Why half of Canadians want new jobs – and why you should too

New year, new me!

…Unless you’re not happy about spending another year at your current job. 

But if you are ready for a change, you’re not alone. A new survey has found that half of Canadians are looking for a new job in 2023. 

But why are people leaving their jobs? For the most part, its compensation. The survey by Robert Half Solutions found that 62% of people want a salary increase. Other people are looking at compensation with 39% wanting more work benefits and perks.

Some are trying to fulfill their work goals – 30% want to leave to advance their careers.

Others are choosing a more well-rounded life with 27% of them leaving so they can have more choice of where and when they work.

How do you know if it’s the right move for you? 

• 61% of employees who have been at the same company for two to four years are ready for a change

• 57% of technology professionals are looking at different companies
• 56% of Gen Z and Millennials are finding new jobs
• 55% of working parents want a new job too 

If you fall into any of these categories – or more than one – you may not know that many people are feeling the same way you do. 

You don’t have to be afraid of looking like a job hopper anymore. HR professionals report that 51% of employees change jobs once a year and 34% employees hop every two years. 

Let’s walk through what may be holding you back to decide if changing jobs is the right move for 2023.

If you want a salary increase

If you’re not making enough, that alone is a good enough reason to look for something new. 

You can learn if you’re being underpaid by:

• Talking to your co-workers about their base salaries
• Reviewing your roles and responsibilities
• Evaluating if people in your company with different races, genders, and physical and mental abilities are being paid the same
• Comparing your qualifications with your position
• Researching other salaries

Having a conversation with your colleagues will help you get a sense if the compensation you are receiving is equal to the rest of the company – and the work you do. 

If you feel you learn you are doing the same amount of work as a colleague but you are not getting the same salary as them, you could be underpaid. Maybe it's something as simple as them having more education or experience under their belt. Maybe it’s something discriminatory that you cannot control like your ethnicity, gender identify, or state of mind and body. 

Either way, these conversations with your colleagues can reveal a lot. If you have a good relationship with management, you can bring it straight to them to discuss.

But before you do that, you should have an idea of what other people are getting paid outside your company. You could all be underpaid, depending on market rates.

There are a few websites to help you do this.

RepVue helps you see if you’re paid fairly for sales positions specifically. 

Source: RepVue Compensation

They collect sales’ salaries metrics directly from active sales professionals. They even divide them by region. Companies are ranked according to their salary and compensation data, the percentage of the team hitting their sales quotes, product market scores, and leadership scores.

You can also look for companies and positions that pay in the price range you want.

Have you ever typed your desired salary into the filter or a job search website? Well, start to. 

For example, here are some of the jobs that come up aftering filtering $90,000 jobs in and around Toronto, Ontario on Indeed:

TikTok Content Creator at SORA Clothing Inc.

• $100,000 a year

Manager, Program Development and Evaluation at Toronto Community Housing

• $91,127–$136,690 a year

• Minimum three weeks of paid annual vacation days that increase with years of service
• Four paid personal days
• Defined benefit pension plan including 100% employer matching
• Health and dental benefits
• Employee and family assistance program
• Maternity and parental leave top up of 93% of base salary
• Training and development programs with tuition reimbursement of $1500 per calendar year
• Fitness membership discount

Sales and Marketing Representatives at OSL Direct – Bell Authorized Agent

• $90,000 a year
• $1000 signing bonus

• Paid car allowance
• 25% discount on personal residential Bell services
• Offering getting paid daily of up to 50% of salary
• Health and dental coverage

Here are some other benefits you could be getting:

• professional development budget
• medical insurance
• life insurance
• vacation time
• mental health days
• equity in the company
• retirement benefits
• pension plans
• registered retirement savings plan  

If you want more flexibility

If having a long weekend every weekend sounds appealing to you, visit 4 Day Week to find the company of your dreams. You can sign up for alerts to get a 32-hour work week. There are currently 192 jobs available:

• Engineering – 71 open positions
• Data & Analytics – 24 open positions
• Product & UX – 27 open positions
• Marketing – 37 positions

Maybe you’re okay with a five-day week and just want a better work-life balance for your family. In that case, check out Canada’s Top 100’s Top Family-Friendly Employers. Their list include companies that cater to some under some or all of these features:

• maternity and parental leave
• daycare assistance
• paid personal- and earned-days-off (EDO) program
• flexible work arrangement
• compassionate leave and elder care assistance
• adoption assistance; reproductive assistance
• including fertility drugs and IVF
• and even academic bursaries for employees' children

Their list of 20 employers include Bank of Canada, Bell Canada, Desjardin Group, Employment and Social Development Canada, and more.

Remote Hunt has a database of hundreds of companies with unlimited time-off for all your vacation, personal care support, and emergency needs. You can even filter the companies out by the remote work culture, benefits, and even code languages.

Convincing your manager to go remote/hybrid

If part of you wants to stay at your company but you just want more flexibility, try to speak to management before jumping ship. Since the pandemic, most companies are open to making work compromises. Management needs to retain talent. Recruiting and training new employees is time consuming and expensive – with the risk of the new hire not working out.

Talk to your manager by:

• Sharing a hybrid work proposal
• Sharing the benefits of remote work
• Addressing the concerns of off-site work

Sharing a proposal of how you can make working from home full-time or spending a few days of the week in the office can be beneficial to the company. Tell your manager that remote work has been proven to increase productivity up to 77%. Highlight projects you completed with great results while working remotely. Tell your manager about the improvements you have seen in your focus and mental wellbeing. 

But assure your manager that working from home doesn’t have to change your team’s output. Offer daily huddles or weekly meetings for virtual check-ins. 

If tech issues are a point of content, point to the IT solutions most companies had to turn to not even three years ago when the pandemic first began to remind them that offsite work has been manageable before. 

If you want to advance your career

If you know you want to leave your company because you can grow elsewhere, it’s time to expand your network.

You need to meet professionals who are at the same place in their career as you to have a support team. You also need people ahead of you to act like mentors. You can find both of these groups of people on LinkedIn through status updates and connections.

But you can also find them on websites specifically dedicated to people seeking mentorships – people who are excited and dedicated to being a mentee or a mentor. 

Here are some to choose from:

ADP List is a platform that gives you access to over 11,599 mentors across over 5000 companies. 

Source: ADP List

If you are seeking a mentor, you can connect one-on-one with people across various industries. Here’s how their mentors are currently looking. 

• Design – 8763 mentors
• Content Writing – 277 mentors
• Product Management – 3126 mentors
• Marketing – 1100 mentors
• Data Science – 139 mentors
• Software Development  – 1420 mentors

With PushFar, you can register for free to meet a global community of people seeking professional development. Include your industry, most recent job title and company, then select the areas you need support in:

• Job hunting 
• Interview training
• Industry insight
• Time management
• Productivity
• Career progression
• Networking
• Upskilling
• General advice

Mentorcity connects people who seek mentorships and provides on demand classes on career and employment services and recruitment and management. Your profile can include the languages you speak and the specialized skills you possess to match you with a mentor who can build on your talents.

When you decide to leave

If you’re ready to leave your job, there are plenty of people ready to transition with you. That’s why 3Skill’s Project Pivot is your next step. 

The program connects you to other professionals so you can build a network. It pairs you with mentors across industries so you can learn from them and get strong referrals. It teaches you to communicate your value and emphasize how the skills you already have can transfer to another industry so you don’t have to take a pay cut for branching out. 

Project Pivot’s success rate is undeniable when 91% of graduates have transitioned to brand new careers after completing the program. Within two to six months, Project Pivot participants have transitioned with average salaries of $95,000. 

The first Project Pivot cohort starts January 16. What are you waiting for? Sign up here.