What are your priorities for your current or most recent job search? Salary? Career development? Work-life balance?
Periodically, since 2016, we have asked mining jobseekers about their priorities in their job searches.
It has been fascinating to see how these priorities have changed over time. They have changed with market conditions, and with life-changing moments like the pandemic.
In August 2016, almost half of respondents prioritised work-life balance in their job hunt. Three in 10 prioritised career development and almost a quarter said their top priority was salary. Eighteen months later, work-life balance was still top but it had slipped to four in 10 priortising it and almost the same number motivated to move by career development opportunities.
We asked the question again in February 2021, with a skills shortage in full effect, and salaries was now the top priority for 43% of respondents. Career development continued to hover around the four-in-10 mark, but work-life balance — which had come out top less than five years before — was languishing at around 13%.
So, where are we today? We’re curious to find out. It’s why we’re asking the same question again in this month’s poll. We’re hoping to get a clear picture of the motivations for mining employees to shift jobs now. It’s our first temperature check on this question in what we might (perhaps hopefully) call the post-covid environment. Did the pandemic — the hard border closures, the roster changes, the reactions and actions of mining companies during that period, and the community-wide moment of facing our own mortality — shift the mood music once again?
What do you think? What are your priorities for your current or most recent job search?
Tell us here. All responses to our poll are completely anonymous. The poll is open until 31 October 2022.