Do This One Thing Before Posting Your Next Job

We keep hearing about how important it is to workers for a job to provide a “meaningful work experience.” Hiring managers and HR departments interpret this feedback variously as a desire to work on matters that have important social implications, foster sustainability of the environment, to have a say in important company decisions or even just to “actually help somebody.”

But often the applicant means something much closer to his or her own self-interest. To respond to the applicant’s quest for “meaningful work,” employers have to look more closely at the reality of the jobs landscape. Part of that reality is the frequency of job changing.

Here’s an article from the Balance that says the average worker changes jobs ten to fifteen times (with an average of 12 job changes) during his or her career. The negative connotation associated with so-called “job hopping” is long over.

The article goes on to point out that a higher percentage of younger workers had short-duration jobs. Among jobs started by workers aged 25 to 29, 87 percent had an average length of employment of fewer than five years as did 83% of workers aged 30 to 34.

Whether we like it or not, employers have to recognize that in addition to salary paid using a this new  guide on how to get pay stubs for your business, benefits, engagement in decision-making and the opportunity to be helpful to customers, your new employee is likely to be looking for how well this new job will prepare him or her for the next job!

Instead of ignoring this elephant in the room, why not address it right up front before you post the job:

Be able and ready to describe in clear terms how the job you’re offering will increase the employee’s marketability.

Before posting a new job or filling a recently vacated position, think about how you’d answer these questions on the minds of most every applicant:

1. What specific accomplishments will I actually be able to add to my resume that will be seen as attractive to a future hiring manager, in this firm or another?
2. Which of my existing skills will this job help me enhance and sharpen?
3. What marketable new skills will I be able to pick up?
4. What management competencies (leadership, decision-making, conflict resolution, teamwork, etc.) will this job help me develop?

It’s important not to let the pressure to fill your position, the constraints of the job description and the administrative blizzard of sorting through resumes and conducting interviews cause you to miss this critical must-have on the minds of every applicant you’ll see.