Always in the Job Market

There may be a reason one of your colleagues is dressed to the nines on a casual day and another almost sprints to her phone when she thinks it is ringing.

More than half your co-workers are probably in the job market in one way or another, according to a new survey by Towers Perrin, a New York-based management and human resources consulting firm with 9,000 employees worldwide. The survey also credited the Internet and its millions of job postings for creating a work force that’s always looking for greener pastures.

“This is a phenomenon that has emerged in the last three to five years,” said Chris Michalak, who leads Towers Perrin’s global talent management initiative. “The Internet is fueling it. There are so many ways now to get your name out there or just visit company Web sites directly to see what jobs are posted, and you can do these things anonymously.”

In addition, the survey of more than 5,700 employees in companies with 500 or more workers found that most employees are at least dabbling in the job market most of the time, they place little emphasis on long-term relationships with their employers and they no longer feel that there is any minimum time that they have to remain on a particular job.

If Towers Perrin’s research is correct, it’s a warning to employers that they could end up with serious retention problems.

But employers haven’t gotten the message, according to a report by Walker Information, which recently noted that only 24% of U.S. employees want to stay with their companies over the next two years.

“Our research shows that low levels of employee loyalty and retention ultimately affect a company’s relationships with its customers,” said Marc Drizin, vice president at Walker Information, an Indianapolis-based company that conducts research and measurement in customer loyalty, employee commitment and other areas.

Although the Internet gets some of the credit for making it easier to hunt for a new job, employers’ relationships with employees also is part of the equation.

“Is it really a change in the tastes of the employees or is it more that the employers are no longer willing or able to offer sufficient rewards to their workers?” said James M. Baron, professor of organizational behavior and human resources at the Stanford University Business School.

But Baron also has some questions about the Towers Perrin study.

“There has certainly been talk of such a trend, but so far it’s more talk than actual trend,” he said. “Even if it is a trend, it’s not clear which is the chicken and which is the egg.”

Although some employees may be searching regularly, that search becomes more urgent when their current job appears to become unstable.

After her company went through three rounds of layoffs, Jodie Rosenthal of Los Angeles landed a job with Palisades Media Group as a senior vice president.

During the 12 years she spent at Initiative Media supervising Buena Vista’s theatrical division, she received a number of calls from headhunters.

“I was pretty happy at my old job,” said Rosenthal, 50. “They were treating me well, and I had a nice level of responsibility.” But she never ignored the inquiries from job suitors for two reasons.

“Unless you hear what they have to say, you don’t know whether it was a missed opportunity or not,” Rosenthal said. “You never know unless you have the conversation. Someone might be calling to offer you the job of your dreams.”

John Graff, now working in sales for a Santa Monica-based computer company, said he too had feelers out during his previous job as an operations manager for a local film production company.

“The company had been sold, and I felt it was an unstable situation,” the 37-year-old Culver City resident said. “I didn’t feel that the [new owners] were behind me. So I checked the newspapers on Sunday and had my resume out on some job boards like Monster.com.”

The Internet does make things easier.

On Yahoo’s job page

(https://dir.yahoo.com/business_and_economy/

employment_and_work/careers_and_jobs),

for example, there are thousands of listings under categories such as executive search firms, company Web sites, resume services, career counseling, and traditional and Internet-based job boards and search firms.

Frank, a Los Angeles-based computer technician who does not want his last name used for fear that his employer would react badly, regularly uses confidential job boards and Internet search firms to keep his name in circulation.

Frank uses variations of his own name, such as the middle name first, and also switches the order of his initials. He posts only a private e-mail address, not his home address or even a telephone number.

“Nobody minds,” he said. “They understand that I have to protect myself. I remember my dad saying he used to post his Social Security number on his resume. How crazy would that be today?”

Towers Perrin said 56% of the Fortune 1,000 employees they randomly surveyed said they were in the job market. Forty percent said they had talked to friends at other companies. About 36% had researched job postings over the Internet, and 30% had talked to a former colleague who had recently left their company. Some had taken all or just one or two of those steps.

The high-tech industry, which once inspired job jumping among its employees, now shows little movement.

Robert Adkins is an unemployed database administrator in Fairfax County, Va., who lost his job this year. Adkins’ wife, Connie, recently became an Oracle Certified Professional, an information technology certification that proves she can build and manager Oracle databases for clients.

Neither has received so much as a nibble in the last several months of job searching.

“To me, it sounds like the Towers Perrin information rang true for a period of about 18 months ago, when things were much better,” Robert Adkins said.

As an employer, Jon Taplin, chief executive of Culver City-based Intertainer, agrees. His company provides video on demand for cable companies and for high-speed DSL Internet connections.

“The fact is most of our competitors are out of business,” Taplin said. “Two years ago, trying to retain talent was absolutely brutal. Now, we get hundreds of resumes, and we have hardly any attrition at all. It’s not like there are a lot of places for my people to go.”