Re: Hiring Publications Managers

Subject: Re: Hiring Publications Managers
From: Bruce Byfield <bbyfield -at- axionet -dot- com>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>
Date: Mon, 04 Feb 2002 10:49:57 -0800

Kelley wrote:

Also, as I said, I, personally, refuse to hire contractors unless desperate because they made a choice to contract. It's a market. I make decisions. You make decisions. Our firm makes decisions. We get disciplined by the market. In my role, I'm happy to discipline contractors. That means they go at the bottom of the "Yes" pile. :)

Incredible. Honest (full points there), but incredible. An employer is, of course, perfectly free to select job candidates on any legal criteria. However, eliminating people who need to be resourceful to survive hardly seems in the interest of any company.

People who chose to forego the benefits of contracting should be rewarded with the jobs I have to offer: full-time positions with an employer who will reward that commitment because they've demonstrated that commitment in the past. People who chose to contract shouldn't be rewarded because they haven't demonstrated that commitment. We want to invest in someone. Discipline.


Reward? Discipline? These terms sound more appropriate to bondage games than to hiring an employee. You want people who can do the job, and who can get along with other people in the company, and that's about it.

If you've done something a long time, it's going to be an adjustment. Why should a potential employee want to pay for someone to adjust to captive employment? Why should I have to have the stress of always wondering if they will get bored.?


Anybody coming into a new job is making an adjustment. A successful contractor, who has learned to be flexible, is unlikely to take any more time to adjust than anyone else.

As for committment: I get around to enough job sites to know that, even in this economy, full-time employees are still flitting from company to company. Maybe they're doing it less, and more carefully, but they're still doing it. No matter how well the company treats employees, a certain number will get bored and move on fairly quickly. Keeping good employees is one of the largest issues in high-tech management, and it's not solved by not hiring contractors.



Yep. I just don't fool myself into thinking that I have so-called objective criteria or even the only criteria that could be used. We have to weed through hundreds of resumes. You end up doing what "feels right". You either survive, or you don't. You get disciplined by the market and progress or die.

Objectivity may be impossible, but you can certainly increase the odds of hiring a good person by choosing your criteria carefully. By all means, ask people about a history of contracting or about gaps in their employment - but don't jump to conclusions about what these mean. Ideas of reward and discipline, or prejudices - however enlightened - do nothing to increase your chances of hiring a suitable person.


--
Bruce Byfield 604.421.7177 bbyfield -at- axionet -dot- com

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Follow-Ups:

References:
Hiring Publications Managers: From: Paula Puffer
Re: Hiring Publications Managers: From: Kelley
Re: Hiring Publications Managers: From: Kelley

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