Job hopping. It’s career suicide. That is, if conventional wisdom and my father are to be believed.
They tell us to stay at a job for at least two years. That the longer you stay in one place, the more dependable you’ll appear. And the better your chances for success when you do look for a new job. They tell us that too many jobs in a short period of time makes you a flake.
Forget job offers. Instead, you’ll be getting offers of advice on how to mask all that job-hopping on your resume.
But how bad is job-hopping really? Is there anything to
gain from all that moving around? Let’s find out!
This article will look at
the benefits of job hopping,
its role in this economy, the
right and wrong way to do it, and how to
put a positive spin on it the next time you’re looking for a
job.
The Changing Landscape
We all know career dynamics have shifted dramatically over the years. Gone are the days where college grads joined a company and stayed for life, rising through the ranks to win that ultimate workplace trophy: the corner office.
According to Business Week’s Richard Florida, people under the age of 30 change jobs almost once every year and a half (compared to the national average of once every three years).
And really, it’s not surprising. Workers feel less incentive to stay put. Pensions, in the traditional sense, are virtually obsolete. We’re increasingly paying the price for our employer-sponsored healthcare. Loyalty is no longer about putting in your time, or paying your dues. It’s about providing measurable value and being rewarded for it.
Corporate culture has changed, and employees are responding to it in the only way that makes sense to them.
Chris Murdock, recruiting expert at LandingJobs and former “Senior Sourcer” for Yahoo, says job tenure – and expectations around it – have changed. “It used to be that people would stay at a company for life, but nowadays, if you’ve been in a company two years, you’re the seasoned professional,” he says. “Some even think if you’ve been at a company for five years, you should move on. That it’s too long.”
Job-hopping as an asset
It sounds like a contradiction in terms, but some experts now say
there are benefits to job-hopping — and not just for the
employee.
For one, they argue, it can help those early in their career figure out what they want to do. Let’s face it: no personality test or career adviser can compare with real world experience.
On her blog, Brazen Careerist, career expert Penelope Trunk wrote about job-hopping as a path to career stability. In her post, says it’s “nearly impossible to find something right without trying a bunch of options”
Trying different jobs also means building a more diverse skill-set.
“[Job-hoppers] continue to hone their skills and develop new ones,” says Ron Katz of Penguin HR Consulting. “And not just the tactical/technical skills. They also develop the strategic skills, the ones that transfer from job to job and assignment to assignment.”
And what effect does all that hopping around have on performance?
Trunk says job-hoppers tend to be top performers because they have no choice but to deliver results. “If you don’t need to get another job anytime soon, then you don’t need to perform well in the next six months. You can coast,” she says. “Job hoppers don’t coast or their resume will look bad.”
Another benefit to job-hopping, at least in the short term, is monetary gain. Career consultant Tammy Kabell says you can negotiate a 10-15% salary increase with a new company, a significant gain from the average 3-5% you’ll get annually if you stay put.
And it’s not just the job-hopper who benefits. “Employees that move from company to company are like bees collecting pollen… and sharing that info with a new employer each time they come on board,” says Kabell.
“This is especially evident when a smaller employer hires someone who has experience from a large company. That employee brings with them excellent training, policies, procedures – basically the best practices of companies with much larger budgets and possibly a longer history and therefore a longer evolution than a smaller or newer company.”
But job hopping in a recession, the right and wrong ways to do it, and putting a positive spin on it the next time you’re job hunting?
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