Just to give my personal experience, it took some time to find a job after graduation. In my interview with my first company, I was told that it was dead-end and that the pay increase would only be marginal, if at all. I was desperate so I took the opportunity and stayed for a year. At my current job, I've been here for over 2 years, and was expecting a merit increase, because I'd heard this company likes to reward their employees. Well that changed, and my increase was for less than inflation, in addition to me being given 2.5 to 3 times more work for the rest of the year. It was also fairly plainly stated that if I wanted to make more money, I'd need to move and switch to a different part of the company, requiring me to learn new skills. Meaning that I effectively would be needing a new job. Not everybody has a job like this, but I'm far from the only guy with this kinda personal experience.
Does your company do a good job of retaining employees? I know that you've mentioned your troublesome employee many times in the Rant Thread, but how about everybody else? Do people tend to stay for a long time? On my first day at my current place, the median number of years people had been working here was 10 or more. But my company has cheaped out and has been slowly losing more and more of their veterans. Millennials DO watch this stuff, we're not all dog-crazed wandering travel junkies.
Sorry for the late response. Employee loyalty has been great here. I've been here 5 1/2 years and I'm something of a newbie comparatively. At our annual Xmas luncheon we recognize employees anniversaries that hit their 5, 10, 15, 20+ years of service for that year. This year we recognized 12 employees who have been with the company 5 years or longer. We have about 120 employees total. I would guess about 60-70% have been with the company five years or longer. Our company is facing something of a minor crisis as we are seeing a lot of employees retire or will be retiring in the next year or two and will need to fill these positions with younger workers. Because of our industry "Industrial Distribution" we don't have that many people with degrees. We have lots of warehouse workers and CSR's. Positions that don't require a degree.
Our owner is great. Back when the housing market and economy took a dump he was forced to let some people go for the first time in the companies history. Everyone else had to take a pay cut. When the economy bounced back, he repaid everyone the salary they would have earned before a pay cut. As long as the company is profitable, we receive annual bonuses. I really can't speak for salaries in other departments, but my department (IT) earns a decent living. Our health insurance sucks though. It's quite expensive.
I've worked in large corporations most of my career until the last 10 years. There's not a lot you can do about raises and advancement at large corporations because of the layers of bureaucracy everyone likes to hide behind. While working at a smaller company has some disadvantages I've found a gem here. Our owner believes in technology and has stated more than once that IT will lead the way. Most smaller companies look at IT as nothing more than an expense. He understands that technology can introduce systems to increase sales and the bottom line.
I don't lump all millenials together, but the underlying theme seems to be consistent from what I've seen. I have an open position I'm going to fill. I received a lot of resumes and the vast majority of them were moving from job to job every year. Some of that is probably the employer and some the employee. I would agree that those with degrees probably stay longer. Probably because they don't look strictly at the paycheck, but consider things like benefits, job satisfaction, commute to work, flexible hours, etc.
I did rant about that employee I had. He was a pain in the butt and had worn out his welcome. The rest of my staff avoided him like the plague. I should have fired him the day he walked out of a meeting, but I considered his family. When we decided to have a small marketing department the VP decided he would create two positions, Marketing Mgr and a graphics position. They decided to let the pain in the butt employee have the graphics position. I warned them that this was a mistake. Since he's moved to that position, I've been told more than once by the Marketing Mgr how he wished he had never considered him. lol
My advice......In general, unless you could land a job with a considerable increase in pay and as long as your job's not toxic and you don't fret over the job day & night I would stay for a couple of years to see how thing work out.
