If you are like most people you probably cringed when you read the headline. The idea of treating someone's career and life like closing a deal is cold and heartless. But if we delve deeper and look at both actions in their purest form we see it’s actually quite the opposite.
If we treat each and every sale as the exchange of goods and services that creates a mutually beneficial situations for both parties involved in the transaction then the title of this article quickly changes its meaning from a selfish one sided acquisition to a statement that could change practices and protocols that have been in corporate America recruitment for decades.
Too often people are hired into companies because it will benefit a company more than benefit the individuals’ career. Ultimately stifling the employees’ growth creativity and limiting their potential. They will eventually get bored and look for greener pastures or even worse grow complacent and stay with the company until the company realizes the employee is stagnate, unengaged and eventually will be replaced by someone who is more enthusiastic about the possibility and promises that this new position holds only to be disappointed once they realize that it's the situation they came from: a lateral move that is equally less challenging as the position they came from..... And cycle continues endlessly as long as companies hire with their own interest in mind.
Now I'm not saying we turn corporate America into a charity. What I'm saying is that if we hire to create symbiotic relationships first then we can reduce turnover, decrease time of hire to productivity, and increase retention rate amongst valued employees. Like any relationship the employer/employee relationship should be 50/50, the moment it becomes 51/49 one or both parties becomes disinterested and everything falls apart. Treating the employer/ employee relationship like you would a spouse or partner eliminates the element of "cheating". Happy couples don't stray, appreciated partners don't leave, growing relationships don't die......unhappy, unappreciated, stagnate ones do just like careers.
Obviously the two types of relationships are very distinct and unique but it would be irresponsible to not acknowledge the parallels. There will always be bad apples out I the world but if we enter each situation with the best intentions for both parties, then we will be right more often than not. Best advice I ever received was “as long as you always do what you feel is the right thing to do you'll never be wrong". We might hire the wrong person for the job, they might be a bad apple, but as long as we did it with the best intentions we made the right choice. The moment we start hiring people because it benefits the company more than it will benefit the employee everything begins to fall apart.
I hire like I sell