Why Hiring A Serial Job Hopper Could Be A Boon For Your Organisation

Could hiring a person who has changed many jobs during his/her career be a good thing? 

Most sane people leave jobs for reasonable reasons, after they have checked and double checked that there is no hope in their current assignment. The time frame for such a confirmation varies in different cases.

I am yet to see a sane person who left a job just for the heck of it. Some of the reasons why an intelligent, capable, aggressive, sincere and ambitious person leaves a job are: a bad manager (in most cases), an organization that has failed to stay on the growth path that it promised or an organization that called itself people centric but is not so in reality, etc.

Now let us look at what the typical HR or hiring manager thinks about people who change jobs often and why there is a need to re-evaluate these notions:

1. The candidate is incompetent – this is negated by the very fact that the person got a job whenever he/she left one.

2. The candidate is unstable and fickle minded: Wrong. The choice of changing jobs is in most cases a symptom of some other issue within the company rather than the cause for the job hop. 

Hiring a serial job hopper could deliver great results for the organization if you tap the enormous passion they carry for efficiency and growth, as opposed to those candidates who have stayed back in the same job forever, despite feeling the urge to leave, either because they couldn’t find another job or because they simply lost the fire in the belly

For instance it could be a manager who is being painfully inconsiderate and not recognizing the effort of the employee or even worse hogging the credit for himself/herself. In this situation, some employees might not leave while others choose to leave. But both set of people feel the same urge: to leave the job/manager. 

An aggressive (used in a positive context) person in this situation might leave the job while others may stay back putting up with the stress. I want to mention here that I am not saying the person who stays back is a lesser mortal. 

3. The candidate will jump jobs again if someone offers more money: Untrue most of the times. Usually such restless and intense persons are not motivated by money and instead by self-actualization and self-respect.

Lets understand that a job hopper is also a person who is capable enough to get a job every time he tries. That means he/she is also intelligent and capable and would understand that a frequent job change for money might end up harming his/her chances of getting another job in future. 

4. The candidate will leave us too very soon! To be honest, any capable candidate who knows that changing too many jobs is detrimental to his/her future career will never leave a job for trivial reasons. So if an employee leaves a job, it points to a problem within the organization and does not reflect on the candidate (most of the times).

Management usually loses visibility of the entropy that exists within the organization (it could be a bad manager who is driving away good people or the company culture or policies. Even when management knows that a problem exists, it sometimes simply turns a blind eye to it because it is not willing to take the bull by the horns or stir up a hornets’ nest. Usually the bad managers are insecure but excellent at building a coterie around them within the organization which makes ‘taking them on’ difficult.

Many experts have opined that when people leave they actually leave bad managers and not the organization. It is also true that good managers retain employees and reduce attrition despite not at times being able to offer the best monetary incentives.

Usually most people who change jobs (there are always exceptions) are high on integrity and are extremely keen on producing good quality work. That is why they don’t put up with any crap. The dents that they had might be useful to create revolutionary value in your organization if channelized well.

Instead of ticking off the checklist of pre-conceived notions, next time you are evaluating a candidate with a history of job hopping, look at his credentials and track record. Do a character check, background check and ask for references (do not approach the immediate manager or for that matter any reporting manager ..ask the team members who he/she lead). Check for any history of non-compliance and criminal record and if they are OK then go ahead and hire that person! He/she might produce excellent results for the organization if you tap the enormous passion they carry for efficiency and growth as opposed to those candidates who have stayed back in the same job forever, despite feeling the urge to leave, either because they couldn’t find another job or because they simply lost the fire in the belly.

Usually most people who change jobs (there are always exceptions) are high on integrity and are extremely keen on producing good quality work. That is why they don’t put up with any crap. The ‘dents’ that they have might be useful to create revolutionary value in your organization if properly channelized.

Authored by Maqbool Commu Syed. Over a career spanning 25 years, Maqbool has worked with organisations such as GE, Panasonic, Cognizant & Microsoft. He has also served a faculty at NIT, Warangal. He is a M.Tech from IIT Kharagpur. (Image courtesy tumblr)