When Nizar was faced with two offers upon his graduation: a thesis in France and a job in Italy, he didn’t dither about much. The next day he was in Milan! After just four months of some Italian Job, he thought it was too risky! He came back to Tunisia, did some R&D for several months, taught some math courses in a university for a year and a half then went back to France as a Consultant Engineer. “Success is ephemeral” says Nizar - now 30 – “Therefore one must succeed every day! Sometimes this means choosing career paths and options that all your entourage and your own intuition would cry out against and describe as blithe, reckless or improvised!”
In a globalized world where change is the rule and where all verbs conjugate either in the past or the future with no such time as the present, mobility emerges as a must, says Peter Drucker, the guru of modern management. Some even go far to claim that in times of rapid change, experience could be your worst enemy!
Yes! No! Employers should not frown upon fresh graduates and employees who hop for all the following reasons:
It’s not all about the money!
While pay is probably the most important factor to consider when deciding whether to look somewhere else or to stay, other factors are often taken into account: access to promotions, trainings, a good bonus system, a flexible working pattern and ideally an international career among other things. That’s exactly what Abdelkarim did. Although he got lured at first by a seemingly generous salary for a fresh graduate, he soon figured out the job [civil engineering] would lead to nowhere, “you gotta be kidding me!” He said as he jumped over the fence and went to work in an HR-software-developing company for a while only to end up as a reservoir engineer in a state-owned oil company where he seems to have found his hidden gem!
This “switch-until-you-get-satisfied” approach is worth the try, especially during your first years after graduation! Noureddine, a “job hopper” himself puts its bluntly “After all, it’s you who got to manage your career, not the HR department!”
Others such as Mohammed may even wear a completely different hat just because their target field seems to be trendy and promising: network engineering, auditing, bioengineering or whatever looms up as the next big thing!
The “Nail-in-wall” theory is obsolete!
It has always been so but it has never been more obsolete than as it is now! Take Japan for instance: the Japanese economy is growing again after over a decade- long recession. Experts say this wake up couldn’t happen haven’t Japanese accepted to go through some painful measures like massive lay-offs and no more life-time employment: the old Japanese corporate culture is already a thing of the past! Some HR experts even argue that “Corporate loyalty is history. Employees are more mobile, sometimes switching jobs as frequently as every few months, and prospective employers no longer automatically dismiss resumes fraught with job hopping”.
Breaking the routine may be another push factor and some may still wait until their feet are on automatic pilot each morning on the way to job and then it’s TIME to make the switch!
