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Shilputsi
in the News
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Compulsive Job Hoppers - Business Today:
August 17, 2003
Why is that some managers seem to have an almost
primal urge to keep hopping jobs? Restlessness? Or is it something else?
By Moinak Mitra
They are amidst us. They don't seem to treat doors as some rockers do -
more a matter of perception than reality. They don't have any particular
spring in their step either. They are, still, job hoppers. Some of them
are compulsive job hoppers, often incurably so. If there's some strange
kick they get from it, fine, they ought to be free to hop their careers
away - so long as they don't trample on others' freedom. But such lofty
liberalism mustn't stop us from asking why they do it. So, why do they?
Roll, Roll, Roll
Viresh Kamath a seriously anchored executive, who as president of an
FMCG firm until 2000, was able to propel his company from Rs 30 crore to
Rs 200 crore in sales over just five years. Then the dotcom bug got him,
and he's been job-hopping ever since: from his doomed dotcom to an IT
firm, from there to a mid-cap pharma company; and now possibly, as the
buzz goes, back to an FMCG job.
Is Kamath looking to
resurrect a career gone wrong? Perhaps. According
to Purvi Sheth, a consultant at search firm Shilputsi, returning to a
sector starts getting trickier over time. But that hardly stops a
hopper, or does it?
Not if getting out is
the dominant thought in the hopper's mind. In the observation of D.N.B.
Singh, HR consultant and author of Do Not Dig A Grave...And Bury Your
Career, "Most people jump jobs for comfort reasons. They can't get
along with the boss, and since they're often functionally superb, they
don't see the need to adjust to the reality of the organization."
Job hoppers' careers
typically have "a sad inning" or two, which they try to
conceal in their bio-datas, says Ronesh Puri, Managing Director,
Executive Access. As an executive recruiter, he has seen candidates
failing to mention job tenures of under six months, or sometimes even
two years. "Nearly 60 per cent of the CVs floating around today are
not authentic," he estimates. Sad.
Yet, job hoppers have diverse motivations,
according to Anita Ramachandran of Cerebrus Consulting, so don't jump to
conclusions prematurely.
Wholesale Whiners
"First, there are those who seem forever unhappy with their jobs
and feel the grass is greener on the other side," says Ramachandran,
explaining the 'compulsive' aspect of much hopping behaviour. Consider
the case of a whiner in his late-30s who left an FMCG company to join a
telecom firm, but got tired of it and moved to another service provider
- only to whine again. Last heard, the man had become a strategic
planning associate with a BPO company. The whines are subsonic so far,
but a lot of eyes will be rolling up if he starts.
Dullsville Distraught
For managers looking for job excitement, being stuck in Dullsville can
be reason enough to hop - in the hope of escaping monotony.
Take the case of this FMCG man who went to an
MNC bank. In less than two years, he
left - for a drastic drop in his yawn-rate as vice president (marketing)
at a cargo company. No luck. So he joined a telecom company. More ennui.
Next, he resurfaced at what was supposedly a hot and happening. After a
brief stint at yet another telecom firm overseas, he's back at a bank.
Lemming Leavers
Enmasse departers cite the same reasons that others do for moving jobs,
with the crucial difference that they do this more out of 'groupthink'
than individualism. There's safety in numbers, they feel, and if their
peers hop so do they. Three years ago, three equivalent level executives
at a single FMCG firm switched simultaneously to telecom (two different
firms) hopped about in this industry, and returned to their old
employer.
Peter's Prodigals
All too often, managers hop their way up the corporate hierarchy -
only to reach their level of incompetence, in accordance with Peter's
Principle. The next thing they know, their key performance areas are in
jeopardy - and out they go. A headhunter cites the instance of
"a great talker and a good presenter" who he recruited for a
pizza major, only to discover "one helluva bad implementer".
The poor fellow hopped to a multiplex company within months, lasting
about a year, before shifting to a retail chain in the Gulf.
Cinderella Celebrities
Some top honchos, alas, become brands. Consciously or not, they start
shaping the firm in their own image, and often succeed so well that
their personal profile casts a shadow on the rest of the corporate
identity. Any resentment caused puts them at risk of being ousted.
The story of an
entrepreneurial wiz with an Ivy League MBA is particularly poignant.
With a career spanning oralcare and IT, this man became director of
operations at a beverages major, and then the chief of a café startup -
before leaving to do his own thing. The strength of his own profile has
rendered him unemployable, perhaps.
Triumph Turners
There is a rare, but important tribe of hoppers too: That of
special-task artists. Armed with a diverse but circumstance-specific set
of skills, they see themselves as adding value only on rescue missions.
Turning a company's fortunes around, for example... after which they
prefer to bail out, for the next challenge.
There's the example of an executive who hopped
from an imaging business to set up a direct selling operation, and then
to a telecom, and again to a consumer-care startup - only to be at the
stage of the business he excelled at.
"Turnaround or
start-up artists," says Atul Vohra, partner, Heidrick &
Struggles, "are visionary and highly innovative managers with
excellent leadership skills and the ability to harness and channelise
the energy of the team. " Often, too, they are people who know
exactly where they're driving to - and keep their vision on that road
and grip on the steering, irrespective of the hops they make.
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