How to Choose an Employer: Lessons from LeBron James

With the current economic and unemployment conditions, it's unlikely that most of us will find ourselves in the kind of position LeBron James (was in recently)--aside, perhaps, from those working on Wall Street. A free agent, in case you hadn't heard, LeBron (was) being wooed by many of the big names in pro basketball (and the Nets!), with astronomical sums of money on offer for his skills.

CNBC's Darren Rovell wrote an interesting piece on the financial implications of LeBron's impending move, weighing up the likely costs and benefits to each of the teams courting him, and attempting to figure out which of them stood to gain financially once they'd met his salary expectations.  Having completed the run-down-which found that the Knicks and the Nets had the most to gain financially by bringing James in--Rovell saved his most interesting observation for the very end of his blog: "LeBron cares about the value of the teams to him, not the value of his presence to the teams. If he cared about the latter, he'd wind up in New York or New Jersey next season."

That observation is likely true of many in the workforce today, and represents one of the inherent conflicts at the heart of business and hiring: almost everyone, first and foremost, is out to do as well as they can for themselves, with their employer's needs coming a distinct second. Perhaps that's exactly as it should be: a careerist who isn't looking out for their own best interests certainly won't find anyone else in the corporate world to do it for them. But what if money was off the table? Assuming that all teams were capable of making LeBron the same offer, what factors then come into play for him-and for the rest of us?

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