Flitting from job to job can give wings to your career

Not so long ago, gaining a 'job for life' was the ultimate career panacea. Staff took on a job broadly hoping to go the distance, while employers offered promotion prospects, a generous pension, and a gold-watch on retirement.

Nowadays, employers are more likely than ever to take on temporary staff, and few staff apply for a position in which they envisage themselves in 20 years time.

In Hill's case, he felt that trying a number of different jobs first-hand gave him vital skills that are of use in a broad range of professions.

"I think it would be ridiculous for anyone to assume that my having tried out a number of different professions makes me flighty," says Hill. "If anything, I would have thought it would be obvious that a wide range of jobs would make me far more likely to know what I was best suited to. Not to mention being able to lend expertise from a range of industries to wherever I was working." Hill is currently working as a copywriter in Edinburgh - a position he feels is fine for the moment.

So what do employers make of staff like these? Many have been forced to address the traditional prejudice exercised towards job-hoppers, or 'career butterflies'. And with good reason, say some career experts.

"It depends on the industry, but job-hopping can actually be the sign of a very desirable member of staff," says recruitment consultant Lindsay Cuthill, of Glasgow agency Westaff.

"For some technical positions, for example, larger companies find out about top employees by word of mouth, so talented individuals can just go where the money is. Staff are basically headhunted, so if someone has had a number of different positions it's a good sign that they're in demand."

In fact Cuthill hired a "job-hopper" to work in her own office. "We have a girl working for us permanently now who came here looking for temp work straight out of university. We found her a number of jobs, we had good reports from clients, and people were asking for her by name."

Working as a recruitment consultant, Cuthill is only too aware that numerous short assignments can build all manner of useful skills. The job-hopper in question was marketing graduate Sophie Parker, who quickly progressed in the space of a few short assignments from having little hands-on experience, to gaining a strong working knowledge of database design.

Before her current permanent position, however, Parker admits to some trepidation regarding the impact the duration of her contracts might have on her future employability.

"I was a bit worried about how it might look on my CV, but I really benefited from job-hopping, and I learned a lot of skills I didn't have previously."

Of course there are still employers who look less favourably on a CV that has multiple jobs within a short time-span. Particularly if the jobs are clearly of the same type or within the same sector. While roaming from engineering to PR might mark you out as an employee willing to push his or her career boundaries, a string of positions in the same sector may be indicative of an individual in the wrong industry, or who struggles to get along with colleagues.

"Certainly, employers view job- hopping in a much more flexible way than they used to," says careers expert John Lees, author of How To Get a Job You'll Love. "But there are some employers with more traditional attitudes, and there are certain measures you might want to take that can help to tone down the appearance of flitting from one job to the next. Grouping all temporary work together as a single block of assignments, for example, might be a sensible option. And you don't have to list every job you've ever had on a CV."

But whatever your view on job- hopping, it's an unavoidable fact that employment in this century is a far more flexible business than it once was. And as an employee, you can choose to make this work for you in a way that might be just as rewarding as holding down one job for the foreseeable future.

For serial job-hopper Hill, shorter assignments provide him with the ideal structure to discover exactly what his perfect job might be.