There are many good reasons why talented employees might entertain dreams of leaving for greener pastures, among the most compelling -- and typical -- being better benefits, higher salary, the right values, a great culture, and more career opportunities.
Some people look to leave just because they can’t stand their boss.
Apart from the obvious, there is another lesser known factor that can cause people to leave even if they are not even looking, according to Tom Leung, co-founder and CEO at Anthology (formerly Poachable), a recruiting platform for passive job finders and HR recruiters.
You might call this under-the-radar reason the life-cycle, or stage, factor, Leung says.
“The life-cycle, or stage, of a potential new employer comes into play for passive job seekers,” Leung explains, adding that some employees feel they fit more naturally into set roles in larger corporations versus juggling the many hats at a startup -- and vice-versa. Or, one subset of workers enjoys long-term strategic planning, while another group needs to be on the front lines, tactically executing.
“Perhaps they're looking for the brand recognition and stability of a public company,” he says. “Or maybe they're more swayed by the generous compensation and bonus packages of private companies that aren’t beholden to public shareholders.”
With that concept mind, Anthology took to helping out HR recruiters (especially in the technology space) identify the types of employees interested at their stage of company. Anthology polled 1,500 current employees at Microsoft, Amazon, IBM, Oracle and Apple on the Anthology platform to find out what stage of company could induce them to leave. They uncovered some very interesting results.
For example, if an employer is recruiting for an early-stage startup, Google may be the best bet in the search for interested talent. Google employees were the most likely to say they’d jump to an early-stage startup (45%) or well-funded startup (73%).
“We always knew that Google had a reputation for attracting entrepreneurially minded employees and this data is consistent with that," says Leung, a former Google employee. "Another factor for more tolerance for risk could also be the cachet of the Google brand as a former employer, such that even if the startup they join doesn’t pan out, they’ll still have that ‘former Google’ badge to fall back on.”
If you're doing the recruiting for a larger public company, Leung says, Amazon workers may be a good target, as 74% of their current workers said they wanted to jump to another public company.
And if you recruit for a more risk-averse type of business, you may want to recruit IBM folks, Leung says. IBM employees that may entertain a move are looking for a little more stability and less risk, with 72% saying they’d likely join a profitable public company and only 23% saying they’d join an early-stage startup.
At Oracle, employees were pretty evenly distributed in terms of their next potential company’s size and stage. While they had the second least number of employees (29%) interested in jumping to an early stage startup, the rest of the options were almost all equally appealing to them. At 59%, moving to a public company nudged out the others as the top potential destination.
Finally, if the company you recruit for recently raised investment, it's more attractive in the eye of Apple employees, who report being more hesitant to join an early-stage startup, but once proven, 62% were willing to jump to a well-funded startup.
“Everyone knows how hard it is to land a job at Apple, so it’s possible that that affects their willingness to work in someone’s garage," Leung explains. "It could also be affected by the higher number of people interested in hardware from Apple, which tends to be more capital intensive than just coding up a fun app, for example.”