Job hopping, politely called attrition is not a good exercise, especially in the software industry. Employers, while selecting a candidate, closely look at the track records and usually select the ones who have not changed their jobs too frequently.

The rationale, employers say, is that the person who has changed his jobs very often has most likely not learned much at any of the positions and has not gained real work experience to shoulder more responsibility, like leading a team and such. So a person, who has switched often, may end up with less than the knowledge expected of a person after 3 or 4 years experience.

While software industry professionals admit that job hopping has reduced sharply over the past decade, it’s still rampant if the professional has ‘hot skills’ — in the IT industry. For instance, this translates into mastery over Java and SAP. Naturally, these candidate change jobs more frequently, with substantial hikes every time.

Despite the employer’s reluctance to hire someone with a CV declaring a list of former employers — indicating frequent job changes — they still get taken on. This depend on the person who takes the interview i.e., If the hiring is being done by HR, they have targets to meet, and therefore freely employ people. They cannot afford to let someone go only because of frequent job changes.

However, if the technical manager is doing the hiring, s/he will come to a different conclusion altogether, and may not hire the person.