Are you doing meaningful work?
We are moving away from people caring about having a bean bag, free breakfast and table tennis table. Thank god. That is not going to help to hire good talent now we're all at home for a while. Creating work/life harmony for your staff will.
Is a question you should ask regularly. I believe no one wakes up and wants to sell their soul for pure money.
I always encourage them to break the search into a few areas.
Career progression
- Who will be your boss?
- How quickly have people progressed in the company?
- If you’re a junior, have they hired juniors before?
- Do they have budget for external courses to up-skill?
- What's the internal training policy?
- How big is your potential team? How good are they? What’s their background?
- Does your role in the company have chance to make impact?
- What does your first 90 days look like? Always a good indicator of the next year or so.
- What is the vision for the company?
- How much has the company grown in the last 5-10 years?
- Why is this role live?
- Why do people leave the company?
Values
- Is this company ethical?
- How do they win new business?
- What is their Glassdoor rating?
- What’s the latest thing you saw about this company in the news?
- What's the CEO's background?
- What is their diversity policy?
- How do they conduct recruitment? A sign of hiring good people is the process.
Well-being
- Flexible work hours?
- What’s the work-life harmony like?
- What are the expectations of you?
- Work style
- What is the office space like? (when/if we go back it's important to see)
- Will you be commuting long hours?
- Benefits - good amount of holiday days? Do they encourage you to use them?
- Allowance to work on side projects? Keeping people fulfilled out of work is so important
- What are the people like you’ll be working with?
Looking for a job is simple, looking for the right job is hard.
Some of these tips will be relevant, others not so much.
For me, the most important factor is well-being, because it’s the fundamental base for career progression. There is 0 point progressing your career if you are constantly burning out, annoyed and frustrated.
As a society, we need to re-define what success is. Success for me is not making lots of money but neglecting your mental health and justifying by saying “In 10 years I can quit because I'll make this much."
Career/life harmony should be vital.
I feel looking after your mental health and physical well-being, the rest will take care of itself.
UX/Product Designer | Mentor | Speaker
4yNicely put. I believe that with our home lives moving side by side with our working life will also give us more insight into people's (not 'users') life frustrations and obstacles that will ultimately lead us to creating more intuitive products that will make us more successful in the business of creating convenience and happiness.
Frontend Software Engineer 🚀 SaaS • Data Visualisation • Reporting
4yIf this lockdown has been good for one thing it's thinking time, thinking about what's important to us, what makes us happy and what our long-term goals are - that's why I resigned 5 weeks ago and set up my own business! Free breakfasts, free pints and quirky office benefits are great but they don't keep people in jobs. What keeps people in jobs is feeling listened to, building meaningful relationships and enjoying your work. IMO, a lot of stress-fueled agencies will struggle after lockdown when their employees realise they can do better.
Principal | Lead Designer | Strategy, Design, Problem Finding & Solving
4yWell before Covid brought the world to its knees I used to say that all I wanted was to do interesting work with good people - fast forward to my 14th or 15th week working remotely and I’m still doing interesting work with good people - That’s what matters. Alison Sharp
Entrepreneurship, Innovation, Human Centred Design & Self-Actualisation
4yIf I could love this many times I would 🥰 Noone will design your life but you. It’s your job to make your life your priority