In a recent survey of 3,000 workers and hiring managers by Robert Half and CareerBuilder, almost 50% of the hiring managers think higher energy prices will hamper their ability to recruit skilled workers in the next year.
It is very common for hiring managers to be very focused in finding candidates who are extremely local, said Rosemary Haefner, CarererBuilder.coms Vice President of Human Resources. Job seekers are being a lot more selective now of opportunities that are closer to home or can take advantage of mass transit, she said, so they can have a better work/life balance.
Now this article takes this information a little far in attempting to paint a somewhat bleak picture in that the commute distances will affect hiring and retention negatively over the unforeseeable future. Am I telling you that the commute has no bearing on hiring and retention? No. What I am trying to say is look at everyone as an individual.
If you are in the process of recruiting new staff, talk to the candidate about the commute. Will the commute be shorter or longer than they are used to? How far have they commuted in previous jobs? Will they have to be in the office every day? Do they enjoy or look forward to the commute? These are just a few of many questions you can ask the candidate when it comes to commuting. The commuting issue should be a small part of the whole hiring process.
We have had numerous experiences with our clients when it comes to candidates and commuting. We had one client that excluded a very good candidate from a first interview based solely on her commuting distance. Even though the candidate would have been about 25 miles away, her commute time would have been significantly reduced because she would have been going against rush hour traffic. What we learned was this hiring manager hated his own commute of over 30 miles (which was with the flow of the rush hour). He had one employee quit because of her commute became longer once she moved to a new community. His bias was projected onto any new candidates who did not live within a handful of miles of their office.