Job Hopping: Is it a red flag?
The reason this post piqued my interest is because if you
look at my resume, some will say that I’m a “job hopper” or assume that I can’t
hold a job which is untrue. See, my first job out of college was a 3-month
contract working with a small staffing company in Northern VA.
Toward the end of my contract there were somethings that
started happening that made me feel apprehensive about continuing my employment
with the company. The first issue was with the account executive. One day I get
all call from the boss, and she said that she needed me to go into the personnel
files and find the file for the account executive. At the time I had no idea
why, but later while having a conversation with the account executive, he would
tell me that he was disputing his commission payout because he felt the company
didn’t pay him for a deal he landed.
This prompted him to start looking for other jobs and when
the boss found out she wasn’t too happy especially when she found out that he
was interviewing at a competitor. From that point on things in the office got
really tense and she even called a meeting with me to request that I be her eyes
and ears while she was out of the office. Now, I should probably mention that this
woman was barely ever in the office for a full day. Sometimes I would see her for
a few hours first thing in the morning and then she would be gone the whole
day. Sometimes she would come back in the late afternoon, sometimes I get a
call from her saying she wasn’t coming back in because she was already back at
home.
When I told the account executive what she said, he asked me
if I was going to report back to her things that were being said in the office,
to which I replied jokingly replied, “I’m not an office snitch for less $15 an
hour.” But in all seriousness, I didn’t feel right being some spy for her. I
didn’t think it was even something she should have asked me to do, so I didn’t
do it. I even covered for him.
One day he came into the office first thing in the morning
and told me that he had an interview and that he was going to be gone for a few
hours after lunch. When the boss lady called asking where he was, I told her
had left for lunch and had a few client meetings after lunch and that he would
be back sometime in the late afternoon.
The next issue I had was when I didn’t get paid on time. I
woke up on payday and the first thing I did was check my account and there was
no deposit which I thought was strange because most of the time my check is deposited
by midnight. I didn’t put too much thought into it and figured it’d be there by
lunch. When I got to the office the first thing my boss said was that if anyone
calls about their paycheck being late tell them it was a glitch with ADP.
Not one time did she tell me that directly. She didn’t assure
me my check would be deposited. She just had me reassure others about their
checks. After she left the office, I talked to account executive and the recruiter,
and they both said that the company is probably having some money issues. I
didn’t necessarily believe that until the boss lady called me and told me to
start calculating paychecks and found out that she was paying certain people
out of her own pocket which I thought was weird because if this is just an ADP glitch
why would she go through such lengths to cut someone a check to cover their wages
for the pay period? That should be on ADP, no? Then I got bothered by her
paying others and not paying me because I work in her office. I see her every
morning and she couldn’t even reassure me that my check was coming, but I had
to help her make sure others got their money? I got my check the following week,
but I wasn’t too happy about it being late.
By the end of the contract, I decided that I wasn’t going to
continue working with the company, so I started looking for other jobs. I got
my coworkers to write me letters of recommendation and one even helped me con a
website into giving me a discount for a suit, so I would look more professional
during interviews.
After that job I found a new job working with another company
in the Northern VA area as an HR Coordinator. When I interviewed for the job, I
told them that I was looking for an opportunity that had longevity because at
the time I didn’t want to be seen as a “job hopper”. I wanted an opportunity to
be somewhere for the long haul.
I wasn’t at that job for even a full year before I started
to hear things about some changes coming and before I knew it, they were firing
branch managers including ours. People started worrying about their jobs and
before that got too out of hand, they had corporate HR talk to us and reassure
us that those of us in HR and recruiting didn’t have to worry because no one
was getting laid off. A few weeks later they had us working with an offshore audit
team that was supposedly auditing our work and we needed to work with them to
help them understand our processes.
I knew from that moment that I was training my replacement. After
the new year my manager called me into her office for a meeting with herself
and the acting branch manager to let me know that they were laying me off. Neither
of them was happy with it and you could see that in their faces, but they did
everything they could to help me find new employment. Even though they didn’t
help me find a new job, I appreciated their efforts to help.
At the time, I was dating a girl from NC and she was
graduating from college the following summer. We talked about it and decided
that I would move to NC. I packed up my stuff and moved back home to save money
while I looked for a job in NC. I’m not going to lie, it took a while to land a
new job, but I did, and I ended up moving here to NC.
The job was a 6-month contract as a recruiter staffing for
the customer service centers for companies like CVS Caremark, Blue Cross Blue
Shield, and Humana. The pay was decent, and the job wasn’t hard, but I knew at
some point it could end so I made sure to keep my resume floating around and
passively look for opportunities because I needed something more permanent.
The 6-months flew by and before I knew it, I was getting an
offer to stay full-time permanently. I would be there for about year before I
got laid off. After I got extended the offer to stay full-time, the company
started to make changes to its corporate structure. They were separating the
business operations I was supporting into a separate company. They brought on a
new CEO and things were starting to change.
At this point I started to passively start looking for job
because I felt like there was a possibility that they may lay some folks off
due to these changes, and I wanted to be ahead of the game this time in case I did
get laid off. I was sure the layoffs were coming when they said there was a
hiring freeze and open enrollment for health insurance was starting soon. See,
our busy season started right before open enrollment and all during the open enrollment
period. That seemed off to me and sure enough once the hiring freeze was lifted,
they laid off several of the new people working with us and it wouldn’t be long
before I found myself out the door as well.
Back on the job market again, and I was having a hard time
landing a new position. It took months of searching to the point where I was
pretty much desperate for anything. Eventually I landed a job working remotely
as recruiter for an IT staffing company. Taking the job meant I would have to
take a $12k pay cut, but I needed the money because I had bills to pay, so I
took the job.
Eventually I had to take on a second job which wasn’t bad at
first, but after busting my hump for 16 hours a day at least 5 days a week, I was
getting a little burned out and I had a conversation with my manager about getting
a pay raise. This conversation went back and forth over a few weeks, and we
ultimately decided that it was probably best if we just part ways because they
weren’t going to be able to get me the pay raise I wanted and I just wasn’t
happy anymore. We parted ways and I stuck with my part-time job because if I
worked full-time I was making just about the same amount of money.
A few months later I
would end up interviewing with a lady who had just moved to the area because
she was the new regional manager for an insurance company. I accepted the
position and for a while, it wasn’t bad because I was working part-time with
her and part-time at my other job. Eventually she convinced me to come to work
for her full-time, so I did which turned out to be a huge mistake.
One day I was working on something, and she called my phone
and I didn’t notice. I never have my ringer on because I find it super annoying,
so my phone only ever vibrates. Well, 2 minutes after she called me, she called
one of our coworkers to see if I was working. The coworker had the phone on speaker,
so I heard the whole thing. It hurt because I’m the kind of guy that gives his
all when doing something, so for her to treat me like that it hurt.
It was then I was fully committed to find another job
opportunity. Eventually I would get a call from a construction staffing company
and when they offered me the job I jumped at the chance. I didn’t even give
notice at my other job. I just worked until the end of the day and emailed her
my letter of resignation. About 10 minutes after I sent the email, she called our
coworker and she put it on speaker so I could hear. Before the end of the conversation
she would say, “I should’ve known he was going to do this he just seemed like
the type.”
Funny thing about it is that I would’ve stayed if she had treated
me better. On more than one occasion she treated me like I was the help. One
morning she even fussed at me because I didn’t have a smile on my face when she
came into work. Made me write this letter saying that I would improve my
attitude or something. She once yelled at me because she had a fight with her husband
one morning and I guess in his attempt to make up with her he decided to bring
her coffee. When he showed up, she was in a meeting and I told him I’d give it
to her and he left. She came out of her office a few minutes later to berate me
about how she said to come get her when he showed up. Swear I didn’t hear that,
and I expressed that to her, but she didn’t let up not even a little.
Now I’m at this new job making the money I want to make and
I’m working with a great group of people. I think this is finally my time to get
back on feet after all the mishaps and setbacks then the pandemic happened.
Found myself laid off again not even after a year of being at this new job.
Laid off again, and it sucked. It was hard trying to
reconcile why I was having such terrible luck with my career and life. So many
setbacks, road bumps, and I had no clue what to do about it. The first few
weeks were the hardest because I had to try and figure out what I was going to
do amidst the pandemic and with a resume that I know most will look at and pass
on because I haven’t been at any one place for more than a year. I knew that
people would assume that I’m a “job hopper” or someone that can’t hold a job,
but none of that was true at all. At this point I had been laid off 3 times by
3 different companies doing what was best for them, I left a job because of a
miserable boss, and mutually decided to leave another because the pay wasn’t enough,
and I had a part-time that I could work full-time to get by until something
better came along.
I decided this time I was only going to apply for the jobs
that I really wanted, and I wasn’t going to just take the first decent offer I
got. That led to me landing a freelance writing job with an online sports
lifestyle blog. It was freelance gig, and I wasn’t getting paid for it, but I
loved it. It didn’t last long because of the pandemic, but I enjoyed my time
doing it and wish I could find another job like that one that pays because it
was something I really enjoyed.
Then time started to pass and the money I was getting from
the Pandemic assistance and unemployment started to run out. I started to feel
the walls closing in financially, so I had to start applying for jobs that I
didn’t necessarily want. Then came an offer. It wasn’t exactly the offer I was
looking for, and at the time I was being considered for another job, but ultimately,
they decided to go with someone else for the position, so I had to take this
offer because there was nothing else and I didn’t know when the next one would
come along.
I was there for about 5 months before I had to decide: stay
here for who knows how long working in this stressful job being anxious that
they may find out I’m spending a lot of my days applying for jobs and
interviewing, or do I put in my two weeks’ notice and just focus on finding a
new job? I decided that I was going to choose myself and do what was going to me
happiest. Why shouldn’t I? Three different companies decided that it was in
their best interest to take away my livelihood, so why couldn’t I make the
decision to do what’s best for me, my mental, and physical health?
I know that I’ve taken a long winded approach to get my
point across, but I think in order to really grasp my point of view, you have
to understand where it comes from because I’m not the only person out there who
might have a resume that people pass on because they’ve had a bunch of
different job and could be seen as a “job hopper”.
Not everyone’s career journey is the same. Some people have moved
from one job to the next because they were on a quest for more money. “Great
company culture” and “growth opportunities” don’t pay the bills in real time. An
employee could be happy as a clam at their current position, but if an
opportunity comes knocking with a larger paycheck attached, most people are going
to go for it because the chance making $100k from a future promotion that may
or may not happen isn’t worth passing over a pay bump from $50k to $70k now.
Going through the things I’ve gone through has helped me as
a talent acquisition professional see things from a different perspective. When
I look at a resume, I don’t assume the worst of candidates that have had a
bunch of different jobs, instead, I see them as story that either starts right
after high school or college and each story is different. Some people have the good
fortune of having found a great place to work, and some haven’t. Some have been
trying to increase their earnings each year, and some have been laid off
several times.
Obviously whatever narrative I play out in head is just
fiction until I talk to the candidate, but my assumptions are never bad. Even
when someone has a long gap in employment history I still assume that they had a
hard time finding suitable employment and worked off the books or that they had
to take care of a family member.
I’ve talked to women that took time off to be with their children
and then they got to the point where they wanted to rejoin the workforce for
whatever reason. I’ve talked to women that left jobs because the job wouldn’t give
them a regular schedule because they couldn’t have someone watch their kids
during the day. Childcare is expensive and people need jobs that will accommodate
and if they won’t people will go somewhere else.
The point is that “job hoppers” aren’t always a bad sign. Yes,
there are some people who can’t hold a job and get fired, but that’s why we as
hiring professionals should check those references and do all that we can
verify the information we are being given. We can’t just assume that because someone
has held a lot of jobs or hasn’t been at one job for whatever arbitrary amount
of time, that someone isn’t worth talking to or hearing what they have to say.
Anyway, I’ll come down off my soapbox now and leave you with
this: If you’re a hiring professional that thinks “job hopping” is a bad sign,
I hope this changes your perspective just a little bit because you may be
missing out on high caliber candidates because of your bias and if you’re
someone that has a spotty resume or thinks moving from one job to the next is a
bad thing, do what’s best for you because most companies don’t have your best
interests in mind and you’re the only one who is going to take care of you.
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