Dangers of Changing Jobs often and how it affects your Career

Changing jobs often used to be a red flag to prospective employers, but it’s less so these days, as long as your CV tells a good story. There is no generally accepted time criterion for determining what qualifies as job hopping but it is widely seen as changing jobs within 2years. Career experts have debated this phenomenon for years now, many citing that it’s a bad idea. But job hopping isn’t an entirely bad thing.

Keeps Employers on their toes

When employees are able to easily move from one job to the other, it sends a signal to employers to provide the best of employment terms and good service to their workers in order to retain the good talents.

Price Discovery

In my findings, employees who stay with one organisation tend not to receive as much total emoluments as those that move around. Employees are able to discover the true value of their skills as they move from one employer to another. As they put it, you can ‘test the water’ by appearing before a few interview panels to ascertain how much other employers are ready to pay for your knowledge, skills and experience.

Growth opportunities

Moving from one company to another exposes you to various opportunities, diverse organizational culture, leadership styles and experiences. Beside these, you have growth opportunities available for you as employees usually negotiate for higher grades before they switch. If your current employers is currently stifling your career, hopping to the next job is an easy way to put your career back on track.

Networking

There’s no quicker way to grow your professional work faster than working in different organisations. You meet many people, logically, than staying at one place. You meet clients of all these businesses you work for face-to-face, within a short time, and your network grows bigger, faster and becomes powerful.

Loyalty

At managerial levels, you are expected to have worked with employers beyond 3 years before switching to the next. People who hop around are usually not great candidates for higher managerial roles. Some level of loyalty is expected from you and this unfortunately is inferred from your CV. Generally, job hoppers are not seen as loyal to their employers.

Today, most under-30 employees view themselves as “free-agents” who need to manage their careers actively. They realize that their employer can lay them off at any time if business slumps and are also aware of the fact that their economic survival and growth depends largely on the maintenance of cutting edge skills. This could be the reason why they feel no guilt when they jump to the next employer for a better pay package or better opportunities for growth.