Job seekers: Personal contacts lead to success
Over thirty percent of Swiss employees would like a career change. First and foremost, personal contacts, company job websites and job platforms lead to success in the job search - spontaneous applications are on the rise.
More than 30 percent of Swiss employees would like a real change in their everyday working life. But why do job seekers want to change their employer? According to a recent survey by the online job portal JobCloud (jobs.ch / jobup.ch) in cooperation with the LINK Institute, the prospect of a higher salary is the main reason for just over 10 percent. This shows that a higher salary is particularly decisive for younger job seekers between 16 and 24 (20 percent), whereas job seekers between 45 and 60 attach little importance to this (8 percent). Of the French-speaking Swiss looking for a job, around 15 percent do so because they do not have a job, compared with 9 percent of the German-speaking Swiss. The German-speaking Swiss seem to be more open to a career change than the French-speaking Swiss: 10 percent of respondents would like to switch to a different industry or pursue a different activity (French-speaking Switzerland: 6 percent). Differences also emerge between women and men, with women more likely to be looking for a better-paid job than men (13 vs. 11 percent) and men comparatively more likely to be looking for a job because they do not get along with their work colleague or supervisor (11 percent vs. 5 percent). Overall, these results indirectly confirm the findings of a study recently published by Xing (see our report).
Personal contacts very important for young job seekers
The fact that job searches now mainly take place online is no surprise: around 66 percent of respondents prefer to search on online job portals such as jobs.ch, while 49 percent also look for new job offers on companies' career websites. Nevertheless, print media also continue to hold their own: 39 percent of respondents also look for jobs in newspapers and magazines. Particularly among the generation between 45 and 60, the search via print media continues to be well established (54 percent). Personal contacts are also used for job seekers (45 percent). Especially among younger job seekers between 16 and 2 (52 percent). This age category also consciously searches more often directly via search engines such as Google or Yahoo (46 percent vs. 29 percent on average across all age categories). In French-speaking Switzerland, social networks such as Xing and LinkedIn are more popular for job searches than in German-speaking Switzerland (29 vs. 21 percent) - the French also use personal contacts and the RAV job exchange more frequently than German-speaking Swiss (47 vs. 44 percent and 14 vs. 6 percent).
Personal contacts lead to success
The question is which of these channels will lead to success. As the JobCloud survey shows, personal contacts are worthwhile: Around 29 percent of respondents obtained a new job through friends and acquaintances in 2017. 19 and 18 percent of respondents, respectively, decided on a job they had found on a company's job websites or on an online job platform. In 2017, 8 percent of jobs were found as a result of spontaneous applications. However, a comparison over the past three years shows that these are apparently becoming more common: in 2014, blind applications accounted for only 5 percent.
