If I take you on I want some indication that you're going to stay around long enough for the investment we're going to make in you to be worthwhile. We'll normally pay a recruitment fee and then we'll pay you while you're learning about our product, our industry, our processes and the specific technologies you haven't worked with that we use, and we'll be paying our existing staff to take time out from coding to do those things. That's not inconsiderable.
Obviously your experience may render some of that irrelevant. If that's the case then if you're massively better than the other candidates I may take the risk but if you're not, then I can take you or I can take the person who is as good but will stick around longer. That's not a tough decision.
I'm not looking for gold watch territory or even an indication that you might be around for 5 years, and I'm not looking for a guarantee, but if your CV shows a pattern of you moving every 15 months I need to work out why I think I won't be your next 15 month stint and if I think I think I am whether it'll be worth my while.
I move very fast from companies that don't keep up with pay. I stay at companies with regular pay rises. I've had both. So in my mind it means that companies concerned with job hopping, are really hoping to keep your pay down. It's an early warning .
I accept people leave when their salary diverges more than a certain amount from the market rate but that would normally - even in a good market - take time.
Personally I wouldn't expect a major pay rise within the first 12 months of a job (if you do then you've probably not negotiated your starting salary properly). Add to that a couple of months after that to find another job and a month notice and the shortest stint relating to poor pay I'd expect is about 15 months. If you're staying 15 months or so in places which are bad payers and a few years in places which are good then your average is probably going to be 2-3 years. To me at least that's not a problematic amount of time (particularly not if you've shown you can stick at least place for 3 years or so because that says to me you're not inherently disloyal).
So short stints don't say anything, at least not much, about money when I read a CV.
Most employees are not loyal, because they know companies are not. If they think companies are loyal, they are probably new to the job market. Once a project ends, and there's nothing else to work on they will get rid of you. There's no reason why employees should not think the same way.
In the past five years a fair number of people have left the company I work for and I'd estimate about 25% were money related.
As I say there's no one rule but I've seen developers put up dreadful money for a job they liked and take a pay cut to get out of somewhere they hated and if I had to generalise I'd go with that over them following the pay cheque.
I've seen no data that suggests this is true, and from my own anecdotes I've found it to be untrue as well. The people I see that switch a lot seem to be simply unable to deal with colleagues or challenges that aren't going their way. Lots and lots of prima donna's in this industry that do not have the skill set to change things that are problems.
Even the money concern is a bit of a red herring. Being unable to justify pay increases at your current employer may be a sign of a bad employer, but it's just as likely the sign of someone who either cannot present their value proposition properly or someone who overestimates their value. Both are bad signs for the candidate.
Decent challenges, and decent colleagues are included in my definition of market price.
This turns out to not be true of lots of people. Being able to understand your value to your employer and to outline it in a compelling way is a skill that is very under developed in software tech candidates. It's also a skill that I've found correlates well with good hires.
In case a frequent switching happened, what would you like to see in a resume?
At least for me, the CV is the least important part of the hiring pipeline. I have found them to have virtually zero correlation with good hires. So if I get a CV with frequent switching on it, and the candidate is great in all the other pipeline, it probably won't matter at all. If on the other hand, there are other questions about the candidate, a frequent switcher will get some questions about what they want in a job and a little bit of skepticism if we think there will be a big ramp up cost.
> In case a frequent switching happened, what would you
> like to see in a resume?
If you had a business, would you want to hire someone who is probably going to jump to another job in a few months?
For contractors, it's obviously somewhat different - but speaking from experience, many short contracts tend to get extended, so someone who has a raft of 1-2 month contracts and very few longer ones might be a bit of a risk. (Obviously some contracts are intentionally short - but I would definitely describe a very short contract on my CV as being more of a "project" than an actual contract.)
But more than anything: get comfortable talking about WHY it didn't work out, in a way that doesn't bad-mouth the company and still makes you look like a professional.
An advantage of applying through a recruiter is that they can have this chat with you first, and then make your case to the employer (who they will have a relationship with). As a Hiring Manager, I've said no to candidates, only to have a recruiter persuade me (rightly) that actually I should talk to them, even though there were things that spooked me about their CV.
I have had my job eliminated, regardless of my personal job performance, a grand total of four times. I have been forced out via office politics once, and voluntarily left a job once.
If you had a family, would you want to work for someone who is probably going to sell or eliminate your job well before retirement?
The loyalty from employers is gone. If you don't want me to leave in a few months, offer me an actual contract, and one that binds you to the relationship as firmly as it binds me.
However, even if HR doesn't like it, if you do get an interview, then you can tell them a happy story to explain what happened. It helps if you can convince them that this time you'll stick around, provided the necessary conditions are met. Then ask several questions to clarify the points that are important to you.