August 13, 2014 in Blog by Dawn Williams

The upside and downside to job hopping

What are some of the benefits and drawbacks to job hopping or changing jobs often.

Job hopping is when a candidate is in a series of jobs, for a short period of time; it could be 12 months, it could be 18 months. I have a lot of candidates that are in that situation and their resume seems a little bit all over the map. I also have a lot of clients who say,”I don’t want a job hopper”. So, who’s right here?

The norm is no longer 25 years of work, where you get the ring or the watch from the company you’ve worked in since you were in your 20s. The new normal tends to be shorter jobs with a variety of different companies or shorter jobs within the same company. But I think most clients are concerned with the shorter jobs with a variety of companies.

If you are a job hopper, understand you can be perceived as someone who doesn’t get along with others and you’re leaving your job because of that, or you are not performing at your job and you’re leaving. You need to make sure you’ve explained in that interview why you’ve job-hopped.

Mr. and Mrs. Employer what you need to understand from a job-hopper is that they do bring some good things to the table:

They’ve been exposed to a variety of environments, people, cultures, software, systems, and processes.
They have a vast network outside of your normal network.
They can probably adapt to many different environments because they’ve job-hopped.
They can bring fresh new ideas as the “new kid on the block”.

I am not saying it is good to job hop or it is not good but you have to assess the person in front of you. If you are that employee that has job-hopped, you need to explain why you’ve done it and make sure you put that person at ease. But also take into consideration, if there are cuts to come, you might be one of the first ones gone because of the fact that you’ve job-hopped, and they think that there is no loyalty coming from you anyways.

You have to make your choice whether it’s an upside to have someone who’s a job-hopper or it’s a downside. But these are the facts.

I’m Dawn Williams. I can be reached on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Happy Selling!