Does your resume suggest you're a job hopper?

Q: The long-suffering job market has left otherwise stable workers with fragmented resumes. They worry that they look like job hoppers. In the last 10 years, how frequently have you changed employers?

Nick's reply: The impression many people have about the job market -- especially in the high-tech sector -- is that workers jump around a lot due to frequent layoffs. For some, job instability is a sad reality. Others have been more fortunate.

While victims of the downsizing trend learn to deal with the financial consequences of frequent job changes, one of their big concerns is how it looks to employers. Will a record of three jobs in four years turn off a prospective employer? Is this going to be a self-perpetuating cycle with only weak companies willing to hire scarred workers?

Sometimes it seems that employers care too much about this. What do a few job changes really mean? If you move around a lot, you might be considered disloyal or a bad risk. A company might invest in training you only to have to do it all over again when it replaces you (too soon). After all, a changing economy may lead new hires to quickly move on when they can get slightly more salary from a competitor.

But, believe it or not, some employers see things another way. They wonder if a stable worker isn't too complacent. Has she stayed at one company for so long because she's lazy? Or why hasn't another company lured this guy away? Maybe he's just not that attractive to other employers.

No matter how you analyze this, you can get hurt because employers make the wrong assumptions. But I think there are ways to avoid being pigeonholed because you've changed jobs.

As a headhunter I have my own way of judging a candidate with a fragmented resume. I ignore it entirely, and I get the candidate to talk about two things: the problems and challenges my client is facing and the candidate's ability to tackle those. Once I feel I have a candidate who can do the job, if there are a lot of job changes on the resume we discuss it bluntly. What I'm looking for is commitment. How do I judge this? It's subjective:

-- Commitment to the work. Does the person talk more about his work or about "the money" and "new opportunities"?

-- Commitment to people. Does the person reveal a sense of responsibility to co-workers and peers or is there too much emphasis on "myself"?

When I check references, I look for:

-- Commitment to the employer. Do references talk a lot about the person's contributions to the company or do they say nothing about this?

-- Commitment to productivity. Do they focus on how they lost a great worker or do they quickly end the conversation?

Our economy continues to be in flux. I can't judge a person primarily for how he or his past employers coped with economic pressures. I want to know what he produced at each job. I care why he left a job, but until the economy strengthens I can't worry too much about that. While I'd like to recruit a worker who will stay on the next job, my real concern is the impression the person leaves behind. Will he do the kind of work that pays off to the company? Or is he primarily interested in a job because it will pay off until the next leap? Ultimately, it isn't time spent that matters. It's the quality of that time.

I find that quite a lot of managers think the same way. They realize that many good workers have been forced to change jobs more frequently than they'd like. Managers themselves have bounced around and they are careful not to judge, lest they be judged, too.

It's hard to guess people's motives and intent. But over the years I've learned that the best workers focus on the work and on how they'll produce profit for their employers. So my suggestion to job hoppers is to think about the commitment measures I discussed above. What do you communicate about your level of commitment when you interview for a job? Do you demonstrate that you are a dedicated, productive worker no matter how long you might be on a job? This could make all the difference in the outcome of your interview and in how long your next job lasts.

Copyright 2008. Distributed by Universal Press Syndicate

Nick Corcodilos is author of "Ask The Headhunter: Reinventing the Interview to Win the Job" and the host of www.asktheheadhunter.com. He can be reached by e-mail at seattle@asktheheadhunter.com or at North Bridge Group, P.O. Box 600, Lebanon, NJ 08833. Sorry, no personal replies.