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Job-hopping a common trend among Indian employees: Survey

Employers consider job-hopping as a display of lack of loyalty.

January 23, 2019 / 05:14 PM IST

Job-hopping has become a common trend among the Indian workforce. A survey by employment portal Indeed said that 60 percent of Indian workers have job-hopped in the past.

The survey said that women employees are less likely to hop jobs in the short term when compared to their male counterparts.

"The growing trend is more visible amongst the millennial workforce, with 56 percent of respondents having job-hopped in a short duration at least once," the survey added.

About 85 percent of those who hopped jobs said that they would add a job to their resume regardless of how long they had stayed in that role.

The survey said that while job hopping is not a new one, the Indian workforce is seeing a climb in project-based work and contract work, which is fuelling a willingness to switch roles more readily.

Why do they switch jobs?

The most popular reasons for leaving a role in a short period of time were that the job did not live up to expectations (30 percent), it was an unhappy work environment (29 percent), or they were offered a better role elsewhere (38 percent).

As per the survey, 49 percent of respondents saw job hopping as an opportunity to learn new skills and over 43 percent stated job hopping could help boost their resume or identify greater job prospects.

The trend is more visible in mid-sized companies with 200-500 employees, in comparison to smaller organisations. Interestingly, ‘stickiness’ seems to be higher in traditional sectors of manufacturing with 49 percent of respondents in manufacturing & utilities having never voluntarily left a role after a short period of time. This is in comparison to 40 percent of respondents working in the IT & telecom sectors.

Employers despise job-hopping

In contrast to the attitudes of job seekers, employers continue to believe that frequent job movements are indicative of indecisiveness in a candidate and demonstrate a lack of loyalty.

About 87 percent of employers surveyed stated that they had chosen not to interview a candidate in the past due to a history of short-term jobs. It therefore comes as no surprise that people who job hopped more frequently felt that they were missing out on jobs.

In the survey, 69 percent of respondents who had changed jobs twice in the last five years stated they had been overlooked in roles they were qualified for, due to their history of job hopping.

However, whilst employers may take a different view towards job hopping, staying in the same role does not always indicate the right job fit. Although 44 percent of respondents stated they have never job-hopped in the past, 7 in 10 respondents also reported that they had stayed in roles longer than they wanted to in order to avoid being perceived as a job hopper.

"The millennial workforce is an interesting cohort and the world is always curious about their next move. Employers need to devise ways in which they can retain and continue to attract this talent pool," said Sashi Kumar, Managing Director, Indeed India.

Those surveyed considered a short period of employment to be 16 months or less.

The research was conducted by Censuswide, with 1,002 employed respondents in India between July and August 2018.

Moneycontrol News
first published: Jan 23, 2019 05:11 pm

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