Jobhop Jobhop's blog : When Should You Job Hop?

There are times when you definitely should job hop

You may be a strategic job hopper and have your job hops perfectly planned out. As a strategic job hopper you know exactly how many job hops you need to do to get the career position you want and you know exactly what skills you need to collect from every job hop.

But what if you haven’t got a strategy in place and you’re not sure if you should job hop or not, what do you do? Perhaps you’re worried to job hop because you’ve heard it looks bad on your CV, there’s no need to worry, the average time span of a job is now three years so you’re not a solo job hopper, everyone’s doing it. Job hopping is now the norm!

Let’s look at some scenarios of when you should job hop

You’re bored

If you feel like you’re just going through the motions and nothing challenges or excites you anymore then it’s time to job hop. This doesn’t necessarily mean job hopping to another company, have a chat with your employer and see if you can job hop within the company. Tell them that you want the opportunity to learn new skills and to challenge yourself again, this job hop will re-energise you. When you’re happy, challenged and motivated you’ll be more productive which is good news for the company. If there’s no-where for you go within the company then it may be the right time to job hop to somewhere else.

You’re in the wrong industry

For example you’ve taken a marketing job with a car dealership but now you realise that marketing is definitely your dream job but you’re in the wrong industry, you want to be in the food industry. This is a great job hop, you want to do your dream job in the industry that you’re passionate about.

The culture doesn’t fit

The personality of the company doesn’t match your personality. You feel like your face doesn’t fit, this isn’t your fault, you probably have sought after skills and that’s why you were hired. Your recruiter was blown away by your skills and hired you without thinking about culture fit, it happens a lot. Can you change your personality to fit the company personality? It’s an incredibly big ask so it’s probably easier to Job hop to a company which has a similar personality to your own. A lesson to learn here is that you should thoroughly investigate the company culture before accepting the job offer.

Career change

Perhaps whilst you were in education you studied to be an accountant, just because you weren’t really sure what to do and at the time it made sense because most of your family are accountants. Along the way though you had a complete change of mind, you decided do something completely different, a completely new career. This is a brave job hop because you’re completely leaving your comfort zone. You may find that in your new profession you’re going to have to start at the bottom again, but the good news is that you’ll be doing something you love and when you love what you do it will never feel like work.

Job hopping is positive, if any of the above apply to you then you should do something. Doing nothing will make you miserable and non productive which isn’t good for you or your employer.

JOIN Jobhop and spread the word.

Julie Bishop Jobhop.co.uk

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