

Dear employees, I am hearing you

Some of you might think that I’m some kind of a pompous monarch highly perched into his ivory tower, overlooking the world in his luxurious office while sipping a cup of Earl Grey and enjoying a self-given sense of superiority and excellence. This couldn’t farther from the reality.

Yes I plan to wear a Darth Vader outfit for Halloween ’09 but this has nothing to do with my ego, the outfit happened to be on sale.

Truth is, I’m just a regular guy who followed the path and the path happened to lead to a CEO position. And starting from today I am creating a “Dear Abby” kind of column where CGI employees throughout the world can open their heart, talk about issues at work and I’ll be taking a hold-no-prisoner attitude toward them. They can go ballistic on me and I will listen. This is what a CEO should do, isn’t it? I mean, it’s better to whine here than posting your rants and salary on Glassdoor.com or RateMyEmployer.ca because there's someone who will listen to you.

Let’s take our first message, this is from a HR person whose identity will not be disclosed. Let’s call her Susie.

CGI acts toward its employees the same way cell phone companies are acting toward customers. Massive efforts are done to lure new customers, but existing and loyal customers are totally ignored. What could you do to improve this?

Susie here seems to have a point, but she does not when you work through the numbers. Luring new employees into our web requires great effort because – as I stated in an earlier post – CGI is not really cool per se and the job itself is as exciting as cleaning road kills on the highway. So investing a few lunches and career fair activities to capture a revenue generator (a new employee) that will bring in net profit tens of thousands of dollars a year to CGI is a safe investment.

So what do we do with existing employees? Well, nothing because the numbers do not add up. Let me tell you why.

There are a bunch of employees, which I call the 1^st tier, who will stay with you for years even though you totally ignore them, assign them to dull projects and give them ridiculous raises. They are the fat gooses who produce large golden eggs, except you don’t need to feed the goose or clean and heat the barn. Those employees might eventually go to a competitor only to realize it’s the same situation over there, so they come back to you begging for work, you hire them back and then you can completely abuse them for another 10 years or so. Sounds easy? It is.

The 2nd tier of employees is the “high-maintenance” one, they request a lot of attention on your end, they may work a lot but they expect something in return (like bonuses, promotions, taking part in strategic decisions and asking exceptions to corporate rules - yuck!). Fortunately, this tier is made up of much less people. You don’t invest anything in them because eventually they’ll come into your office and politely tell you to fuck yourself, and you’ll never see them again. So why bother investing in this tier too?

Bottom line is, the way we work now is a best practice and our spreadsheets are there to prove it. So to answer Susie’s letter, there’s nothing we can do to improve perfection.

Friends, please send your question to fake mike roach (at) gmail dot com with “Dear Abby” in the subject line. See you soon.

Note to HR: Do a marshmallow test

One of the hardest concept to implement inside a company is deferred gratification, as opposed to get a cash instant cash bonus. I overheard something in the men's room today about the Stanford Marshmallow Study, where you test kids to act on their impulses (eat the marshmallow now) versus deferring the gratification (wait 20 minutes, and you'll get two marshmallows instead of a single one).

I'm writing this on the blog before I forget it, we're having quite a party with the CGI Germany unit. Note to HR: we need to implement a CGI version of the marshmallow test to screen bozos and obnoxious Gen Y people.

Here's how it should work: You get employee to choose between the two following: either get your full profit-sharing bonus in '09, or wait another year and you will have 1.6 shares in 2010.

Normal people will automatically think that they should get 2.0 shares the next year since they'll skip a year there it's 1.0 + 1.0 share the next year, right? Smart asses will ask for 2.10 shares because of compound interests. Typical Gen Y youths will ask for 25.0 shares because they deserve it - period. Stupid people will think 1.6 shares every two year is better than 1.0 share every year. The latter should be fired and discreetly sent to competitors.

You got Njoyned

It’s a shame employees nowadays are disgusted with the idea of serving 25 years at a single company, they think jumping ships is the quickest way to increase their salary and get promotion. And don’t get me started on those Gen Y youths, they deserve to get their butt kicked hard and… wait… Mike, control yourself, you need to refrain your negative energy. Ok, deep breath, exhale, feeling better now.

Today I’d like to talk to you about how to block unsatisfied employees of leaving your company. Let’s say that there's this kid, let’s name him John, and he’s 25 and doing a good job but he thinks he can get a 10% raise by moving to Desjardins, Bank of Montreal, Bell or anywhere which happens to be one of our outsourcing client.

John’s obviously stupid because he’s already working at CGI, a company whose excellence and values cannot be topped, so he’s already at the best place but John doesn’t see this. Blame his inexperience.

John sends his resume to this company X, but wait, who’s managing this company’s infrastructure? That’s right. John’s resume is tapped by our CGI supersensors located deep into the client’s network and the resume is routed to the Njoyn database where CGI has private access. Our clients are told to report any defecting CGI member. If they don’t, well it’s the game where you tell the client that they have a beautiful infrastructure with tons of server containing sensitive data, and of course it would be bad if something happened. Like, really bad.

So John goes from disgruntled to depressed because he never get any interview or job offer, thanks to our super Njoyn system. Wink, Wink. We introduce self-doubt in the employee so he’s ready for the next phase.

Every week our senior HR guys take a look at this database in their secret room (pictured above) and discuss what treatment should be given to those who dare considering leaving CGI. We don’t beat them WWE-style, of course. We typically reassign the employee to a project where he has to work all alone with very little human contact – from CGI or the client – for a very long period of time. This solitary confinement is an opportunity for the CGI employee to meditate and to begin an inward journey where he/she discovers how much our company has to offer – on our terms of course.

Simply said, the grass cannot be greener elsewhere, because CGI is the grass company.

If you’re not already a CGI client, you’d better firewall your own resources with military-grade control because they will evaporate like free beer on a hot summer day. Instead of trying to do it yourself, why don’t you give a call – I have Njoyn brochure ready for you.