A Story for You: The Tale of the Job Hopper

by Angela Loeb 

Dear Hiring Manager: We have a story for you, and it goes like this…

Once upon a time in the land of the United States, there lived a curious creature called the Job Hopper. Job Hoppers existed only because there was an unwritten law in the land that said: “Thou shall stay employed with the same employer for the duration of thy career.”

Job Hoppers rebelliously defied this unwritten law and dared to seek new employment every few years or so. Perplexed by this defiance, hiring experts would speculate that maybe Job Hoppers got bored too easily, or maybe they left when things got too tough, or maybe they were unable to work well with others. Whatever the reason attributed to their lack of employment longevity, they were labeled Trouble with a capital “T,” which resulted in rampant Job Hopper bias.

Consequently, Job Hoppers tended to be somewhat rare in the workforce during those days, but we definitely know they existed because many of us remember how harshly they were judged and how frequently they were shunned during the hiring process. We remember them because many of us actually participated in that Job Hopper bias… that is until a couple of decades ago when things started changing… and so did we.

Changes came with seminal events like the tech industry’s dotcom/dotbomb era of the late 1990s, the Y2K scare, the 2001 recession, 9/11, etc. But most would agree that the definitive turning point in this story happened during The Great Recession, which hit its peak in 2009. The massive layoffs of that time contributed to the obliteration of the old unwritten law of the land and eroded whatever loyalty still existed between employee and employer.  

In the decade that followed the Great Recession, what was once a rare creature called the Job Hopper became neither rare nor even called a Job Hopper any longer. People everywhere began to realize that career resilience no longer meant career-long employment with one employer. And even if they wanted to stay with only one employer, they came to accept that it simply wasn’t possible in a world with so many mergers and acquisitions leading to layoff after layoff. People also began to explore different options for achieving job satisfaction, such as gig working, following a career lattice vs career ladder path, digital nomading, etc.

So, adaptability became far more important than company loyalty, and everyone started to embrace the norm of moving to different employers every few years. Some even came to believe that staying in one company for longer than a year or two could adversely affect their ability to adapt or how their ability to adapt was perceived. And then when the next large-scale calamity hit, the COVID pandemic, the ability to adapt became even more valuable and valued.

With all these changes, we also learned that if you want people to stick around, then your workplace culture must be the kind that makes them want to stay. Researchers showed us that culture was a huge factor in driving The Great Resignation that came on the heels of the pandemic. It turns out that a toxic corporate culture is 10 times more likely than compensation to be the cause of employees leaving.

Unfortunately, even though times have changed, and there’s really no such thing as a Job Hopper anymore, there are a few people out there who still want to cling to the old ways. To them we would say that adaptability is not only what ensures survival, it ensures flourishing and growth.

The Tale of the Job Hopper is one of many tales of change and adaptability from the history books. For example, once upon a time, we exploited children for labor. Once upon a time, the Human Resources function was called the Personnel Department. Once upon a time candidates were expected to include age and marital status on their resumes. And though we may still have a way to go before all our hiring biases, conscious or unconscious, are eliminated, we would like to say to those still hiring like it’s the early 2000s… Dear Hiring Manager: You’ve obviously adapted before. We know you can do it again. It’s high time you let go of that Job Hopper bias from the old days and join the rest of us here in the nowadays.

________________

To learn more about how APW can assist with your human resources needs, including recruiting and hiring awesome people for your team, please reach out to us at https://austinpeopleworks.com/contact.