How to Evaluate New Job Opportunities!

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
 And sorry I could not travel both …

- Robert Frost, The Road Less Traveled

Time is your most valuable asset, don't waste it. The big risk might be staying where you are. Here are some ideas on where to go.

In First, Break All the Rules: What the World’s Greatest Managers Do Differently, the Gallup Group identified 12 core factors that drove job satisfaction. The big ones focused on the hiring manager’s role in clarifying job expectations up front; providing each person support, encouragement, and personal development opportunities; and assigning work the person finds motivating. Not surprisingly, these are the same factors the best candidates use as part of their prime reasons for accepting an offer or not. It’s always about the actual work, not the requirements listed on the job description.

This critical issue is frequently minimized or totally ignored in the rush to screen, recruit, and hire, when a short-term emphasis to fill the position often overshadows actual job needs and the long-term opportunity. The results of this haste include underperformance, dissatisfaction, and unnecessary turnover. I call this collective effect “The Vicious Cycle of Hiring and Retention.” The concept is summarized in the graphic.

Why People Look for Work

Overall job satisfaction and the desire to change jobs, tends to be driven by an excess of the negative motivators shown in the bottom half of the graph, coupled with an absence of the positive ones in the top half.

These positive and negative factors can be further categorized as Extrinsic or Intrinsic motivators. Extrinsic are short-term or transient motivators, like a one-time bonus, or circumstantial, like a bad boss or a one-time increase in compensation. While important, they’re not sustainable motivators. Intrinsic motivators provide ongoing sources of satisfaction, like working with a great group of people, having a great boss, working on an important project, or doing work the person finds very rewarding.

While people leave jobs for both negative Extrinsic and Intrinsic reasons, they tend to overemphasize the positive Extrinsic motivators when accepting new ones. While these one-time events are good for rationalizing a superficial decision and impressing others, they do little for growing a career. This is the trap companies, recruiters, hiring managers, and job-seekers unknowingly fall into, often leading to disappointment.

While the positive Intrinsic reasons to change jobs, like better career growth and doing more satisfying work, are often discussed during the hiring process, it’s typically done at a superficial level or filled with hyperbole. This becomes a problem when the actual job, culture, and hiring manager’s style don't align with these expectations. Then underperformance and dissatisfaction become rampant, and the process begins anew. This is the Vicious Cycle. The process then repeats itself in perpetual motion-like fashion in the rush to fill jobs with the wrong people using the wrong reasons. This is shown by the red arrows in the graphic.

The Vicious Cycle can be stopped in its tracks by changing how job descriptions are prepared and how candidates are recruited, interviewed and hired. Here are some big steps:

1. Put the traditional skills-infested job description in the parking lot and determine the actual work the person hired needs to do. I call these performance-based job descriptions.
2. Offer better jobs, not lateral transfers. Over-hiring leads to underperformance. The best people want to be stretched, so offer jobs that emphasize the long-term positive motivators, not one-time bumps. Here’s how job descriptions should be advertised.
3. Emphasize long-term growth over short-term benefits on first contact. Don't opt out until the true opportunity is understood. Too many passive candidates filter jobs based on the title, compensation, location, and company. Too many recruiters box-check skills and experiences before seriously considering a candidate. How many lost opportunities occur as a result? Here’s how to maximize your personal funnel of top talent and great opportunities.

For job-seekers with high-demand skills there’s a natural tendency to rush things and overvalue the seductive power of extrinsic motivators, especially when leaving a less-than-promising situation. This is how one less promising situation leads to another. While passive candidates are much more discriminating when actually comparing one job opportunity to another, they often stop the conversation in its tracks when first approached by a recruiter or former co-worker. Then it’s all about the money, the company, the title, and the location. While most of these can be negotiated if the opportunity is right, neither party wants to “waste the other’s time.” Yet in the short-term rush to decide, that’s exactly what is wasted.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:


Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,

I took the one less traveled by,


And that has made all the difference.

_____________________

Lou Adler (@LouA) is the CEO of The Adler Group, a consulting and search firm helping companies implement advanced hiring programs. He's also a regular columnist for Inc. Magazine and BusinessInsider. His latest book, The Essential Guide for Hiring & Getting Hired (Workbench, 2013), provides hands-on advice for job-seekers, hiring managers and recruiters on how to find the best job and hire the best people. For more hiring advice join Lou's LinkedIn group or follow his Wisdom at Work series on Facebook.