Ante Barisic worked for a large telecommunications company for almost two years. He enjoyed “all the benefits of working for a big player,” then jumped ship for a smaller company. Nobody in Barisic’s family could understand why he’d made that move.
But, in a post titled “Switching jobs: Why I left a large company to join a smaller one?” Barisic explained why. “[I received] bonuses, 25 days of paid vacation, paid sports activities and top-notch medical care,” he started out. “So, why did I leave?”
The reason, Barisic said, answering the obvious question, was he didn’t like the slow motion of his big company. He hated the workplace politics. And he wanted credit for his work. He regarded planning for a few weeks at a time as a “waste of time.” He also believed that doing work for a large enterprise with no visibility “becomes an even greater risk to your career.”
He wasn’t alone in his sentiments. In Gallup’s 2017 State of the American Workplace study, 52 percent of U.S. employees surveyed said they were actively looking for a new job. One reason seems to be that Americans have become more optimistic in their ability to work somewhere else: In 2012, only 19 percent of Americans said it was a good time to find a quality job; by mid-2016, that number had grown to 42 percent.
Owners of small companies, then, are in a better position than they’ve been for years. As employees like Barisic look to leave larger companies for smaller ones, the latter have a chance of attracting the talented A-listers they want to their organizations.
Here’s how smaller companies can use their unique strengths in the employee-recruiting sweepstakes for big talent:
1. Offer better benefits.
It can be hard for small companies to compete with the salaries of bigger companies, but they do have some leverage. Considering that the 2017 Gallup report found that millennials had the highest rate of underemployment, that segment might feel somewhat undervalued.
What’s more, 93 percent of the 13,300 millennials surveyed in LinkedIn’s 2016 Talent Trends Report said they were interested in hearing about job opportunities. And 30 percent said they could forsee themselves only working less than a year at their current companies.
That’s where smaller companies can step in. Those companies can offer a wider range of benefits more…
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