How 2020 Changed What Employees Seek in Their Next Job Opportunity

Interview with Alexandra Ten, a Data Analyst at a Digital Agency, for Sharehold’s Redesigning Belonging Research

Published in

Sharehold

3 min readNov 19, 2020

This post is part of an ongoing series in which Sharehold is publicly sharing our research that answered the question: “How does uncertainty impact one’s sense of belonging at work?” Access the insights here.

Meet Alexandra Ten

Alexandra Ten is a data analyst. While currently at Digitas North America, we interviewed Alexandra for Redesigning Belonging in the thick of her job search for a new role. Unlike many people searching for new jobs in 2020, Alexandra’s job search was by choice. After working for four years in marketing and business development at a small agency while in school, Alexandra made a strategic leap to find a new role post-graduation to support her career growth in data and digital marketing.

Alexandra’s interview touches on a few themes:

How shared COVID-19 experiences positively influenced team interactions
The role that greater purpose plays in employee engagement
What she was looking for in her next opportunity given the uncertainty experienced in 2020

Here are a few clips from our conversation with Alexandra:

How do you define belonging?

“Belonging is really basic: feeling heard, seen, and respected. It’s really simple. Unfortunately, sometimes those things aren’t honored at workplaces.”

How does belonging relate to inclusion?

“If you feel like you belong, then it’s implied that you’re being included in the conversations because one cannot exist without the other.”

How did this time of uncertainty, defined by COVID-19, the mass shift to remote work, and civil unrest, impact your experience of belonging at work?

“People, especially those who are more old school, realized you can get work done and you can be productive [when working from home]. People tried harder to over-communicate, which I think always needs to be done at work… We were kinder and more thoughtful about everyone’s living situations. There was this sense of camaraderie because everyone was sharing this painful experience…. [The company leadership] saw that employees were stressed and were kinder to them.

My work in particular kind of benefited from the drastic change of working remotely. We were forced to change the way we work and I don’t think it would have happened otherwise.”

“[But at the same time], I was more driven and motivated and engaged when I knew that I had projects, a career goal in mind, and I had metrics toward which I would be working… When people are dying and I’m not a frontline worker…sometimes there is a bigger question: what do I do to contribute to the good of the world?”

Having been through these experiences, what are you looking for in your next opportunity?

“What I’m looking for in my next role is a workplace that understands its flaws and is actively working toward resolution, not just glossing over the issues that they had before or after protests and George Floyd’s [murder]… I want to see them actively doing something, actively rethinking their hiring strategies and about how they treat their employees.”

If you had a magic wand, how would you increase belonging at your place of work?

“My short answer would be recruiting practices. I wish my magic wand also conveyed how important it is.”