Data insights

How to Get People to Change Jobs [INFOGRAPHIC]

The typical professional goes through a few stages when considering changing jobs: awareness of another opportunity, consideration, and finally decision.

What makes for a truly great recruiter is knowing how to approach the candidate at every stage of this journey. To help with that, we analyzed the behavior of over 7 million LinkedIn members and surveyed over 10,000 people who recently changed jobs. The results are published in our Why and How People Switch Jobs Reportbut you can see some of the most important findings in the infographic below.

Here is how you can attract the candidates’ attention during every step of their journey:

how to attract people who want to change jobs

Awareness: When professionals first hear about your company, they want to get a feel for your authentic talent brand

According to professionals, the number one obstacle to changing jobs is not knowing what’s really like to work at a company.

This means that despite the wealth of information on the internet, people still find it hard to get an accurate picture of what daily life in your office is like. If this doesn’t scream “prioritize your talent brand now,” I am not sure what does.

First, make sure that you cover the basics – create a content-rich careers page on your company website and open up social media profiles on social media networks that are relevant for your business. It’s important to infuse those with photos and videos of your employees and leadership team and clearly explain your company’s mission and values.

And remember, your employees can be your best talent brand ambassadors. Our survey showed that the #1 job seeking activity on LinkedIn is looking at employee profiles. This means that your hiring managers and colleagues are on the front lines of hiring, and have the power to sway a candidate to or away from your organization. Excite them about the chance to be part of the recruiting process and enable them to represent your talent brand well through their online presence.

If right about now you are saying, “Oh but we are just a small business, we don’t have time and money to invest in this” – we have news for you. Small businesses are hot and our data shows that more and more professionals are choosing to leave big enterprises and join companies with fewer than 500 people.

Consideration: When they start considering your organization as a viable place to work, reach them with the right messages through the right sourcing channels

It’s no surprise that the top way people first discovered their new job was through someone they knew. Referrals are not only the most popular sourcing channel, but they also yield the best quality candidates and the lowest cost-per-hire.

Take advantage of this by investing in your employee referral program and make sure that everybody in your company knows how to share with you the best talent they know.

Going beyond referrals, different generations of job changers lean toward different sourcing channels. Millennials are more comfortable with online channels, Gen X-ers rely on staffing agencies, and Boomers love tapping into their friends and family network. Make sure your channel mix is the right one for the demographic you’re going after.

Once you’ve identified the right candidate pool and the right channel mix to reach them, it’s imperative that you use the right messages so they’ll actually respond. This is especially the case if you’re trying to improve your diversity hiring efforts. The data doesn’t lie - women really do want different things in a job than what men want. Millennials respond better to one kind of messaging while Gen Xers and Boomers to another. Our report will walk you through these differences.

Decision: When candidates are deciding, close them on career opportunities, not jobs

Sure, money is important. But it’s not enough. What candidate’s really yearn for are better career opportunities. This was the #1 reason they left a job AND the #1 reason they joined a new company.

We also saw that a whopping 1 in 3 job switchers changed careers entirely -- they changed both their function and their company. People want better & different career opportunities, and they want them bad enough to leave their old jobs behind and head into the unknown.

The lesson for recruiters is clear - to be successful, you must close candidates on career opportunities, not pay. How does one do this?

The first step is asking candidates what they’re looking for in a new role, and figuring out what a career opportunity might mean for them. The second step is really listening to make the right match between that person and their dream job. Otherwise, you risk placing someone who will churn out of the company. The third step is being honest about the good, the bad, and the ugly about your organization so the candidate knows what they’re getting into and can make the right decision for the long haul.

To get more insights into why people change jobs and how to get them to join your company, download the full report.

why people change jobs

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