Job hoppers regularly change companies, moving from one to the next without staying in their jobs for very long. In the United States, this phenomenon is such that it has given rise to the concept of quick quitting.
The term quick quitting is used to describe employees who are reluctant to spend their entire career with the same company, as many of their predecessors did. They stay for a maximum of one year before seeing if the grass is greener elsewhere. This term is not to be confused with the concept of quiet quitting, which involves doing the bare minimum at work — just what’s on your contract, and nothing more.
And if quick-quitters are always on the move, it’s precisely to avoid the pitfall of quiet quitting. They fear being bored at work and suffering from boreout, a form of exhaustion caused by repeated periods with little or no work, and the accumulation of unrewarding professional tasks.
And scientific studies prove them right, since employees who are bored at work are two to three times more likely to fall victim to heart problems, according to UK research from 2010.
If the boreout syndrome is still some way off being recognized by medicine and labor law, the Covid-19 pandemic has revived the quest for professional meaning. So much so that it is now a major concern for 92 percent of workers, according to a survey conducted in 2022 by Audencia and Jobs That Make Sense. But what exactly do they aspire to? To contribute to the challenges of the ecological and/or social transition (57 percent), it seems, or simply to feel useful (53 percent).
Employees in search of meaning, especially younger ones, no longer hesitate to change jobs multiple times to meet their personal and professional aspirations. This trend is particularly pronounced in the US, where the short-term tenure rate — the number of jobs that end before one year — jumped in 2022, according to LinkedIn’s “Economic Graph”.
Junior employees are swelling the ranks of US quick quitters, as are managers. Managers faced significant challenges during the pandemic, which is why they are quick to jump ship if the position they were promoted to is not all they imagined.
This change in behavior raises questions among recruiters and managers, who see job hopping as a lack of professional stability or company loyalty.
Criticisms that quick-quitters dismiss out of hand, especially if they happen to be Gen Zers. The latter take a more relaxed view of their career development. The idea of a “career plan” doesn’t really speak to them, and they see no harm in spending short periods in different companies. They even claim that this multitude of experiences is a strength, just like the so-called mad skills that adorn their CVs.
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