A generally accepted old school recruitment principle was to avoid hiring candidates that were considered job hoppers. A job hopper is often defined as someone who spends between 6 months and a year with a company before moving on, although it can also be considered someone who spends less than 5 years with the same employer. Recruiters and human resources have always flagged job hoppers as risky hires and they are often associated with negative traits. This perception still persists in the recruitment industry with job hopping candidates usually being excluded from shortlists. The working environment is changing and employment cycles are getting shorter particularly in the digital tech sector. Technology companies have more dynamic environments and if it’s a start-up the staff turnover can be particularly high as the company tries to define its technology requirements and culture. High demand for digital tech staff has also driven a higher propensity to move from job to job with the offer of increased salary and benefits making regular moves more attractive. Candidates are no longer too concerned about multiple employers over a short period appearing on their resume.
Positive vs. Negative.
There are many positive aspects to candidates with multiple employers over a short period of time. They will bring an assortment of skills, viewpoints and experiences accumulated from several companies plus a wider knowledge of technologies and industries that someone who has stayed with the same employer for years does not. By their nature they are more likely to have a dynamic attitude to working making them ideal for a fast-moving technology environment. Conversely, short job stints may also indicate someone who is difficult to work with or just not capable of performing. However, it can indicate that a candidate gets bored easily which could be caused by a lack of challenging work or motivation, given the right environment these candidates may be potential high flyers.
Bias
The historical practice of excluding job hoppers from the recruitment and selection process still prevails when resumes are being sifted manually to create a potential shortlist. This manual selection method is potentially excluding some great potential but using a hiring tool that eliminates bias in the selection criteria can result in a shortlist without bias. Removing bias from the process means that candidates can be selected based on their skills and experience rather than length of employment with previous employers.
One such company who are game changing the face of recruitment by providing a robust process to deliver more efficient recruitment without bias is Hire Digital. A start-up recruitment company with a global presence that has invested heavily in Artificial Intelligence (AI) to manage the digital tech recruitment and talent management process. Their ATS software platforms give digital talent recruiters a strict criterion for posting job adverts and descriptions and their AI works in such a way that it generates a much smaller more targeted candidate list by using up to 40,000 attributes. They key to this is efficiency, recruiters spend less time generating job advertisements and trawling through hundreds of CV’s to get their shortlist, Hire Digital tech can rapidly access up to 1bn talent globally.
Hire Digital is an AI technology with a human touch that is completely revolutionising the recruitment and selection process. It’s two times faster, 50 % cheaper and ten times more accurate than traditional hiring tech. To find out more speak to Robin Brohl at Hire Digital he is a real person and would love to engage with you and help you streamline your recruitment processes.