Hiring in 2025 has become disconnected from corporate realities. You’ve seen the news. Companies are laying people off. Things are hard. And, frankly, they have been since 2020.
Most job seekers look for and apply to jobs online. Applications and resumes are fed into what’s called an applicant tracking system or ATS. Companies use an ATS to track applications and to put candidates through interview steps.
I recently had the opportunity to take a behind-the-scenes peek inside an ATS. What I saw is disappointing. When a candidate is rejected, the company selects a reason from a list. Included are things you would expect – lives too far away, not qualified or high salary expectations.
However, there’s another item on the rejection list: “job hopper.” That’s right. “Job hopper” is ranked along with not being qualified or being too expensive.
Companies are still making decisions this way. I’ve recently heard of multiple CEOs rejecting qualified candidates for this reason. The other managers at the companies felt the candidates were valuable and qualified, but the CEOs overrode their recommendations.
In one case, an HR recruiter asked the candidate for help explaining to the CEO why job hopping occurs, because all of the good candidates they received had frequent job changes.
Rarely does anyone want to change jobs. It’s painful. It’s risky. Employees do not begin to actively look for a new job unless they believe there is nothing else they can do to salvage their relationship with their current company.
Why do employees leave jobs? One issue is that an employee might be significantly underpaid. Salaries are more commonly posted online today. When an employee finds out they are paid 30%-40% less than their peers, they might ask for a raise. But they would be lucky to get 6%. The only option might be to change jobs if they want to be compensated fairly.
This is not the most common reason people leave jobs today. Companies make decisions differently now than they did 20 years ago. It is not unusual for a company to lay off hundreds or thousands of employees to help their bottom line or bump their stock price. It’s common for companies to be bought and sold as part of private equity deals that may leave an entire workforce out of jobs.
There also are cases in which an employee specializes in a very specific role. These employees might have to consider changing companies if they want to continue to gain new skills and experience.
Very rarely is any employee jumping from job to job carelessly. Employers need to rethink their perspective on this issue. Employees have been put through the ringer, by no fault of their own.
Think of job hoppers as resilient. They value a good company and a stable job. It’s time to adjust hiring practices to match today’s business environment.
Angela Copeland, a leadership and career expert, can be reached at www.angelacopeland.com.