Remote work

The 1 word you can add to job ads to get more applicants. Also, 7 other things worth knowing today.

What matters most to create an incredible business? You'll hear it over and over: Recruit and retain the best people you possibly can.  

Well, what if I were to tell you that there's an incredible hiring advantage out there for the taking right now, which can make it easier for almost any business to recruit true superstars—if they're willing to do it?

It comes to us courtesy of LinkedIn, which revealed in its State of the Labor Market last month that there is a misalignment in terms of what job applicants are looking for, and what companies are offering. It goes like this:

• Only 14 percent of job postings on LinkedIn right now indicate that they're open to remote work;

• But, those job postings attract fully 50 percent of the applications that people submit via the platform.

Crunched differently, jobs that advertise flexibility attract many times more applicants on average than jobs that don't advertise that remote work is allowed. Or as LinkedIn put it in a report:

There are two labor markets in the U.S. nowadays. There's the market for remote work, and the market for onsite jobs. The former is cooling down quickly, and the latter is still tight.

It's a pretty big disconnect—"the 'great remote work mismatch,'" as Rand Ghayad, head of economics and global labor markets at LinkedIn explained to The Washington Post—and it could be an equally enormous opportunity to make a simple change that results in a giant difference.

Because if you're willing to pare down requirements and allow remote work, you might have a much larger pool of employees to choose from, and more chances to find those elusive high-performers who can make or break a business.

Look, the last two years ago have been among the most dynamic times at work in living memory for most of us. We embarked on an international, unintended experiment that gave us data on whether employees who work remotely can be as productive as those who work in an office.

In the end, largely, employees want that flexibility, but as the pandemic waned, many employers became more reticent to offer it.

Moreover, we're in almost exactly the numerical situation that Stanford economist Nicholas Bloom, who has been studying remote work and productivity for years, predicted at the start of 2022.

In short, he said, employees will segment into three groups:

• The ones who can't work from home (50 percent), either because their jobs simply and practically don't allow for it (police officers, airline pilots, restaurant workers), or because they don't have the professional capital in order to demand it.

• The ones who have hybrid arrangements (40 percent), who largely have leadership and management responsibilities and who "need face-to-face contact to be productive," but, who want—and have the clout—to insist on at least partial work flexibility.

• The ones who can work from wherever they want (10 percent), who are productive or even more so without having to go to an office, who are highly skilled and working in service roles, who largely don't have to manage big teams—but again, who are good enough to be able to insist on total flexibility.

So, you tell me. How important is remote work? Is it a deal-breaker for you? If you’re the hiring boss, is it something you’re willing to give? If you’re looking for a job do you want that kind of flexibility? Let us know in the comments.

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7 other things worth knowing today

• The man who disarmed the Monterey Park shooter, who had killed 10 people at a Lunar New Year celebration, spoke out: "When I got the courage, I lunged at him with both my hands, grabbed the weapon and we had a struggle," said Brandon Tsay, 26. "We struggled into the lobby, trying to get this gun away from each other. He was hitting me across the face, bashing the back of my head." (Good Morning America)

• A Texas woman pleaded guilty to a felony charge and is facing up to four years in prison for stealing her cousin’s $1 million New York state lottery jackpot. Iris Amador Argueta, 34, pleaded guilty Friday to one count of second-degree grand larceny after stealing and claiming the award in November 2020. (CNN)

• Simple cooking tips to make your veggies taste so good you won't miss meat—according to the man who unlocked secrets to living to age 100. (Insider)

• Why some people can't tell left from right. (Around one in six people, according to a recent study—struggle with the distinction.) (BBC)

• How to ask for a raise, without alienating your boss along the way: Tips from psychologists, managers and people who have successfully asked what can feel like a very difficult question. (NYT)

• The Colombian navy rescued a man from Dominica who says he survived 24 days adrift in the Caribbean on a sailboat by eating ketchup, garlic powder and seasoning cubes. Elvis Francois, 47, had scrawled the word “help” in English on the boat’s hull, which officials said was key to his rescue. (AP)

• Which one is correct: O.K., OK, ok, or okay? (LitHub)

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Thanks for reading. Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash. I wrote about some of this before at Inc.com. See you in the comments.