Often considered a millennial trait, job-hopping has been on the rise. In fact, older employees (55-65) are doing it almost as much as millennials themselves!
Once considered career suicide, job-hopping is now a mainstream occurrence, and, if done correctly, sometimes advantageous. Some call it the new way of climbing the corporate ladder. While no set parameters exist, job-hopping is typically used to characterize moving from company to company every one to two years, as long as the reason for the move was not a layoff or company closure.
A recent survey found that the median tenure for three different age groups really aren’t all that different. The median tenure for employees 25-35 was 1.42 years, employees 35-55 was just under two years, and for employees 55-35 was 2.53 years. The findings show that the old norm of 30 years spent at a company is a thing of the past.
Changing jobs has become more socially acceptable for employees of all ages. For older employees, this shift could be due to new opportunities and career paths opening up that perhaps had not been available or even invented before. Taking on a new challenge may be more appealing than riding out the rest of their career in a familiar position.
Whatever the reason, this new job-hopping trend among older employees has certain ripple effects.
Retention
Companies may have thought there was no risk of losing their older employee population due to the history of this employee group to stay at one job. Now it seems all bets are off. That means bolstering retention strategies should be a huge priority, especially executives. (Remember, health insurance is the #1 benefit they care about!)
Recruitment
Looking to bring a new executive on board at your company? These findings show that it may be more possible to recruit an executive from another company because of their willingness to hop to another company. If the opportunity is right and the benefits are compelling, this new population of job-hoppers could be used to your advantage!