Changing Jobs – How Often is Too Often?

Long gone are the days when it was important to show job stability as a major priority on your resume. It’s extremely rare today for a professional to stay in the same role or even at the same company for an entire career.

Yet, there can be such a thing as being too quick to quit.

“How often is too often?” You may ask. Good question, but one without a universal answer. In general, basic industry metrics say multiple movements with stays shorter than two years define “job hopping”. At the executive level for financial professionals, four to five years seems to define the average tenure.

If you’re looking to gain experience in a variety of places and roles, changing jobs every few years early on in your career can have an advantage. Played (very) strategically it has also been used as a gambit to increase your salary to market levels. Be careful with this one though.

If you left a long-time job for a riskier role and it didn’t work out, that’s okay — look for something new.

But if your habit is to job-hop merely because you don’t feel strongly about making a commitment, or because the grass looks greener somewhere else, that’s a red flag for employers. They want to hire people who will dig their heels in and help effect real growth and change. That’s called resilience and it’s a trait every organization and team values.

#jobhopping #tenure #careerdevelopment