How long should you stay in a job?

There was a time when employers expected or demanded loyalty. In return you would be rewarded with a job for life – or at least a sizable chunk of it, along with steady progress through the ranks and pay increases.

This still happens in some Asian countries.

Somewhere along the way the social contract broke down. Employers no longer expect you to stay for ever. Or at least most don’t. If they want to keep your skills, talent and enthusiasm they’ll offer you equity, options or another incentive.

From your career planning point of view, a move should not be directly related to money, but to the overall shape of your curriculum vitae. You must balance the variety of skills and breadth of acquired experience against the need to demonstrate some stability.

Maybe your next employer may not be concerned that you have only been in your current job for 10 months, but subsequent employers may well be.

It’s important that you don’t appear to be a butterfly that flits casually from one job to another. On the other hand, smart recruiters recognise that five years at a single employer might not mean five years of experience, but the same year of experience repeated five times. It might also indicate an unambitious nature or even a lack of gumption.

There are no hard and fast rules. The details differ from discipline to discipline and from region to region, but after talking to recruiters and people who successfully manage their own careers the following seems to be about the right recipe for the current market:

• It’s OK to have a new job roughly every year up until around your 30^th birthday. Assuming you graduate at 22, that means you can safely fit in seven employers before hitting your 30s. Less than three employers in this time means you probably won’t have learnt enough. Higher degrees, periods of self-employment and bar-keeping in London each count as a single employer.
• When you hit 30, you need to slow down. Individual jobs should last between 18 months and three years with an average of over two years.
  Aim for four CV items between your 30^th and 40^th birthdays. Don’t worry if one job lasts less than 18 months—but make sure you have a good explanation if there is more than one short-term job. Higher degrees and periods of self-employment are still cool. Indulgent goofing-off (i.e. bar-keeping in London) looks a bit flaky, but accomplishing something (writing a book, sailing single-handedly around the world or climbing Everest) is OK.
• Above 40 it’s OK to stay longer with employers, but not too long and certainly not if you remain in the same role. The lower limit of 18 months still applies but you should be looking to clock up some extended periods of more than four or five years with a single employer.

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