How to Handle Interviews As a Job Hopper
Although staying with one employer for decades has fallen out of fashion, many employers still cringe at candidates who spend less than two years at each company before moving on to the next opportunity. Does your job history make you look like a job hopper? Use the following tips to present your job-hopping history as a positive, rather than a negative, and land your next dream job.
1. Showcase Your Skills: Working at various companies and moving frequently doesn’t have to be a negative. Chances are you’ve gained a wide variety of technical skills and experience because you’ve played various roles at various companies in a short period of time. When you’re in an interview make sure to focus on your wide variety of experiences and skills.
2. Collaboration Station: If you’ve worked in collaborative roles you’ll have adjusted to a variety of different teams filled with varying personalities. Most employers are looking for emotionally intelligent people who can effectively communicate and work with almost anyone so highlighting the amount of people you’ve worked with in various positions will help an interviewer see that you have these valuable soft skills in your repertoire.
3. How You Made A Difference: Employers are often wary about hiring job hoppers because they worry you won’t actually create any value at their company before you move on to the next opportunity. Prove that this isn’t the case by providing concrete examples of the value you created in some of your previous jobs. This will help alleviate their fears and show what a valuable asset you can be on any team.
4. Focus on Opportunity, Not Grievances: Inevitably your interviewer will ask you why you want to leave your current position or why you’ve changed jobs so frequently. Instead of airing grievances about bosses that were too controlling or redundant projects that bored you to tears try to focus on opportunity. Exploring career options, seeking more training opportunity, or simply trying to find the right fit for you are all valid reasons for leaving a position that won’t make your interviewer cringe.
Job-hopping is becoming the new normal but it’s not widely accepted by employers yet. If you have a choppy job history, use these tips to focus on the positives of your history in your next interview.