Younger generations switching roles frequently for greater reward

After what has been dubbed “The Great Resignation” following the Covid-19 pandemic, and the resulting recruitment crisis, younger generations have been turning to job hopping in order to further their career prospects and enhance their pay.

Christopher Lake, assistant professor of management at the University of Alaska, has defined job hopping as switching roles once a year. US statistics show that employees under the age of 34, change jobs most frequently. In the UK employment market where organisations are struggling to hire, employees have been experiencing the freedom and autonomy to choose where they work and for how long. Lake states:

“When people change jobs, they collect skills, abilities and knowledge they can use in a future role...A worker that’s job hopped will likely have a greater wealth of experience to draw from, leading to a wider variety of jobs and companies available to them.”

Job hopping can be seen with a certain stigma however, by more senior, older, hiring managers who may have entered the workforce in an age where loyalty to companies was important. This can mean that job hopping can be seen as a red flag by some employers in some industries, which could put the candidate at a disadvantage, especially when the employment market begins to swing back into the favour of the employers once again.

When employers are presented with candidates who have extensive employment histories over a fairly short period of time, it is important to verify each period of employment and conduct integrity checks, to ensure that there is not a different underlying reason for the frequent changes in job.