Why Hiring Matters

business, happiness, retirement, Teaching and Education 1 Minute

As I thought about the hiring process, a few things struck me.

  • Hiring a new employee is potentially a multi-million dollar, multi-decade decision. An employee may work somewhere for 40 years, earning not only salary but benefits as well.
  • For the employee such a job represents an opportunity to potentially settle down, buy a house, raise a family, become a part of their community, and then retire with enough money to live on for at least another 30 years. That means the hiring decision could affect 70 years of a employee’s life.

In other words, it’s a big decision, one that both the employer snd employee need to take seriously.

I wish all job candidates the best.

*image from the James G Martin Center for Academic Renewal

Published by Jim Borden

A 60-something guy trying to figure out the world, and his place in it. Happily married for 40-plus years, three wonderful sons. Accounting teacher, fitness enthusiast, blogger, reader.

Published

36 thoughts on “Why Hiring Matters”

  2. It is a huge decision, especially when hiring for a professional position. That’s why people that put out questionable behavior in their social media accounts are shooting themselves in the foot. If you’re putting it out there, someone is going to see it.

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  4. I would agree that at professional salaries this could be a multi-million dollar decision for a company who retains an employee for 40 years. At $10 an hour, it is more of a $832K type of decision.

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  5. HI Jim, I do believe you are right about this but I’m not sure if young people straight out of Uni always appreciate this. Also, with job shortages, employees may not be able to be very choosey about potential jobs.

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      1. Sorry, Jim, that’s not strange at all! Historically, I’ve always contended that when some manufacturing jobs went away, usually replaced by mechanization, the people who complained about losing their jobs could just go pick vegetables, especially if they griped about having to get retrained. I guess I could have expanded that to include other front line menial low paying jobs like fast food workers and hotel housekeepers.

        On the flip side and more recently, looking at the jobs in the US that have gone wanting for lack of applicants or possibly even people qualified to perform them, I have two thoughts as to the reasons.

        First, of course, I agree that some of these folks can’t or won’t go back to them. I’m sure we know as you do that they don’t pay a decent/living wage in most places in this country even without the cost of having to find decent and affordable childcare in many cases. And BTW that is another category of underpaid employment, especially given the responsibility that goes along with it.

        Second, I’ve also considered that the workers in these underpaid categories would most likely love to move up to better paying jobs and would probably take them for less than some of the people who may have done them in the past for less than $15/hour. Employers (like banks and other financial institutions as my stockbroker reported keep her on hold because they have so few actual people available to answer questions), in my opinion, just don’t want to pay the cost of training these people.

        Another possible reason I can’t delve too deeply into is what I have heard about many of the younger generations who just aren’t interested, at least right now, in working hard for the money and are looking for something else out of a job. I just hope those people don’t expect to live off welfare and social security like some of my baby boomer peers seem to have done.

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      2. thank you once again for your thoughtful comments. It si hard to pin down why there is a labor shortage, but your explanations seem quite valid and could explain a big chunk of it. I do hope that employers start paying everyone a livable wage, and soon.

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  6. With the doctrine of employment at will where an employer is free to terminate an employee’s employment for any reason or no reason at all without any legal consequences, employers should but many times don’t view hiring as a long term decision. Human resources are many times the easiest factor of production to add or subtract. Agree about good luck to job applicants.

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  8. I am still dwindling on the 40-year job statement. Wow I can’t imagine a job for that long. Not too many of those types of jobs left these days. Except in the education and academic world, unelected government positions and perhaps healthcare if the person doesn’t burnout. Healthcare is a tough gig in Canada. Most other employees are at the mercy of their companies and the economy. At least when I got chopped I was close enough to retirement that I would survive. No so for many others. New graduates have no intention of staying in a job for 40 years. Good for them. Flexibility is a requirement these days.

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    1. You are right, and I guess coming from academia, I have a biased perspective. But I think employers are perhaps starting to realize, with all these job openings, that there may be some benefits to being more loyal to its employees.

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  9. Probably not the case in the academic world, but I think most employees/companies are thinking mid-term these days. I’ve never taken a job I expected to retire with (except now because of my advanced age). I’ve always looked at jobs as a stepping stone, a place holder or (best case) an interesting and valuable way to contribute to society (for a while). My chosen field of nonprofit finance is extremely cyclical – last night I said to my wife “I’ll bet you’re sick of me talking about the budget, huh?” She said “Every year it’s Audit, Budget, Audit, Budget… I’m used to it.” I can’t imagine doing my job for 40 years.

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    1. While I may teach the same material year after year, at least to it’s to a new group of students, which helps keep me energized.

      But my first and and only corporate job lasted less than a year since I couldn’t see myself doing that job for the next 40 years. So I decided to go back to school and become a teacher…

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  10. Your post took me to many directions, Jim. Being an administrator for ten years, I was on the interview panels numerous times. Sadly to say that in our school district, there was too much politic going on when it comes to hiring. The worse political situation was hiring a superintendent. The district got burned twice when we tried to get rid of the superintendents. For these two, the district gave them administrative leave of six months each, salary plus benefits, couldn’t hire any one during those two-six months.
    One candidate applied for a position in our office had no knowledge or experience for the job. We could tell she answered the questions from the superficial study of the job requirement. We had better candidates who don’t need on the job training.

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    1. thanks for sharing your experiences, Miriam. Iwould think hiring such a high-profile, and often political position would be a challenge. And superintendent is such a critical position in the community…

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      1. I remember one HR director said, if a candidate challenged the denial, he would just say, that person was not a good fit to the district. But with the superintendents, they might perform well in the previous districts but don’t do well in our district because we have our ways of doing things.

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      3. It’s true. The last item on my job description was “perform as assigned.” As it turned out, my job didn’t look like what I was hired to do. It was good for me because I learned a lot, both in technology and PR (I was hand-picked by the superintendent). ☺️

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