[Anonymous]

I recently read a few articles on the general positive/negative views of job-hopping including the article below:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeannemeister/2012/08/14/job-hopping-is-the-new-normal-for-millennials-three-ways-to-prevent-a-human-resource-nightmare/2/

I was wondering how you all feel this applies to the accounting field. Is it more accepted/expected in our field? Does it depend on tax/audit/private/govt?

[How many letters do you need]

It depends on a lot of things! The stage of your career is probably the biggest. Employers expect a little job hopping fairly early on…but if you are still hopping 5 years later it could end up as an issue. I have a bit of a hopper background and I've made an art form out of turning it into a positive (which in my mind, it is). To be clear…I mean greater than 1 year and less than 2 as an effective hopper. Less than a year any more than once or twice on a resume will seriously damage your options unless you have good reasoning. I will say this…being a hopper has its serious obstacles….biggest of which are references. I've got plenty of solid coworker and customer (VP level of departments I've supported) but direct supervisors tend to take it a little personal when you leave after 18 months. Most will say they will give you a reference but often times are too offended to actually do it. Especially if things are really rocking when you leave and they go to shit after. It's not very fair but something you should all be aware of if you decide to hop around a little bit.

MBA,CMA,CPA, CFF?, ABV?

[fuzyfro89]

Don't sweat it. If a company is sensitive about people job-hopping, they should pay you an absurd amount of money and give you crazy benefits to stay. Some companies actually do this (think: Google, Facebook, investment banks, etc), but it's out of necessity, and they still have trouble retaining people. I think the trend is to see change as a good thing, not a bad one.

With that said, regardless of whether you stayed somewhere for 11 months or 4 years, you should be able to rationally explain why you left/want to leave and what you're looking for.

Examples I like to use:

1 – Recent accounting graduate starts at EY audit in fall 2010. Leaves EY in fall 2011 for a financial analyst role at ABC Company. Leaves ABC Co in Dec 2012 to be a senior financial analyst at DEF Co.

2 – Recent accounting graduate starts at EY audit in fall 2010. In 2014, now looking for a new position.

Let's say I am a HR person looking to hire someone with 3-4 years of experience with at least some accounting background. You see the two resumes above. Would you think poorly of Candidate 1 because they had 3 jobs in 4 years, or favorably upon Candidate 2 because they stayed with one company for 4 years? Maybe, maybe not. It depends on what experience you're looking for your ideal candidate to have. Would you favor #2 just because of “loyalty”?

Personally, I could care less about loyalty. In an ideal world, I would like to hire someone who I thought would stay for at least 2 years, but today you really never known. People go back to get their MBA, move to be closer to a gf/bf/family, get a good job offer and move away, or any number of other reasons.

In my totally made up example, #1 had clear motivation for moving from one place to another (which I would obviously ask about in an interview to get their perspective), but wouldn't hold it against someone for taking promotions and broadening their skills. #2 seems solid as well, though loyalty alone doesn't make me want them. In fact, if #2 spent all their time on one big hedge fund for 90% of their time, they might actually be pretty useless (unless my company is also a hedge fund).

Point is: have rational explanations for why you did what you did… whether you stayed somewhere for 4 years, or if you left multiple jobs within 18 months while getting raises/promotions and progressively more challenging roles. The key is to make sure that over time, you are able to have a positive relationship with 2+ people to serve as your references if/when they are needed.

[Anonymous]

Job hopping is pretty normal. Especially if you start in public accounting it's not rare to have around three different jobs in under six years.

But it depends – obviously changing for promotions, to move to a new city or to change types of jobs (e.g. from public accounting to industry) are more expected. For example, changing from Kpmg to Pwc to Grant Thornton or from staff accountant I to staff accountant I to staff accountant I in a five year period would be hard to explain.

[How many letters do you need]

Fuzzy: While I appreciate and agree with your perspective, the important thing to realize is that there is still plenty of old guard out there. While you and I may see things the same way, the true decision makers for my level are usually the the CFOs and VP of Finance guys who have been around a long time. In reality, we may be able to change the way it will be for those coming up after us, but for us, we still have to work with an old set of rules. Of course I realize that there are entire companies built on bucking the old guard, but in the scheme of things these are still in the vast minority of opportunities out there. Unfortunately true evolution takes time….

MBA,CMA,CPA, CFF?, ABV?

[taxman89]

looking for an employee with longevity isnt necessarily about looking for loyalty. In the example above. the employee with 4 yrs exp at 1 place is going to learn more and have a better/more in-depth skill set then the person that was hired and spent the next year/year and a half looking elsewhere for a promotion. Personally if i left after a year or a yaer and a half of my first job out of school i would not have that much more knowledge and skills of a recent grad (i am in tax so its cyclical). however after 3 years i have been through the cycle 3 times now and have a much greater understanding than i would have if i switched companies every year. the first year or so it spent figuring out how the company's process (Etc) work.

I dont work in HR (thank goodness) but i would take someone (all else being equal) with 4 years exp at one place over someone with 1.5 years at 3 difference places any day. not only for the increased likelihood they stay but also for the increased skill set

edit: and i am a millennial and very much not a “old guard”

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[How many letters do you need]

Taxman: you bring up some good points. But what about the guy who has been at three different companies who now has an understanding of the systems of three different companies; and can now bring that experience to you. I can't speak for tax but in the corporate world sometimes people learn all they can in a particular role in 18 months (I know I did). I'm not saying all job hoppers are like that….Some are impatient and arrogant…but if you find the one who was just bored what you have is a solid employee. I once worked for a company for 7 months….A big one….and was able to save them about 2 million dollars in seven months. You think they would have turned back the clock and not hired me because I only stayed 7 months?

MBA,CMA,CPA, CFF?, ABV?

[taxman89]

It takes a minimum of 4 months start to finish to hire someone at my company (big company), longer if we need an experienced hire. If someone left 7 months later they could probably assume bridges are effectively burned because, even if you brought value for 7 months, just wasted 4 months of pain in the a$$.

imo if you have one short period job (less than 2 years) and then are in your next job for at least 3-5 years its not a big deal as there are alot of different situations that could cause a short period job. but once you have consecutive short period jobs then it looks more and more like you are the issue not the job situation. I realize that this is not the case in some situations but it IS the perception and i think its an important thing to consider when thinking about job hopping

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[How many letters do you need]

Taxman: you misunderstand me. I'm not saying it doesn't make a difference in some companies. It certainly does, what I'm saying is that it shouldn't. In my above example you are clearly thinking of yourself first and not the shareholders. The shareholders just made a huge ROI on my 7 month stint and that's always the correct decision. Even if you took into account the cost of turnover and hiring (which isn't truly incremental..because let's face it most of us are fixed costs companies try to leverage)…even then I provided a huge ROI. Is it sometimes a pain in the ass as a manager? Sure. But it still turned out to be the best decision for the company. Truth is I made a greater impact in seven months there than most people do in four years elsewhere.

MBA,CMA,CPA, CFF?, ABV?

[taxman89]

your impact is irrelevant to the discussion (also 2 mil is relative (that wouldnt even come close to moving the rate in my dept) and assumes whoever would have been doing your job if you were not there would not have also found the savings or other savings…but again , that is irrelevant). the discussion s whether consistent job hopping is accepted or if it has an impact on your future job prospects. I would argue that if you said in your interview that you were leaving in 7mon to a year later that you would not find a single employee that would hire you. imo having a history of consecutive job hopping (again there is an important distinction between have 1 short period job and many) would definitely hinder future job prospects

not saying someone who job hops is a bad employee/person/w/e just saying you need to be aware of what it projects.

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[taxman89]

the other side of the coin is if someone has been at the same job with not promotion or anything for 20 years you have to wonder about their motivation/dedications….it works both ways. its just important to be aware of how you become portrayed because of the decisions you make

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[Anonymous]

I think one of the main components in this is the generational differences (which you all slightly alluded to)…

I for one, am a Gen Y-er and my mom is a Gen X-er. As I recently expressed my desire to look for a different job, she was concerned because to her I was “job-hopping” and didn't want it to have a negative effect on me. I assured her that's just how things were done these days and that it's OK for me to do this because I'm still young and early on in my profession…but on second thought, I wasn't so sure I was right about that.

Hence, the reason for reading the articles on job-hopping. It's not that I enjoy looking for work, it's just that I'm still trying to find where I fit within the world of accounting. I want to make sure I use due diligence and make sure I KNOW that I'm in the right practice area.

[fiona87]

This thread is insanely timely, thank you all for your insight.

I left a public job two months ago during a buyout, after working there for 2.25 years (three busy seasons), and took a job as an assistant controller. However, the job has ended up being WAY different than what was pitched to me, I'm unhappy, and am considering jumping back to public. I hate the tax season hours, but am poking around to see if there's any smaller local place that'll pay me a bit less than they'd pay a regular 80-hours-a-week-February-through-April employee to work 30-40 hours/week May-Dec and then 40-50 during tax season. I feel like that makes me come across as lazy, but I've got two little kids and three years of 60 hours a week busy seasons makes me hate my life. It's just that I really genuinely enjoy doing taxes.

GAH. Life decisions, man. In any case, good thread.

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[GSU-CPA]

I completely agree with tax man… i will try and explain this a bit better.

I used to be a supervisor at Best Buy in my earlier years and i did 1000s of interviews and hired 100's of employees. It came to the point where the first thing on the resume i would look at is how long the applicant has been in their previous 2-3 jobs.

There is nothing NOTHING worse then spending a week doing interviews to select the employee, having them go through orientation with HR, training them for 3-4 months and then them leaving 3-4 months after that. In best buy all employees had to pass 3 interviews before being hired (one interview with supervisor, one with manager and one with general manager). Imagine the time and it takes from all those 3 important people that could be doing something alot more productive for the company in order to pick that employee ( keep in mind you are interviewing on average 10 employees to hire that one employee). So that employee leaves after 7-8 months maybe a year and now you have to repeat that process again. This means i wasted about 4 months training that employee when god knows i had better things to do. Now i have to spend another 4 months training another employee. So in total i just spent 8 months training out of 18 months because i hired a job hopper.

Once i started mainly looking at non job hoppers i was able to start getting some quality employees that worked for me for years and i helped them get promoted to senior/supervisor levels. I got so good at doing interviews that all the managers pretty much approved anyone i passed through to them because. My department started doing great we started winning banners for being the best department in the territory (territory consisted of about 400-500 stores). We employees became friends went out to play basketball/flag football/ paintball the whole work atmosphere became really really good and it showed in our productivity. If you got people coming and leaving every 12 months then you cant really form that bond. When i decided to leave best buy after working there 5 years to fully focus on my accounting degree i made sure that one of the guys i hired 3 years ago got my position. I am still friends with some of those guys.

I plan on owning my own business and you better believe that once i hire a good person ill do everything in my power to keep them.

There is nothing worse then Job Hoppers.

So in the example you gave i probably wouldnt even consider the guy that had 4 different jobs in 4 years.

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[Anonymous]

GSU-CPA: you make valid points. I understand what it costs (monetarily and otherwise) to hire and train someone for a position. But I think the important thing is one point you made when you said:

“you better believe that once i hire a good person ill do everything in my power to keep them. “

Not many companies/employers have that mentality. If I don't feel like there is room for growth in my current position, I reserve the right to look for another job. I don't want to have to sacrifice my career trajectory/goals/finances for the sake of not being considered a job-hopper. To me the benefits of leaving outweigh the costs.

If you don't want to hire people every year or so, then employers should work at making the job more engaging, mapping out a career path for new hires that show potential for growth, and get benefits that make sticking with your firm a no-brainer.

When the supply of accounting positions is greater than the amount of accountants in the workforce, the burden is on the employers to make their company worth staying with.

[How many letters do you need]

Taxman: we must agree to disagree I suppose, I cant believe you believe that the level of contribution is irrelevant in a hiring decision. To me its easily one of the top 3 things when I hire somebody.

As a manager if somebody told me that they can come on board, minimal training (full speed in 30 days) and six months after contribute directly to the bottom line 2M in a role that most people contribute much less….you bet your ass I'm going to hire that person. But that's what makes me me and you you I suppose!

MBA,CMA,CPA, CFF?, ABV?

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