Why It's OK to Job Hop

The list of jobs in your working experience is seen to be multiple. Recruiters and Hiring Managers are not keen looking at your employment history because the impression is not great.

Should you be apologetic for the rich experience and if you could turn back the clock, would you do it differently?

But for potential employer, there are 3 benefits that such candidate brings to your company as follows:

1. Wide experiences from multiple roles. The multiple roles would have expanded the knowledge, experiences and skill set of the candidate. In order to fulfil the expectation of those roles, the candidates would have continuously learn and be more versatile in their work approach.
2. Exposure to different work cultures. Different organisation have different culture and best practices. The candidate will somehow absorb some of the best quality of culture making part of their personality and work ethics.
3. Unique value proposition. In hiring based on a set jobscope, the candidate may not be the exact fit but with his/her experience hitting 60% of jobscope, the role could be further expanded for the benefit of the company. For consultancy projects, they would be cheaper to hire as internal staff with exact timing and clear deliverables since they can devote the time and effort exclusively. The engagement with existing employees are also closer as they are not seen to be intrusive and a strong competition for roles.

Today, a career nomad is no longer a taboo but should be seen as an expert who will do well in project based role. They are not interested to build roots within the company as the career objective is to enrich their working experiences and cultivate project portfolio.

So, it is OK to job hop but do it for the right reason and not for emotions.

Suraya is trained as an accountant but has pivoted from the number crunching role to policy development, strategic planning, project coordinator and people management. Her passion is in helping leaders to translate their vision into actionable item to the multiple stakeholders in order to realise the vision.