Using Tree Rings and Resumes to Diagnose a Career

There’s much to discover when you cut down a tree. Growing up in a wooded area and having had two fireplaces in my parents’ house, we burned a fair amount of wood in the winter.

It always fascinated me to look at a felled tree. 

My favorite part was the age rings because they show the living history of an area – how long the tree lived, whether it suffered disease, in which years it saw little rain, and when it grew most abundantly.

The rings tell a story...

In recruiting, a resume is much like the rings of a tree. It will tell a very interesting story if you know how to read it. Each job on a resume is like a ring on a tree, and I have to determine if what I am looking at is healthy and flourishing or about to get the ax.

Two key factors to consider with a tree are:

1. The number of rings
2. Their relative size to one another 

On a resume, I look at the "same" thing: the number of different jobs and how long each one lasted.

Because I talk to hundreds of candidates and hiring managers on a regular basis, I’ll share what I’ve found to be a healthy number and size of rings. 

But first, I’ll share what often strikes a hiring manager as a red flag:

Either too many jumps or too few.

If you are 50 years old and have had 12-15 different jobs, your tree rings are going to be too thin and too numerous. As a result, you may appear unstable or unreliable. On the other hand, if you are 50 and have only had one job for 25 years, you may appear inflexible or unable to adapt to a new role or company culture. Please don’t get me wrong, if you are 50 and have a great job with a long runway in front of you, don’t quit your job tomorrow. I am simply making generalizations.  

So what does a healthy assortment of “tree-rings” look like on your resume? 

I think that this depends on your age. Let me give you the maximum number of job changes that I think will keep you looking healthy to a hiring manager.

If you are 22-30 years old, try to keep your job transfers to less than 3-4 before you turn 30. The perception is changing with millennials and college graduates. There is more acceptance for this demographic to switch jobs more frequently.  

For those in the 30-40 bracket, there is an expectation that you are more settled. During this stage, I would say that 2-3 job changes are allowable. But if you changed jobs often in your 20’s, shoot for 2 or less during this stage.

As you get older – in the 40 to 50 and the 50 to 60 year range, the number of jobs changes reflect your stability and loyalty. I would advise limiting career changes to twice maximum in each decade, for a total of 4 over those 20 years. A better number would probably be once every 10 years when you are in your 50’s and 60’s.

However, I realize that re-orgs and restructures occur all the time. If you become of victim of one, this can be easily explained to a hiring authority. Sometimes, there are legitimate reasons for several of those tree rings on your resume.

So far, we’ve talked mostly about the maximum number of times that you should change roles (the frequency). But what about the minimum – that is, how often should you change? At 6-7 years, a change is probably in order if you are not being promoted or advancing. If you stay this long in a role without moving up, your resume could reflect a lack of ambition. On the other hand, if you are regularly moving up the ladder and enjoying your company, it could be advantageous to remain even past 7 or 10 years.

In order to simplify things, I’ll leave you with simple a simple adage. 

Consider the Rule of 18 –

Staying less than 18 months at a company is the socially accepted minimum. It indicates that you survived a review cycle and had the chance to make a contribution (and learned something). At the other end of the spectrum - if you have been with a company more than 18 years, a hiring manager looking at your resume may be wondering, “Can you adapt?”

So what can you do?

Here are 2 takeaways:

If you are hiring – realize that some frequent job changes are legitimate (due to re-orgs, layoffs, etc.) and do not indicate a lack of career health. However, a candidate's long-term pattern of jumping may indicate that your post is going to end up short-term as well.

If you are a candidate – maintain a balance between job changes and career progression. “Too soon/too often” or “No growth/No development” could signal a professional disease.

If you would like to hear more about current trends and industry insights, feel free to reach me at: [email protected]