A Quitter or Mismanaged Talent?

Today’s episode of apologetics is about folks who knock on your door with a resume in their hand. Suppose, your company is hiring and put out fliers announcing an opening. CVs pour in and a headhunt begins. You come across a resume whose owner has changed his/her job 5 times in the last 10 years (please note: I’m not talking about particular companies or individuals. This is only an exercise). Your reaction?

Do you paint this person a quitter, someone who just can’t see any project through to its end? Or do you see someone who has a lot of potential, but whose talents have been mismanaged?

In my opinion—and it’s a wild guess—90% of IT companies see their business as those of manufacturing: they think people are pluggable. You pull one out, and drop another one right back in. Just like that. Not enough horsepower? Hire a second shift. Few companies try to identify what an individual is talented at, and even fewer match that talent with the company needs. When such folks have their talents misplaced, they get bored, angry, frustrated, indifferent, and eventually move on. Being fired to them is liberating, not traumatizing. Until… they join another clueless company and the story goes full circle once again.

If my 90% guess is accurate, folks who truly care about their careers and are ambitious by nature are inclined to change jobs on a regular basis until they find the right fit and settle in (I chose every 2 years in the example above solely for dramatism).

Back to my point. What’s your reaction to a stripy resume?

I tend to go far more on how people come across in the interview - if they can get into a techy talk with me and have a bit of 'to and fro' which shows they are talking at the right level then I feel comfortable. Of course they wouldn't get through the door with a BAD cv - but 2 years per job... sounds standard to me in IT. I'd probably have to ask them some questions if it was 1 year per job.
Unless they're a contractor :)

Aaron.

Mine is like that. I'm a contractor. :-)

Not in today's economy people go thru jobs it seems faster than a pair of shoes. With so many companies laying off jobs and compaines going under anyone who has had 5 to 10 jobs in the past 10 years is normal to me.

Two years is very normal in my experience. I know my employer would look at that kind of flitting about as breadth of experience.