Jobseeker shares employer he interviewed with specifically looked for ‘job hoppers’

SINGAPORE: Job hopping often raises a red flag in recruitment, but what if being a job hopper is what helps you bag the job? A jobseeker shared online that an employer he once interviewed with specifically looked for “job hoppers” in the finance industry because they showed “adaptability and fast learning capability”.

Sharing more details of his conversation with the employer, he wrote, “Yes, you won’t know things from the start, but you will be able to get basic knowledge within three months and could be able to be independent. Six months, you should be at least at an advanced stage. One to two years, you should outgrow your current role, and we should be able to cross-function you for new things. He said team rotation is always done and encouraged in the firm. Even VPs change roles every two to three years.”

He said that the employer also told him, “He was worried I would stay stagnant in a company for years. Either you rotate teams or change roles in other companies. That’s where you learn new skills.”

“He specifically said if our dinosaur mindset doesn’t change, we will never be able to capture younger talent. As department heads, we need to change our working model and capture the best talent as much as possible,” he shared further.

Although from a different industry, his comment came after a netizen prompted a discussion about job hopping on r/singaporejobs, sharing concerns about what he described as backlash from employers towards younger hires in the information and technology (IT) industry, as their average years of service have been getting shorter.

He noted that while there is nothing wrong with staying at a company for a shorter period than the norm, as younger hires figure out their place in the industry or job hop for higher pay, hiring has now been filtered for people “ready to hit the ground running”.

“Budget and time for training is less of a priority since by the time somebody gets up to speed, they are likely about 25 to 50% through their ‘lifespan’ in the role within the organisation,” he added.

The same concerns were raised by commenters, with one commenter saying that companies not supporting employee training is simply “inevitable.”

“Why would an organisation bother training somebody if they don’t think that he/she will stay around long to be worth the investment of time and effort? Or worse, you are just training him for a future competitor”, he said, adding that companies are not providing training in response to job hoppers who “sought to game the system”.

Others added that employers who pay new hires higher salaries expect an “immediate” return on investment (ROI). /TISG

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