“Too many jobs.”
It’s not the top reason hiring managers give me for not wanting to speak to a candidate, but it’s pretty darn close. For some understandable reasons, and some more unfounded ones, hiring managers are notoriously spooked by candidates who’ve “jumped” jobs too often. That mindset has gotten through to candidates too, and a lot of them now seem firmly convinced that one year is a sort of magical barrier - stay that long and you can’t be accused of moving too often.
My opinion? Especially for younger candidates, those jumps don't indicate a lack of commitment or focus, often it's the very opposite. Motivated employees seek out new challenges, even if that means they have to find a new place to work. Sure, some people are trying to outrun a bad work ethic by moving around as much as they can, but I truly don’t believe that’s as common as we think. We’re also in a unique moment.
In 2010 half of workers 20-24 had been with their employer less than a year. Some attribute that to a millennial tendency toward using your 20’s to “feel out” different careers. But I don’t think that’s entirely accurate. The generation of college students that graduated in the middle of the economic downturn of 2008 is just now in their mid 30’s. The youngest employees were the ones hardest hit by the downturn - they were the newest at their companies, and thus the first out the door. Or they graduated and took a job, any job, to get started. Basically I’m not sure there’s a lot to read into the number of job changes someone in their mid 30’s made when they were in their mid 20’s. More or less, it’s just a reality of the economy they graduated into.
From age 22 to 32 I had six different jobs. I also moved twice, finished grad school, was laid off once, and had a position eliminated when my company was acquired. By a lot of hiring manager’s standards, I’ve jumped quite a bit, but in only one of those situations was it my decision. I don’t think I’m all that unusual.
A former co-worker who is also my age has worked for three now defunct companies and one museum that shuttered. By conventional standards her resume would probably spook most hiring managers. SO many jobs! But she’s hard working, super smart, and really wants to work somewhere she can start a long term career.
I interviewed a sales person last year who was looking for her third job in three years. She’d started fresh out of college at a government contracting company that lost their biggest contract and with it, let her go. She moved to a small consulting firm where she worked as a receptionist, answering phones, scheduling meetings, ordering office supplies. She said it was fine, but it wasn’t challenging and she really wanted to be pushed. They told her she could move into consulting when a spot opened up, after a year and a half it hadn’t so she moved on. She took a sales job for a small start up because it seemed to fit the bill, but was back on the market six months later because it folded.
I guess what I’m saying is that I think it’s time to shift our thinking from assuming candidates are running FROM something to asking what it is they’re working toward. As the graduates of the economic downturn move into the middle of their careers their resumes will be quite a bit more complex than those of their older co-workers. They’ve had to work hard to forge a path and piece together a career in an economic climate that was strongly stacked against them. Maybe we don’t focus so much on the number of jobs they’ve had, and instead focus on what it represents - a whole lot of hard work and hustle.