Why new employees are hired?

Getting hired is a problem that many of us face at some point in our career. There are plenty of articles and discussions that focus on the person who is applying for the job and tips how they can get the position. Tips include: she/he should have tidy clothes, firm handshake, be on time, be polite, bring all the material for showcasing your work, etc. Those are all good tips, but I think we should focus more on the why company decides to hire a new employee in the first place.

Exploring why companies hire

While investigating the topic, I found plenty of different reasons what are the reasons and signals to expand:

• your current employees are unable to finish their work, and you often have to extend deadlines for your employees
• the overall quality of work in your company is slipping
• existing job skills and knowledge are fine for your company's current level of productivity. To expand, you'll need either increased skills and knowledge or a new and different set of skills and knowledge

These are just a small sample from a larger pool of reasons.

If you go deeper to each reason, then you can categorize each reason to two categories: Value and out of necessity. Each reason can be in one of the categories or both.

Value

In some cases the value employee brings is easy to measure. In a consulting business, it's pretty easy to calculate how much new consultant would provide value to the company by doing just his job.

The value is not only about the money. Publicity, connections and skills are all assets that bring value that eventually convert to better finance. The better finance can be only assumed if you pay in the right correlation with expected value.

Out of necessity

Certain positions in a company bring less value directly but are necessary to have a working organization. These include secretaries, janitors, in-house IT administrators, etc. When the company gets larger the work amount in different areas of organization reach "critical mass" and there needs to be a dedicated person to handle that particular operation.

(Out of good will)

The third reason (but a rare one) is when the company gives a summer job for a young student. Expectations for bringing value is almost zero. It's not an altruistic deed, but more like satisfying the expectations of society and paying back the support you have received from the government (if any).

Conclusion

I think we all should think more how to provide value. If you have been unemployed for a while, it's good to take little bit different perspective and think what I would bring to the company and is my position necessity for the future employer. In the private sector, relying on your diplomas, school papers, etc. isn't wise as they don't bring any value. It's not the "Dr." title that brings more salary, it's the skills that they assume you have.

It's not only your current skills but a willingness and passion to learn means that eventually you'll bring value back to the company.

What's your take on this?