Job Hopping - Loyalty Is Losing Its Luster

Darlin' you got to let me know; Should I stay or should I go?

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Take a moment to go back in time and remember your first job. Was it in the service industry? Retail? Maybe it was a labor job? Maybe it was that time you were paid $40 to babysit the neighbors kids for the evening while they spent a nice night out at a fancy restaurant. Everyone gets their start somewhere, and for most of us (at the time) teenagers, it was equal parts exciting and nerve-racking. You were being given money (!!) to do something, but you knew you should probably do your best to just keep your head down and do as you're told. After all, this would be the first step to getting that job you really wanted years down the line. If you showed you could be a good employee, it would go a long way to getting that golden reference.

Much of what was out there for information at the time lined up pretty cleanly too. You want to move up? Show you are loyal to your employer and build your personal brand as a hard worker who's willing to stay and tough it out through the hard times. You'll start to become the expert in your craft and people will look to you as the professional you've become. Plus, companies will love you for the fact that you stick around and hold down your post. If you stick around during your time going through college and university, even better! No gaps in your resume and you become a verified grinder and hard worker. Perfect!

So why are we now staring down a job landscape where the exact opposite has become the norm? Where did job hopping come from and why is it becoming the popular choice? And what's the best play for you to make when it comes to navigating the job market?

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Job Hopping? That sounds made up.

I know it sounds odd, but it's fairly new and very real. Basically, it's exactly what you may have anticipated based on the name. You hold down a position (be it in a minimum wage environment or a career setting) for a short time before "hopping" to the next one, implying that you are only in the position for a short amount of time. What "short" means is still up for debate, but it's generally accepted that the time frame to hold a position before making the "hop" is under two years. That being said, it's becoming increasingly common to see job hopping with times as low as six months or less.

The interesting thing about job hopping is that there are two different settings it takes place in (as mentioned above, minimum wage environments and career settings). They both functionally look and act the same and have very similar reasons to occur. But can we expect the motivations of a job hopper in a retail setting to be the same as one in a marketing, law, or engineering setting? Intuitively, it seems like there should be more to the puzzle. And that's why the job market is still adapting.

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Back in my day...

It's important to recognize once more that job hopping is very much a new career strategy. While there has always been an element of movement between industries and companies, sticking with your starting company was the go-to expectation. They took the chance on you as an untrained worker (something becoming increasingly uncommon), and you were expected to repay the favor. To leave your position every couple of years was actively looked down on, and could get you seen as a lesser valued employee. Consider how many of the more senior employees at any given company either hold or are in line for a 30, 40, or 50 year service award of some sort. Do you see one of these in your future? I'd be willing to bet that most of you probably answered no.

But can we fault any of the so called old guard for not buying into the job hopping concept? Most of the senior employees in the workforce got their start when the internet wasn't even a thing. Job hunting was personal, literally. You walked into the office and approached the desk before inquiring to see if that company was looking to take someone on. There were no online postings, no job aggregate sites, and no ultra-fast ways of reaching dozens of companies in the span of an afternoon. The job market was simply not geared to allow job hopping to be easy or successful.

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Things haven't changed that much... have they?

Certain aspects of the job market are still very much relevant and alive. Good company culture, fair wages, and a satisfying work-life balance still inspire a degree of loyalty to the team you spend a third of your day with. And yes, even with that glorious internet access, many companies still rely on a face to face approach in the final stages of hiring (or whatever is closest to it given the whole pandemic thing). In many instances, the time spent going through the hiring process in and of itself is enough to deter job hopping by sheer virtue of exhaustion.

And yet we all have that one friend. You know the one. Maybe you are the one! The one that has a new job every time you go out for a night on the town. The one who has a resume where the "work experience" section reads like a small novel. The one who collects job titles like they're Thanos collecting the infinity stones.

Job hoppers have chosen loyalty not to a company but to themselves. So what motivates the hopping? The answer is both beautifully simple and situationally complex:

$$ Money $$

Plain and simple. People are motivated by the thing that pays their grocery bill, satisfies their rent cheque, and buys them access to a month of Netflix. But as I mentioned earlier, there's a difference between a minimum wage environment and a career setting. And therein lies the complexity.

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The double edge sword cuts both ways

In a minimum wage environment, there's not a lot of money being thrown around between employee and employer. By definition, it's quite literally the lowest amount of money possible (or very close to it). Surely it makes no sense to abandon your job after 6 months to make 50 cents more per hour across the street.

And you're right, it doesn't. But the money factor here isn't that an employee stands to make more, it's that they quite literally can't make less.

I'm willing to bet that pretty much everyone who has worked a job in a minimum wage environment has been told either by their manager, a coworker, a friend, or a family member that they are expendable. It implies that they can be easily replaced, and that unless they perform to a high level, the company will go snag anyone they want from a large hiring pool. It used to be effective at keeping employees in line and loyal.

Fast forward to a few years ago and it seems the tables have in fact turned. It's a double edge sword that employees have figured out how to use to their advantage. If someone is unhappy at their job, take no hit to their paycheck, and can easily be scooped up just as they had been told, they stand to lose what? Loyalty? In exchange for the potential for better hours, comparable pay, and a feeling of control over their work lives. Increasingly, this is becoming the go-to choice.

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Ok, so wouldn't careers be less... I don't know... unstable?

Yes, careers are going to be more stable. You can much more easily live off a salaried career than an hourly wage in most cases, and you'd be forgiven for thinking that it would deter job hopping. Here, the unhappiness with the job still plays a role, but I'll set it aside because it's not as big a factor here. I touched on it previously, but in those minimum wage environments, new positions don't stand to lose you money. But for career professionals with training and experience, they stand to use job hopping to gain money. Big time money. And those loyal to themselves will take the opportunity when it comes.

You're wrong, that's what raises are for!

Fair enough, let's look at it for a second. At the time of writing this, the rate of inflation in the United States is 8.3%, and for Canada, it's 6.7%. Take the number that applies to you and ask yourself if you got a pay increase that matched that number. It was lower? Congratulations, you effectively got a pay cut. You may have made more, but that more is worth less.

So why is job hopping better?

Because this is a career setting with trained professionals. That training is valuable and, in some cases, hard to come by. You may have signed a $50k contract and stand to get a raise to $52k this year, but the guy on the other end of town is looking for a person with your talent set and will pay $60k. Would you trade loyalty for that? Increasingly, people are saying "Absolutely". And with inflation where it is, the cycle repeats quickly. In a year, you stand to make the raise to $63k but they new firm downtown will pay you $73k. And companies are happy to pay for trained workers if it means they don't have to sink time into training from scratch. They benefit off the disloyalty, but stand to lose by the same mechanism.

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Should I start job hopping?

That's going to be a very personal choice that I cannot make for you. Do consider that it's not nearly as taboo as a decade ago to do it and that more people than ever are turning to it. Loyalty is losing it's luster, and if you need to adapt, all the power to you. Some key things to consider if you are thinking of going this route:

Are you in a minimum wage environment?

Can you realistically find work if you were to quit?

Are you satisfied with your work?

Are you a career professional with some training?

How much do I stand to gain by job hopping?

Am I willing to accept that by job hopping, I may be burning bridges?

Am I happy with my current work situation?

Overall, it's not going to be for everyone. But until companies make a direct effort to bolster retention practices, wage increases, and promotion from within, job hopping will continue to be a factor. At the end of the day, do what's best for you.

~IR

Are you a job hopper? Do you feel that you'll be turning to job hopping in the near future? Or maybe you just have a comment to add? Check out the Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or LinkedIn page and let everyone know. Don't forget to follow or like the page for updates! And share this article if you feel others should give it a read!

And for the one person reading this who not only knows who The Clash is but also saw the reference at the top of this article, I salute you.

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