With the labor market being tight over the last year plus, workers have had a historically disproportionate amount of leverage when it comes to negotiating better pay, obtaining promotions, and shaping job requirements to better meet their work-life balance goals.
Of course, the underlying and often unspoken source of that leverage is the implicit willingness and ability to seek out a new job on another team or at another company if their current option does not satisfy their requirements, and research has shown that employees have become increasingly willing to do so, which further advantages their collective negotiation position.
While the job market has softened a bit since its recent peak, it remains strong by most measures, and many prognosticators predict that will remain the case for the imminent future, which means the outsized hand that employees have been experiencing is likely to be a continuing theme in the near term.
As employees have been putting this advantage into practice (and will presumably continue to do so for the time being at least) their expectations have understandably evolved over time, and the standards by which they are evaluating employers, both existing and prospective, have changed, as well.
More than simply comparing factors like salary and commute length at face value when choosing between job opportunities, employees today are often doing a deeper analysis of the underlying companies in order to have a more complete understanding of their choices and make a more informed decision.
Some of the deeper-level considerations that employees in the current job market are taking into account when evaluating employment prospects are the financial health of the company; the available training, professional development, and internal growth opportunities; and company culture.
In terms of underlying financials, what job candidates are really looking for is stability and longevity, and while an economic downturn within the next year looks increasingly unlikely, that consensus is a fairly new development among the economist set. Among the general population, whose evolution of opinion tends to lag behind that of experts, however, concerns about recession happening sooner than later remain an active reality for lots of people, and is very much on the mind of many prospective employees when weighing one company against another.
When researching potential employers, many modern job candidates are analyzing the company’s strategy for growth, recent/potential integrations, and any stated plans for going public or conducting additional fundraising. For companies that are already public, candidates are doing most of their research online via news articles and financial statements, etc. while candidates researching privately held businesses are utilizing resources like Dun and Bradstreet, as well as information published by the Better Business Bureau, in addition to asking questions on these matters during the interview process.
Longevity concerns also come into play when candidates are researching the kind of growth and skill-gaining opportunities they might expect to encounter with a potential employer. Employees have consistently displayed the desire to broaden their core competencies and a willingness to switch jobs in pursuit of professional development if their current employer doesn’t provide it. Perhaps more than ever before, job candidates are prioritizing working for an employer that’s willing to invest in their employees’ skill set development and to provide a clear path of growth within the company, which is something candidates can get a good feel for through LinkedIn in terms of seeing how some of the current and former employees’ roles and responsibilities changed over time.
And finally, the culture that each company has fostered is another important factor that is driving would-be employee decision-making about whether to get onboard with a given company. While culture may be the most difficult of these considerations for job candidates to perceive in a meaningful way from the outside - especially in the case of remote interviews and/or work - prospective employees can still evaluate publicly declared company values and mission statements revealing company culture as defined by the company at the least. They can also look for relevant articles, legal filings, and current/former employee comments about both the company itself and the impacts it’s made in a larger sense, as well as any company sponsorships, community engagement programs, and even company benefits offerings that serve as a reflection company values and priorities.
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