Over the years, I have had dozens of conversations with colleagues and friends who were at the cusp of transitioning their career paths. Almost always, the trickiest and the longest part of the conversation hovers around objectively evaluating the intangible benefits of the current job vis-a-vis with the new employer. This is where numbers and data start to fade away over your intuition and instincts.
Here's one litmus test to evaluate your future workplace from your interview experience.
Who Art Thou? A Person or a Resource?
Here's one litmus test to evaluate your future workplace from your interview experience.
Who Art Thou? A Person or a Resource?
Has your future employer spent enough time in knowing who you are as a person? Or have they focused only on the skills you bring to the table and that alone did the trick?
You will have a much more rewarding experience working for a firm that believes in achieving commercial success by genuinely setting up individual employees for success, rather than in the companies where you are a resource entry in a staffing system that will automatically match you to the most economical opportunity based on your skills.
Hired as a resource, you are just that. Hired as a person, they value the whole of you.
When your interviewing experience singularly focuses on your prowess of the subject matter alone, you prove your viability for a return on investment for the company. Now imagine stepping inside an environment where every single colleague you work with was able to get a foot inside the door using this criteria, irrespective of their working styles, how they collaborate, what inspires each of them, and what they value of each other. At best you will find accidental one-off synergies, at worst, you may never be able to nurture a single meaningful relationship at work.
Now contrast this with a company that assesses your aptitude but also invests time in truly understanding what motivates you, how you define success, how failure has shaped your personal leadership, what you value in your co-workers, and where you desire to be in months to come. This demonstrates a deliberate attempt to empathise with your personal story and aspirations. When you receive an offer letter after a similar soul searching interviewing experience, there is an implicit message that says, “We heard your story and you belong here.”