How can employers and employees determine if a job is right for a person?

We seem to be heading into an upswing in hiring again. Recruiters fees are going up and it is becoming an employee's market. If an employer is going to pay more money for an employee, it is a great time to figure out if they are the right employee. It is also a wonderful time for employees to figure out what makes them happy in a job. Getting down to motivations help both sides do a better job.

I have had a number of jobs in my career and I know what the basics are that make me happy. When I was developing my list in early job seeking adventures, I had a long time friend and mentor, Larry Weber, tell me to make a spreadsheet where the rows were the items I thought were important and the columns were job opportunities. I graded on a scale of 1 to 10 where ten was the best. After I had completed that task, he asked me to weight the rows by grading how important each row was on a scale of 1 to 10. I then used this weight as a multiplication factor for the cells in a row. The total was my overall number.

What happened for me was that I discarded obvious mismatches and was usually left with a couple of choice that were close. The important part of the exercise is to think about your job in an analytical way and to determine some amount eHarmony-esque compatibility.

The items that always end up on the top of my list are:

• Is the job interesting?
• Do I like the person I will be working for?
• Do I feel that both me and the company have a reasonable chance for success?
• Do I feel I will be fairly compensated?
• Is it a short commute?

I clearly have a longer list of less important items and some of the above items are multi-faceted (e.g. interesting equates to technical, management and business challenges). My list clearly includes some objective and subjective items. It has helped me in my decision process.

So what does all this mean for the employer? When hiring it is common to mistakenly hire the wrong person. Often interviews do not reveal enough issues or they do highlight how a known issue with a candidate might play out in your environment. I plan on a 5% failure rate on ongoing hiring and a higher number when doing a large expansion.

Along with technical, leadership and interpersonal skills, it is important to examine candidate motivations. See how what you are offering lines up with what your candidate is looking for. If your candidate has not thought about what they are looking for, then ask them to do so. This will help you make sure you have a match and hopefully a long-term productive employee.

Hire well.

More later ...