Who Are the Best New Hire?

Uploaded by Heroes 4 Hire

I’ve sat in dozens of discussions with different companies over a basic question about new hires.  Should we look for experience or hire someone out of college?  This is actually not an easy question to answer because both choices have strong pluses and minuses.

Let’s start by looking at hiring someone with a lot of experience.  What you get is someone who can start being productive early and may need very little new training.  For companies that don’t have the time and patients to develop someone new this looks like a good option.  However, since they are ready to go, you will end up paying more for them.  You just have to determine if they are worth the extra money.  In addition to all the good traits, they will also bring in all the bad habits they’ve learned in past jobs.  You have to determine if this is okay and/or can you retrain these people.

New college graduates are more of a blank sheet.  They don’t have some of the bad habits because they haven’t done anything yet.  However, they may come with the biases of their teachers.  It does cost less to get an unexperienced person but you will have to invest in a lot of training.  In addition, it may take a very long time before they are productive. 

In the end result, this is a partly a financial decision.  Where do you want to spend your money?  Where will you get the fastest return? 

It’s also a cultural and team issue.  Who is going to fit in with the team?  Who can work in the existing culture?

I’ve seen both methods work very well and I’ve seen both methods work miserably.  I think it’s a matter of knowing what you’re really buying and being prepared for getting these new hires up-to-speed.

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The Coming Knowledge Crisis

 originally uploaded by hanneorla.

It’s always easy to get some attention by calling things a crisis. But here’s what’s happening. In the next five years, the majority of the baby boomers start to retire. Those who didn’t make a fortune and retired at 50.

In the workplace that’s a tremendous amount of knowledge, existing every major corporation and a lot of small businesses. Unfortunately, a lot of that information isn’t written down. It isn’t part of some large data base.

So the questions is, does your organization have a plan to capture that knowledge? Have you considered what type of incentive is needed to get these employees to give you that knowledge?

One of the things we’ve found from doing Learning Path projects is you start to identify and capture this knowledge. Check out the Learning Path Whitepaper for more.

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Dimensions of Corporate Culture

Corporate culture can have a lot to do with who you want to work for and who you want to buy from.  Think about the difference between shopping at Walmart, Costco, Target or even Nordstroms.  They even feel and sound different when you walk in.  I don’t want to talk here about which is better but to point out that they are obviously very different.  The same is true between cars companies, plastic manufacturers and even universities. 

So what makes them so different?  I think there are a number of dimensions but here are just a few. 

1. Leadership – does the company have strong visionary leadership or is it more of a competency, technocrat leadership? 
2. Risk Taking and Change – does the company reward and encourage risk taking or punish it?
3. Work Styles – is this a competitive, cooperative or collaborative environment?  Do you work in teams or alone?
4. Results – is performance measured and rewarded or not measured at all?
5. Norms and Work Rules – What are the companies formal and informal work rules, and how are the followed?
6. History – Where is the company located or founded?  What are the values of the community?
7. Decision-Making – How are decision made, who is involved?
8. Ideosyncracies – What are the odd and unusual traditions and rituals in this organization? All companies have a few.
9. Motivations of Leadership Team – The top leadership is driven by a lot of different things.  It’s not just all money and profit. 

I’m sure there are more.  It’s a little like a personality test.  Every time you read articles that seem to lump all business together or words like Big Oil or Big Pharma, take them with a grain of salt.  Each of this companies is very different.  People aren’t robots and neither are companies.

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Corporate Cultures

I’ve worked in more than a hundred different companies and they all do seem to have a unique “corporate culture.”  Actually it’s more like a corporate personality which is a hard thing to change.  There are rules, norms and values driven from the top but there are also a lot of informal things that connect people. 

 It’s interesting to see how a company like GE has created a change culture that is embedded in just about everything they do.  I was facinated about how DuPont carried over a saftey culture from the early 1800s.  And I liked how Disney approached everything as a stage show. 

I’d be interested in your stories about corporate culture.

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