Professionals who seem like job hoppers present a risk to hiring managers. Taking them on is a gamble. It could be a waste of money if they decide to up and leave several months after being hired.

But what can you do to find out if they’ll stick around at your business? Steph looks at some of the methods we use in this video.

To read more on this topic, view our blog post here: “Should You Hire A Job Hopper? A Guide For Hiring Managers”

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Transcript

Hi there. I’m Steph from Blues Point and today I’m going to talk to you a bit about job hopping.

Today we’re going to talk about it from the client’s perspective.

What Is A Job Hopper?

What we would call a job hopper is somebody who, on their CV it looks like they just jump from job to job. Maybe six months here, eight months there.

That can be a real concern for clients, obviously, they want to see that someone is capable of staying in a job for a long time and maybe get promoted in the role, or something like that.

That’s a lot more attractive than somebody that just keeps moving on and perhaps can’t give very good reasons for it.

An Example Of This

So I’m going to give the example of a client I spoke to last year, who, I’d sent over a CV, and on face value the client was not happy with the CV.

He said: “Steph, why have you sent me this person? They just look like a job hopper.”

I had of course done my due diligence on that candidate and I thought they were a good candidate for the role. But, to be honest, they’d had a bit of a rocky patch in their CV, moved jobs quite a few times.

I think sometimes when we deal with people who have perhaps progressed through the ranks of a job, you know, back in the days when a job for life a was a real thing, people a little bit older than me, perhaps they sometimes perceive – they’re a bit confused as to why people move from job to job, and maybe why they can’t find what they’re looking for. They should stay in one place and settle down but working in recruitment , I know that’s not really how things are these days.

And quite often, it’s the case that we might need to try several different environments to really understand what works for us.

To give an example from my own experience, I’ve been in my job for 9 years now. I’ve been with Blues Point for 9 years, I’m very happy here. But before that, I think I had six jobs in two years after getting made redundant.

Perhaps that’s why I’m a bit more sympathetic towards people that are perhaps perceived to be job hoppers, because I know what it’s like to try and get taken seriously when your CV looks like maybe you struggle to stay in the same place.

So what I’d just like to talk about today is to encourage clients to use some of the tools that we’ve got, to try and establish whether someone really is a job hopper or whether it’s that they’ve had to make choices in order to find the right position.

Point #1

The first thing is to look at the candidate’s pattern on their CV.

Look at the roles that they’ve stayed in longer and the roles that they haven’t stayed in so long, is there a particular pattern there?

If it’s a massive corporate company, they don’t like it very much, perhaps they prefer a smaller environment. So look out for patterns, that kind of thing.

Also, have a look at what their ambition is. So are they someone who’s just a high-flyer?

Are they someone that’s moving from job to job because they perhaps feel like they’re outgrowing the role? That they’re not finding it all that challenging and stuff?

Is that a pattern for them?

And if that’s a pattern, and if what you’re offering is a really challenging role, then it’s certainly worth a conversation with that person. Just to see if their ambition aligns with the role you’re actually offering.

Point #2

And the next thing I would suggest is to use the tools we have at our disposal such as video interviewing.

So ask your recruitment consultant, myself, to do a video interview with the person and just see for yourself what the candidate has to say about why they’ve moved from job to job.

It’s always worth really drilling down and actually finding out what their reasons are.

“Career progression” is not a good reason but you scratch the surface of career progression, it could be that they’ve just been overlooked for a promotion or, perhaps, promises made at interview have not been kept.

And asking for money is not a good reason either, of course, but perhaps the person’s been in their job for a long time and been underpaid, perhaps.

There are reasons why we do move on for money sometimes.

Psychometric Assessments

The other thing I would suggest is to use psychometric assessments to get a really thorough picture of the person.

So something like Thomas International Personality Profiler is the assessment that we use and that will tell you if someone gets bored easily, for example. That will be quite a common thing. So somebody who get’s bored easily isn’t going to last very long in a mundane job, or something that you can’t hit them with fresh challenges all the time, that person’s probably going to move on.

Final Thoughts

So ultimately, what I’m saying here is, if you perceive someone to be a job hopper just by looking at their CV, if I’ve sent that CV to one of my clients, it’s because I believe that that person is a good candidate for that job so what I would say to you is don’t dismiss them without talking to them first.

Don’t make a decision based on their CV because a CV is just a piece of paper. It’s much more productive to have a conversation with the person, you might find that they are the right candidate after all.

So hopefully this has been useful. Next week, I’ll be doing a similar topic but I’ll be talking to people that are looking for jobs, who perhaps perceive that their CV reads like they are a job hopper and giving them some tips on how to overcome that. And how to make it clear that they are a really great candidate.

Thanks very much.