Americans’ penchant for job hopping when times are good — and the necessity of changing jobs when times are bad — may be held against them.
A new survey finds a higher percentage of American hiring managers have reservations about hiring people who’ve had quite a few jobs than those in Asia and Europe.
The survey from Right Management, part of staffing firm Manpower, found that 57 percent of North American recruiters, executives and hiring managers would have reservations about hiring a person who’d had a number of past jobs.
In Asia-Pacific, only half of respondents would be concerned about hiring someone with a number of past jobs. In Europe, just 38 percent said they’d have those concerns.
The survey included more than than 2,200 recruiters, human resources executives and hiring managers worldwide.
In better times, some Americans have prided themselves on jumping from one employer to the next when a better opportunity presented itself.
In more recent years, many Americans have been forced to switch jobs amid layoffs and high unemployment.
The median amount of time Americans spent at their jobs hit 4.4 years in January of 2010, according to the most recent data available from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Median employee tenure fell to a recent low of 3.5 years in the year 2000, but it has since crept up.
Not surprisingly, older workers are more likely to stay at a job longer.
Employers may not like employee turnover, but they appear to be resigned to the fact that it exists. The Right Management survey also found that 59 percent of North American managers expect higher employee turnover in the next five years. Human resources folks in Asia Pacific are expecting a similar amount of turnover, while 41 percent of Europeans expect higher turnover.