Job Search: Why Are They Hiring?

Something that job searchers often ignore in their haste to find a job is to understand why the firm in question wants to hire for a particular position. Understanding this will help you identify what is important to emphasise in the interviews throughout the recruitment process. That said, it is also worth considering that each interviewer the candidate meets will have their own view on the reason for the hire. Sometimes there may be subtle differences between the view of the interviewer and that of the leadership team driving the hire, and sometimes there may be downright disagreement. This is something that I saw a number of time during my career as an Executive Recruiter.

For that reason, it is important to interact with each interviewer as an individual and seek to understand the thoughts and perspectives of the person in front of you in the interview.

Generally speaking, I think that there are three reasons to hire. Furthermore, if you are going to proactively reach out to a firm which is not actively hiring, there are perhaps two other ‘modes’ which are well worth knowing about. These additional modes will explain the reception that your outreach might have.

Let’s go through each of them in turn.

Mode 1: Growth. In this scenario, the firm is doing well and wants to build out its activities and needs more skilled hands on deck. This speaks to the position that the firm is in its corporate lifecycle, as expounded by Ichak Adizes. The enterprise might be anywhere from complete start-up. all the way through to a point of maturity and prime. If the firm or department is in growth mode, then it will want to hire with a reasonable level of speed.

Mode 2: Crisis. The business is in trouble and the leadership needs to take significant and swift action in order to stop the things getting worse and to turn the situation around. Often a firm will seek to cut costs by reducing headcount. It is also the case that a firm in crisis mode will need to hire in new people who have the skills and qualities to rebuild and reshape the business. The need to find and hire those individuals becomes urgent and there is a requirement for speed of action. It may also mean that, for the right person, the purse strings are loosened in order to expedite the hire.

Mode 3: Replacement. If a firm has a key initiative that has faltered, it might be that those who were driving it may need to be swapped out and replaced. The new leaders will be tasked with picking that new area of business and making it work.

It might also be that there is someone at an important place in the value chain who has just not got the skills, experience or the ability to handle that position, and there will be a like-for-like replacement hired.

Finally, it might be just a question of replacing someone who was doing a great job and for whatever reason needs to be replaced. Perhaps that person was promoted and there are no other internal candidates or they simply left for another firm. In this mode, there will be a sense of urgency to get the hire done.

Mode 4: Everything is fine. You may try to engage with a firm where everything is working well and things are just fine. There is no growth, no crisis and there are plenty of well qualified people to replace anyone who leaves. The appetite to hire is likely to be very low. That said, all things change so just because that firm / department is in ‘everything is fine’ mode now, it might not be in three or six months time.

Mode 5: Misjudging. It might be that the management are misunderstanding the situation that they are really in. They are interpreting the data that they have and think that the enterprise is in Mode 4. In reality, there are things going on which the leadership are unaware of and therefore don’t feel the need to take action. Perhaps at a strategic level, they have misread the changes in the market and see no reason to adjust the business plan accordingly. At another level, a department head may be unaware that he is going to lose a key team member once bonuses are paid. As a job seeker who might know that the firm is in more trouble than it thinks, it might be an idea to allow the situation to play itself out and wait for the mode to change from Misjudging to Crisis or Replacement and the management wake up to the situation they are really in.

Being aware of which mode the hiring managers of a business or department are in will help you in your search for your next job, whether you are being approached by recruiters, responding to ads or proactively reaching out.

If you find yourself looking to change roles or career, do get in touch to schedule a free Career Consultation to see how we can help.