I saw this in a post this morning. It got me thinking about the difference in a candidate’s mind between taking a job and furthering their career. We’ve gone through the offer process with 1,000’s of candidates. Before we even get to the offer stage, we like to have a conversation with our client about how they can position themselves to attract the best candidates for the job.

When we ask our candidates what would incent them to make a career move to a new employer, here’s what we hear:

• An investment in their growth. Does the company offer training and/or pay for their employees to learn and grow in other ways?
• A career path. This doesn’t necessarily mean a career ladder. Instead, it may mean the opportunity to take on additional responsibility and broaden their role and have that reflected in their pay.
• An onboarding process. Our candidates want to be able to bring value as quickly as possible just as much as our hiring managers want them to be able to contribute.
• Compensation also comes into play. Having a comp plan that is defined is important. Although, once the comp plan is defined and the candidate views it as reasonable, comp is no longer the most important decision factor.

We’ve also seen these actions have a positive impact on how quickly our candidates engage in their position and how satisfied they are with it:

• Receiving an Onboarding plan that outlines what to expect and what they need to do in their first days and weeks.
• Being setup before/on their first day with any equipment and systems they need to perform their job.
• Given a tour that helps them engage in the office, if that’s where they work, with teammates and others in the organization and with the systems they will use to find information and perform their job.

Navigating your professional life isn’t just a game of numbers and resumes, but emotions. 

Evan Thomas, Author