This Isn't Your Grandpa's Job Market

Posted by Kristina Cowan

Job hopping used to be a red flag. Frequent jumps around the job market signaled a worker's lack of commitment. These days it's more of a green light, especially for younger workers. Job mobility can help speed them along a career path--or rescue them from a rut--and keep them interested in their work.

In a recent Boston Globe piece Penelope Trunk writes:

The best thing you can do early in your career is move around a lot so you can figure out what you're good at and what you like. If you compare people who job hop with people who don't, people who job hop build their network faster, build their skill set faster, and are more engaged in their work.

She's right.

Changing Jobs, Changing Times

Globalization is driving a more competitive market than ever, meaning networks and skill sets are more vital than ever. The more places you work, the more chances to cultivate relationships. You'll also acquire and hone new skill sets. Of course, you have to stay long enough to meet both goals. Three months at each of three different places, for example, doesn't cut it. Sally Haver, senior vice president of business development at The Ayers Group in New York, explains:

If you’re moving every six months people might scratch their heads. But if you move every few years—people are more tolerant. They feel the person has extracted everything they need from that job and also given back enough value-added, so he looks like a valuable employee to that workplace. That’s sort of the new ethos at work, as opposed to their parents’ and grandparents’ generation.

In those generations, lengthy, even lifelong, employment with the same firm was common. Employees worked hard and committed to the company, and the company met employees' needs, or at least gave them a sense of security.

But time has changed companies--and employees. Younger generations have reason to distrust employers, as Rich Milgram, founder and CEO of Beyond.com, a niche-specific career network, points out:

There has been a shift in how employers value their employees. Employees have become more of a commodity, more like a computer—at some point it becomes antiquated and you get rid of it. It’s sort of sad.

If a company considers employees expendable, there's nothing wrong with employees adopting the same mindset.

Better for the Bottom Line

Changing jobs can also boost your paychecks, particularly if you land your first gig in a testy economy. A U.S. News & World Report article from 2006 says:

If you started working when the job market was less than ideal, it may be in your best interest to look for a new job with a different employer. "I had to go into guerrilla-marketing mode," says John Paasonen, a 2001 graduate of Taylor University in Indiana who had a rough time finding his first job. ... "You have to work harder if you're somebody who graduates in a recession year," Paasonen says. "You have to be willing to take risks."

[Paul Oyer, an associate professor of economics at Stanford University's Graduate School of Business], agrees. "The people who catch up aggressively do it by changing jobs," he says. "People who don't—that will affect their long-term outcome." In fact, job searches can explain about 30 percent of how workers caught up to their counterparts who graduated into better economies, [Philip] Oreopoulos found.

Oreopoulos, co-author of a National Bureau of Economic Research working paper, found workers who landed low-paying jobs in a recession could see lower earnings for as long as a decade.

Research published in the February issue of the American Sociological Review offers similar findings. The research, by Sylvia Fuller, assistant sociology professor at the University of British Columbia, says "moderate and even high levels of mobility can lead to equal or better wage outcomes than stability," especially if the job changes aren't the result of layoffs, discharges, or family priorities--and especially if the changes come early in a worker's career.

Fuller's research, however, isn't based on today's young generations of workers; she studied people who started their careers in the 1980s. Fuller says studying today's new workers could reveal less stigma tied to job changes.

Crafting a Strategy

As with any career strategy, choose your job changes wisely. Don't just move around because you're bored after two months; it takes a full year to learn how to do most jobs. Stick around long enough to gather all the knowledge, contacts and skills that will empower you to earn more and thrive in your next move.

And by all means, don't cop a sense of entitlement. Approach any job with the belief that you have a lot to offer--and a lot to learn. Give 150 percent, and when you leave, you'll reap favorable reviews from colleagues and higher-ups.

The job-hopping stigma is eroding as our job market evolves. So don't be afraid to move. Just make sure each move is strategic.

• Job hopping an option for young people (The Boston Globe)
• For Class of '08, A Scramble for Jobs (The Wall Street Journal)
• Job Hopping Has Costs (American Sociological Association release)
• Job-hopping your way ahead (U.S. News & World Report)
• Can Job Hopping Hurt Your Career? (PayScale.com)
• Generation Y Rules: The Flexible Workforce Revolution (PayScale.com)
• Generation Y At Work (The Salary Reporter)
• Career Action Plan for the Current Recession (PayScale.com)

Comments

[Employee]

Unfortunately, companies are no longer loyal to their employees, so don't think twice about leaving a company high and dry.

[Ravindra]

Very much true. My Friends who have changed job every 2 years are performing far better.
Still we see documents floating around that tell how being loyalty will help etc.
When things like marriage have lost loyalty why should one attach to a company which in turn does not care. Nice article.
Regds

[Spuffler]

This is a commissioned article, someone accepted this as a 'job', did this to make a few $$. It consumed part of a work day, and earned them maybe $350. They moved on.

Some initial precepts here are wrong.

First off, your 'parents' and 'grandparents' are interviewing you - they are the HR people and the department managers at the companies you apply at. Even that generation places a high value on loyalty, dedication to task and to company (even when their hands are forced by unwanted decisions from above). No matter what this article says, when you follow the advice presented herein, a prospective employer will see that you would not stay even if they had offered you a perfect position. They know that the position is not going to be perfect for every candidate they screen, don't let that manager take their offer off the table by showing them you won't stay very long.

That leads to the next concern: many employers have 2 kinds of positions: long term (support staff, management, R&D), and short term (contract based, production team member). When you apply for a position, are you applying in the same metro area where you live, or are you applying globally or nationally? Usually, you are applying locally - you do not want to upset your life, you are trying to avoid expending your time and your money moving your stuff, you don't like the idea of being thrust into a new area where you are unfamiliar, re-registering cars and watching its insurance rate change, etc.. Right there, you are admitting that change is not welcome as a first option, in your life.

The third point, on the other side, is: when you find a strong industry leader such as a highly entrenched OEMs (Ford, Whirlpool, General Electric, etc.) or highly regarded investment firms (such as Fidelity, Merrill, etc), rest assured that your having perfect credentials but a spotty resume means the hiring interviewer will not want you for their decades long contracts or their mainstream business areas. Your prior actions will ensure that you will be sent to the hiring managers that are in the riskier portions of their business - this job hopping can bite you, possibly you will never be offered the long term positions.

The only portion of the above article which holds a measure of truth is the quotation: "There has been a shift in how employers value their employees." That is largely true, but is not 100% true for every employer across the business world, and not true for every position offered. This article shouldn't be deduced to mean that all employment offers should be treated as temporary. I advise you to treat each position as if it were your last option to consider leaving.

My resume is dotted with recent temp positions and short term employment; going back further, I have 2 longer term positions at the start of my working career of 30 years. An interviewer mentioned this out loud: "What happened? You started out good", he was older than me by about 10 years. I explained to him that the trend seems to be such that the recent employers I have worked under are contract based opportunists: "Bid, win, hire, fulfill, layoff", I can't change that. He shook his head and said, softly, 'Not here'. I was walked to the door. I saw that the prior candidate was given a facility tour, just as I walked into the interviewers office.

Consider: I've earned less in each the past 3 years than I earned in my first whole year at my longest term position in the early 1980s - is this what you want to end up with? Your hourly wages go higher, but your averaged annual income could be lower, in the longer term views: moving, longer commutes, different benefits, you have to add it all up, not just the authors viewpoint.

Follow a commissioned article? Try to be loyal despite adverse employment market? You decide.

With that in mind, you just might never change employers (states, banks, friends) ever again.

[Cookie Monster]

Resumes and interviews are all about spin. If you feel sorry for yourself and regret your decisons to change or take short term contract work, this can be a huge turn off to employers.

Job jumping should be done cautiously and with the intention to round out your experience and grow your career. While some employers still view it as a red flag - you probably don't want to work for those employers if you've made a series of deliberate job changes.

However, if you really are ready for a long term commitment and you position your job changes to an employer this way: that that you've deliberately moved around, gained diverse experience but now are looking for a rich commitment within a dynamic organization - my guess is that you'll be given the tour and not shown the door.