95% of American workers
said they planned to look for a new job in 2024. Money's a big part of
this. 45% of American workers say they need a
higher income. Job switchers increase
their salary more quickly, on average, than those
who stay put. In February 2024, people
who stayed at their job for more than three
months increased their salary by 5.1% year-over
-year, whereas those who switched jobs increased
by 5.9%. I ended up almost doubling
my salary after a year and a half, and then from
there,
each year, I probably increased my
salary from anywhere to $15,000 to $35,000 or
$40,000. But hiring professionals
stress that it's important to be strategic about job
moves. You don't want to rise up
the ranks too quickly and then be this expensive
head that's sort of easy to chop in any kind of
downturn. I think companies do
expect an unrealistic level of loyalty, but
unfortunately we're at their whim a lot of
times, right? So we do have to play the
game, and that game is making it seem like
you're going to spend the rest of your life there.
They really do want to be lied to you. So how long is the optimal
amount of time to stay at your job for your career
advancement, salary, and your well-being? The survey data about why
people leave their jobs is pretty consistent across
the board. Ranking at the top of the
list are wanting a higher salary and not feeling
like they have room for growth at their current
job. The desire for higher salaries may lead people
to job hop, which is when
a worker jumps from job
to job within a short period of time. Oftentimes, switching
companies is the fastest way to get to that next
level role in terms of seniority and in terms of
your income level. And the reality behind
that is in your current company for you to get
promoted, for you to get to the next level, that
position needs to open up in a way that it's either
someone leaves or they get promoted or the company
is growing. Gen Z is 36% more likely
than other generations to prioritize adv
ancement
opportunities. Even if there are
opportunities for promotions within their
current workplace, they may still find it easier
to leave. A lot of employers are
reaching out to people and recruiting them. Workers have more
negotiating power that way. You can also find
out more easily what wages are available just by,
you know, going on ZipRecruiter and looking
at job postings, whereas perhaps finding out what
the opportunities are within your company
involves sort of an uncomfortable
conver
sation with your manager. Other common reasons for
leaving are to get better benefits to escape a
toxic work environment, and for better work life
balance. The ancillary thing is, if
I pay people more, would they be happier? If that were true, then
investment banks and private equity firms law
firms would be the happiest places in the
world to work. They notoriously aren't
viewed that way because there's a certain way
that you treat people, whether it's benefits or
whether it's time off or compe
nsation or, quite
frankly, just how you treat people on a day in
and day out basis with interpersonal skills. Those are the things that
end up being more important. Workers also have career
aspirations that may not be fulfilled in their
current positions. Early in my career, I
always had the goal of eventually working for
myself. So I told myself around the age of 30, try
and get enough experience and exposure to the
things that are required to have a consulting
firm. So each job that I've
worke
d, I've always left a company, if I felt like I
had already obtained the skill that I needed to
obtain. And if I wasn't getting opportunities to
obtain the skills that I needed, I went to the
next place. As humans, we tend to
change every 2 to 3 years in terms of our goals,
our priorities, our stages of life. And now the
younger generations ask themselves, well, how
does my career serve me and not the other way
around? There's never a wrong
reason to want to leave. If you want to leave, you
can
leave, right? But you have to be smart
about leaving. Americans consistently
stay at their jobs for a median of 3 to 4 years. In 2022, the median
tenure was 4.1 years. In 2002, it was 3.7, and
back in 1983 it was 3.5 years. But breaking those
numbers down by age paints a clearer picture about
how long Americans should stay at their jobs. Between 2002 and 2022,
workers aged 20 to 24 typically stayed at their
jobs for less than one and a half years. As you look
at older workers, the median tenure
increases
with each age group. I think a lot of people
think of job hopping as being generational, but
it's actually more driven by age than generation. So our parents
generations at the same age as young people
today, a lot of the data shows that they quit at
very similar rates. A Bureau of Labor
Statistics study found that American adults born
between 1957 and 1964 held an average of 12.7 jobs
between the ages of 18 and 56, with nearly half of
those jobs held before the age of 25. I think the
idea that you
have to stay at one company for an extended
period of time comes most probably from our
families and our parents, because their expectation
and their version of success was to stay
within one company, or at least within one career,
their entire life. Our parents would get
pensions, they would work for a company for a
certain amount of time, retire and be paid for
the rest of their lives. So the incentives have
shrunk and so the loyalty is just not there. Another thing to consider
i
s a lot of benefits accrue over time. So if
you switch companies too quickly, you could be
leaving money on the table. For example, some
employers won't allow you to keep your 401(k) match
until you've been there for a certain number of
years. I see a huge wave of Gen Z
and millennial professionals asking
themselves: is this job, is this career right for
me? And what do I want for my
career to look like and to feel like and where do I
find this career? Versus feeling like I
have to stay doing wh
at I've been doing in my
career. Recruiters say there's
more leeway for job switching earlier in your
career. Gen Z can do that right
now because they're in their early 20s, but when
they get to their late 20s or their early 30s. They can't be moving like
that. You're 22 years old. You're not making any
career mistakes right now. There are so many places
that you could go, and none of them would be a
mistake. Because you're so young and you have so
many years to figure out what you want to do. W
hen you're 35, not
really right? Ideally, you're in your
career and you're making a good salary with great
benefits. And once you have that,
you need to be more strategic and intentional
about those moves that you make, because now you can
make a really bad career mistake. Instead of asking how long
you should stay at your job, career experts
suggest shifting your focus to how much you've
accomplished. I think the biggest risk with job
hopping or leaving your job too early is you not
understandi
ng where you are in your development. And that's why I try to
tell people remove your focus on money,
especially if you're being compensated okay, and
you're able to pay your bills and survive. Don't focus on just
getting a huge pay bump before you are actually
ready, before you have gained the right skills. Don't focus on time. Don't focus on money. Focus on skills. And if you are
comfortable in the skills that you are acquiring,
then you are ready to move on to the next level. Workers may also
want to
consider looking at their career as a whole, rather
than honing in on only tenure or compensation. I took a $20,000 pay cut
when I dropped hopped the first time, and I knew
that was okay because it would come back tenfold
based on the experience I was going to be getting
at the new place of work. So I don't focus on the
money. And I know that's a
privileged thing to say because my roles
compensate me well. And at the time when I
started in my career, I just really shrunk my
cost of livi
ng. I would say I lived in a
house with seven other people and my rent was
like $500. So after I took the
$20,000 pay cut, I ended up almost doubling my
salary after a year and a half. And then from there
each year, I probably increased my salary from
anywhere to $15,000 to $35,000 or $40,000. And now that I'm an
independent consultant, I mean, this is the most
that I've earned ever. While it could deliver a
quicker pay raise to switch jobs, often long
term loyalty and tenure are rewarded in the
end. And so if you look at the
top five highest paid people within a company,
they're often the veterans who were there from the
start. The company may only want people in
senior leadership positions who have a
demonstrated track record of reliability, of
sustained performance, and of loyalty to the
company. Companies don't do promotions that often. They might do them once a
year, twice a year. And so if you have only
stuck around two cycles, but the company has a
policy of promoting people abo
ut once every three
years, you know, you may miss out on that big
payday if. You are not a self-aware
person and you don't do a lot of introspection for
what you are and are not ready for, job hopping is
not wise in my opinion. If you're not really able
to assess your true skill set, it's going to be
hard for you to get the opportunities that you
want or reach your end goal. Timing and the broader
economy are important factors as well. How
difficult would it be to find a new job. In January 2024
, the
Glassdoor Employee Confidence Index fell to
its lowest point since 2016. You need to figure out
like the strategy before you give that notice,
because it is taking people 6 to 12 months to
land a new position. A 2023 survey from Insight
Global revealed that 55% of unemployed adults said
they've been searching for a new job for so long
that they are completely burnt out. This trend is
hitting Gen Z the hardest, with two-thirds of them
suffering from application burnout. But 75% of Gen Z
wor
kers would quit their jobs without having a new
one lined up. I personally would never
leave a job if I don't have another opportunity
already lined up. Another part of being
strategic is thinking about how employers are
viewing a candidate's work history. For employers, turnover is
challenging and very expensive because hiring
realistically takes a lot of time and a lot of
resources. 90% of organizations are
concerned about employee retention. Helping
employees upskill is a key component to ret
aining
talent. Companies with strong
learning cultures see higher rates of
retention, more internal mobility, and a healthier
management pipeline compared to those with
smaller levels of commitment. But there's also a
goldilocks dynamic to this. Sometimes companies
don't mind turnover. People think that
employers don't want any turnover. I disagree with
that belief, and I think the companies that don't
want turnover are actually creating more problems
and mistakes, because that would imply that
every
person you hire was right. And I have never met
anybody who's perfect at anything. There are many industries
that don't seem to mind high turnover very much. But some companies may be
taking on a more forgiving attitude when viewing
work history. I think employers are
very, very suspicious of workers who switch jobs
for a tiny incremental pay raise, but they
understand if people are pursuing opportunities to
learn more, to sort of advance their careers, to
get broader experience with some
career goal in
mind. I think the people who are
in hiring positions now that are millennials and
15 years into their career have just a lot more
empathy than older generations, and they
don't expect the lifelong loyalty that older
generations expected. Most people realistically
have some sort of a gap on their resume, and the
longer you are in the workplace, the higher the
chance that you will have a gap, or you will have a
short-term, three month experience on your resume
because that didn't wo
rk out. Employers are human,
and they know that. They understand that. And
the chance that the hiring manager that you're
talking to has gone through that themselves
is actually very high. You have to figure out
what is the best decision for you. And the only
person who can do that is you. And people come to
me all the time, like, just tell me what to do. And I tell them, I can't
tell you what to do. I can tell you like what
I would do in this situation, but I can't
tell you what to do because t
his is your
career and it's going to affect you.
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