The Dirty Secret Your Employees Are Hiding From You

You're not going to like the results of this survey, but knowing the truth is far better than being kept in the dark.
Let's get the bad news out of the way immediately: Most of your employees are probably looking for another job.
More than half of employed workers in the U.S.--51 percent--want to leave their jobs, according to a new survey from social recruiting platform Jobvite. These findings come just a few weeks after another recent survey showed that 20 percent of full-time employees want to quit their jobs.
Men are more likely to seek a new gig than women, according to the survey: 60 percent to 40 percent.
The survey found little difference in the ages of those seeking new jobs, with the exception being those on the final leg toward retirement. Job seekers had about equal representation among those aged 18-29 (30 percent), 30-39 (28 percent), and those 40-54 (30 percent). Only 12 percent of employed job seekers were aged 55 or older.

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The survey also found that employees were using social media more than any other platform to conduct their job search, and that 43 percent of job seekers are looking on their mobile phones. (And in the vein of interesting details that veer a little too far into TMI territory: Seven percent of job seekers, and 10 percent of those who are actively looking, do so on the toilet.)
Silver Lining
You might see this data as a reason to sound the alarm and find ways to better appease your employees and their potentially wandering eyes. By all means, check out this awesome list of employee retention strategies.
But on the other side of the spectrum, recruiters should see the findings as a sign of how today's employees navigate the job market--and how they can take advantage of it.
"Recruiting used to be primarily a sales job--one in which you closed applicants," says Jobvite CEO Dan Finnigan. "Now it has to be a marketing job--one in which you engage with people as prospects long before they're applicants."
What does that mean? You need to put that site where potential employees are--which, the study showed, is on social media. Regularly publishing links to your job page on social media is one way to make sure your recruiting efforts extend to the widest network. "It's the exact same thing the CMO does for a (product or service)," Finnigan says.
But it's not as simple as just pushing out your job listings. Finnigan says you should publish a link to your job section even when you don't have openings. That, obviously, requires a job page that features more than just those openings. A really awesome jobs section should give potential employees a sense of your culture and mission, Finnigan says. He cites San Francisco gaming company Kixeye as a company that does this well. Kixeye's careers page features a quiz--styled in the form of a video game, naturally--to see if you're the right fit for the company's culture.
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