Just Because Companies Can Afford To Be Jerks Doesn’t Mean They Should; Or: On The Usefulness Of Your Job

A counterpoint to the “it’s a buyer’s market so we can do what we want with job candidates” zeitgeist that’s been floating around.

The wisdom—and we’ve been buying it, too—is that if a company gets 500 resumes for a given position just by putting the job up on one board, they really don’t have to treat candidates with respect or whatever because if they chase one away there will be another waiting in the wings. (Is this a good idea just because they “can” do it? Of course not, but that hasn’t stopped some, you see.)

Stephen Balzac, writing at ERE.net, argues otherwise.

“That person needs a job, even if it’s not that specific job,” he writes. “But wait, it’s a terrible economy! Does the candidate really have a choice [if the company's treating him/her poorly]?

“Surprising as it may seem, yes they do. If one company is hiring people with a given skill set, odds are others are as well. Companies hire because they believe that the value of bringing someone in exceeds the cost: in other words, they see a potential, or actual, source of revenue. Well, there are a lot of companies out there; if one finds a valuable niche, you can bet others will too.”

To take this to the extreme, however, that means if you’re not getting interviews in this economy it could be because your skills aren’t valuable. Maybe they were five years ago, but they ain’t now.

At least, that’s the argument we’re seeing here. Do we buy it? Not entirely; we think that in an economy this bad you’re still going to see companies that would hire in skill sets that are less than crucial…if they could afford to.

But it is another argument against jerky managers.

For example (also from Balzac’s post), don’t do this:

During the last downturn, the CEO of one midsized technology company told several employees that he wouldn’t give them raises because, “It’s a terrible economy and you have no where else to go.” Within a month, each of those people had found new jobs at significantly higher rates of pay. Although the employees were eventually replaced, the cost to the company, in terms of lost productivity and ramp-up time for the new people, was huge. Their competitors dethroned them from their once dominant position in their market niche. The company now no longer exists.

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