Company loyalty just isn’t what it used to be. Incentives such as pensions and loyalty perks are slowly diminishing, and cropping up in their place are negative events like downsizing, company mergers and corporate takeovers. Little wonder that once-enthusiastic employees feel less loyalty towards their employers, or less secure in their jobs. If this describes your situation, you need to ask yourself if your frustration, disdain, or other factors are getting in the way of staying put in an otherwise lucrative company position. Are your career moves harming your reputation as a valuable employee? Here are a few signs that your career changes in your past have done more harm than good, and that you may be permanently branded to future employers as an undesirable job hopper.
1. A Resume Chock-full of 1-2 Year Job Stints
This is the most obvious clue that you may be a job hopper. Whatever the excuse, you end up leaving a job after only being there a short amount of time. While your personal reasons for leaving the company may be valid, with each job you leave prematurely, the more you implicate yourself as an undependable employee who is either unwilling or unable to stick it out.
2. It’s Always Them, Not You
Do you always find an excuse that gets you off the hook with the last job you held? Are you always rationalizing to yourself, your friends, and to your next job interviewer that the work was just too challenging, or not challenging enough? Was the salary inadequate, or were your co-workers or bosses too difficult to work with? Are there a myriad of other excuses you consistently use when you inevitably leave a job soon after being hired? Whether your job choices are just bad planning or a type of self-sabotage, you’ve got to own up to the responsibility that it was ultimately your decision that landed you the job in the first place. Figure out why you’re in the job cycle you’re in, and make the necessary efforts to change it.
3. Idealized Views on Finding That Perfect Job
How realistic are you about your skills, assets, experience, and your place in the job market? Are you choosing jobs that you are either underqualified or overqualified for, operating on instinct or an erroneous belief about what the perfect position and opportunity for you might be? If no job is ever good enough, if you constantly find yourself landing jobs which you quickly realize are poor matches, you will want to reassess your views on the job market and your place, and hirability, in it.
4. Consistently “Bored” After a Few Months on a Job
Do you typically have high expectations regarding new jobs, only to quickly realize that you are already bored with the position? Whether you choose job offers that do not challenge you enough, or which you expect to be much different than they turn out to be, you are using the excuse of boredom to cover up a larger issue. Either you do not know yourself well enough as it relates to the job market, or you do not understand the job requirements and descriptions, or you are uncomfortable making a longer term commitment to any company or position. Whatever the case may be, once you have pinpointed your particular issue, you can take the necessary steps to improve it.
5 thoughts on “4 Signs You’re a Job Hopper”
I never heard of that before, i been on my job for seven years,i actually took a break today and decieded to find omething else better to do with my life i guess my time is up also,i were a single parent working two jobs, now i only have one. Iam actually happy about my choice that i made.
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I admit I am a job hopper and agree that is not necessarily a bad thing. My jobs last about 1 1/2 to 2 years and I have left for all the reasons above plus others. Ethical reasons, moral reasons, mean boss reasons. I have never been fired nor have I ever collected unemployment. I have a lot of experience in many fields. I am a very quick study and can learn anything. I could probably learn to build an engine for a Boeing 757 inside of month. I love to learn and thrive on how much I can learn. I need to multitask or I am bored. I probably have Adult ADD. My sister jokes that my goal in life is to have a job for every letter of the alphabet before I die. My resume consists of: Limo driver, bartender, makeup artist, secretary, bookkeeper, real estate sales, insurance sales, electrologist, office manager, title clerk, wedding photographer and more. I have to say, bartender was my most favorite. Why? Because I saw so many different people and it was like being on stage. I can change hats and adapt to every type of client. I knew a little bit about a lot of different areas and can keep the conversation flowing.
My moral summed up: I believe that I was put here to pop from job to job touching lives of many people. I make them laugh, I help them understand, I listen, I absorb and have a way to help people change the negatives to positives. I feel I have saved lives of people in passing through jobs. I love people and will go out of my way to help anyway I can. There is something inside of me that tells me when my time is up and I did my job here, time to move on. The more jobs I have, the more people I meet and the more lives I touch. If I make a small difference in one persons life, my job is complete.
You know, speaking personally as somebody who once managed a corporation , all of the above points made ARE red flags to any employer.
A company generally puts much money, energy and resources into the actual hiring process ( breaking down just the first few weeks of employment for a new employee ), and the training of any employee…….thus said, employers like to know that they will stick around at least a few years.
Their is no perfect job, any job has it’s positive and negative points……and in this economy, most are lucky to even have a stable job position. And of course, there will always, occassionally, be people around you at work that you just don’t seem to see eye to eye with…..that’s just part of life wherever you may go.
The only other solution is to go into business for yourself, but be advised that one just doesn’t jump into being self employed. But that is a whole other article. ( I do business readings, corporate and small business by the way).
Good article, honest and grounded.
Blessed Be )O(
Gina Rose ext.9500
Well, with all the facts been read by me I can say Yes, I am/was a “Job Hopper”. Although I don`t see nothing wrong with that and I certainly don`t use or used in the past excuses for changing jobs. I just did it and it was right everytime. I realized that I am just not a 9 to 5 girl under the Observation of one or more people. I am now self-employed since `98 and still loving it!!!!
Nothing wrong eiter with people they are good employees and/or company people. It just wasn´t it for me.
Sylvia