Far from job-hopping being a drawback, Selena Rezvani* says it is essential for young millennial women trying to build a career and achieve financial success.
There are strong arguments for and against it, but for millennial women, job-hopping should be a no-brainer.
The everyday messages we hear about millennial workers paint them as workplace disruptors of the most undesirable kind.
With their short tenures and even shorter attention spans for work, they’re uprooting the very fabric of the workforce as we know it. Right?
Here’s an angle that most commentators and career experts won’t tell you.
Millennials, and millennial women in particular, should job-hop if they want to accelerate their career success.
The Business Insider magazine concluded that job-hopping is hurting millennials in the workforce.
The practice makes it less likely that a future employer will want to hire them.
Not only does it take time and effort to cultivate work that you love, organisations value loyalty and patience.
Though this may be true in some cases, a study showed “75 per cent of employees ages 18 to 34 view job hopping as beneficial compared to 59 per cent of workers ages 35 to 54 and 51 per cent of those 55 and older.”
This collision of two very different approaches could spell trouble for the workforce as more millennials continue to seek the benefits of jumping around.
The millennial generation is by far the most educated and most indebted generation we’ve ever seen.
That mixture leads them to seek ways to bolster their income.
This is especially apparent among millennial women who are more likely to have a degree than their male counterparts and, as a result, are likelier to be employed.
Millennial women are also delaying marriage and parenthood in favour of career opportunities and income.
Unfortunately for them, without switching jobs, it can be much harder for women to advance or increase their pay.
A Deloitte study found that millennial women mainly leave their organisations because they don’t see opportunities to advance with their current employers.
Millennial women are also crafting a different kind of career than generations past.
Job-hopping may be exactly what underpins their approach.
Young female professionals are concerned with their ability to put their strengths to the test, work on their own terms, and be compensated well for it.
Job-hopping benefits the millennial woman’s wallet — and why shouldn’t it?
These women continue to be paid less relative to male millennials, even though the gender gap within this group is smaller than that of older generations.
Women who change jobs more frequently can expect to see more aggressive raises.
Another report finds that wage growth is consistently higher for job switchers who move to different companies.
Young women’s job-hopping may also serve a larger mission.
Strikingly, 83 per cent of millennial women want to own their own businesses.
With a clear desire to be their own bosses, young women may be amassing a portfolio of job experiences to bring to their own start-up ventures.
Job-hopping should be commonplace for millennial women.
The boost in salary, experience, and opportunity these workers enjoy from jumping around is something they can’t and shouldn’t give up.
Rather than committing to companies that can’t take them where they want to go, they’re rejecting the traditional system and advocating for more.
The workforce economy will shift drastically in coming years, as the rise of the gig economy pushes more people to adapt and be agile in their careers.
In that case, job-hopping not only provides more adaptability and agility fuelled by learning opportunities, but it makes women more prepared to take on this new way of working.
It allows them to build portfolios and project-based resumes that demonstrate a breadth of knowledge and expertise.
We need young women to be a little less loyal to their current jobs and to jump in and make waves.
It’s time to show employers that the most ambitious, educated cohort of all time has clear value.
Bet on them, or they’ll bet on themselves.
*Selena Rezvani is a consultant, speaker and author on women and leadership. She tweets @selenarezvani and her website is www.selenarezvani.com.
This article was originally published in Philadelphia Magazine.
