Nova's Top Talent Report 2024
Hey, we are Ramón Rodrigá?ez and Andrea Marino, Co-Founders at Nova, the Global Top Talent Network.
Welcome to Talent First, our newsletter where those who believe that talent is the most important resource in the economy get together.
Every week we cover a new topic related to attracting, hiring, developing, and retaining talent, as well as the learnings from our journey building Nova.
Summary:
?? The Top Talent Report 2024
Insights on the Top Talent Report
The Top Talent Report is an annual summary of the state of Top Talent that we create at Nova to give insights to both Nova members and companies looking to hire top talent across 3 areas:
A. The current state of top talent
B. What does top talent want in their ideal job
C. What are the best companies to work for and the preferred locations
The Top Talent Report was created as the result of a survey answered by +1.200 Nova members in April and May 2024. Check the graph below to see the demographics occupations of Nova’s answering the survey:
Regarding the companies where those 1.200 members are currently working, here are the 25 with bigger representation. These are very close to the main employers of the whole Nova community: the main consulting and tech firms were all present, together with some banks, FMCG, and Pharma companies.
A. The State of Top Talent
In the first part of the survey, which we call “The State of Top Talent”, our goal was to:
Novas in Marketing, Finance, and Consulting are generally the least satisfied with their roles
In the report, we asked members how satisfied they were with their current jobs, which helped us infer the levels of job satisfaction by market, industry, or type of role. Although an overall comparison is always tricky, as we compare very different levels of seniority and markets, overall we found out that roles in Marketing, Finance (excluding Investment Banking, PE, and VC), and Consulting were the ones where our members felt the least satisfied.
This could make sense if we consider that the Marketing function is never the one with the best salaries and is suffering deep transformations with the changes in AI. Finance and Consulting are typically highly demanding jobs that many members take for a few years when they are younger with the goal of learning fast and leaving at some point for a less demanding job.
Salary and satisfaction do not correlate, but roles in Product, Software, Legal, and Ops seem to have the best of both worlds
Any correlation between salary and satisfaction would need to be done at a very detailed level if we want to compare “apples to apples”, as the distribution of members in different seniorities is different (for instance, members answering in Operations were generally more senior than those in Investment Banking, PE and VC, which explains why the average salary is higher).
In any case, as a whole, we did not see any strong correlations between salary and satisfaction, which makes sense considering that most research out there displays no correlation from a certain salary threshold which most Novas surpass.
In any case, the roles that overall offered higher average satisfaction and salary are Product, Software, Legal, and Ops. As you can see, our members in Academia are also quite happy with their jobs, but their salaries are considerably lower than other types of roles:
Toward the end of the report, we did a thorough salary analysis by type of role, market, and seniority which sheds a bit of light on how the market is compensating top talent today. For instance, if you are looking to hire the best Software Engineers in Spain, this is what you should be paying.
Download the full report below for other combinations of roles and markets.
The economic downturn has increased uncertainty and made more Novas open to new opportunities or even actively looking
After years of a “candidate market” where the demand for top talent surged, partially inflated by the QE and monetary policies of central banks, we started to see a change in 2023 that has consolidated in 2024. Although we are still living in a Talent War, top talented individuals today have a little bit less power in the labor relationship as the demand has eased down, resulting in an easier market for companies when they look to hire top talent.
We can see the impact of this downturn in the increased uncertainty that over 45% of Novas have felt, which has sometimes made them less inclined to accept changes (16-23%) but mainly more open to looking for alternative opportunities (23-27%). These levels of uncertainty are higher than those of 2023, particularly in openness which has grown by 3-8% across the different markets.
B. The Ideal Job for Top Talent
In the second part of the Top Talent Report 2024, we aimed to:
Here you can find an overall graph of the traits of the ideal job for Nova members:
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Inspiring leadership, purpose, and company reputation are the 3 most important factors when considering the company
These results match with the report we published in 2023, where those 3 were the most important factors already. However, once we break these by gender or seniority, we start to understand some nuances. For example, we see that students and recent graduates prioritize the company's reputation, whereas executives value inspiring leadership to a higher extent
Leaders who support self-improvement, work-life balance, and meritocracy are the 3 most important factors when considering the environment
These results are also aligned with the results of 2023, though this year it seems that Novas value leaders who support self-improvement over work-life balance. In any case, as we dive deeper into the differences of seniority or male and female, we start to see interesting differences. For instance, we see how meritocracy is more important for men, while women seem to value work-life balance to a higher extent.
Challenging work keeps being the single most important factor when considering the role
Just like what happened in 2023, the biggest insight we got when asking Novas about their ideal job is that, regardless of seniority, country, and type of role, challenging roles are by far the most important trait of a job when considering the characteristics of the role. If you are hiring women, you should consider that the variety of assignments is also a very important trait for females, almost as important as challenging work.
Competitive base salary keeps being the single most important factor when considering compensation
“Pay peanuts and you will get monkeys”. That is the harsh truth of hiring top talent: they know their worth and want a good base compensation. They care more about work-life balance, fast career growth, or leadership opportunities as a form of compensation than high commissions/incentives or overtime pay.
This helps demystify this theory that Millenials and Gen Z only care for purpose and work-life balance: it’s actually the base salary that they mainly care about, and of course, they then prioritize companies where they align on the purpose and enable them to live fulfilling personal lives in parallel.
When comparing by gender, we saw how females value work-life balance more than men, who are more keen on high commission incentives or higher salaries in the long term.
For next year, we will include equity compensation as a standalone item, as it is becoming more and more common, particularly in the startup ecosystem but not only.
Hybrid is king and keeps growing in popularity
COVID-19 changed dramatically how we look at working modalities and proved that if well managed, hybrid and remote models can work. However, results of our survey show that Novas do not like in general full-remote modalities and believe that hybrid models are the best, with ~75% of Novas choosing hybrid as their ideal modality. This trait is shared across markets and has grown when we compare against the 2023 results:
C. Where do Top Talent want to work at
Last, but not least, we asked Novas about their dream companies and locations to:
Big Tech and MBBs keep winning, with some scale-ups coming up
In the company preferences, members could pick their 3 most desired companies, and then we simply summed them up to create a ranking.
In the overall ranking, Google kept its honor place as the most desired company among Novas. We kept having the other big tech players (Microsoft, Amazon, and Apple) along with the “MBBs” (McKinsey, BCG, and Bain), which are clients of Nova and utilize the network to source junior and mid-career top talent. Spotify managed to stay in the top 10 due to an outstanding image in the Nordics, and we saw the entrance of 2 scaleups with amazing strength: Bending Spoons, which has become the most desired tech scaleup in Italy, and OpenAI, which is changing how we all work with its leadership in the AI race. Meta and Tesla lost their place in the top 10 this year.
We did these rankings as well by the market and chose the most desired companies in 10 of the main sectors of the economy to understand who are the market leaders. Download the full report below to get more insights.
The US, Switzerland, and the UK are the first options for Novas in terms of relocation
Around 50% of Novas are highly or very highly interested in relocating internationally, with Italy having a slightly higher proportion of 60%.
To close up internationalization, we take a look at the most desired destinations of relocation by Novas. With a clear margin, the United States is the top relocation destination, which matches with the top desired employers by Novas. Surprisingly, Switzerland stands in second place probably thanks to high base salaries and low taxation. The podium is completed by the UK, which has suffered a drop in interest since Brexit.
Link to download the full report
If these insights got you curious and you want to dive deeper, there are many more we cannot summarize in a newsletter without getting too detailed.
To understand for instance the career preferences of a specific type of role in a specific country, the most desired companies by industry and market, or the salaries of different seniorities, markets, and types of roles, download a copy of the full report here:
If you are a founder, work in HR, or have management responsibilities, we hope it helps you understand talent preferences better and make wiser decisions with your talent strategy.
Let us know if we can support you with your Employer Branding, Recruitment, or Learning & Development.
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Postdoctoral Fellow working on Aging and Alzheimer's Disease | Evolving toward Biotech and Pharma Innovation. MSIP Fellow.
2 个月It's really interesting to see Academia ranking as one of the top roles in satisfaction while being at the very bottom in salary. It is a reflection that passion-driven jobs and perhaps slightly better work/life balance have a positive impact on the worker's perception. I wonder how these results translate to other job ecosystems, such as the US job market, where the difference in quality of life is much more dependent on income than in European countries, and the differences in salary across roles are several orders of magnitude larger. Thanks for sharing this!
Ex-Summer Associate @NationWithNamo | Millennium Fellowship Scholar'24 | 80K+ Linkedin Impressions | HPAIR'24 Delegate |Ex-Research Trainee at DRDO (INMAS) CCML |Department Rank #1
2 个月Very helpful
Good opportunity, wishing the best for all applicants ?? ??