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September/October
2003
What
job candidates really want
YOU
MAY BE SURPRISED TO SEE WHAT’S ON THEIR SHOPPING LIST
THIS
SMELLS.” We all know that’s the ver-nacular way
of saying that something about the current situation isn’t
quite right, and it stems from one of our most primitive instincts
for self-preservation: If the meat or berries have a peculiar
odor, one avoids eating them.
In stressful
situations – is that a lion lurking in the bush? –
the brain goes into sensory and intellectual overdrive. Modern-day
Homo sapiens doesn’t encounter too many lions but does
go into high alert when confronted with major life changes.
And high on the list of major life changes is changing jobs.
Is it prosperity or peril that lies ahead?
Job candidates
are bundles of nerves in the best of times, and few consider
today to be the best of times. With higher unemployment rates
in most industrialized nations, it may seem currently like
a buyer’s market for employers. But most organizations
prefer to hire the happily employed, and the vast majority
of adults in the labor pool remains employed. Those individuals,
of course, don’t want to join the unemployment ranks
and therefore evaluate career changes very carefully –
fearful of the LIFO principle at a new employer. Even at the
highest corporate levels, where handsome severance packages
can soften a fall, executives have to weigh the damage to
their reputation of a wrong move.
When
evaluating a potential job change, most people will carefully
weigh the pros and cons and then add a healthy dose of intuition.
Nose a-quiver and ears laid back, the corporate animal scans
the surrounding landscape. Does this deal sound right? Does
anything about this smell?
It goes
without saying, but we’ll say it nonetheless, that employers
can make a world of difference based on their response to
a range of candidate wants and needs. Here are seven of them
that Sanford Rose Associates deals with every day:
- Candidates
want to be treated like candidates – not applicants.
Applicants walk in the front door, or their résumés
arrive over the transom, and they are owed no special treatment
beyond common courtesy. Candidates, on the other hand, have
been recruited by the company or its search firm and are
the woo-ee, not the woo-er. On interview day, roll out the
red carpet and don’t ask them, for example, to waste
their time filling out applications for a job they don’t
yet know whether they really want.
- Candidates
desire honesty, not puffery. While candidates
will expect some degree of mutual selling to go on, they
generally appreciate the employer who doesn’t try
to sugar-coat challenges associated with the new position
(such as poor internal morale or tough marketplace competition).
Similarly, most candidates can stand rejection and would
prefer to be told if they are not the right “fit”
for a job – rather than being strung along for days,
weeks or sometimes months.
- Candidates
want to see a clear opportunity to apply their skills in
a more challenging position, grow professionally, improve
their standard of living and (in most instances) climb the
corporate ladder. That is why offers of lat-
eral moves invariably fail, unless accompanied by extravagant
sums of money. Individuals, of course, will have varying
needs depending on their personal situation and past experience,
so a good search consultant can aid the employer by explaining
each candidate’s particular hot buttons and hierarchy
of needs.
- Candidates
want acknowledgment that they have a personal life too.
In olden days, it was a badge of honor to keep the longest
hours, work the most weekends, take the least time off and
wistfully complain that it was difficult sometimes to remember
the children’s names. And then one was downsized.
In the increasingly family-oriented culture of the 21st
century, the offspring of Baby Boomers (i.e., virtually
anyone in the workforce under 40) seek out employers who
offer a reasonable work/life balance, along with time-enhancing
benefits such as flexible hours and on-premise services
(including childcare, dry cleaning pick-up and delivery,
take-home meals, etc.).
- Candidates
increasingly prefer cash in hand to stock on the come. The
options movement of the 1970s, ‘80s and ‘90s
was based on the philosophy that employees at the management
and professional levels could be incented to im-prove the
corporation’s performance by being awarded options
to acquire stock at a “strike price” greater
than the stock’s present value but less than its hoped-for
future value. (During the dot-com revolution, essentially
worthless companies with stratospheric initial public offerings
found it a cheap way to create paper millionaires.) The
concept, however, intensified the focus on short-term results
and phony profits as some executives attempted to manipulate
the price of their stocks. When profits started falling
in 2000 and 2001, many employees found their stock options
“under water” and rediscovered the old saying
that “Cash is king.” Recently, Microsoft announced
that it will replace stock options with restricted stock
grants that are free to the recipient but vest over time.
- Candidates
want prompt hiring decisions – not endless delays.
Employers in general are taking longer to
make hiring decisions than they did just five years ago.
Sanford Rose Associates believes three factors are at work:
(1) There is still some anxiety about future business conditions
and whether any hiring decision will be “right.”
(2) With staff reductions at all levels, many executives
are overworked and place hiring on the back burner. (3)
Given the current economy, managers want to take the precaution
of interviewing every conceivable candidate in hope of finding
the “absolute very best” one. Point number three
may be a viable strategy if the employer is attempting to
hire the unemployed; otherwise it is flawed. Happily employed
candidates don’t have to move and, for the reasons
mentioned earlier, will not move to a new employer if they
perceive indecision or otherwise conclude that something
smells. Candidates deserve an up or down vote; stop looking
when you find Ms. or Mr. Right.
- Last
but not least, candidates want to be wanted.
The employer is ready to ask the deserving finalist to trade
the devil one knows for the devil one doesn’t, quite
possibly to uproot one’s family, to assume a new position
whose risks and rewards are not fully known, and to function
in a corporate culture that is not yet fully understood
(e.g., whom does one trust, and whom does one not?). This
is the time to say, “We love you more than anyone
in the whole world and have never seen one person with so
many wonderful abilities.” Now is not the time to
nickel-and-dime the compensation package, whittle away at
benefits and perks, substitute a lower title or otherwise
belittle the potential employee. Such ill-advised actions
leave the finalist with a bad taste in his or her mouth
– another warning sign from primitive days –
and run the real risk of snatching defeat from the jaws
of victory. The best advice is to practice the Golden Rule
and leave the candidate excited about joining your organization.
When
engaging an executive search firm to find your company or
institution top talent, keep the firm involved at all stages
of the hiring process. The firm not only serves as an important
source of hidden information about the candidate’s wants
and needs, but also represents the often-busy client to the
candidate – smoothing troubled waters when unexpected
events and delays occur.
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