For years, conventional career wisdom told us that a strong résumé should show stability: stay with an organization, work your way up, and avoid too many short stops along the way. But what if a career path that looks a little less linear actually develops a skill employers desperately need?
A recent Wall Street Journal article, “The Hidden Advantages of Being a Job Hopper,” highlights research suggesting that people who change employers more frequently may possess an unexpected advantage: adaptability.
Researchers from Rutgers and Cornell universities studied 8,700 hedge-fund managers and found that frequent job switchers adjusted to new positions significantly faster than other new hires. While the average new employee took approximately five months to reach full speed, frequent job changers needed only about two months. They also experienced smaller initial declines in performance.
Why? Practice.
Every new position requires us to learn unfamiliar systems, understand new personalities, decipher a company culture and determine how to contribute, all while making a good first impression. Do that several times, and adapting itself can become a skill.
For professional women, this is an important reminder that a résumé doesn’t have to follow a perfectly straight line to tell a compelling story.
Maybe you left a position because a better opportunity appeared. Maybe you wanted to develop a new skill, take on greater responsibility or explore another industry. Perhaps circumstances outside your control, like restructuring, layoffs or changes within your field, redirected your path.
Those experiences may have given you more than another line on your résumé. They may have taught you how to walk into an unfamiliar room, quickly identify what matters, build relationships and begin contributing.
That doesn’t mean changing jobs frequently is always the best career strategy. As the Wall Street Journal notes, employers may still want to understand the reasons behind multiple moves. The difference may lie in being able to articulate the story behind them.
Instead of apologizing for a nonlinear career, consider what it has taught you. Did you learn to navigate different leadership styles? Become comfortable with change? Gain experience across industries or functions? Learn how to quickly build trust with a new team?
Our careers rarely unfold exactly as we imagined they would. And perhaps that isn’t a weakness.
Sometimes the detours are where we develop the very skills that prepare us for what comes next.