Places and Spaces

An article in the Wall Street Journal at the end of last month posed a question to a panel, asking which cities are most likely to attract young people. The Top 5 they came up with included:

Washington, DC and Seattle (tied for first)
New York City
Portland (Oregon, not Maine)
Austin

You might want to take a look at this. Why? Well, not because you should be focused on recruiting and hiring only young people. That's not just a dumb plan, it's also more than a little illegal. BUT, these places tend to be popular younger people because they provide an invigorating environment, the sort of place that supports and encourages creativity. It's not age, in this case, it's location, location, location. When you're looking for Creatives, you might want to be looking for the sort of people who'd be attracted to cities like these.

So, how can you make this information work for you?

Well, first, you might want to locate your business in one or more of these cities. If you're a big firm with offices in many places, or if you're small but mobile, consider relocating to someplace like one of these.

If you don't feel like moving your firm to the favorite-city-of-the-week, consider hiring free agents from these cities. Look for the people who've moved there to take advantage of what the city has to offer and see if they might be right for you. Just because they live there doesn't mean they have to work there...that's the beauty of free agency.

Both of these points get at your recruiting strategy. Very often, a firm's recruiting strategy tends to be either too narrow or too broad. Sticking only to your home city, a narrow strategy, limits your pool of potential Creatives, while going to broad, and searching, say, nationwide, can leave your recruiters overstretched and not able to do a very detailed job. So use this information to tailor your recruiting efforts.

There are other cities the panelists discussed that didn't make the Top 5. If you're not getting anything worthwhile from looking into the cities listed above, consider some of the runners-up.

Where you work can help determine who works for you. Your recruiting strategy needs to consider which locations are desirable for the kind of people you want, and what it is that makes these places so great. Then find the right location for recruiting, and hit 'em hard.