I realized today I hadn't completed the Making Jobs Attractive series, so here's the final installment.

Even a candidate who's accepted an offer is not an employee. That person is still a candidate, until he or she arrives at work that first day and signs all the paperwork. So make sure you stay in touch with the candidate from the time the candidate accepts your offer until the candidate starts work the first day.

The time between offer and first day can still be a time of investigation for the candidate--one reason I like to have a short time between the offer and the first day. The longer the time between offer and first day, the less likely the candidate will actually start.

Make sure the candidate's office space is ready for a first day. When you make the space ready, you can invite the candidate to come in, look around, see the space. People can visualize themselves working in that space. (I have a whole chapter in Hiring the Best ...--that's how important I think it is.

Consider assigning a buddy to the new employee, to ease the transition. An article I wrote a while ago is How2 Create a Buddy (Informal Mentoring) Program.

If you consistently perform all of these pieces, you will be making your jobs as attractive as they can be.

Labels: attractive job, first day

posted by Johanna Rothman at at 10:46 AM | link |

So you've interviewed a candidate you like. The interview went well. You're checking references, and thinking of making an offer. This time is a perfect opportunity to market the job.

You haven’t finished selling during the interview until you’ve extended an offer and the candidate has accepted the offer. With any luck, you learned what the candidate wants in a job (and an offer), during the interview. If not, you'll need to ask now.

One of the questions you can ask is, "What would it take to make you say yes to an offer?" Some hiring managers are afraid of that question, thinking it leaves them open to outrageous sums of money or other perks they can't provide. But more often, the perks are something you can provide.

Some people want a book allowance. Some want travel money for one conference a year. (One of our AYE participants negotiated AYE attendance and travel each year as part of his package.) When I had small children, I wanted a guarantee I could leave every day at a specific time so I could pick the girls up from the after school or day care on time.

Some of you are probably saying, "Hey, JR, this isn't marketing; it's negotiating an offer." You're right. And your flexibility in making an offer is part of marketing the job.

Your organization's flexibility is part of your marketing. That flexibility is what will make your job attractive, aside from you as a hiring manager, your team, and the work.

Labels: attractive job

posted by Johanna Rothman at at 7:10 AM | link |

I don't normally market a job or "sell" a candidate during an interview. I have found that by asking great interview questions, and having everyone on the interviewing team ask great interview questions, I don't need to sell. One of my clients is convinced that they need to sell during the interview.

If you too, think you need to sell the candidate on the job or the company, first you have to know what's attractive to the candidate. That means you need to know more about why the candidate is leaving/considering leaving his current job.

I sometimes start with a question like this, "Why are you leaving your current job?" You might hear a good answer, but more likely not. Too often, people are reluctant to say they want more responsibility or more money or a different product. More often, I'll start with a question about previous job changes, "Tell me why you went to the company you're working at now. What attracted you to that position?" Now I have some information about why the candidate went there. Now, I might be able to ask the why are you leaving question, but I'm more likely to ask about previous moves.

Once I know what's attracted a candidate before, I can say something about that in this interview--if it's true. (Never lie or even just stretch the truth in an interview.)

When I changed jobs back when I was working inside organizations, I changed jobs when I was no longer having fun learning new things, or if the company was about to go under. So, what attracted me was the ability to learn new things, and know my paycheck was relatively safe. As an interviewer, I can use that knowledge and talk about learning new things and the financial outlook for the organization.

So the way to market the job during the interview is to learn about the candidate--especially why that candidate is looking for a new job. Do that with behavior-description questions and maybe an audition, and now you'll have enough ammunition to sell the job in the interview. If you need to.

Labels: attractive job

posted by Johanna Rothman at at 11:49 AM | link |

So you've got a job description that offers an opportunity, not a job. You've come to terms with how you see the value of the job. Now it's time to start looking for people--candidates--to help fill that job.

One way to make a job highly attractive is if you, the hiring manager, actively participates in the recruiting. There are several ways you can actively participate:

• Write the ad for the job so it sounds like you.
• Spruce up the ad on your company's web site so it sounds attractive.
• Make sure you've let everyone in your group know you're looking. Your employee referral system might be your best ally here.
• Attend professional group meetings where your candidates are likely to be.
• Perform phone screens for every resume you think is a "yes" or even a "maybe" if you're having trouble finding candidates.
• Attend job fairs.

The more active you are in the recruiting, the more likely you are to find someone quickly who will find the job attractive--because you're involved.

Part of making a job attractive is to market it well. But you can't market it if you don't respect it. So the first part in marketing is to come to terms with how you feel about the job.

Are you hiring someone to do something you consider "grunt" work? That's a hard job to respect. And, it tends to lead people to sheepwalking. If you're hiring someone to do grunt work, why? Sure, it's work that needs to be done, but if you think about it as grunt work, that's going to come across to your candidates.

Instead of considering the work "grunt" work, reconsider if you even need a person to do this work. Or, think of how you can explain how the work enhances the work of others in the organization. Here's an example of how two companies dealt with this with an HR administrator job. Company1 decided to buy one of those large systems that allow their employees to administer all their work. They hired someone who could teach the system, deal with the vendor and the IT staff. Of course, that person ended up having to help people enter their information, but that's a different problem :-(. Company2 hired an administrator, to free up the people who were supposed to do other work. This administrator could have felt like a servant, but they hired a delightful woman who took pride in saving the technical staff from the "chaff of their jobs--they got to work on the wheat." Company2's administrator dealt with the vendor, and made them make her job easier, so she could keep doing "chaff."

Two different approaches to the same job. Each approach allowed the administrator autonomy and a way to look at the strategic parts of the job. Not bad for an administrative position, right?

Once you configure the position so you can respect, it's a lot easier to market it. Sourcing (what recruiters do) is a form of marketing. There are a ton of marketing techniques, and I'll address that in the next post.

Labels: attractive job

posted by Johanna Rothman at at 11:38 AM | link |

The first step in making a job attractive is to create a job that's an opportunity for someone, not just a job (Adler). An opportunity allows people to grow in some dimension, not just do the same-old, same-old. That means you need to develop a hiring strategy, and do a job analysis so you can see what problems you need solved and the kind of person who can help solve them.

Let me make that a bit more concrete. Say you're hiring a Tier 3 support person. A Tier 3 support person is a developer who likes developing small things with close-to-immediate gratification. The great Tier 3 people don't think that they do maintenance; they think they do small development.

If you call a Tier 3 support job "support" or "maintenance" you are offering a job. If you call it something like "small, short development projects to existing products" you are offering an opportunity--especially if you structure the job so this person works with the other developers, not just with support.

I'm assuming you're not just writing a job description like this, but that you will structure the job like this. (Never lie in a job description.) When you structure the role so that the person bridges the gap between hardcore development and hardcore support, you have a great opportunity that will attract exactly the people you want.

Labels: attractive job

posted by Johanna Rothman at at 12:46 PM | link |

According to my colleagues inside organizations, we are officially in a buyerseller's market for technical jobs. They are reporting it's difficult to find people, and they want to know how to make the jobs attractive.

I don't claim to know a lot about sales (just enough to keep myself in business!), but here's the one thing I do know: you can't sell something you don't believe in. That means that the job you're looking to fill has to "offer an opportunity" (that's an Adler quote) to someone; that you respect the job to market it well, and that you respect your organization enough to market the organization (you, your team, and your organization) well.

When I'm done with the series, I'll post the links here.

Labels: attractive job

posted by Johanna Rothman at at 12:38 PM | link |