Are You One of the Best Places?

This week Business Week published an article on the best places to launch a career. Looking at the list, you won't find many creative firms there. A few made the Top 50: Google, Microsoft, Walt Disney (full disclosure: I own stock in the last two). The Top 50 list was top heavy with accounting firms and investment banks, though there were plenty of technology firms as well as a few consulting firms which, if done right, could employ a lot of Creatives. But all in all, very few Creative-oriented companies ended up on the list. Why so few?

Well, the easy answer may be that these were only large firms, and many of the most creative companies are small, often employing only a few people, so of course they aren't going to make the cut on a list of international firms like this. But that doesn't explain why some of the biggest creative firms -- Apple, Yahoo, the large advertising companies -- didn't make the Top 50.

So we have to wonder: are the creative firms offering what today's college grads say they want? Sure, many of the firms near the top offer big salaries and bonuses, but the new entrants to the workforce say they want different things. They want to be able to take their skills from work and use them to help their communities, they want to take on meaningful work, they want the opportunity for increased responsibility sooner rather than later...in short, they want to be able to make a difference.

We don't really know why the big firms full of Creatives aren't on that list, but we can still try to learn something from it. Even if you're a small firm, ask yourself if you're providing the kind of opportunity that will make someone want to be there with you, rather than accepting a job just because they can't find anything else. Will you be attractive to the hard-charging, go-getters? And if so, will you know what to do with them once you get them (so that, hopefully, you can keep them however long you like)? Some simple things, which really don't cost all that much, emerged from the study, including flexibility (telecommuting was a biggie) and the opportunity for their voices to be heard and their ideas listened to, even if they aren't ultimately implemented (it's important for new grads to keep a sense of realism...they aren't always going to have the best answer to a problem, no matter how smart they've been told they are for their entire lives). So even though your firm is different from the companies you see on that list, you can still learn a lesson or two from them.

A few things you'll want to avoid also surface in the survey. Pharmaceutical companies and other biotech firms have turned off too many folks with their internal bureaucracy, stifling creativity. The same is found in the government; agencies that (supposedly) encourage creativity over bureaucracy, like the CIA, State Department, and NASA, make the cut, but not others. So if you're trying to attract Creatives, let them focus on the creative work and try to relieve them of the repetitive day-to-day stuff as much as you can.

Surveys like this may not seem to mean much to smaller, creative companies, but there's still some stuff to learn. If you're trying to attract young, energetic, talented employees, see how that works at companies that already do.