Thoughts on hiring – alumni pride
Previous “Thoughts on hiring” articles
In the first article in this series I made note of how Hamilton’s industry has been referred to by some as a minor league, where developers and technical talent work for a few years before moving up to Toronto, K-W, or elsewhere.
One way to approach this problem is to flip it on its head. Isn’t it a great thing that firms can take a rookie developer (typically a co-op student or fresh grad) and turn them into an experienced developer? Imagine if firms weren’t doing this.
Value is being created in the form of workforce development, but it’s not being captured by one of the parties involved in the creation of the value. It isn’t being captured by the firm that offers the training, professional development, and experience that gets the rookie to the more experienced level.
And it should go without saying that the developer themselves staying late, putting in unpaid extra hours on projects, etc, has a lot to do with their own success and development… all the power to them in commanding a better wage. But if the firm can’t afford to keep them onboard, how can the firm still capture some of this value too?
I can tell you that top notch post-secondary students target some specific companies by name, inside and outside of town, because they know they’ll be offered great opportunities for professional development. As a result the companies with these reputations attract great rookie talent, keep them for a few years and make them even better, and then bring in the next wave of great talent.
The academic in me can’t help being reminded of how professors will list their previous grad students on their webpage, along with what the students did afterwards (took a postdoc at Harvard, R&D lab at IBM, etc.). It’s a way for them to attract the next wave of slave labo…, er, hungry grad students.
Companies can do this too. Check out Differential in Cincinnati that lists their “alumni” along with their current team:
Developing a reputation as a great stepping stone isn’t a bad thing, and neither is advertising it openly. Alumni pride is a good thing!
