How much job hopping is OK?

[Geoff Hart <Geoff-h -at- MTL -dot- FERIC -dot- CA>]

Anonymous Poster wondered <<...what is considered "job
hopping" and is it acceptable these days because of the nature
of technology?>>

I'm not sure what you mean by the question. If you mean that
it's an issue of turnover time, then the potentially apocryphal
numbers I've heard are that the average young techwhirler (if
such a beast exists) lasts between 2 and 4 years at a given
position or company. So if you want to know the acceptable
frequency of job changes, hopefully that helps: it may not be
what managers want to hear, but short stays would seem to be
fairly common, and perhaps even "the rule".

<<how do you explain to potential employers, when you have
taken several jobs that turned out to be REALLY, REALLY
bad choices and have had the opportunity to leave them after
just a few months and did?  Or, what if you have a really bad
year where life occurrences cause you to make bad
choices?>>

The truth generally works, provided that the truth isn't "I get
bored really fast and feel the need for a new office and new
people every 2 months". <g> You can always try to put a
positive slant on it, just don't outright lie; that kind of lie
comes back to haunt you eventually (like when they check
your references). For example, explain that you wanted to
experience a range of different work environments and work
with a range of tools and problems to get a feel for what's out
there before you settled down; the obvious question from the
interviewer will then be "so what did you find out about
yourself, and what makes you think we're more than just
another data point on your graph?" so have an answer handy.

<<I know that you are supposed to keep your professional
life and personal life separate, but sometimes that just isn't
possible. When you are interviewing, how do you explain
what happened and why?>>

Obviously, "I had to leave the job because a colleague
stooled on me and the subsequent drug testing led to 6
months at the Betty Ford clinic" is going to be a red flag to
the average manager, but I don't think many employers will
object to you changing jobs so (for example) you could be
nearer to a dying relative, or to reduce the commute from 3
hours to 1 so you could see your kids before they went to bed
at night. That kind of thing is a perfectly logical excuse; it
may still turn off the "you have a life to support your work
habit" manager, but do you really want to work for that kind
of manager? I guess the trick is to emphasize the positive
reasons for your changes, and when forced to explain the
problem situations, justify the negative reasons in such a
manner that you don't seem unreasonable and unreliable, and
don't seem vindictive about the former employer. Blaming
everything on someone else is pretty much a surefire way to
get written off the shortlist.

--Geoff Hart @8^{)}     Pointe-Claire, Quebec
geoff-h -at- mtl -dot- feric -dot- ca

"Perhaps there is something deep and profound behind all those sevens,
something just calling out for us to discover it. But I
suspect that it is only a pernicious, Pythagorean coincidence." George
Miller, "The Magical Number Seven" (1956)

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