Job hopping, not promotion, drives career growth, analysis shows

Posted by News Room 3 December 2024

Dive Brief:

  • Fifty-eight percent of Americans have changed jobs rather than wait for a promotion in the last five years, according to a Nov. 26 report by Kickresume, an online resume builder. In an analysis of 1,250 active LinkedIn profiles, KickResume found that only 17% of workers were promoted by their current company over the last five years.
  • Those who changed employers switched companies an average of 2.7 times over the five-year time period, or once every year and five months, Kickresume found, while workers who were promoted waited an average of two years and four months. 
  • All told, 65% of workers have switched jobs in the last 5 years, either internally or by changing companies, per the report. Kickresume said that number may have been boosted by COVID-19-related layoffs during the period analyzed.

Dive Insight:

Martin Poduška, editor in chief and resume writer at Kickresume, identified factors like at-will employment, the corporate ladder structure and economic problems as reasons for frequent job switching in the U.S. 

“There have always been two paths to progress in a career — you either get promoted or start looking for a new job. However, our new survey suggests that for workers in today’s United States, only one of those paths seems to remain open,” Poduška said in a statement. “If the promotion’s out of your reach, switching jobs may be the best way to progress in your career,” Poduška said. 

Promotions, Poduška said, are rarer than people think. 

One factor could be if an employee works in the office or not, according to a recent survey by United Culture. More than a quarter of the 1,000 workers surveyed who work remotely some of the time said they thought they missed out on a promotion or work opportunity because of it. That sentiment was higher among older Generation Z and millennial workers, the survey results showed. 

Mary Crossan, professor of strategic leadership at Western University and author of a recent report on character-based hiring and promotion published in MIT Sloan Management Review, said companies should consider character when promoting or hiring someone. Doing so can lead to better returns and engagement and more effective leadership, the report found.