What High-Potential Young Managers Want

The authors conducted two surveys, yielding responses from more than 1,200 young professionals, and had 18 in-depth interviews to examine the work behaviors and experiences of early-career, highly skilled employees. They found that young professionals have short average tenures at organizations. Ninety-two percent of them are on the lookout for other job opportunities while employed, and their job search continues even if they seem engaged in their current job. They consider jobs with high stakes, top management support, and ample formal training the most valuable and important for their career development, and they want more coaching, mentoring, and formal training from employers than is currently given to them. The authors organize their conclusions around three themes: the rewards of job change, the job-search behaviors of this footloose group of professionals, and the management-development practices that may keep them with employers. The researchers note that their findings on the relationship between employer changes and promotions represent a radical departure from both previous empirical research and past conventional wisdom about job hopping and career success. A decade ago, it was generally believed that promotions accompanied with a disproportionately large increase in responsibility were more likely to be given to insiders than outsiders. This advantage seems to have eroded: The authors found no marked differences between the promotion patterns of job hoppers and those who stayed with the same employer during the early stage of their career. Young professionals have marked and ambitious career goals that are often not linked to any particular organization, and they don't see frequent jumps across employers in a negative light. In fact, this relentless job search is not necessarily driven by dissatisfaction with the job and the intention to leave the organization, as traditional models of job search and turnover might assume.

• Managing employees