We continued to poll our users each week on a variety of workplace topics. These covered themes on pay, job satisfaction, career advancement, job searching, and workplace environment. Below are the main takeaways we have from their responses in the first quarter of this year (2024) and we’ve added some tips on actions to take.

Key learnings from our 2024-Q1 career polls

·    Pay – The majority of our users feel their pay is in line with their experience and are satisfied with their benefits and pay overall.

·     Job satisfaction – In general, our users aren't satisfied with their jobs and that is consistently their response each time we polled them over the last 18 months. The positive, they overwhelmingly enjoy working with their co-workers.

·    Career – More than half of our users don't feel there is a strong connection between their job and education background. Likely related, almost 2 out of every 3 of them feel that a career change will benefit them.

·    Job searching - The percentage of Jobtrees respondents actively searching for a job has increased since the beginning of the year (40%) to almost half (45%). In their career search, very few people are using tools for mock interviews or building their resume. Almost 2/3 are actively networking for their next role.

·    Workplace environment - A third of respondents feel their job doesn't allow for work-life balance but they overwhelmingly felt their organizations supported innovation in their jobs. About half felt their manager gave them recognition for their accomplishments.

See the answers to all our career polls here. 

Help us provide even better insights by answering our poll each week and encouraging your friends and colleagues to do the same. Answer the current poll here.

Action you can take to improve your career

A few points of advice on how to take the learnings from our users’ feedback and use them to create a more successful 2024.

·    Pay – Our users feel like pay and benefits are in line with work. If you don’t feel this way about your job, you can consider asking for a raise but you likely will see better results from focusing on finding a new job that matches your skills and compensation expectations. That will likely lead to a more substantial pay bump and greater job satisfaction. Even better, try both at the same time. The more paths you pursue, the more options you give yourself to find success.

·     Job satisfaction – Do you like your co-workers but not your job? Take time to find what specific aspect you aren’t satisfied with. The solution may be to change companies, move managers or potentially a full career switch. The relationships you’ve built in your current role don’t disappear when you take a new job. The new job is an opportunity to add to your community instead of losing one.    

·    Career – We choose our training and education background, likely, because of a strong interest in that subject but, most of us are not leveraging that in our current roles. This likely contributes to low job satisfaction as our jobs don’t link well to our interests and passions. If that seems to resonate with you, consider finding a way back to leveraging your training and education. Check out Jobtrees’ tools to help you with that. 

·    Job searching – Based on our poll results, you are at least passively searching for a new job and aren’t using any of the powerful tools out there to help. In addition to leveraging job boards, make sure to network and use tools to help you prep your resume and for interviews. Impress employers by showing them how prepared you are.

·    Workplace environment – If you don’t feel like you can have work life balance, go find it. From our poll, the majority of people have it in their jobs. Not feeling like you are getting the recognition you deserve, you’re not alone. The positive is that many people have it and so don’t be afraid to look for a job that can provide that for you.  

One last plug to remember to fill out our career poll each week and encourage your friends and colleagues to do the same. We share insights like this quarterly. Any feedback or questions, don’t be shy. Reach out to contactus@jobtrees.com