I am sure this has happened to most, if not all, of you.
You are doing something and as you are doing it, you realize you are making a terrible mistake! Well, that happened to me a few weeks ago. I was conducting a search, now closed. My phone rang and the woman who called said she had submitted her resume but had not heard back from me. I told her I respond to all resumes and asked if she had checked her email. She said she had not. Instead to telling her to do so, I looked at her resume and told her why she was not being considered for the job. That was my mistake.
I explained to her that, according to her resume, she had never been able to keep a job more than 2 years, and, in the past 10 years, she had had some 15 jobs. She is what is called a “jumper” and my client will not hire jumpers. They are going to invest time and money in training their new hire and want to make certain they remain on the job for a decent length of time. I then told her, given her track record, she should stay at her current job, which she has had for only one year, for at least two more.
Since the mistake was mine, I let her proceed with the insults, and she hung up, indicating to me that there probably is a very good reason why she can’t hold a job.
Most people have a short-term job on their resume. I have a couple. But I have others where I had worked five or more years, so I am not considered a jumper and employers, when I was looking for work, would always ask what happened at what were viewed as anomalies.
Once, maybe twice, you can say “it was not a good fit,” but, to paraphrase Shakespeare, if you have had multiple short-term jobs (not contract positions, but jobs that were meant to be full-time positions), and not been able to keep them for any length of time, “the fault, dear readers, may not be with the employers, but with yourselves, for you are underlings.”
But fear not, it may take a few hours of discussions, but there are ways to overcome the “jumper” resume, without lying. The only condition is that you have actually achieved a few things in your career, for your employers, that are verifiable.
And, for the record, the school of thought that says that having many jobs equals more experience and makes one a better candidate, should be shut down. It’s rubbish. The experience all employers want is reliability, dependability, and accountability, something jumpers lack.
Employment Edification 