July 15, 2014
One only has to trawl through LinkedIn to see that these days many people in many different industries frequently leave their jobs to join another organisation. I noticed it increasingly happening during my twelve years at my previous permanent job with Acxiom Australia, a marketing data services company. Many people circulated amongst the main competitors which included Experian, Veda, Salmat, Global Red etc. They would spend about two years at company A, plotting how to take market share from company B only to then join company B and start plotting to take market share from their former friends at company A.
Many times at Acxiom Australia positions would be filled by people with track records of frequent job hopping and then when they inevitably hopped away again the whole process of finding a replacement would have to be undertaken yet again, causing much angst for those affected.
The question must be asked - why are these job hopping people so readily hired? Is there a perception that they have a broader range of experience gained from working for many different organisations? Many of them could be 'jacks of many trades but masters of none'. If the latter were true it would explain to some extent why organisations might not offer a lot more pay to try to retain them.
Since being made redundant last year I have been unable to secure another permanent job and many people have told me I'm disadvantaged by having stayed with the same company for too long (12.5 years). Several other loyal and talented 12 year plus people were made redundant by Acxiom the previous year and some of them have also struggled to find permanent employment. Some of them had some temporary work but are now out of work again.
Presumably the motivation for job hopping is to get a higher rate of pay at the new organisation but of course there is some risk that things won't work out and they could be out of work in a short time. It is for this reason that parents are probably less likely to engage in job hopping than their carefree bachelor and spinster colleagues. That was certainly the case with me. By staying in what I thought was a safe and steady job I was able to ensure we could continue to live in a good suburb and our son could keep attending a good school. As the average age for having children continues to increase then the proportion of these successful job hoppers will also increase but eventually many of them will also become parents and tend to stay in a job longer, possibly even suffering the same fate as me and some of my former colleagues.
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Reply from:
Fintan Guihen
Database Administrator at RCSI
The key here is to ensure you are growing and learning all the time. There are a lot of "loyal" people in roles for 5 years or more that don't actually have 5 years experience, they have 1 years experience 5 times over. A good recruiter or interviewer will see this quickly, and so by staying and being loyal, you are limiting your career progression/choices. If you find a company where you are challenged daily, so the job stays fresh and you are increasing your experience all the time then yes, stay put for 5/10 or more years, be loyal. The company is being loyal to you by giving you a job you are gaining new experience in all the time. Loyalty is great, as long as it is reciprocated and you feel you are getting real experience, not just coming in and doing the same thing over and over and over for years, without really growing and learning.
