According to the world’s first and biggest specialized staffing firm, Robert Half, 64% of workers are in favor of job-hopping.
As bestselling management author and CNBC News contributor, Suzy Welch pointed out, a reasonable timeline for your departure from a job is three to five years.
While it is not illegal per se to job hop, hiring managers might have the impression that you “become easily bored” or that you are unable to commit to a company well. In turn, they might doubt the point of hiring you to help the company attain its ultimate goals which could take many years to come to fruition.
Unless your job is truly abysmal, you should try to avoid job hopping as much as possible for the sake of your resume and future career prospects in the long run.
Here are 4 ways to break the cycle of job-hopping:-
1. Research the company before applying
2. Research the position before joining
3. Expand your social circle
4. Seek opportunities for growth
Before applying for a job, it is of paramount importance to thoroughly research it from as many different angles as you can. This would greatly minimize your chances of ending up in an undesirable place.
1. Research the company before applying
Credits: The Electrochemical Society
It is salient to have a strong understanding of the industry that your coveted job is in. You would be more knowledgeable about current and upcoming developments in your career, which could help you to see if it is becoming more or less relevant, popular, or specialized. From there, you would better know if advancing in your career path is as easy or as rosy as you might have once thought.
Besides relevance and the like, keeping tabs on how the company treats its workers, clients or the environment is an often large indicator of whether you would be happy working there.
Just last year, one of Singapore’s top media companies Night Owl Cinematics (NOC) came under fire after shocking exposés about how they would treat their staff was leaked online. Even some of its partner companies such as TreePotatoes have complained about the poor treatment of clients, such as constant tardiness to meetings and frequent shouting.
From this example, you can see how a company is roughly like based on reviews and news about them. Platforms such as Glassdoor and Indeed allow workers to share their experience working in a current or previous company.
What’s more relieving is that anyone can post their reviews, all while being under a veil of anonymity so that no one shies away from spilling complete truths about a company. After gathering a “treasure trove” of positive and negative reviews, you would be able to make more informed decisions about whether or not a company is worth working for long term.
2. Research the position before joining
What you have been reading about a company might be to your liking but the same may not necessarily be said for the position you are applying for. This could be due to many factors, such as your department having fewer helpful leaders or trainers compared to other departments, or an uneven allocation of resources.
In the following employee turnover dashboard of a healthcare company, you can see that high flight risk, or high likelihood of resignation, is more common for registered nurses compared to health unit coordinators or nursing assistants. This means that if a nursing assistant has written laudable reviews about the company, a nurse in the same company might criticize it heavily.
Credits: BLUE GRANITE
Thus, after researching a company’s profile, always remember to consider reviews from people who were or have been working in the position you are aiming for. We also covered the 10 best future-proof jobs so that you can consider them.
Furthermore, do not skim through the job description just because you have a general idea of what the job entails. In our current age of technology, applying for jobs at the touch of a button has never been easier. On the other side of the coin, hiring has never been harder for recruiters and employers who often have to sift through poorly filled applications. We shared about how to cold email for a successful internship too.
On average, according to a UK recruitment agency, Dovetail Recruitment, around 90 % of job applicants fail to carefully read the job description. By not being fully aware of what your responsibilities are, you will be a lot less likely to know whether the role is aligned with your values, career aspirations, or personality. As such, you might highly likely resign after a short while.
To avoid such regrets, peruse every stated detail of the job description and carefully consider if this is where you can see yourself in many years to come.
3. Expand your social circle
Credits: Jobberman
One of the best ways to make the problems you face in your work more manageable would be to foster new camaraderie with your colleagues. A 2018 Udemy study found that nearly half of employees surveyed had quit because of a bad manager and not because of the bad job.
The banters, laughter, and ideas shared amongst you and the people around you can make or break your overall work climate. This is especially so because nearly every day, you guys would be seeing one another, perhaps even more often than your current friends, family, or relatives. Imagine if there is no informal chatter now and then to liven the environment! Work might be a more dreadful and lonely experience for you, not to mention in the many years to come if you plan on committing to the role long-term.
Also, by being on friendly terms with your colleagues, they can be your pillars of support whenever setbacks arise, such as having accidentally made a mistake before being given an earful by your boss. Additionally, you guys can make light out of the situation by cracking jokes here and there (as long as they are not disrespectful, I digress). By having such a network of support and memorable times with your work community, you would feel a much stronger sense of belonging which is intertwined with job satisfaction. Based on findings by the National Business Research Institute, employees’ satisfaction levels soared by around 50% after establishing a close rapport with their counterparts.
Thus, join your colleagues for lunch, surprise them during their birthdays, and arrange for outings once in a while! There are plenty of ways to make friends at work for a healthy social life. Indeed, with friendships and better teamwork from the friendships built, you would be able to thrive at work with socially vibrant work culture and hence, be more willing to continue working wherever you are.
4. Seek opportunities for growth
Rather than searching for other jobs that could bring more benefits to you, why not see how to maximize your time in your current time first? You would realize that there is a kaleidoscope of aspects to a job and that there is always something that can be learned or improved on. This is why most companies now organize workshops designed to help workers enhance various skill sets, such as programming courses that have taken the world by storm in recent years. Not only would such initiatives help to equip you with transferable skills for your venture into other fields in the future, but work life would be more exciting as you would not just be performing routine tasks.
Credits: HP
By searching for opportunities to improvise or upskill yourself in your industry, you would be able to make far more significant contributions to your duties. In turn, this would make you stand out more in the eyes of your bosses or managers who would be more confident in promoting you to higher positions. All in all, it does take patience and dedication to be seen as a force to be reckoned with at work.
To conclude, before you choose to quit a job out of your own volition, always keep in mind that the grass is often greener on the other side. Sometimes, we might be so blinded by the “overselling” of other jobs or companies that we forget to look at the positives of our current jobs, which might be missing in those other jobs.