WHAT do employers think of job-hopping? Malaysian Employers Federation president Md Jafar Abdul Carrim said frequent job-hopping was not well regarded. “Employers see someone who, say, job-hops eight times as a rolling stone,” he said.
He believed that in the early years of a person’s working life, he or she should stay in one company for at least two to three years. “If not, you cannot really learn anything. In a new company, there’s the acclimatisation process and you have to put in time before you can learn,” he said.
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Jafar Carrim: ‘Employers see someone who, say, job-hops eight times as a rolling stone.’ |
After that, he added, one should stay in a company for at least three to five years. For someone past his or her 40s, job-hopping was generally not encouraged.
Frequent changing of the field of work was also not advisable. “If you are in human resource, stick to human resource and don’t jump to marketing. By the time you learn enough about a field, you are already advanced in age but people will wonder why you are still at a low level (of employment),” added Md Jafar.
As such, he said it was important for people to find out what they wanted to do before they graduated. “You cannot afford to waste time after graduating to find out,” he said. However, should a company meet the employee’s needs, there was no need to move, he added.
“Don’t job-hop for the sake of it. If you enjoy working at your company, get sufficient job challenges, your career prospects are looked after and there’s personal growth, why change jobs?” he said, adding that employees and employers should also be equally concerned about training.
Md Jafar also said it takes skills to manage change in the work environment in terms of getting along with people and learning new skills. He added that in certain industries, however, both employers and employees would benefit from job-hopping. “Generally, in industries where technology moves very fast, employees will be able to learn more things if they job-hop. Employers will also welcome some turnover,” he said.
An employee’s personality and lifestyle also contribute to job-hopping, believed Md Jafar. “A more aggressive person would look to job-hop for the challenge and so on. It’s a question of what the individual wants. Money is not everything and there’s no end to how much you can learn. You don’t want to be a jack of all trades; neither do you want to be narrow-minded and lack the breadth of experience. It’s a matter of balancing it,” he said.
Pros and cons of staying on
Pros
- Become more effective and knowledgeable in the organisation and industry.
- Know colleagues well and how things are done.
- Establish network of contacts in industry.
- Earn respect due to seniority.
- Less need to prove yourself.
- Enjoy share options and other benefits from long service.
Cons
- May not be open to new ideas.
- Fixed in certain way of doing things.
- Complacency and being in comfort zone.
- Limited promotion opportunities.
- Monotony of work.
- Lack of challenge.