Can You Get Rich by Continually Changing Jobs?
Can you get rich by continually changing jobs? Is job-hopping for more money smart or stupid? The answer to those questions depends on the answer to five simple questions.
Is job-hopping for more money smart?
The answer to that question depends on the answer to these five questions.
What is the difference of the total package between the job where you are working and the job where you have an offer?
Are you walking away from retirement savings, profit sharing, vacation, medical coverage, and other benefits? An increase in income is just one part of the package.
What are your promotion opportunities where you are?
Promotions can greatly increase your short-term and long-term earnings. Changing jobs for more money can cost you in the long end when you career continues to move laterally.
What additional costs do you incur in your new job?
In “Hidden Expenses at a New Job,” I detail the costs that can erase a pay raise and even put you at a reduction in income at your new job.
Is the place where you are going somewhere that you can stay for the long haul?
Some hiring companies have a dim view of people who change jobs in less than a year or two. They have an even dimmer view of people who change jobs every two years repeatedly. Companies invest money and time in hiring and training people. They want to keep good people to continue to get value out of their investment. They don’t want to hire flakes who will quit every time another company offers a fifteen percent increase.
What is reality?
As a recruiter, I placed hundreds of people in new jobs. The average pay raise for these people changing jobs was two and one half times greater than their annual pay raises at their current or previous company. They came out ahead through these job changes.
Pay raises were not involved in all job these changes. In some cases, people accepted jobs for lateral pay, because the new job fit their needs for various reason.
On the other hand, I placed some people who increased their income fifteen to twenty percent or more. Obviously, pay raises through job changing ever two to three years will result in a person making a lot more money.
But I never saw anyone who was able to change jobs continually for more money. I did see people who found it increasing difficult to find a new job when they had an employment history of job-hopping.