Come to Keene!

I just completed my March Madness bracket in 5 minutes, which is usually the amount of time that I devote to this project. My husband and his friends love to have me compete in their online ESPN group. Even though I am inundated with college basketball information each season, I rarely retain any of this knowledge. Therefore, they see me as the control in their long-running experiment to determine if studying the stats can actually lead a person to correctly identify the outcomes of 72 successive basketball games. I chose the winning teams based on the following criteria:

• School Location
• Mascot
• Team colors

These may seem unrelated to the game, however I have been a fierce competitor in this group of Sportscenter junkies for years.  In fact, I was the only person in our group to correctly choose the winner of the 2003 tournament.  For those of you who don’t remember (or weren’t living in Central NY at the time), Syracuse won the title over Kansas, led by superstar Carmelo Anthony.  How can anyone resist Otto the Orange?!

All decisions, including those affecting your career, require a certain set of criteria.  The key is, though, that these criteria are different for each person.  When deciding to stay with a current employer, accept another position, or create a new career path each person will weigh the variables in their own way.  I have attended trainings in which the presenter has given statistics on the most important factors for a jobseeker.  It seems that when answering an online survey, most jobseekers will say that they first consider the location of the position, then the salary, and then the stability of the company.  These are all tangible aspects, however, that can easily be assessed and quantified.  I know that we could each write a list of features we look for in an ideal employment situation, and the results would be unique for each person.  Here are a few of the items on my list:

• Location: proximity to both home and quality childcare/school
• Corporate Social Responsibility
• Opportunities for training and growth
• Salary & benefits
• Environment (I refuse to use the phrase “corporate culture”)
• Overall employee retention
• Ability to make a valuable contribution
• Flexible work schedule
• Supervisors who support the process, not manage the appearance of the outcome
• Likable co-workers
• Access to coffee
• Big windows in my work area

This is in no particular order, however, I wrote them as they came to my mind, so I believe that the stream of consciousness is revealing.  In addition, it would not be absolutely necessary to include each of these in every situation; the combination of likable coworkers and coffee can outweigh an unruly boss.  You will notice that many of the items would be inappropriate topics for an interview.  I would not be able to find statistics related to office windows on a company website.  Many of these aspects would need to be assessed based on how I felt throughout the hiring process.  How has each member of the team approached me?  What types of questions seem to come up again and again?  How responsive have they been to my questions?  And, really, how bright is the office?!

Much like my March Madness methods, my natural inclination is to choose an environment that feels closely aligned with my interests and values and to choose Otto over a Wildcat.