Job-hopping is the practice of having many jobs in a relatively short time. It involves switching jobs or moving from one company to another to get the best job to meet specific standards.
A Job-hopper is a person who jumps or hops from one job to another and has short spells with many employers. Often, those short spells are between one to two years at each position, but some people classify Job-hoppers as persons who spend at most four years on a job.
Putting that in view, per the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, presently, the average number of years employees stay with their employer is 4.1 years.
Job-hoppers have no real reason to leave their jobs and look for new ones. People who leave their jobs because of circumstances they can’t control, like the cost
reductions or being sacked aren’t job-hoppers. Real Job-hoppers leave their switch.
REASONS WHY JOB-HOPPERS CHANGE JOBS FREQUENTLY
- Greed for Higher salary: One of the primary reasons Job-hoppers jump from one job to another is the desire for a higher salary. Moving from one position to another usually comes with an increase in pay as part of the contract. Many people prefer to change their job instead of waiting for a raise or bonus from their employer.
- Better workplace: Some employees are unsatisfied with a particular job’s direction, so they jump into another job with a better career path. Others switch because they find out they don’t like the job or are not culturally fit with the company they work with.
- Less Work Pressure: Work-life balance has been a battle for most people. Most employees who switch jobs do so because they want to work at a company with less work pressure – a place where work isn’t defined by being in the office almost daily. They want the liberty to work from home, the chance to travel, or even unlimited time off.
HOW COMPANIES SUFFER FROM JOB-HOPPERS
- Forego customers: Companies sometimes lose customers as a result of employees quitting. These customers were probably brought to the company by these employees.
- Pressure built up on existing team members: When an employee quits their job unexpectedly, the workload and duties of these employees would have to be shared among the remaining team members until a qualified person is hired and groomed to take their place. This whole process usually takes weeks.
- Untimely payment from customers When an employee who is supposed to deliver goods and services to customers suddenly quits, the delivery is put on hold for a little while, and so also the customer’s payment.
Job hopping makes life difficult for recruiters in many ways. The cost of employing a Job-hopper is not worth the short-term value they add to the company.
Employers and Recruiters don’t want to go through the tedious process of hiring a person, training them to get them up and running, only to lose them when they have begun to be productive to the company.
WHAT NEXT?
Job-hopping is catastrophic to any organisation. What’s more disappointing for an employer than losing a talented employee loyal to the company for many years?
