'Faithful to your job? 60% Indians don't believe in it'

On a sticky wicket

Job-seeking Indians have perfected an art in the process: Job-hopping. Indeed, a survey has now revealed that 56% of male respondents have job-hopped in a short duration. But there is a silver lining for employers: Women workers tend to stay on, at least in the short term.

There is no twist in the tale. The accomplished job-hoppers were not forced out, they simply walked out voluntarily, found the survey by leading job site, Indeed. Getting smarter at this, 85% of the job-hopping men would add a job to their resume, no matter how short their stint was in that role.

No, Indian male workers did not invent job-hopping. But the survey revealed a relatively new trend: Due to the rise in project-based work and contract jobs, the Indian workforce is more willing to switch roles without a second thought.

But surveys being surveys, it prioritised the most cited reasons to call it quits. For almost half the respondents, 49% to be precise, job-hopping was the best way to learn new skills. In all frankness, 43% admitted that they quit their jobs to boost their resumes.

Now comes the gender twist. Forty-seven per cent of the women surveyed had never left a role voluntarily in a short time. But the men were not finished, they had more reasons to cite. For 30% of them, the job had not met their expectations, 29% found the work environment too unhappy.

These trends were more pronounced in mid-sized companies with 200-500 employees. ‘Stickiness,’ Indeed’s euphemism for job loyalty, was higher in traditional sectors of manufacturing. A high 49% of the respondents in Manufacturing and Utilities had never voluntarily left a role. In the IT and Telecom sector, it was only 40%.

What employers say

Employers had an entirely different perspective on the job-hoppers.

Frequent job movement, they were convinced, was proof of a candidate’s indecisiveness, demonstrating a ‘lack of loyalty.’ An overwhelming 87% of employers surveyed chose not to interview a candidate with a history of short-term jobs.

For the job-hoppers surveyed, short employment period meant 16 months or less. Commissioned by Indeed India, the research was conducted by Censuswide. Surveyors fanned out to interview 1,002 employed respondents in India between July 13, 2018, and August 1, 2018.