Why do some companies and job opportunities seem terrible for one A Player that interviews, and to another equally qualified candidate seem like their dream job?
On paper the new role looks like the kind of role each candidate would thrive in. To both it’d be a pay increase and the next logical step in their career.
The trap lies in thinking there’s a logical approach to how decision making takes place with these big life choices like changing employers.
There are incalculable factors in drivers for changing jobs. For example, how does one calculate personal preferences in personality types to work with?
It’s why The Positioning of your company and your role you’re hiring for matters when recruiting top talent. Without it, you’ll miss the key points worth hitting on in an interview to excite a top level candidate. You’ll be in the dark on whether you have a shot at being their top choice over your competitors.
Push & pull
Positioning in this context is two things. It’s a yin and yang of sorts.
Push. There’s things in the candidate’s current position that they dislike and are either pushing them out, or just plain missing (unlikely to work on rockets at Ford).
Pull. And there’s aspirational items, of what they hope to see instead that pulls them into being interested in a new role.
The more your company is positioned as an answer to their driver for change the more attractive your company offer will look.
Here’s a break down of some push/pulls in play I’ve run into:
| Push | Pull |
|---|---|
| commute sucks | hybrid/remote culture |
| Remote team, feels isolated | in office/local culture |
| pay flatlined | Aligned performance incentives |
| feast or famine comp package | higher base, lower variable — more guaranteed income, capped sooner |
| work is no longer challenging | newer org, take on more |
| work and expectations are constantly changing | established role and company |
| leadership micromanages | Culture of autonomy |
| leadership absentee | Culture of collaboration from senior leadership |
| party culture | community culture |
There’s a whole spectrum of forces at work that can push a candidate out. And there’s a scale of weight to this too, not all pushes or pulls have the same importance.
That importance has a seasonality to it.
Let’s take public accounting
Someone fresh out of Loyola might find a PwC or Deloitte to be quite attractive:
- high pay
- reputable firm
- parents can brag about
- large graduating class hire so you have peers and friends
Sure there’s long hours, it’s a grind, but that’s what your 20’s are for.
Then you get married, buy a house outside of Chicago, start a family. Slowly the downtown office, the long hours, the competition from all the peers that stayed as long as you — jockeying for the next level, which is increasingly more scarce — become ever greater forces of job discontent.
That’s the push pull in effect. What made Deloitte attractive to this candidate at 22, is the same reason people start leaving in their 30s.
Local midsize accounting firms can use this to pick up talent. Setting up office in the suburbs, capping hours in busy season, having a career track that isn’t move up or move out, are all things we’ve seen work.
The map isn’t the terrain
What I often see a lot of companies miss is the belief that if they have the qualifications and irrefutable numbers, that it’s a candidate they want. It’s an overemphasis on what’s easily quantifiable at the cost of equally important intangible items (credit Charlie Munger).
Often these intangible items come up later in the postmortem of a hire not working out, as “flags” that they overlooked due to the qualifications. And for the employee it gets referred to as:
“Such a great offer, I thought I could live with the commute.”
That thing. Those “flags.” Those are the harder to define, intangible qualifications on whether or not the opportunity actually aligns — ignored or glossed over, because on paper it makes sense.
What makes sense on paper is flat, it’s 2 dimensional. At best it’s a map, but “the map isn’t the terrain”. We live in a 3 dimensional world.
It’s why things like motivation, lived experience, impressions (vibes) matter so much. It’s an issue of not properly vetting the forces of motion in play, and whether or not your company is an actual solution to what’s driving the candidate.
It’s taking cookie cutter answers of “I feel like I’m no longer challenged, and ready for my next opportunity” as a starting point to a conversation. An opportunity to really drill into what that specifically means for that individual.
It’s easy for a company to keep blinders on, and write off A-players that turn down working for your company.
What’s hard is chasing feedback, and pushing for honesty and candor. To find the rationale in their decision that your company was not the answer to their problems/aspirations.
This is the core of positioning to win top level talent. Figuring out what are the common things that cause top talent to leave your competitors (push) that you have a counter point to (pull). Then it’s a matter of making sure that it’s known in your market. As David Ogilvy was apt to say:
“You can’t save souls in an empty church.”
35 hours
There is a brokerage firm I work with that has built their employees’ workweek on a 35 hour basis. You best believe that all the outbound campaigns we run to recruit for them, that’s the headline.
It also works as a value signal that gets weaved into the story of the company. The idea of work life balance being more than lip, and built into how they operate as an org.
To some of the market that sounds amazing, great! To others, that doesn’t move the needle much. Which is also great, because now the positioning based on values also works as a filter.
I’ve seen all sorts of positioning attract A Players.
Autonomy.
Project type (dudes worked on rockets).
Startup with PE backing.
Firm dedicated to staying PE free.
Setting — to be out in the field.
Increase in responsibility.
Decrease in variety so that they can specialize.
It’s really endless. What matters is figuring out who you’re for, and being okay with not being for everyone.
Which is why people should care more about honest transparent positioning. What kind of company are you? What do you value? How do those values show up in the type of hires that thrive?
Because it doesn’t matter how qualified they are if they end up being miserable working for you.