Uncovering What's Important to Job Seekers
By Barbara T. Ling

One of the most effective ways of retaining your empl oyees and also increasing the number of quality responses to your job posts is to have the answer to the following question: What is important to job seekers? After all, if you currently employ qualified professionals, you certainly do not want them to become active job seekers (i.e., you want to retain their services)! And in the same breath, you want to ensure that your company, your job posts, and the comments about your work environment from your employees, all come together to leave a positive impression.

Quite often, companies focus on what brings in the most profit. What are the requirements of specific jobs? What are the cost-savings measures one can implement to optimize the yearly budget? While these are very feasible concerns, it does miss one crucial component that is critical to your company's overall success. It doesn't address what is important to your current employees and anyone who is considering working at your company as well.

Think about your company's needs from the job seeker perspective. You might know your research department sorely lacks a top-notch molecular analyst. But if you're going to spend your company's hard-earned money to hire the best, you will want some assurance that your corporate goals are met. What's the experience of the job seekers who apply? What are their strengths? Do they have the required knowledge of all software packages in-house? If not, how quickly can they learn it?

This is all very well and good for your company. The thing is, though, all of the prior points focus on your company's needs - they fail to consider the job seeker's issues as well. Smart companies also factor in what is important to job seekers when laying out a hiring strategy; this greatly increases the pool of qualified applicants from which to choose.

What is important to job seekers? The answer, of course, depends upon the person. Consider the following: professionals spend perhaps 8 hours a day-maybe more-in their work. That's a rather hefty chunk of their time! Thus, they are receptive to job offerings that focus as well on meeting their needs; if someone is going to spend approximately 1/3 of their life in your corporate environment, her or she is going to want the best possible treatment or perks possible.

Luckily, this will not often cost an arm, leg, and left earlobe. Let's examine, one by one, some of the issues that are important to job seekers.

One of the main concerns job seekers have today is job security. They are afraid that if they accept a new position, the company will then undergo a reduction-in-force and they'll be out searching for a new job within months. Granted, they are aware that in this economy, the days of cradle-to-grave employment are long gone! Still, you can address this issue by providing regularly scheduled state-of-the-business meetings that give employees an overview of how the industry as a whole is doing. While upper management generally doesn't want to cause a panicked stampede by announcing layoff probabilities before they happen, they can consider the option of folding that into the larger issue of all-around industry health.

Another concern for job seekers is their work environment. It's a sad fact of life (but a fact indeed) that corporate politics exist like decayed fungus in virtually all aspects of doing business. This atmosphere permeates some companies to the point that work is viewed secondary (staying employed by "playing the game" is the primary activity). This is extremely non-beneficial for your company as a whole-projects can become delayed, quality people can leave, and overall group morale can sink to the size of a fly's eyelash. Fostering open communications between management and the worker bees can be healthy in addressing this concern, but you must take the time to ensure it is actually implemented. Stress, another byproduct of corporate politics, can be reduced in this fashion as well.

Remember your main goals when hiring or retaining the quality professionals you deserve. To keep the best, you have to be perceived as offering the best. Now, the concept of "best" can vary. For some job seekers, the best environment includes the latest and greatest of technologies with which to do their work. For others, it's the ability to work side-by-side with renowned researchers. For still others, it's an outstanding benefits package. Another big issue that job seekers might have is that of recognition. It's been said that people will work for money, but will die for appreciation and while that might be a tad extreme, the spirit still holds. Human beings that professionals are, they often have their egos infused into the work they create. A survey of why people left their current position often points to lack of appreciation as a reason, as well as a failure to receive credit from among their peers and management for their quality achievements. Having a department-wide weekly newsletter can easily alleviate this by listing the accomplishments of the employees involved.

As professionals are all individuals, the high priority concerns will vary from person to person. An effective way of drilling down to the essence of what is most important to any specific job seeker is to put yourself in their shoes. Do they have family members for whom they are obligated? If so, financial security would rate a very high concern. Have they been in the industry for 20+ years? If so, a dearth of stress and corporate politics might be an important factor. Have they been downsized for the first time in their lives? If so, keeping their ego and self-confidence intact could be a very high priority.

Let's take that now to an extreme. When you interview new candidates, I'm certain you'll ask them questions about the skills required and test their knowledge. Have you also considered including within your suite of stock test questions, a question that covers what is the most important new job quality in your opinion? By getting answers directly from the candidates you are interviewing, you're creating a secret window into their mind that other companies quite often fail to do.

The benefits of this are immense. No matter how much experience you've had in the industry, you most likely have failed Mind Reading 101. Asking candidates what is most important to them in a new job will enable you to engage them on topics that are near and dear to their hearts, and will strike an emotional chord that provides a positive memory of the interview process itself. You can even take advantage of this technique by asking your current employees about their concerns as well - bringing it out in the open and ensuring the issues get addressed will provide a sense of "my company cares about me" to all of your employees. This kind of positive word-of-mouth cannot be bought, mind you-it's an excellent human-interest touch.

There are some excellent resources online to assist you with generating open communications. They include the Small Business Administration's Boosting Employee Morale, Changed Dynamic's Overcoming Negativity, a complete newsletter on the subject, the Confidence Center' s Fire Up Your Staff on a Shoestring Budget and more.

If a candidate doesn't already work for your company, and doesn't know how wonderful the benefits can be, how can you alert them to this and encourage them to submit their resume? Remember the primary way many job seekers first come across your employment opportunities - your job posts! Always ensure that you include in your job advertisements compelling copy that outlines not only what your company is searching for, but also what your company gives to employees in return. This will trigger satisfaction of the age-old "What's in it for me?" question all job seekers have when considering new employment. Remember, it doesn't have to focus on monetary returns-it can simply include a brief bulleted list on all the emotional and personal career-growth opportunities you offer.

Finally, what about your own corporate web site? Quite often, companies will dedicate a section about the benefits of working for them. Always make sure to include current employee testimonials, outlines of the career tracks you offer, descriptions of your benefits and the like. By offering more information to entice quality applicants, you will yield a larger pool of candidates from which to choose.

Wise companies address these softer issues. It costs your company far less to ensure the human aspects of employment are taken care of, then to lose your key professionals due to the failure of taking their concerns into account. When you combine your corporation's productivity goals with your employee's real life goals, you are then set for maximizing both your hiring and retention. Take advantage of that.

Barbara Ling is an Internet consultant and Web advisor. She is the author of The Internet Recruiting Edge (Lingstar publishing, 732-203-1194). Her book won a five-star rating from Inc. Magazine for online recruiting resources. She also created and teaches the highly popular RISE Internet Recruiting Seminars.

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