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Employers shy away from people who have had short-term jobs

Two thirds of employers have opted not to interview someone who has had short-term jobs in the past.

This is according to research from global job site Indeed.

In seeking to define “job hopping”, on average employers consider six months to be a short-tenure to spend in a job, and employees consider 11 months a short period of time.

In addition, in the minds of most employers, a period having four short tenure jobs on their CV would qualify a candidate as a job hopper, while 44pc feel that three such roles would.

Job hopping is more of a concern in smaller companies with less than 10 employees, with one in four such employers admitting to not interviewing a candidate for that reason.

In contrast, for companies with more than 500 employees, fewer than one in seven employers said they would not interview a candidate that they felt was job hopping.

From an employee perspective, only 29pc felt job hopping would ultimately hurt their career, while 57pc felt it wouldn’t really have any impact.

Meanwhile a small proportion of employees, (14pc), felt that moving among various short tenure jobs was a positive for their career, presenting a chance to learn new skills, demonstrate their adaptability, boost their CV, and make connections to further their career.

When asked what was an acceptable amount of time to stay in a job in order to contribute, gain experience and progress your career, employers and employees shared more common ground, with employers on average agreeing 16 months and employees 19-20 months.

On average employers feel it’s acceptable for a candidate to change jobs three times in a five year period.

When asked their reasons for leaving roles after a short period of time 40pc of employees cited an unhappy workplace as the main reason, while the second most popular reason for leaving a role prematurely was the offer of a better role with another company.

“There remains a perception that moving from job to job too frequently looks bad on a CV, and this is evident in our research among employers,” Chris McDonald, Indeed’s vice president of EMEA, said.

“Times are changing however. It’s no longer uncommon to change jobs, companies and even industries several times over the course of our working lives, and when you combine this with a still-tightening labour market, employees have considerable scope to pick and choose the roles they want, and employers will need to overlook their concerns about job hopping.”

Article Source: http://tinyurl.com/kbwqb42