Are you happy in your job?
We speak to candidates every day who fit into three categories:
- Happy (not even thinking about changing jobs)
- Unhappy (really want to change jobs)
- Happy Enough – somewhere in the middle
Is Happy Enough Good Enough?
Happy-Enough applies to people who, for various reasons, consider themselves open to new career opportunities but perhaps who are not motivated enough to be proactive about it. They often like the people they work with, are content with the salary and working arrangements and think their job is interesting – enough.
However, the effects of the pandemic coupled with one of the busiest job markets we have seen can lead to a nagging feeling. Could you be somewhere else, doing something else to further develop your skills and experience?
Who is Happy Enough?
Interestingly, more than 50% of the placements we make are with candidates who were Happy-Enough and we have noticed a few things they have in common.
- They are too busy to think about how to change jobs. Working from home for many people has meant they have less time than before. Add in extra pressures such as juggling kids and home-schooling and it’s easy to understand why looking for a new job would just seem like another time pressure to add into the mix.
- They don’t know how their experience fits into the market. Often, they have found themselves in roles created for them by their firm and their job title or list of responsibilities feels highly nuanced.
- They have settled into a working arrangement that suits their life. Whether this is part-time, on set working days, or flexi arrangements or something else, they feel they won’t get this type of arrangement elsewhere.
- They feel entrenched in a particular industry and are not sure how to transfer their experience to another sector.
- They have change fatigue. The world has been disruptive enough recently and their job is one stable element they have, even if it’s not that challenging anymore.
A Happier Career
So how can we help you overcome some of these hurdles to go from Happy-Enough to Happy?
First, it’s useful to share with you how we work with our clients. As a specialist recruitment firm, we are mostly engaged by clients on an exclusive basis to do a targeted search in the market. This means that if we approach you about a role it’s because we already think there is a suitable match between your experience and the position. To enable you to assess this we often prepare a prospectus, which includes interviews with key stakeholders and an executive summary of why the job is being hired. Examples can be found here. Candidates find them very helpful in deciding whether to apply for the role, or not.
Giving you as much information as we can helps you to assess if it’s the right opportunity for you. We aim to be very transparent with you at the beginning of the process to let you know what the size of the talent pool is likely to be and therefore what your chances are.
Applying for roles with Seldon Rosser is also made easier because we can coach you on resume writing, interview preparation etc which is also useful for any other jobs you might wish to apply for. We can also help you translate your experience from one sector to demonstrate its relevance to another.
One of the positive things to come out of the pandemic is a more flexible and balanced approach to working arrangements. This means that if you have very tailored arrangements in place we can usually negotiate the same with your new job. We have these conversations early on and therefore can quickly establish if your requests can be met.
Outside of an application process, we can also make time to speak with you about the market and assess your skills and experience to help you work out what your next career move might look like. Sometimes these career conversations result in us finding you a role that is not on the market (as we have watching briefs with many clients – particularly at this busy time).
We are all living in challenging times and changing jobs can feel daunting – so it’s important that we alleviate as much stress and pressure as we can to ensure your experience is easy, professional, focused and fun. We want our clients and candidates to be more than happy with the recruitment experience, not happy-enough.
Reach out to us if you want to start the process of moving the happiness dial in your career.