"Anyone who has looked at a resume in the last 20 years knows this. “In our day” you stayed with the same company a long time; having a succession of short term jobs suggested the person was flighty or a risk.
Why? Even back then, employers could not be counted on to retain the employee for more than a few years before downsizing or going out of business. An employee who is not flighty is often required to find a different job due to employer decisions."
Sigh. I’m talking about people who VOLUNTARILY flitted from job to job to job, not people who were let go in layoffs due to no fault of their own. (That was obvious to everyone reading except you.). Back then, 25 - 30 years ago, it WAS seen as “what’s wrong with him - can’t he keep a job? Does he not get along with people?” Nowadays, it’s just not surprising to see a person who is 30 who might have a new job every year or two years or so, and it doesn’t have the negative connotation it used to.
“Perhaps Wall Street was not as short term focused back then as well, so a minor miss in earnings did not lead to Wall Street pressure to downsize as much as it does now.”
The downfall of my company - a major household name you’d all know - is absolutely traceable to when it started caring more about Wall Street than about the consumer at the heart of it. Because somehow people in finance, who did absolutely nothing other than move money back and forth, were somehow more important than the people in marketing and R&D and operations who actually created products that met consumers’ needs.
When I was voluntarily “flitting” from job to job, I asked my father if I was changing jobs too often. The early to mid 80’s was confusing because things were changing. My sister and her husband thought I was changing jobs too often and it looked bad. So I asked my father what he thought. He looked at me and replied, “The places that hire you don’t seem to think you are changing jobs too often”.
At that point, I stopped worrying about what organizations thought. If they like my resume, I’d get interviews. If they don’t like my resume, I won’t.
I have mentioned before that I changed careers entirely back in the 80’s. I knew several people who made career switches back then. The advice I give to D is not to define herself by a job title or specific industry, but to develop a set of skills that can be transferable.
There is a difference between someone hired, for example, into a company’s IT department vs. someone who takes a job with a contracting company and has to hustle to find a gig so they aren’t sitting on the bench too long.
DH commented that in some overseas call centers there is no loyalty or staying power. Someone will jump to another company for a few cents more an hour. Maybe that’s a lot over there.
Graduated college in the 80s. On my 3rd career. Dreaming of my 4th. Spouse on 2nd career. None of my friends my age are in their first job still. (Unless you don’t count residency for docs–then I have a few who are).
My parents graduated in the 60s. Mom has had at least 4 careers, not counting parenting 6 kids. Dad had 2 careers. Apparently we are an ADHD family.
I certainly don’t see this as a generational thing. I’ve been out of college 30 years now. Had 8 jobs, one lasting 15 years, one lasting only a year (a startup that never took off). I realized early on that employer loyalty and retiring with a gold watch went out the window, when I was contracting at IBM when they did their first-ever layoffs.
In IT, even then, it was common to change jobs regularly. Companies swing between insourcing and outsourcing. Companies merge, get acquired, buy others, go under, always impacting IT groups to some degree. 30 years ago there was stigma to having been laid off as well as for job-hopping - nowadays it’s a rare individual in the IT world who hasn’t been impacted by a layoff at some point in time. I’ve dodged that bullet - so far - but have seen many good workers get cut for any number of reasons that were not performance related.
Every time I’ve changed jobs I’ve either learned a new skill or changed careers. I would not be as valued an employee as I am today had I stayed stagnant in the first - or even second or third - jobs I had. I work with amazing individuals, most of whom have had several careers. It certainly gives a different perspective and helps keep everyone’s skills fresh.
The point was that Wall Street attitudes affect employees in all companies with publicly traded stock. If a company misses earnings, the stock price drops, and there will be pressure from investors or corporate raiders to terminate employees, close divisions, and other types of “reorganization” (and if the company does not accede to such pressures, corporate raiders will try to do it themselves, taking advantage of the lower stock price).
So how do you tell if a resume that shows several short term jobs indicates someone who voluntarily flitted from job to job to job, versus someone who happened to be unlucky and got laid off several times (or left only semi-voluntarily because the company was obviously sinking and would have likely laid him/her off shortly if s/he did not jump to another job)? Most resumes do not give any indication of why someone left his/her previous job.
Gen-Xer here. Tired of reading these articles about Millennials, because they’re pretty much exactly like the articles that were written about us Xers back in the day. (Including the parts about flitting from job to job and oh my isn’t that horrible that they won’t settle down et cetera). I used to get annoyed at the Boomers for writing that sort of nonsense about Xers until I discovered that the Boomers had had similarly critical things written about them, too (remember—the Boomers were allegedly all hippies and such). And, of course, the cycle goes further back, too.
As much as The Atlantic regularly annoys me, a few years ago they did publish a decent take on the whole “Let’s criticize the kids!” phenomenon, with documentary evidence of it in the popular press dating back to over a century ago: [Every Every Every Generation Has Been the Me Me Me Generation](http://www.thewire.com/national/2013/05/me-generation-time/65054/).
Most of the young people that I research (as my research has slowly slid into the depressing history of juvenile confinement) are of the generation that eventually grew up to be the “Greatest Generation.” 8-| The “adults” then were writing the same things about kids as I read today about my generation. I swear I could pluck out stories and change a few key words (like today we generally don’t refer to kids as being of “low grade (heritage) stock,” not that similar other terms aren’t used to describe kids of certain “races” and backgrounds) and easily pass it off as a “WAH the Millenials are the WORST EVER” article and no one would be the wiser.
It’s frustrating as a Millenial especially since we’re graduating into a **** economy (although recovering), with ungodly amounts of student debt (that no other generation before us had en masse), with fewer safety net/economic boosting systems (which have been used by almost every middle and upper-middle class person in their lifetime whether they realize it or not), and the largest income inequality in decades- and growing. Not to mention our crumbling infrastructure system (places like Flint are just the tip of the iceberg and glimpse into what’s to come), an educational system that is falling behind the rest of the global north (though, of course, those at the top are still among the best in the world), and an unsustainable health care system- all of which are basically being ignored by those whining about my generation.
So you’ll excuse me if I’m really quite sick of these articles. I don’t particularly blame the generations above me (because, really, what’s blaming anyone going to get us?), but I despise being "tsk tsk"ed because of the issues we were born into and had/have no control over.
Those whining about the millenial generation are probably expecting the millenial generation to pay higher taxes to fund the older generations’ ever increasing socialized medical insurance (Medicare) costs.
Some industries no longer promote from within. DH has changed jobs about every 5-7 years for the purpose of getting a promotion and a raise. His first switch doubled his salary!
I think the whole point is that when we fifty-somethings see resumes of younger people who have gone from job to job, we DON’T think ill of it. We know it’s the new normal in a way it wasn’t when we were first starting up and frequent job change was a red flag. It ISN’T a “bash the younger generation” thing.
Contemplating administrative jobs. (Just contemplating–and still probably healthcare focused). With 2kids in HS now, may have to stick to practice a bit longer though.
It would be more of a story if they showed the percentage that changed more than once. Many 22yos don’t stay in the same job. I had one job for a few years and then left for grad school. Had three jobs in quick succession (including a move cross country) and then have had the same family-friendly job for over 20 years.
If also would have been more interesting if they contrasted the numbers to Gen Xers or boomers and compared the 22 to 27 yos and the older cohort. There are probably fewer workers who stay in one place for decades than there used to be, but this survey suggests that about 44% of workers did not change jobs even once in the past 5 years.
Healthcare administration can sometimes be like going from the kettle to the fire. And switching to the insurance/managed care side is like going to the dark side.