Your Career is more than the jobs on your resume

There is a false myth that is popular today that jumping to a new job every 1-2 years will get you more salary. There may be some truth to this early on in your career, but it will come back to haunt you. The best performers who make the largest impact to their companies will still be the most rewarded, both in the long term and the short term.

It takes up to 12-18 months at minimum to really master your role inside of an organization

It takes up to 12-18 months to really master your role inside of an organization, and maybe even longer to really understand the business model and all the nuances that drives your organization. This concept is not widely followed currently – take a glance at LinkedIn and you can see, at least in digital media, people jump from company to company every year or two over the past decade.

The time you spend at a company beyond this point is gold. You are most likely very confident in your role and you have the ability to make a larger impact to results. You also have more influence in decision making as well as how you impact the company's culture. An employer values you at this point at the highest level and a good company will be investing in your future, offering you unique opportunities to grow and learn in your career.

This is not the case in every company, but it should be, and if it is not in your situation, go seek it out to your manager or the founder or CEO. If you have invested in your company, and you have performed, there is no good leader that is not going to want you to continue to grow within your company.

Unfortunately, most employees nowadays never last that long. The harsh reality is over 30% of new employees won’t last 12-18 months. This may be because they have a life change, or they may have a different job offer that they think is better, or in some cases, they just don’t perform up to the expectations of the role.

This leads to individuals suddenly having 10 or more jobs on their resume by the time they hit 30-35. Great companies are not looking for job-hoppers or individuals that don’t spend enough time within organizations to really grow, mature and understand how to be aligned with teams and strategies.

I read a lot about people that are 40 that think they can’t get hired because of their age. I disagree completely. Our company never looks at age as a factor, but we do look at job tenure and success. If a 40 year old applies to our company and has had 17 jobs all averaging less than 1-2 years, that is a red flag, not the age.

Again, we too have to deal with the reality that 1/3 of new employees will be gone before their second holiday party, but we also want to limit the chances of that in the interview process, which is greatly influenced by references from past managers and how the individual impacted their past companies, both in terms of performance and culture. We then do our best to on-board and train every employee and make them an important part of our growing culture. We continue to improve how we communicate opportunities and set expectations for each employee to have success in their role. Despite all this focus, we still miss and hire good people that are maybe not good fits.

Our company has no greater asset than the amazing people that make up our team at any given moment. The make-up of our team definitely changes at a faster rate than we prefer, especially as we get larger as an organization. Building that core group that wants to be a part of something, that wants to be part of a success story and that understands the time and work needed to make that happen is the most important part of our company.

We now have people that have been with us for over 10 years. That is incredible. Our executive team has an amazing mix of long-term employees, mid-term stars and newer employees that have immediate impacts, much faster than the 12+ months that are usually realized.

I have spent the past 5 years trying to beat these trends, hoping every new employee stays 3, 5 or even 10 years, but sadly, we are seeing similar patterns. We are now resetting our expectations on average new employee tenure and building teams that are less effected by losing a new member. Our managers better understand the goals of potential new hires and how they look at companies as stepping stones versus career builders.

I have my own opinions obviously, but our company is mature enough to adapt to the market and thrive despite the trends. I will stand by the fact that people that are committed to companies for 2-5 years at a shot, will make much more money over their careers, and will have much higher ceilings as they grow their experience. Job hoppers will hit their ceilings much earlier and make much less over time, even if they may grab 10-20% high salaries during their first few jumps. There is also a huge risk if the market changes and unemployment takes a step backwards. The loyal employees of companies will win and the job hoppers could be left without a chair.

In the end, everyone makes their own decisions for their own reasons. I have worked for good companies and bad ones. I have worked for great managers and terrible ones. My focus was working for companies with the greatest opportunities which translated to great opportunities for me and my career. As the owner of a company now, I want to offer the most opportunities for the people that make up our team and who want to make an impact to the people around them.