Are you doing meaningful work?
Are you doing meaningful work?
We are moving away from people caring about having a bean bag, free breakfast and table tennis table. That is not going to help hiring good talent. Creating work/life harmony for your staff will.
Is a question you should ask regularly. I believe no one wakes up and wants to sell their soul for pure money.
When my candidates are looking for a new job I always encourage them to break the search into a few areas.
Career progression
- Who will be your boss?
- How quickly have people progressed in the company?
- If you’re a junior, have they hired juniors before?
- Do they have budget for external courses to up-skill?
- What's the internal training policy?
- How big is your potential team? How good are they? What’s their background?
- Does your role in the company have chance to make impact?
- What does your first 90 days look like? Always a good indicator of the next year or so.
- What is the vision for the company?
- How much has the company grown in the last 5-10 years?
- Why is this role live?
- Why do people leave the company?
Values
- Is this company ethical?
- How do they win new business?
- What is their Glassdoor rating?
- What’s the latest thing you saw about this company in the news?
- What's the CEO's background?
- What is their diversity policy?
- How do they conduct recruitment? A sign of hiring good people is the process.
- Split between male and female in the business. Is it a boys club?
Well-being
- Flexible work hours?
- Work from home policy?
- What’s the work life harmony?
- What are the expectations of you?
- Work style
- What is the office space like?
- What’s your commute?
- Benefits - good amount of holiday days? Do they encourage you to use them?
- Allowance to work on side projects? Keeping people fulfilled is so important
- What are the people like you’ll be working with?
Looking for a job is simple, looking for the right job is hard.
Some of these tips will be relevant, others not so much.
For me the most important factor is well-being, because it’s the fundamental base for career progression. There is 0 point progressing your career if you go home every night burnt out, annoyed and frustrated.
As a society we need to re-define what success is. Success for me, is not making lots of money but neglecting your mental health and justifying by saying “In 10 years I can quit because I'll make this much."
Career/life harmony is vital.
Look after your mental health and physical well-being, the rest will take care of itself.
Service / UX Designer
5 年I don't think meaningful work comes into play with UX unless you work for a charity, public, or government companies. The rest of us UX-ers are working for companies to create business and generation a post consumption culture, to spend money we don't have by improving conversions.??
Helping brilliant business leaders inspire action in their people by becoming more dynamic and engaging communicators. | Internal Communication Workshops | Presentation & Public Speaking Training | Engagement Workshops |
5 年Great article Tom - thanks for sharing! I'd also say that whether a company actually lives it's values is key - how they put those values into all business processes and experiences for both clients and employees.
Senior UX/UI Product Designer | Design Systems & Cross-platform UX Architect | Driving 21% User Engagement ? UK/EU/Remote
5 年YESSSS! I want to be a part of wherever allows me to be "the black sheep". (but I care about free breakfast, a little bit :P)
Designing Awesome Digital Experiences. Filmmaker, I like to make things.
5 年Great article. Some great interview questions in there too.