Excerpt from Wall Street Journal story highlighting Poacht, a startup founded by Princeton alums (originally posted on January 1, 2015)
Here’s a surprising truth about the job market, circa 2015: For the first time in a while, workers have the upper hand.
After a few bruising years for job seekers, employers have started hiring again, and several broad surveys indicate companies will pick up the pace in this year. Companies are competing for talented workers, so wages may rise for many, according to a recent forecast from the Hay Group, which predicts the average global salary will rise 5.4% this year.
Worries about retention and employee engagement have supplanted concerns about cost-cutting in some corporations, and bosses are using bonus pay as well as training and development to groom and reward high performers.
For workers, the question is how to surf the wave of good news and land a new job, expanded role or big raise. Some advice from the Journal’s At Work blog:
Let the Job Find You
A new job sounds appealing, but most people lack the time or motivation to search hard for one. Good news: You are what recruiters call a “passive candidate,” currently employed but open to other opportunities.
Passive candidates are the prize ponies of the job market, because they are already productively working at another company. A number of new services have sprung up lately to connect passive candidates to employers interested in poaching them.
Like online dating services, the new sites and mobile apps use questionnaires and algorithms to match workers with companies. All are designed so that workers can indicate they are open to new jobs without their current boss knowing. Job non-seekers can use them free, and employers generally pay for postings or leads.
Poacht—an app that labels itself as a covert job search for the currently employed—imports employment information from a person’s LinkedIn profile, save for his or her name, photo and contact information. Poacht asks users how serious they are about switching jobs, whether and where they are willing to move, and what salary they are seeking, among other questions. The app notifies candidates when an employer is interested in an interview.
Read the full article at WSJ.