Until about a decade and a half ago, Indians spent years trying to get a job in a government department or a PSU, and if they were lucky enough to bag one, they would stay in it until retirement. “Job security” was a thing, and people would toil their entire lifetimes for a single employer with their sights set on post-retirement benefits such as pension, provident fund and gratuity that would see them through old age.

There was no such thing as job hopping. In most cases, the employer had the last word on the tenure of employment. If a new hire could deliver the same or better results than an incumbent employee, the latter was dispensable. This is still true in sectors where labour supply is plentiful and the business outcome does not depend on the incumbent.

All that changed with globalisation. Spending your lifetime with a single employer is no longer a considered the ideal. Job tenures are becoming shorter and switching jobs is a regular thing to do. A study carried out by an executive search firm found that only 12% of the respondents had spent more than 10 years in their current company and the majority had spent just two-five years in their current jobs.

But, switching companies too often — every six months to a year — is still frowned upon. Most people try to give a job at least a couple of years before moving on to another one. And quick job switches inevitably warrant a barrage of questions from interviewers on one’s motives for the changes. Also, somehow, saying you’re leaving a job to seek a more challenging role seems professionally more acceptable than saying you’re taking up a more lucrative offer.

Employers, too, don’t look kindly on job hoppers. Companies work hard to retain employees as recruiting and training people is an expensive process. Human resource models have typically been designed keeping employee retention and growth in mind. Employers even try to put “golden handcuffs” (benefits, typically deferred payments, given to employees to discourage them from leaving their job) on resources who are in high demand because they possess niche or “hot” skills. They also offer increasingly challenging roles to make the employee feel valued. But, despite all of this, job-hopping is a regular thing now.

If you give the matter deeper thought, you will realise that what we’ve been doing all this while actually switching employers and not really jobs. We may be adding new skills, but they usually build on existing ones and are in our respective domains of experience and expertise. What we’ve been doing is employer hopping, while keeping our core jobs the same. So, in that sense, the term “job-hopping” is a bit wrongly worded.

There are new trends at play now. We are moving from so-called job-hopping to actual career-hopping. People are throwing caution to the wind to pursue their passions and be their own masters. Most of us know someone who has spent some years in the corporate sector, given it up to pursue their passion for a sport or to travel, and then, a year down the line, become an entrepreneur by setting up a restaurant or some other business. That’s what’s fuelling the Indian startup dream. Then there are those to give up materially comfortable lives and high-paying jobs to work in remote areas for the uplift of people.

Until a few years ago, such people were an exception, but not anymore. With the number of people giving up well-established careers to follow their passions rising, employers need to brace themselves for career-hopping.

Source: http://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/just-like-that/career-hopping-will-replace-job-hopping/