As the economy improves, the pool of job seekers is drawing more people who already have jobs - jobs they don't see themselves in for the long term.
It's a chance to regain lost salary. Or a drive to fully use their skills. Or just an opportunity to improve themselves professionally.
"It's a natural thing for many employees," said Mark Leathers, a partner in a Phoenix-based career management firm. "They see friends and neighbors interviewing for jobs and they naturally want to find out what's out there for them."
It may also be a chance to get a career back on track, especially if they were victims of layoffs and downsizing during the past few difficult years.
That was the case for Kevin Dye.
Six months after being laid off from a semiconductor company in 2001 as its vice president of finance, he took a job as a senior finance manager at Medtronic Inc., a medical-device manufacturer.
"It was a step back in terms of the job level and compensation," he said. "But it had been six months, and I needed to work."
Three weeks ago, he moved on from that job to a new position as director of finance for another semiconductor company, Metron Technology.
"This puts me back to the level I was at when I came out of the (semiconductor) industry," he said.
Many people have taken jobs that were not exactly their first choice during the past economic downturn, said Molly Wendell, director of Arizona Executives, a networking and support group for out-of-work executives.
"Now, as the economy gets better, people are beginning to assess what else is out there," Wendell said.
Help wanted
It's no secret to employers that when the economy improves, turnover rates rise.
But some have been surprised at how fast a labor pool can dry up.
"Our motto has always been to sell, sell and sell, because we can always ramp up to meet demand," said Chris Hunter, president of TecServ Inc., a Phoenix-based company that offers information technology services to small and medium-sized businesses. "The last four or five months, that hasn't been the case. . . . We've noticed that the tech talent that was readily available is a lot harder to find now."
Last year at this time, six of every 10 clients who called on Valley-based American Career Executives for career-planning help were unemployed.
This year, six of every 10 clients that call the company already have a job and are looking to improve their situation.
"As people feel more secure with the economy, they are willing to venture out," said the company's president, Linda Baugh.
Consider:
• Online recruitment boards are seeing an explosion of resume postings, a majority of which are coming from those who already have jobs.
• Resume writers and personal coaches have seen a strong uptick in already-employed clients who are seeking their services.
• In a Society for Human Resource Management survey in September, more than 80 percent of the workers surveyed said they intended to look for another job when the economy improved.
• The nation's economy has added nearly 1.3 million jobs since January.
Surfing safaris
The onslaught of job searches is most evident in the place many workers start their covert, or "passive," job search: the Internet.
At Jobing.com, resume postings and help-wanted ads are up 50 percent.
"The advent of the Internet allows people to search for jobs while they are already working," said Aaron Matos, president of Jobing.com.
"And a lot of people are looking to improve their lives."
The company's growth parallels the trend at national job sites, such as Monster, Careerbuilder and Yahoo's HotJobs.
But despite the nearly 1.3 million new jobs since January, the rebound is far from complete.
Many of the new jobs being added are at the lower end of the pay scale and rampant underemployment still exists.
Needless to say, high-level positions are still hard to come by, Arizona Executives' Wendell said.
"Employers are being more selective. As one job seeker told me, they are looking for you to have 12 of the 10 prerequisites."
That said, her members are starting to feel slightly more optimistic about the future.
Take Joe, of Chandler, who did not want to use his full name.
He's been working as a health care salesman for the past five months.
He was glad to have the job after being laid off twice in the past three years.
But his goal is to be a sales manager or director.
He even went back to school for a master's degree in business administration to help him reach that goal.
"It was basically going back to what I did for 20 years," he said of his current job. "The first time I took a cut in pay. In this job, I got equal pay. But it's been a terrible situation for the last three years."
He's looking hard for a higher-level job and has had several interviews.
"It will come, but you have to have patience," he said.
Wendell added, "People are really wanting to get back to where they were or better. And they don't want to take three jobs before getting back there."
Retaining talent
With more opportunities, some employers should be concerned about losing talent.
Peter Hom, a management professor at Arizona State University who describes himself as a turnover scholar, said companies should focus on their high performers.
"The trend is focused on keeping high performers," said Hom, who serves as a consultant to a group of about 25 mostly Fortune 500 companies that share "quit rates" and other turnover data. "Even if a company has a low turnover rate, it's not good to have high performers leaving."
It wouldn't surprise him if employed workers in the Valley were exploring their options more frequently than employed workers in other areas with laggard economies, such as Michigan.
"We know it's true, in general, that as the employment market improves, it gives people more opportunity to quit," he said. "In some industries, it's hitting hard and picking up fast, although I wouldn't say it's happening uniformly."
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