Job-hopping : How It Affects Your Career Success
Job hopping is one of the most common career-related activities, yet also a very risky strategy. In this blog post, we'll be going over the pitfalls of job hopping and what you can do to reverse it, as well as some suggestions for how you might avoid it.
If you're an employee who has been thinking about job hopping, this may be just the post to read before doing so. Whatever your reasons for considering jumping ship - being bored with your current job or because you think that another firm would provide better opportunities - let's work together to hopefully help steer people back into happiness in their careers.
What Is Job Hopping?
Job hopping happens when someone switches jobs for no good reason, or for no good reason that is apparent to him or her. The most common culprits are low pay (or a perceived lack of opportunities within their current organization), low job satisfaction, high stress, and other psychological factors. In the best circumstances (for instance when the new job is better than the old), a person who has just switched jobs can be said to have "shopped around" for new employment.
How Does Job Hopping Affect Your Career?
Job-hopping negatively affects your long term career by tearing you away from your current organization. As you move through the ranks of your current firm, you are absorbing more and more of their standards and expectations; if you switch jobs midway through, however, they will only have a tiny fraction of those experience with which to influence your performance. It also helps to read more about job carrots and job sticks here.
Sadly, job hopping is mostly done out of desperation - it isn't a deliberate career strategy and can't be used to a person's advantage. It can, however, cause a lot of damage to an employee's career.
When People Switch Jobs, They Are "Hurting Their Career"
This is an important distinction that gets lost in a lot of discussions about job hopping and career success. If you go to your boss one day and ask for a raise, then switch jobs the next day, nobody should consider you to be hurting your career. You are legitimately asking for more money, although it will probably have nothing to do with the job title you're holding; if it did, though, you'd have stayed at your previous position for longer than 24 hours (which provides a lot of insight into how much money you've earned). What you're doing is costing your employer a period of time in which you are unavailable for work, during which time you could potentially be putting pressure on the performance and efficiency of that other organization. On the other hand, if a person switches jobs to get a higher-paying gig but then decides to stay at his or her new job for less pay, that person has "hurting their career" - although we're talking about short-term effects here, whereas my previous examples were long-term.
Job Hopping is Like a Drug Addiction
It's easy to think of job-hopping as a self-destructive behavior, similar to drug addiction. There is a lot of truth in this comparison, as we will see below. However, I believe that this analogy is overstated - addictions are self-destructive because they are designed to be so. (Remember: addiction is defined as "a compulsive desire for something frequently resulting in its loss.") People who feel the need to quit their current job to find their next one are not trying to destroy their career - they're choosing what feels like the best path for them at the time. Rather than argue about the definition of addiction and how it applies to job-hopping (or how it does not) let's just agree that there are some serious problems with both.
Let's Talk About the Real Problems with Job Hopping
Job hopping is an insane way to conduct your career, for two reasons: financial planning and loss of experience. To keep your career on track, you need to complete at least one cycle in each position you hold (assuming you're not jumping up the ranks). If you switch jobs every time your paychecks stop feeling big enough, then your experience won't build up - and in turn, the skills needed to advance into a more senior job will be out of reach. Compounding this problem is the fact that you will be doing battle with multiple employers throughout your career: one because you're switching between them, and another because you're in the process of moving to a new city. If you can't feel like you are part of your organization, then what makes you think that the next position will feel like a real home?
You spend most of your career at an employer, after all. If you were indeed on the job-hopping path since birth, it would make more sense to settle on hangover number two as a career plan!
How to Avoid Career Trouble - "The Ring of Fire"
The best thing for an employee who is considering job hopping is actually to stay put. Don't be so eager to jump from one company to the next that you are willing to throw away money and time. Be patient, stay focused, and you'll find the right place for you in your career. Let's look at some of the most obvious reasons for job hopping:
Paying Too Much for a Job
We all want to get paid well for what we do. Many people, however, don't feel adequately compensated for their work; if this is the case with you, then look into ways to increase your income (see what employers are looking for). If you're not satisfied with your current salary, try to negotiate for a higher one; if that's not possible, look at other options within your organization for money-making (see what employers are looking for).
Maybe you'd like to get paid less than you are currently making. If so, then consider whether it's worth switching to another job - while there is nothing wrong with earning less than the national average income, there will be several hundred thousand more people in your city than that national average! Thus, there may be a lot of competition for open positions. It is a lot harder to break into the industry once you've been working at it for a while. On the other hand, switching to lower-paying work may make you more employable overall, since it opens up your options to go elsewhere later in your career.
Not Feeling Comfortable at Work
If you're not happy with your job, then sit down and talk to your manager.
Conclusion
So, after three and a half years of research, I've finally put it all together. Now we know what career advice is actually the best advice - because there isn't any!
While job hopping might seem like the right choice at the time, it doesn't give you any advantages over staying put. It can also create problems for you in the future: as I have mentioned multiple times above, changing jobs every time your paycheck stops feeling big enough for you is going to make your path to advancement incredibly difficult.
In fact, by jumping around from job to job you could be setting yourself up for a career that looks like this:
This layout is not ideal.