What’s the motivation that will get you to change jobs? For some job hoppers the answer is – show me the money. For others, it’s more about mission and building job skills.
A CNNMoney article quoted a 28-year old engineer who quoted six jobs in a few years in order to score a 31 percent increase in salary.
“I tend to change jobs about every six to twelve months. It’s the best way to increase salary,” Baxter told CNNMoney.
Selling the Mission
Baxter’s story sounds like bad news to government hiring managers and contractors, who don’t have unlimited purse strings or budgets to work with. The good news for those individuals is that salary isn’t the only factor to motivate a move. A 2015 TINYhr survey found peer motivation was the strongest motivator for many professionals. What exactly is peer motivation? It’s the desire to be a part of a team, and to help that team succeed. In many ways, there’s no better team to be a part of than team USA.
“People are motivated by different things, salary is just one piece of the compensation packet,” said Major General Kevin O’Connell (Retired), executive vice president of program operations at Advantage SCI , an Alexandria, Virginia-based firm that provides counter-intelligence and other security services globally. “Being a small business we don’t tend to offer signing bonuses, but we usually have bonuses based on performance at the end of the year.”
For O’Connell, he said being a small business is sometimes a selling point for candidates, who seek the desire to be a part of a team where your ideas are easily and readily shared up the chain of command. When it comes to trying to get a candidate to make a move, it’s the ability to sell a number of qualities – including mission – that gets them to make a move.
“There are other things that go into why someone is motivated, other than pay,” said O’Connell. “It’s the benefits package, the jobs satisfaction, the camaraderie and other things that go along with working at a small business that has an advantage.”
What do you look for in making a career move? Share your thoughts in the comments.
