In the past 18 months, Anna, 29, has had three jobs. In that time, the London-based digital marketer has fast-tracked her career. With each move, she’s worked with higher-profile clients, gained greater experience and acquired deeper skills that now give her leverage in a buoyant job market.
There has also been another significant pay-off: Anna’s successive job moves have meant her salary has grown by 30% in a short space of time. “I simply wouldn’t be in the position I am now unless I kept changing jobs,” she explains. “I started at a small start-up, and have quickly worked my way up. Each role has been an upgrade on the one before – I wouldn’t be on the pay I am now by waiting for a promotion.”
Rather than strategically planning her moves, Anna, whose surname is being withheld for career concerns, says she’s opted to change jobs – even industries – whenever a better opportunity has arisen. “Unless I really enjoy the role, I don’t see the point in staying for years just for the sake of it,” she adds. “If I can find more fulfilling work and effectively gain a promotion elsewhere, then how long I’ve stayed at a company shouldn’t matter.”
Workers like Anna who forego the traditional career-ladder climb, and instead jump from role to role, have often been stigmatised; in the 1970s, job hopping was likened to vagrancy and branded ‘Hobo Syndrome’ by industrial psychologists. As such, the practice has received a bad rap in many quarters; from recruiters and executives, but also older workers for whom accruing career capital was a hallmark of professional life.
However, these stereotypes may be outdated. In a tight labour market and an environment where companies show less and less loyalty to workers, many of those who job hop are reaping the rewards, gaining sizable pay rises and greatly accelerating their career progression. The question: is this approach to employment sustainable – and can it come back to haunt those making so many rapid moves?
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Many of the workers who are constantly searching for new roles are millennials and Gen Z, for whom company loyalty is a much lower priority (Credit: Getty Images)
A generational shift
For past generations, the tacit contract of work implied that companies would reward loyalty with progression and pay. This arrangement, however, began to break down in the 1980s. “Many companies downsized and saved money through mass layoffs,” explains Christopher Lake, assistant professor of management at the University of Alaska Anchorage, US. “More workers began to feel disposable, and that their job could be eliminated at any time.”
In the wake of this, strategically moving around the job market became more common, says Lake. By the 1990s, a new mentality had developed: job hopping. “Rather than letting their progress be dictated by a single employer, many workers felt empowered to actively manage their own careers: moving between companies as needed to advance, gain new skills or look for new opportunities.”
Recently, job hopping – which Lake defines as switching roles once a year – has flourished, with younger workers driving much of this movement. US Bureau of Labor Statistics data shows that not only do employees aged under 34 change jobs most frequently (an average of 1.3 years for employees aged 20 to 24 in January 2020, versus 4.9 years for those aged 35 to 44), but they’re doing so more often: median tenure has been shrinking since 2010.
Following the Great Resignation and subsequent hiring crisis, job hopping seems to have swelled even further. In a February 2022 LinkedIn study of more than 20,000 US workers, 25% of Gen Zers and 23% of millennials said they hoped or planned to leave their current employers within the next six months. Lake says with greater choice, workers have had greater opportunities to job hop. “In order for someone to move around, they need enough options to find a better job.”
However, adds Lake, there has also been a generational shift in attitudes towards work. “We’ve seen a growing re-interpretation of what a career is for people, even before the Great Resignation. The traditional model was to work for a company who would effectively decide your progression for you. Today, people are autonomous – they want to take control of their career.”
Where quick switching works
In many cases, when workers job hop, they effectively take bigger strides down their career path. “When people change jobs, they collect skills, abilities and knowledge they can use in a future role,” says Lake. “A worker that’s job hopped will likely have a greater wealth of experience to draw from, leading to a wider variety of jobs and companies available to them.”
Lauren Thomas, European economist at company-reviews website Glassdoor, based in London, says workers often job hop because of slow internal processes at their company. “Moving to a new job can be a faster and easier way to progress to the next level in a career.”
If I can find more fulfilling work and effectively gain a promotion elsewhere, then how long I’ve stayed at a company shouldn’t matter – Anna
Employees are often financially rewarded for switching roles, too. In the UK, Office for National Statistics (ONS) data shows workers who change jobs within a year of beginning a role have consistently higher hourly wage growth over those who stay; workers aged 16 to 24 make the biggest salary gains. In the US, an analysis of 18 million worker salaries showed the wages of job switchers in 2021 outpaced those who stayed in a role; in some industries, workers received nearly a 12% pay rise.
“Job hopping is one of the easiest ways to gain a significant salary increase,” says Thomas. “While staying for a long time in the same role can result in below-market pay, finding a new job usually means instantly receiving the market rate.”
Where job hopping falls short
However, job hopping often comes with a stigma attached – one that’s enshrined by older and more senior hiring managers.
“Job hopping is perceived differently between the workforce and agents of a company, such as executives and bosses,” explains Lake. “Much of it comes from the frustration of investing time, money and energy in hiring someone, only for them to stay for a few months.”
The stigma may also come from a generational divide: those who have spent decades at a company, and reached the top of the career ladder, are often its key decision makers. “Job hopping is a red flag for recruiters – it’s just more overlooked during a hiring crisis,” says Lake. “When the job market tightens, that’s when companies can be really picky again. A resume showing too much movement may be quickly eliminated from the applicant pool; the candidate may have a harder time finding new employment.”
Over the longer term, workers with a long track record of job hopping may eventually risk hitting a wall, dramatically limiting career options. “The longer they job hop, the odds are they’ll apply for vacancies and, over time, run into a manager who doesn’t want to hire them over concerns they won’t stay,” says Lake.
The constant churn of leaving a job and beginning a new one can also form a potentially problematic behavioural pattern; employees facing problems at work can be tempted to quit rather than grind it out, impacting their long-term career prospects. “An employee moving jobs too often can mean they aren’t in a position long enough to truly learn the role or gain new skills,” says Thomas. “It can ultimately damage a person’s career: it may be challenging to demonstrate to a new employer previous proficiency and achievements.”
While ONS research shows job hoppers typically experience greater hourly wage growth, the same data shows they’re still generally paid less overall per hour than workers who remain in longer-term employment. Rather than gradually accumulating expertise and social capital at a company, job hoppers can find themselves stuck in a loop of quitting and starting over, forever in a transitory state between new and old roles.
Constantly changing jobs can also come with a psychological toll. “It can become a vicious cycle,” says Lake. “You’re in a new job and it’s great for a while, only to find there are things you don’t like and begin looking for the next one soon afterwards. The ups and downs of that process are really emotionally taxing.”
Some recruiters won’t necessarily flag short stints at multiple companies, but other recruiters may see them as a red flag (Credit: Getty Images)
Making the right moves
Thomas believes that given its prevalence, job hopping is no longer taboo. However, its acceptance is generally industry dependent. She cites tech as an example where employers more readily expect multiple companies on a CV: “They see it as a sign of diverse experience, rather than unreliability.”
In other sectors, while an occasional short stint is likely to be overlooked, a consistent pattern of job hopping – new roles around every year or so – may arouse suspicion among recruiters. Until younger workers who have job hopped climb the ranks to do the recruiting, hiring managers from older generations may be more likely to offer roles to those they believe will be loyal to an employer.
As such, some strategy appears key to job hopping: framing moves as a short-term tactic for a longer-term career boost, allowing workers to reach new heights faster. “Much of it comes down to making the right move at the right time,” says Lake. He adds that lateral moves come at greater risk in that workers may end up swapping one set of problems for another. “It has to be an overall upgrade: if someone has a history of job hopping over the past five to 10 years, then they really need to think if their next move is actually going to benefit their career.”
For these reasons, younger workers at the beginning of their career trajectory often have the greatest scope for job hopping – with also the greatest potential pay-off.
Anna knows her own job hopping isn’t an open-ended strategy: her hope is that it will come to an end with her new role. “My past employers haven’t made an effort before in terms of offering me a career path or progression,” she says. “I’d just be left presuming that, being lucky, I’d maybe get a promotion after three years or more. And that’s why I job hopped.”
Lake says until employers reward loyalty more, job hopping will be inevitable. “I wish it were different, but an employee can’t assume their company will take care of them. Training, development opportunities and success planning are really important incentives that help keep workers around for longer. Instead, to get ahead and have a fulfilling career, employees often have to be an active participant and move around the job market.”
(Image credit: Getty Images)
By Megan Carnegie16th May 2022
To prove jobseekers’ worth, some employers are asking candidates to work before they’re even hired – sometimes, on tasks that take hours, even days.
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Tahlia was tentatively hopeful when she saw the ad for a senior role at a major trend-forecasting company. Her freelance design career had been curtailed by post-Brexit trading restrictions, so she was working in a minimum-wage job, while seeking avenues more aligned with her skillset.
“I thought it was worthwhile giving it a go, because the salary was £55,000 ($67,600) a year, and similar to my earnings before,” says Tahlia. “They told me I would have five interviews, and if I made it through the first three, I would be required to do a lengthy research project.” Tahlia reached the task stage, and took a week off work to focus on it wholeheartedly.
As requested, she says she submitted a 25-page document with extensive annotations and full graphic-design elements. The next step was a face-to-face interview with two senior managers at the company, although Tahlia felt uneasy when she arrived to find only one was available. “I answered lots of searching questions about my research methods and work,” she says. “When I asked about the role, it was very vague – but it was clear I was down to three candidates, and would hear the final verdict in a week.”
The company never responded to Tahlia, despite her best efforts to make contact. “I heard about someone who’d been through the exact same thing, so it’s clear the company is garnering research for free by pretending jobs are available, and not actually following through,” says Tahlia.
Factoring some form of working task into the recruitment process has long been a way to assess a candidate’s suitability for a role. Along with being a chance for employers to see how their potential hire would approach aspects of the job, these ‘working interviews’ also enable the candidate to flex their skills, especially if they don’t thrive in the interview hotseat.
But the take-home assignment is growing to mammoth proportions. Some candidates are expected to put in days – sometimes even weeks – towards ‘proving themselves’ fit for the job. And it’s a problem, in more ways than one.
Would-be employees are finding themselves working overtime to complete take-home assignments, many of which take hours (Credit: Getty Images)
A sour taste
Whether it’s journalists pitching reams of daily story ideas; accountants taking part in two-day ‘assessment’ centres of psychometric tests, role-play tasks and presentations; or designers delivering a complex prototype, the extraction of free labour during the recruitment process can be insidious. There are very few industries absent of the practice, and it’s certainly not limited by a candidate’s level of seniority.
There are many reasons jobseekers bristle at these intensive interviews. For one, loss of time – and sometimes earnings, as in Tahlia’s case – is perhaps the most pervasive problem. Even for roles without prolonged test projects, candidates must set aside time to prepare for an interview (and if doing it face-to-face, factor in a commute). Then, piling intensive interview work on top eats up more bandwidth. And although some candidates can meet these time requirements pre- or post-work, others don’t have the same flexibility; for some, these tasks could require unpaid time off from a current job, or special childcare arrangements.
Another major issue is candidates are ostensibly doing paid work without the compensation. “Asking people to complete a test project or having them come in for a working interview isn’t unethical in itself – the problem lies in not paying candidates,” says Latesha Byrd, CEO of talent-development agency Perfeqta, based in North Carolina, US. “No matter what term you use, asking candidates to complete working interviews without pay is simply unpaid labour.”
However, beyond time and pay, proceedings can take an even darker turn when candidates discover companies are using the ideas they submit, free of charge, without permission.
Olivia, who is based in the UK, wasn’t looking to move from her company, but a former colleague invited her to apply for a role at an agency. “I met the strategy director, and was assigned a task to write a year-long social strategy, with campaign activation tactics, for one of their new clients,” she says.
After spending three days on the project, she presented it to a rapt audience, and was soon offered the job. While reflecting on whether to accept the role, the company requested Olivia send over her deck so the company’s CEO could see it. Uncomfortable with this, she offered to present it herself, to which the company declined.
Asking people to complete a test project or having them come in for a working interview isn’t unethical in itself – the problem lies in not paying candidates – Latesha Byrd
A few months later, after ultimately declining the role for other reasons, Olivia spotted a piece of influencer content on TikTok she says was based on the idea she had proposed. “Then I saw a follow-up campaign on the exact same idea,” she says. “I thought, hang on – that’s my strategy.” Although she’s glad she refused to send the entire body of work, she says she will never share any work at all with a potential employer again.
‘Thoughtless and indefensible’?
It’s difficult to know what kind of timeframe and asks are both standard and reasonable when entering a new industry or level.
Some experts believe information gathering within professional communities can help determine typical expectations. “If you feel the process of assignment is too much, ask someone in your network what their process was like, and if what [you’re] being asked to do is out of scope,” recommends Chad Leibundguth, who works for the global HR consulting firm Robert Half.
However, Nick Corcodilos, host of the advice-platform Ask the Headhunter, is more resolute. He believes the working interview as a whole takes advantage of people, and falls under the same umbrella as the “thoughtless and indefensible demand to divulge your private salary history”. He coaches candidates to “offer an honest alternative when employers ask for an over-the-top ‘show us what you can do by completing this two-week assignment’”. He adds: “Suggest you’ll do the work on a daily fee basis until the employer decides to hire you or someone else.”
Byrd agrees candidates “shouldn’t be afraid to put a contract in front of [an employer], or ask them to draw up a contract before starting a project to protect your intellectual property.” She says it’s important to get a clear idea from the company how long the activity should take as well as the overall steps to the hiring process. The inability to provide these details – or asking for an inordinate amount of free labour – can serve as huge red flags for candidates, offering a view into how it might feel to be on their payroll. After all, says Bryd, interviews are a chance for jobseekers to take the temperature of the company as much as the company is doing the same of them.
Along with written work, some applicants are being called into do presentations (Credit: Getty Images)
Yet it’s not always as simple as saying no outright to these projects. Jobseekers, many of whom are juggling multiple applications, ultimately face a Catch-22: slave over the take-home assignment, without any guarantee of feedback or even a response; or refuse to work for free, and risk taking themselves out of the running. While some candidates are spoilt for choice in certain sectors, and can easily choose the latter path, not every employee has the breadth of options – or financial security – to jeopardise their candidacy. Realistically, this means some workers may find themselves with no choice other than to take the taxing working interviews, even against their best instincts.
More than a goodwill gesture
In an ideal world, the onus would not be on the potential employee to request payment for their work – it would be a regulated, paid process, spearheaded by the company. While still a fringe practice, some companies are redressing the power balance by remunerating candidates for working interviews.
For instance, applying for a developer role at San Francisco-based Automattic, the parent company of WordPress and Tumblr, starts with a text-based interview on Slack, before moving to a code test and then a contracted 40-hour task. Candidates are paid $25 (£20) an hour, and there’s no deadline for completion. It’s not just happening in tech; in March, the Toronto-based non-profit FoodShare began paying $75 an hour for each candidate’s interview as well as the rate of the job they’re applying for, if they complete any presentations or assignments.
Candidates find this to be a much more egalitarian approach. After a global software company recruited her on Linkedin, Ruth did an initial interview, and was paid a flat rate of $250 to complete a five-hour test project, before another interview and a second test project, for which she was paid $500. “It was estimated to take ten hours, but I really wanted to do a good job on the slide deck, so it took me about 12 hours,” says Ruth, who lives in Berlin.
After several more interviews and months of back and forth, she was offered the job. “It was one of my most positive hiring experiences, because they were very professional and always transparent about the next steps,” says Ruth. “To be given the payment (almost instantly after doing the tasks as well) was really appreciated, and made me want to engage in the process.”
Napala Pratini, co-founder of the London-based health-tech start-up Habitual, points out that along with strengthening an employer brand, paying candidates directly can be more cost effective than paying for placement agencies, recruiters or social media posts. Shortly after launching in 2019, her company started paying all candidates a flat fee of £25 per hour for up to four hours of task work.
“It’s not a huge amount of money, but it’s more about the gesture of compensating somebody for their time,” explains Pratini. “As a candidate, it can be easy to feel you don’t have power in the situation and although you’re not risking your life, you are making a life bet on a company, and they should value that, too.”
As prospective employees navigate wildly different – and sometimes exploitative – hurdles in the recruitment process, safeguarding their time and honouring their value remains a balancing act. Thalia has been getting by doing odd jobs, and although has nothing contracted on the horizon, knows how she would approach a working interview, if asked again. “A small project, or a design or two would be fine, but for a substantial project, I think I’m within my rights to refuse,” she says.
Tahlia, Olivia and Ruth’s surnames are being held for privacy concerns
