[blharr]

For the first interview that you get an offer, what exactly do you tell them to keep them from moving on to someone else?

Most don't extend employment offers out for months in my experience, or at least they really try to get you to agree off the bat. I imagine someone job searching is getting an interview once a week or so. Several times, I've had delays of weeks to months after just submitting an application to get the interview. So how do you just have multiple offers to juggle at any one time?

[SOLAR_FIELDS]

You plan about 4-6 weeks and communicate early on that you are talking to several companies, and that you plan on evaluating offers on X date. Companies will shuffle things around to meet your date if you give them time. If they aren't flex you don't want to work for them anyway.

[BrouteMinou]

No. I am not going to "shuffle things around". You are playing the hard to get, good for you.

For my part, I have hundreds of other candidates to choose from.

[SOLAR_FIELDS]

Great. Hire them, I will go work for someone who gives the same respect that they expect.

People like you are the ones who grumble that it's hard to find good employees, or have to deal with "bad hires". I've built up and staffed teams for a long time and I understand that the best employees sometimes need flexibility. Because the good ones are all going and working for people who want to treat them like adults and understand that the person doing the hiring is just as disposable as the people attempting to be hired.

If timelines don't line up, you just say they don't line up and go your separate ways. No harm no foul.

[esseph]

You are hiring a cog to fit in the machine then, nothing more.

And that's fine for some people who are just "passing through" with no concept of ownership of anything. A lot of people probably.

But you're also going to miss out on people that take extreme ownership of success and failure that have really dedicated themselves to various crafts over their life and career.

You will never, ever, ever get the performance and gains by hiring a cog compared to hiring a craftsman.

Just depends on the org priorities.

[jvanderbot]

This isn't necessarily true. You can hand craft a highly independent and empowered team at a large company (pets not cattle), and still have hundreds of candidates to sift through. At JPL, we did this. We were very careful about hiring, but did have many, many qualified candidates to choose from.

But I will say, we were also careful to accommodate candidate schedules as much as possible, but yes, we did pass on folks who were asking for significantly more than others. It's a balancing game.

[esseph]

Familiar with JPL datacenter, I was working at USDA NITC DISC under OCIO during the competition for certain other gov contracts.

Sounds like you're not there anymore, but Thank You.

[hansvm]

I mean, you're both correct.

It's kind of like how when selling a house your optimal strategy is rarely to try to appeal to the most people. Instead, modifications which greatly increase perceived value in a smaller subset (so long as it isn't too small for your personal goals) will alienate most customers but still increase the sale value in the same timespan.

When you're applying for jobs, some companies aren't willing to play that game, and if you're playing it then that's not just fine; it's ideal. You don't waste your time on companies who won't play ball. Enough will that the strategy still works.

[normie3000]

I haven't heard this about houses; any examples? Would it be something like replacing the kitchen?

[hansvm]

In terms of modifying the house it depends on your local market. The general observation is that something making the house "special" tends to drive the price up rather than down. E.g., radiant heating via floor circulation can be seen as risky and novel, but enough people care that it tends to be profitable. Similarly with "risky" amenities like a backyard walking path. The location determines what a normal house is, so specifics vary wildly, but targeting a large enough sub-market is almost always better than "targeting" a wider market.