Jobhop Jobhop's blog : Can Job Hopping Help You Get The Best Tech Jobs?

“Tech Job” “Tech industry” ‘Tech start-up,” sounds cool doesn’t it. You can understand why young job seekers are excited by the possibility of working in tech, as well as sounding cool; you can wear jeans and T-shirts every day, not just at the weekends!

Just like any job, though, there are great places to work at and then there are the not so great places to work at, so, is job hopping the way to get the best tech jobs?

Job hopping is now normal, the average life span of a job is three years, in the tech industry job hopping is very much the norm. It’s an industry where everything changes at rapid speeds, people who embrace change are hired. It goes without saying that it’s completely accepted that people want to up-skill quickly and get many different experiences under their belt, you wouldn’t fit in if you weren’t like that. Once you start working in the tech industry you’ll soon realise that you can’t afford to stay in the same place doing the job every day for years, your skills will grow stale, things quickly move on, but you’ll get left behind. Job hopping keeps you fresh, up-skilled, connected, exciting, with the pick of the best tech jobs.

Larry Cornett, Ceo of Voicekick calls job hopping in the tech industry “The Silicon Valley promotion!”

Tech start-ups will always have job-hoppers, employees end up hopping because their skills overtake what the startup founders can pay them. But that doesn’t stop employees hopping back once the start-up makes it big and can afford to bring them back onto the team.

So the short answer is yes, job hopping can help you get the best tech jobs.

If you don’t job hop in the tech industry, you could be looked at as someone who lacks ambition, isn’t up to date or worse, perceived as someone who isn’t wanted by any other company.

What tips are there for a tech job hopper?

Be prepared to hit the ground running

You’ll be expected to “know your stuff” and get on with it. You should also be able to hit the ground running when it comes to mucking in and getting to know your team very quickly. If you’ve job hopped a few times you’ll be able to build rapport quickly, if you’re new to job hopping, then practise building rapport quickly by going to plenty of networking events.

Build up your contacts

Keep connecting with people, remember the power is in the second connection. That means who you connect with may not be the person who offers you your next fantastic job hop, but it might be someone they know. Go to lots of tech networks, tech events, and conferences, as well as making a point of joining tech groups and discussions online.

Make sure your job hopping is done strategically

Always job hop strategically, know who it is you want to work for, source and attract them, make sure they get to hear about you. Start off by looking for their conversation trails on social media, engage with them and their employees. Once you’ve built up a relationship with them, start chatting to them about what it is you do and how it could help their business. The art is to make it look like they’ve stumbled upon your online portfolios, little do they know that you’ve already worked out what salary you’re going to be on once you start work there and where you’ll be sitting in the office!

Keep learning

Take advantage of the internet and use it to keep up-skilling. There are free and paid for tuition available in every corner of the net; there are communities where everyone collaborates to help, there are videos to watch and podcasts to listen to. In the tech industry, you have to be relevant every day if you’re not then you’ve had your day.

Leave amicably

Always leave amicably, the tech industry is very close knit. An IDC study in 2014 estimated that the number of professional developers as well as communications technology workers around the world is 29million. Think about it; 29million sounds a lot, but it isn’t really, considering the size of the world and its population. Good tech companies like to stay clustered; they collaborate with each other; they meet up at tech events all over the world, if they don’t know each other well, they probably know each other, it would be a silly move to leave a tech company on bad terms. It would be even sillier to leave on bad terms if you take the rest of the world away and just leave the UK, according to the Office for National Statistics, there are only 333,000 developers/software professionals, that’s just 0.5% population. There are 27 key digital tech clusters across the UK, and each cluster has a bridge to another cluster.

A good job hopper knows the tech world is close-knit, they would always want leave with the door left opened for them in case they wanted to return.

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Julie Bishop Jobhop.co.uk

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