Settle down to avoid risks of job-hopping

By ADAM GIFFORD

Is that new job not the one you wanted? Looking to move on again? Be warned. Job-hopping could diminish your employability, especially in a tightened market.

David Palmer of Alliance IT Recruitment says job-hopping has never been acceptable, but it has been tolerated in a hot market when employers are paying a premium for skills.

"In the long term it is not favoured. People do look at CVs and see whether someone has moved around," Palmer says. "If they are looking at a permanent position, they want to know the person will be with them for at least two or three years. If they see someone changing jobs every six months, it doesn't bode well."

For organisations which are, for example, developing a large software product, it may take new staff three or four months to get their heads around the work and become competitive.

People also need to get comfortable with co-workers and find ways of working together.

However, rapid change is not always a bad thing to have on a CV.

"The question perhaps is why did this person leave - were they pushed or did they jump," Palmer says.

"Typically what you look for in a CV when someone moves is job progression, whether there were logical reasons to move. Were the moves because of promotion, or were they swapping jobs at the same level?

"If you see someone has gone quickly from junior programmer to analyst to team leader, you might say 'this guy has his head together'.

"Sometimes people make a strategic step sideways, when their career seems to be plateauing at the place they are at."

He says recruiters see a lot of job-hoppers, because they are always in the market, "but the candidates you look for don't do it."

So what are the alternatives?

Be proactive in your existing position.

"You can always, whatever the company, do with improvement," Palmer says. Upgrade your skills. "That is something everyone working in IT needs to be doing every day. The day you stop doing that and say 'I have 15 or 20 or 30 years in this industry,' your days are numbered."

Of course, you can stay too long.

"Once you have been sitting in the same role doing the same thing and repeating your experience for a year or two, it may be time to look for something else."

If being pinned down in a formal job role just isn't for you, the contracting market is an option. "Swapping contracts is a respectable part of contracting."

Elvie used to be a job-hopper, going through a dozen or so jobs in her first decade in the workforce.

She left school in the fourth form, picked up some office skills in a technical institute, and with her hands on, can do attitude found it reasonably easy to get jobs.

"I'd learn how to do the job, then feel I was not learning anything else so I would leave after 10 months," Elvie says.

While she saw each job as a small step up, it was not until she was introduced to databases while working for a government agency that Elvie felt she had found a career.

"I fell in love with that sort of work."

When she had to leave that job when her husband was posted to Auckland, Elvie says her current employer, an infrastructure maintenance company, was apprehensive about her stickability.

Their fears were unfounded, as she has stayed with the company for almost seven years.

"I've gone past job-hopping, partly because of my age but also because I know what I want, I know what is out there and I am more focused," she says.

While job-hopping may look bad on a CV, there are ways to minimise its impact.

The rapidly changing nature of many workplaces means experience with a lot of different situations can be pitched as an advantage.

Employers should also be sympathetic to different styles of working and learning and look at how a person can fit into the organisation, rather than be made to fit.