Analyzing the Resume of a Job Hopper to Analyze the Potential for Hiring

Gone are the days when people worked for a company for several years, if not a lifetime. On average, the duration people work with the company has been shortening.

Even with the shortening span of working with a company, a resume worth shortlisting is easy to consider if the candidate seems to have stuck to a job for a few years before moving on to another job. However, nowadays, we frequently come across resumes showing candidates changing jobs, like clockwork, every one to two years.

Let’s consider this: you come across a resume showing great potential, but the continuous job hopping flashes bright warning lights. How do you analyze if the candidate is still worth hiring even with the frequent job hopping?

In this article, we will discuss various aspects of the resume of job hoppers to analyze if the candidate may have good potential despite the frequent job changes in the past. However, let’s first see why job hopping has been on the rise.

Why Job Hopping Has Been on the Rise?

The short answer to the question is more opportunities and less patience to wait for career and earnings growth. The combination of these factors has been making people job-hop faster.

There was a time when people traveled happily in a bullock cart. Times changed, and trains took a couple of days to travel from one city to another.

Leave aside the high-speed jets. In the current age, even by train, we can reach Tokyo to Osaka by covering around 450 km in a little over 2 hours, yet it seems so long. Now, we talk about the Chuo Shinkansen trains in Japan, with a planned top speed of 505 km/h or 314 miles per hour.

Why only that? The hyperloop is expected to reach a speed of 1126 km/h, or 700 miles per hour, and we would still feel that time was moving slowly.

These days, we wish to whisper to Alexa to switch on or switch off the lights and open the curtains.

The exponentially increasing tech advancements are bringing down our patience levels. “The increasing impatience in the shortening journey” also happens in the career journey. Gone are the days when people used to stick to one job for their whole lives.

According to this study by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average time span in a job for the 25- —to 34-year-old workforce in the US is only 2.8 years.

But then, it’s not just the United States of America. At one point, Japan was known as the land of lifetime employment. People used to join a company after their studies and retire from there.

The Situation is very different now. Yes, there are many such cases with large Japanese corporations, but on the other hand, job-hopping has become a rising trend. Employee attrition is already becoming an issue in Japan. This situation will worsen with the new normal of working from home, where the employer-employee connection will see a rising downtrend, and loyalties will decrease further.

Is Considering a Frequent Job Hopper for Employment Bad?

There is no simple answer to this question. There are always pros and cons. Before we analyze this further, let’s consider the pros and cons of hiring an employee with a history of frequent job changes.

Pros & Cons of Hiring an Employee with Frequent Job Change History

The probable disadvantages of hiring a job-hopper are simple. They involve uncertainty about the reliability and stability of the employee and the cost involved if the employee leaves soon. Also, rising attrition may have a chain reaction and lead to an exponential increase in attrition, as it may also affect even otherwise stable employees.

On the other hand, having an employee exposed to different work cultures, skill sets, viewpoints, and processes can bring in new ideas and add diversity. Such an employee can sometimes become an asset, bringing ignored but much desirable changes in the system.

What an Employer Should Look for

The first and most important point is keeping an open mind. Thinking of a person with frequent job changes as a job-hopper and discarding the profile just on that basis may prove to be wrong.

There may be genuine reasons behind the job changes, and there is always a possibility that the candidate might find what he has been looking for in your company and settle down for an optimum period of time for mutual good.

Look for Career History Trends in the Resume

Just a quick glance at the resume to notice frequent job-hopping and rejecting the resume with that macro-level observation may prove to be counterproductive.

It is crucial to have a micro-level look at the career history trends during those job changes.

The career history from the resume can show different trends, and those trends can tell us a lot:

1. A very long time in the first job, with good growth and frequent changes in subsequent jobs
2. Very long time in the very first job, with little growth and very short tenures in subsequent jobs
3. Frequent changes during the first few jobs and then a good tenure later on
4. Less than or around 2 years in each job
5. Less than a year with more than one companies
6. Many changes with the same responsibility or position
7. Changes with increasing responsibilities

Let us analyze the above cases one by one:

Very long time in the first job and very frequent job changes later on

This trend should raise a little red flag. A person who stays a very long time and has good growth indicates good potential, reliability, and stability.

However, the frequent changes thereafter show that the person has adapted so much to a company-specific work culture that they cannot adjust and adapt to any other company’s culture and systems or processes.

It is always possible that he or she may find your company’s work culture matches his or her expectations, but there is always a high probability that he or she may fail to adjust to the new workplace.

Very long time in the very first job, with little growth and very short stays in subsequent jobs

This type of profile should raise a bigger red flag because while the latter part of the above point remains true for this type of profile, the lack of growth in the first job shows that the person may be stable and reliable but certainly lacks performance potential.

Very frequent changes during the first few jobs, and then a good tenure later

Very frequent job changes initially, followed by a respectable tenure in a later job, indicate the initial jobs did not meet the expectations. When there was a good fit, the person stayed with that job. There is nothing, really, wrong with such a situation.

Less than or around two years in each job

If a person has been leaving almost every job for around two years or less than two years, it certainly raises the alarm.

There are no statistics, but professional experience tells us that it is quite easy to survive with a company for around two years without much performance. Such a case indicates issues with reliability and stability as well as performance.

Less than a year with more than one companies

It takes some time to understand the work culture, systems, and processes and start performing. A tenure of less than one year indicates a lack of adaptability, accommodability, and a desire to learn.

Anyone can end up with one job that makes him or her realize, in a very short time, that it was a wrong decision to join that company and that it would be better to leave as soon as possible. There is nothing unnatural in that. However, if this happens more than once, then, at the least, it indicates poor judgment and decision-making ability. And if this happens more than twice, something is terribly wrong.

Many Job Changes with the Same Responsibility or Position

Such a trend proves that there are issues with reliability and performance. A person can neither perform and grow in one organization nor grow by changing jobs.

Job Changes with increasing responsibilities

Changing jobs to get more responsibilities and grow the career is natural. Such a profile indicates potential. Such a profile also indicates that the person is a fast learner. One cannot convince the next employer to hire you for a higher responsibility if you cannot understand the previous role, responsibilities, and achievements.

So, a resume with job changes and continuously increasing responsibilities clearly indicates a good hiring potential of the candidate.

However, hiring such a candidate does not mean that the candidate will not try to explore the possibilities for further growth. If such candidates do not see the potential for growth inside the organization, they will look elsewhere. Therefore, hiring and losing such candidates will show a good hiring decision but bad retention strategies.