Keeping A Packed Bag At Work:
Employees today are more apt to job hop than ever before
By Ilana DeBare • San Francisco Chronicle

Jeff Stevenson's resume would have been tossed in the garbage by most recruiters 20 years ago. With four different jobs in the space of six years, he would have been viewed as an unreliable job hopper.

Instead, Stevenson's career is flourishing. He's moved in and out of well-known firms such as Netscape and NetManage, garnering stock along the way. And each one of his past employers has given him a good reference.

"I've changed jobs every two years for the last six years, and it's the best thing I've ever done," said Stevenson, 35, now director of business development for INSoft, a division of Sunnyvale's International Network Services that makes products to help companies manage their software applications.

The 1990s have completely changed the rules for how long employees stay at their jobs -- and how long employers expect them to stay.

Federal labor statistics show that workers in almost every age group are staying at jobs for a shorter period of time than their counterparts did in the 1980s. For instance, 25- to 34-year-olds have held their current jobs for a median of 2.7 years, down from 3 years in 1983.

Job mobility is even more pronounced in California, where a 1998 Field Poll estimated that nearly half of all workers have held their current job for less than two years.

The numbers reflect a sea change in people's attitudes about their careers and changing jobs. The days are gone when many people could expect to spend 40 years at a single company, moving steadily up the ladder and retiring with a fat pension and gold watch.

Today, more employees -- especially those under 30 -- view themselves as "free agents" who must actively manage their own careers. They realize their companies may lay them off at any moment if there's a business slump or merger. They know their economic survival depends on maintaining cutting-edge skills. And so they don't feel a drop of guilt about jumping ship if another job offers better pay or more growth opportunity.

Daniel Akre is an example of this change. Akre's father, Terry, put in 37 years as a technician at AT&T, waking up at 5:30 a.m. each day to be on the job by 7:30. Then he was laid off without any warning. Akre, who was 18 at the time, vowed never to let that happen to him. "I said then and there, I'm going to 'employ' my employers," Akre recalled.

So Akre, a top-performing salesman, has worked for seven employers since graduating from college in 1987. He's changed jobs for a variety of reasons: sometimes for economic reasons or for growth and challenge, sometimes because his company was taken over by another firm. Most of the moves increased his pay by 10 to 40 percent. One move even doubled it. Akre also managed to leave on good terms with most of his employers.

"In all of my interviews, the topic of 'job hopping' comes up," said Akre. "You have to explain to people that you're more diversified, wise, and agile than if you'd stayed at one job."

Employers today are becoming more used to applicants with histories like Akre's. In fact, many recruiters now view long tenure at one job as skeptically as they used to view job hopping.

"It used to be an honor badge to have worked 23 years at IBM," said John Wilson, an executive recruiter with Korn/Ferry International in San Francisco. "It's changed to the point where recruiters now really scrutinize the background and wisdom of a person who's done that. These days, you have to wonder as a recruiter: 'Why was that person so happy there for so long? Were they challenged by a lot of different roles? Or were they just so comfortable that they stayed and stayed and stayed?'"

Job hopping is more common and accepted in the high-tech world than in other industries. That's because the tight high-tech labor market, fast pace of technological change and lure of startups with potentially lucrative stock options all create an incentive for skilled workers to move around a lot.

But more traditional industries are also seeing people change jobs more often. "It used to be that 10 to 15 years at a job was considered good stability," said Rick Pflugradt of ProTemps Professional Personnel, an Oakland placement firm that specializes in the insurance industry. "Now, it's not uncommon for people to move around from year to year."

Career experts say that today's trend of shorter job tenure has its roots in the downsizing wave of the late 1980s and early 1990s, which shattered many people's expectations of lifetime employment. But other factors have contributed as well:

• The current strong economy makes workers more confident that if a job change doesn't work out, they can find something else.
• Many firms have replaced traditional pension plans with more portable 401(k) retirement plans, reducing some of the financial risk of frequent job changes.
• The Internet -- with hundreds of job listings just a keystroke away -- makes it easier than ever before to find out about other job options.
• The executive recruiter industry has also mushroomed in recent years, so professional-level employees are more likely than before to have someone dangling attractive new jobs in front of them.

"I would say that every single person here, regardless of their function, has been called by a recruiter," said Susan Keck Truman, director of recruitment marketing for Nortel Networks in Santa Clara.

For employers, job hopping can be costly and frustrating. Personnel experts estimate that every departing employee costs a company 1.5 times his or her salary -- a combination of recruiting costs, training time and lost productivity as co-workers and supervisors pitch in during the transition.

"You're really looking at a very limited window of productivity," said B. Lynn Ware, an employee retention expert with Integral Talent Systems in Half Moon Bay. "Let's say someone stays with an organization for 2.5 years. It takes them the first year and a half to really get up to speed. Then they spend their last three to six months looking for the next thing. That leaves about a half year of real productivity."

Some employers try to hold on to departing employees with counteroffers of raises. But frequently that kind of response comes too late. Personnel experts say the best way to retain skilled workers is to continually check that salaries are competitive and make sure individual employees feel challenged and appreciated.

Meanwhile, job hopping also levies subtle costs on employees -- both those who move and those who stay. Bruce Gerstman worked at a search engine firm with such rapid turnover that, after a year and a half there, he was viewed as an old-timer. Gerstman, 28, found the rapid turnover discouraged friendships at work. "'Why get close,' I thought," he said. "He or she will probably be leaving soon anyway, or perhaps I will."

The turnover also demoralized employees who stayed behind. "When somebody would quit, most of us felt a sense of, 'What am I wasting my time here for? I should be making more money and doing more self-realizing work,'" said Gerstman, who ultimately left that company. "Even if our jobs weren't dead-end jobs, nobody recognized that. Everyone felt as if we weren't going anywhere."

In today's new environment, how short is too short to stay at a job? The answer varies among industries and professions.

Pflugradt, the insurance industry recruiter, gets leery if applicants put in less than a year at a job. "A red flag goes up, and you think that either the employee made a bad decision or their skills weren't quite meeting expectations," he said. Other recruiters focus less on length of employment than on whether an applicant finished the project for which he or she was hired.

"Two to three years used to raise a red flag," said Ware. "Now, depending on the industry, it's one to 1.5 years. But what employers are really looking at is, did the person complete the project or commitment that they made?"

Soma Pullela, head of marketing for a San Francisco commercial real estate firm, has held four jobs in the past year -- much more job hopping than most career experts would recommend. But Pullela, 23, had good reasons for each move and employers didn't hold the changes against him. Over the course of the year, he managed to triple his salary.

Pullela is like many other workers under 30 in that he never even considered the possibility of staying at one job for his entire life. "I guess I pictured myself staying at companies three or four years, maybe five," he said. "That's definitely longer than what it's actually been. But there's no way I'd be where I am now if I hadn't done some job jumping."