The Ugly Truth About Job Hopping

The Ugly Truth About Job Hopping

Sean: Hey, guys! Welcome back to the Leadership Stack broadcast. I’m your host, Sean Si, a.k.a Mr. CEO at 22. And for today, we will be talking about why job hopping will ruin your career.

Now, these are pointers that I want to share with you to help you not to be biased to business people or company owners or leaders out there. This is just really to help you and to help other people out there that you know who might be thinking about doing job hopping.

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So job hopping. What’s so bad about job hopping? There are so many articles out there today that say it’s okay to job hop. In fact, you’re going to get a higher salary faster with job hopping. In fact, you’re going to get more experience at a faster rate when you job hop.

Well, this is really not the case. And I’ll tell you why and I’ll share my story with you later on. But I’m going to go ahead and dissect our points. So when you job hop, the first problem is your mastery becomes shallow.

So usually when people graduate from college, so if you’re a fresh grad or you know someone who’s a fresh grad, there’s really not much mastery when it comes to your professional skills because you’re still going to be going to your first job, learning the ropes, learning how it is to be a professional, introducing yourself and integrating yourself to the culture of that company, learning how to deal with your higher ups, learning how to deal with your lateral colleagues.

Learning all of these things at the same time, you’re not even starting with the mastery of your profession yet. Mastery would start when finally you’ve earned enough trust from your leaders and colleagues that they would give you more and more of the tasks that they need you to produce or need you to finish.

Now, when you get more of these tasks, your mastery starts, but it cannot go that deep if you’re just going to be doing it for a year. You see, when I did SEO, I had to practice it for a long time before finally the market respected SEO Hacker and me as the SEO and main specialist. It took a lot of time for that to happen.

I would argue I think it took me around 4 to 5 years for me to be largely recognized as an expert in the field as really good and perhaps even as the number one SEO specialist in the country.

Thinking that you can get that deep of a mastery in just one or two years is a fallacy. It’s not going to happen. And here’s the problem with that. If you are not a master at something, the world will not pay a lot for you.

That’s the honest truth, because the market demands excellence. You have to be excellent at what you do. In fact, I would argue you need to be the best at what you do for the market to value you and pay you more than what you bring to the table.

And isn’t that the best case scenario when you’re doing less work for more pay? That’s actually the dream. And you can only get there when you are largely recognized as the best in the industry.

And the bonus there is that work will get easier for you as well because you’re becoming a master at it. So the work will get easier for you as you grow in that specialization and yet the market is going to be willing to pay you more.

And if you job hop, that’s not going to happen. Your mastery is just going to be shallow. It’s going to stay shallow in a sea of so many people working on their mastery. You have to compete with them.

And how can you compete when you’re just one or two years trying to master this skill and yet there are people who have tried to master it for five, eight, and ten years?

There’s no way you can compete with them. The next reason why job hopping will ruin your career is that scarcity dictates value. And what is more scarce or what is more rare nowadays are loyal people. Loyal people are getting rarer and rarer.

Today we all know that it’s not true just in the job market, it’s also true in relationships. And it’s a sad fact that it’s true in relationships. There are less loyal people now, and that’s because of the advent of social media, all of this fake news going around, all of these stories that have bubbled up, have been exaggerated just to get views and clicks and readers. We think it’s the truth, but it’s largely not.

So loyalty is something that’s beheld in very high esteem today. And loyalty can easily be seen by how long you have committed yourself to a certain organization. It’s so easy to see if someone is loyal based on the number of years of their stay in their resume.

In fact, as CEO, I have to deal with hundreds of resumes in a month. And usually when I see a resume with just one or two years in five companies or three companies, that’s already a danger sign for me. And I usually pass on those resumes.

I don’t hire people who are mercenaries. You stay for one or two years thinking you can get higher pay, thinking you can master a lot of things, be a jack of all trades, but smart leaders will pass on those kinds of people. So that’s another reason why job hopping will ruin your career, because loyalty is rare and scarcity dictates value.

The next reason why job hopping will ruin your career is because commitment is a critical factor to any relationship that will flourish. Much like how a husband and a wife are committed to each other.

When they’re committed to each other, they’re faithful to each other, they sacrifice for one another, they have unity in their marriage, you can see that that marriage clearly will flourish and grow, and they will grow together and love each other more and give more to each other.

When you job hop, there’s just no commitment. How can one or two years in your resumé enable your future lawyer to see if you’re committed or not? One or two years is honestly not a long time in the job market because again, going to my first point, mastery is so important. Loyalty is so important.

So one or two years will show future employers that you really don’t have that much commitment. And if you don’t have much commitment to your past employers, how can you say that you will have more commitment to your future employers? You just cannot, because history, as the saying goes, repeats itself.

The next reason why job hopping will ruin your career is because there is what we call the cost of switching. In any business, especially because I’m in the tech industry, there’s a lot of software that I have to deal with.

When you switch softwares, there’s a cost. You have to learn that software. You have to transition the database to that software, import everything, do your workflows again.

Much like how if you’re going to switch out from a social media platform to another social media platform, there’s a cost of switching. You cannot just take out all your photos and videos and copy and followers and your likes and switch it to that new platform. It’s going to take a lot of time and effort and learning and getting used to and promotion. There is a cost of switching in life.

When you switch careers, there is a cost for you. You have to switch your mentality now to a new leader, a new management, a new culture, a new way of working, new colleagues. They don’t know you. They see you as ground zero.

Yes, you might have a better salary because you switch jobs, you hop jobs. You might have a better position because you switch jobs and hop jobs. But what does it really cost you as an individual?

And this is why most job hoppers find that their stress levels and anxiety levels are higher than those who are loyal and committed and stay with their employers for three, five, ten years.

Not only that, you would have to prove yourself all over again to these new people surrounding you now in your new working environment. And here’s the bad news. Your employers and the HR team who hired you, if they really reviewed your resumé and they saw that you’re a job hopper, they will treat you like a commodity.

There’s no other way to put it because in their minds they hired you knowing that you jon hop. So in their minds, they’re also going to be thinking, “Oh, the loyalty and commitment of this person is temporal. We’re looking at 1 to 2 years. Let’s not teach this person so many things. Let’s not give this person so many benefits. Let’s not give this person so much freedom. Let’s keep this person on a short leash so that we’re sure if this person makes a mistake, we’re there to fix it immediately.”

Not such a great scenario to be in, right? When you stay with an organization for a long time, five, ten years, you are no longer a commodity. Supposedly you are an invaluable, indispensable part of the company. But also that would largely depend on what you put into your work.

If you’re giving your best, you have an excellent work ethic, you’re serving other people in the organization,  you fit in the culture and core values well, you make yourself indispensable. You are no longer a commodity and the company will do whatever it takes to keep you.

Now, I know there are so many studies out there that will say,” Oh, if you job hop X number of years, your salary will grow, X amount, Y amount. It’s big. It’s bigger than those who have stayed with the company for XY number of years.”

These studies show you the short game. They don’t show you the long game. The long game will dictate that those who are loyal and committed, who are indispensable to the company, they actually get a lot more.

Not just in benefits, not just in salary, but also in their growth, which is extremely important.Because us as human beings, our value is not in the paycheck. Our value is in what we know, in who we are as a person and what we give out to the world.

Now, going back and reviewing our first point about mastery, here’s the thing. The market will pay top notch salaries for those who are at the top 5%-10% in the industry.

So, for example, if SEO Hacker is number one, we’re at the top 1%. For example, other companies out there are going to be willing to pay very good money to get us to support their SEO.

But if SEO Hacker is at the bottom 10%, guess what? Companies are not going to pay anything. Or if they’re going to pay something, it’s going to be for a very, very bad price.

Same with career. If you’re just mediocre in your skillset for what they need you to do, they’re not going to pay you good money. But if you’re one of the top 5%-10%, companies are willing to pay you very good money for what you do.

And lastly, as I wrap this point, the last reason that I could think of on why job hopping will ruin your career is about fulfillment. You will have no real, deep, lasting fulfillment in what you do.

And this is because the work that you do will not have continuity. You will not see through your projects until they mature, until they grow, until they fly out on their own.

Also, fulfillment and joy at the inner core is not found with a higher salary. There’s a saying you can’t buy happiness. Money can’t buy happiness. I agree. The most fulfilling thing in life, the thing that strikes that joy chord in your heart is not when you buy something new. It’s when you give yourself to a calling and serve other people often for free. Those are the times that you and I will feel really fulfilled.

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Thank you so much! Take care and I will see you in the next episode.