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.

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What kind of employees do you want in a startup?

I am often asked about the skill sets and levels you should search for when staffing a startup company. My answer is always the same. I feel there are two types of employees that are most productive in a startup:

• Experienced people who have done it before
• Well-educated but inexperienced people

You need a foundation of people who have just done it before. Consummate engineers who know what they are doing and have both had successes and horror stories. These engineers are part of the solution. They do whatever they have to in order to help the company achieve its goals. They can do architecture work, lead project, and slough off bad news. They lead by example. They are rare and usually expensive.

You also need a group of inexperienced new college graduates and engineers with just a few years of experience. They should have more energy than you ever remember having. They don't think there are bounds. They will work day and night just to learn. They should bring some excitement and many will surprise you with what they can do.

Skip the mid-level engineers. Not in a startup anyway. They know enough to know there are problems but they cannot see the light at the end of tunnel. They are still part of the problem. They are worried about titles and salaries. They will chew up much of your management time. Many engineers never leave this stage. As your company gets more established there will be more management bandwidth for this level of employee.

Management hires should always fall into the first category of having done it before. Over-hire when it comes to managers. Get people who know the game. Get people who can talk to customers, hire people and run releases/projects. Do not let anyone who has not managed learn on the job in a startup.

Hire well.

More later ...