Everything You Know About Job Hunting Is Wrong

asktheheadhunter.com

19 points·mooreds··3 comments

"Managers want one kind of worker: the person who can solve problems and have a positive impact on the bottom line. "

From decades of experience, I can state this is not true. Managers want workers that will benefit their own career. While in small businesses this might be aligned with 'a positive impact on the bottom line', the larger the business the less likely these objectives are likely to coincide.

+1 some managers focus on profit, others focus on IP, or capacity, or learning and development, or having a good time, or promoting their ideas, or whatever else they value or their company values. The things they value are various and complexity and there's a whole industry devoted to expressing and measuring then in candidates.

> Managers want workers that will benefit their own career.

+1! This is probably brutal but the most truthful fact not everyone can accept. This is especially true in big organisations. As much as we would like to believe that managers want workers to have a positive impact, that’s usually from the perspective of a manager who has a massive stake in the businesses, for eg, a founder or a small business owner.

Too many “managers” in big organisations are simply employees themselves who care more about their own survival and career, just as with the employees these managerial employees hire.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com