Job-Hopping: Smart Strategy?

The following article appeared as a guest blog on the Balanced WorkLife website on February 18, 2011:

Although the recent recession and its attendant real estate crisis slowed the pace, frequent job-hopping continues to be the strategy of choice among many North American workers, especially those under the age of 35.  And why shouldn’t it be? According to Chicago-based outplacement firm Challenger, Grey and Christmas, who survey on the topic annually, fully 94% of individuals changing jobs report receiving an increase in some combination of salary, bonus, benefits and perks. 

But is frequent job-hopping the right strategy for everyone?  Perhaps more importantly, does the instant gratification of a bigger pay packet necessarily lead to a better career path and greater personal satisfaction and well-being?

The answer, I would maintain, is similar to that given for many other perplexing questions—“It depends.”

For the purposes of this article, I am going to lay to one side the very folks that began the trend of frequent  job-changing more than two decades ago – the programmers, software engineers and other highly-skilled technical workers who made places like San Jose, Research Triangle and the 128 Corridor look and feel like the Sacramento or Yukon gold fields. My focus will be on management, the people who lead groups, functions or whole divisions within organizations. My thinking is very much based on my own experience as a manager at half-dozen large organizations or companies.

I fell into a pattern of job-hopping completely by accident. My initial career right out of university was as a newspaper reporter and editor in New England. One of the things that attracted me to journalism was that it gives you a license to ask questions – to continuously learn.  It also makes you curious about who holds and exercises power.  It was in that context that I made my first real career jump—to politics. I became a press secretary, first to Senator Edward W. Brooke; then to Senator Bob Dole.

Working in government was fascinating. Among other things, it soon became apparent that the nexus of power was not to be found in the halls, corridors and anterooms of Washington. D.C.  Business seemed a more likely answer.  Thus, a few years later, when IBM approached, I was very open to making a second leap, this time to the corporate sector.

This was the IBM of the early 1980’s, superbly confident and deeply committed to employee education and promotion from within. The company had an education center in Armonk, New York that rivalled the facilities one might find at a top liberal arts college. I was swiftly put through New Manager’s School, and, a year later, a kind of mini-MBA program called Advanced Management School.  I was made head of External Programs, IBM’s version of the State Department. There I came to see that while IBM wasn’t exactly running the world, they had pretty good access to those who did.

Life was good. But then, abruptly, I job-hopped again. Why?  The long arm of government, in the form of the Reagan Administration, reached out and grabbed me. After initially rebuffing recruitment efforts, one day I was called in by my boss, the CEO of IBM World Trade. “I received a call from Vice-president George Bush today,” he said. “It seems they need you. I think your taking this job offer is an intelligence test.” Not want to be revealed as completely stupid, I took the position.

It was a mistake at several levels. First, I was leaving a job I really liked. Second, I was leaving a department—my people—in the lurch. And third, I was leaving a boss, the CEO of World Trade, who, while in some ways a delusional megalomaniac, was at least MY delusional megalomaniac.  

I did not know my new boss, who had once been a roommate of George Bush’s at Yale. Getting to know him did not improve the situation. I stayed two years—in that day and age, it was thought ruinous to stay for a lesser period—and got out.

The experience completely changed my career philosophy. I decided I would no longer entertain frequent and abrupt job changes.  On the other hand, I also decided, in line with my desire to experience continuous learning (and avoid boredom), I would swap out not only companies, but also sectors, every five or six years.

My template has been fairly straight-forward. I come in, reorganize and rejuvenate a function; identify and, if necessary, recruit a successor; then after five or six years, move to the next opportunity. My experience taught me that a five- or six-year cycle allowed for an 18-month learning curve; three or more years of peak performance (and mentoring) and a year or so of transition.

I did this at Ford, IBM (yes, I returned for six years), CAE (an aerospace company focused on flight simulation), CIBC and Canada Post Corporation.  In most instances I worked for new- to- the-job CEOs, and was able to bring to the task a toolkit based on cumulative, real-world experience.

There are many reasons senior executives make a career change. Some are passed over for the very top job and want to find another path to the corner office. Some are lured by better compensation packages. Others move—or don’t move-- for lifestyle reasons.

I have a brother, Tom, who has worked for several consulting firms, including McKinsey and CSC Index. He always juxtaposed the consulting model, with its simultaneous multiple clients, with my model. “We’re proudly promiscuous,” Tom would say. “You, on the other hand, are serially monogamous.”

So is job-hopping a smart thing for management?  It depends. In my case, I needed to find a model that not only stimulated me to do my best work, but also satisfied my employers that a five or six year stint was in their best interests, too.  It worked well for my needs.  And the companies seemed well satisfied. And there is, of course, the additional bonus that you will get a lot of Christmas cards from all of the executive recruiters who have placed you over the years!

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