Long back when I had just started working for a BPO, I was sent a forwarded email from one of my friend who had quit the company and moved onto a better paying company. (Note the 2 things in this sentence – First, he had joined on the same date as me and Second, what he moved onto was only a better paying option and not a better position).
This email was an interview with a Job Hopper. You can search the internet and you will find that article on a hundred different sites today. Anyways here is a link to one of those from CiteHR.
The great mind behind Infosys, Mr. Narayana Murthy once said –
Love your job and not your company because you never know when your company will stop loving you.
Since it was Mr. Murthy who said this, there had to be something of value in that. Ain’t it?
Does that sentence really advice you to become a job hopper?
Job Hopper Vs Job Keeper
Job hopping is not a solution to a better pay and unlike the interview of Mr. JH, it is not always easy to land a job if you CV shows that you are a job hopper. I have come across thousands of CVs and every time I sit for an interview, I ensure that I jot down every thing that looks a little off, in the CV – one of the things being the job continuity. If there is a gap that doesn’t look rite or, if there is one too many companies in the CV with only a few years of experience… it makes me suspicious. I prepare my questions accordingly and more often than not, the interviewee falters in answering one of those.
My judgement is then very simple – REJECT on Stability Factor.
I don’t really remember anyone with a poor stability records clearing in any of my interviews.
From a Company’s perspective, they are doing the right thing. It is not the 70s and the 80s, where training was all OJT only. You are hired and put into the role and you learn as you work.
Time has changed. Companies invest a lot of money to train you to bring you up to the expectations in terms of skills. It just doesn’t make any practical sense to hire somebody whose average tenure with an organization is about 8 months, when I know that the training period in my company is about 4 months. Hence, it is more likelier that you will get rejected, if you CV doesn’t look good.
The Advantages of being a Job Keeper – an Employee’s Perspective
Now let us look at it from another perspective – the perspective of an employee.
Is Loyalty is not the reason why you stay with a company? I don’t think so. You don’t need to be loyal but that doesn’t mean that you should be honest and truthful to your work (we can discuss more about this in another post).
My stay with a company is for a lot more than proving my loyalty. It is to grow in my career, which can only happen if you acquire new and better skills and get groomed for your next role.
If you noticed the above statement, you would have seen that acquiring newer skills is a by-product of that primary objective of mine.. but that is another real reason why I stick to a company.
Staying with an organization, gives you access to a lot more things. You are considered as worthy of the next role only when you build that confidence in people. And confidence comes with time.
Of Course, you might compromise on your package a little but that is all taken care off in the long term, if you keep growing in the organization.
So, back to what Mr. Murthy said. He was right in saying, “Don’t love your company, instead love yourself”. When you are training yourself, learning new skills and acquiring knowledge, you are loving yourself. Your reason to stick around with a company is not because you love them, instead it is because you love yourself.
The only thing you should keep in mind in being a Job Keeper is to not start to love your company and expect that they will love you in return and keep you forever. You are just a part of a balance sheet for them. The day your side of the balance looks heavy, they will shed some load. And that load could be you..