mutual fit

I have been noticing a lot of posts on LinkedIn about how many jobs are on the marketing but how companies aren’t hiring. There are tons of articles about why that is, so I am not going to focus on that. What I’ve found interesting is how many of these jobs are vacant for so long or have high turnover.

We look at candidates who have a short tenure at companies as “job hoppers” or we look at a gap in someone’s experience as a red flag. Why aren’t we doing that with companies? I am a big proponent of a mutual fit, so I am actually advocating that we don’t fault candidates or companies for having a position open for “a long time” (within reason).

So many companies and candidates only focus on putting their best foot forward during an interview, which yes, I agree with that to some extent. But wouldn’t we all be more effective if we shared honestly what our areas of opportunity were? Imagine a company telling a candidate about the areas they need help with so they can find a candidate who has that expertise. I am not talking about the job description or a list of duties. I am talking about SKILLS.

“Our team is made up of a lot of dominant personalities who like the get things done quickly, but we know that we can have blind spots sometimes. We need someone to help us slow down so we don’t bulldoze too much.” That sentence means a lot more than “Serve on leadership team to help make strategic decisions for company growth.”

Someone who has a dominant personality may stand out in the interview process because they are outgoing and they are similar to the other leadership members interviewing them. But they are ultimately not the right fit for what the team needs. That won’t turn into a long term mutual fit. The company would have been better off spending a little more time finding the right person for the position.