Can working at the same company for many years hurt you if and when you start looking for a new job?
First off, staying at the same company and working for many years certainly isn’t a bad thing. Having some stability and not feeling like you need to change jobs – or being forced to change in the case where you lose your job – is not a bad thing!
But there can be downsides to staying at the same company for many years when you either decide to look for a new job or are forced to find a new one.
Certainly, if you haven’t interviewed or even had to search for a new job in years, you might have forgotten how to interview, not have a resume ready, not have considered who you’ll use as references and things of that nature. Certainly these things can be learned and/or completed but they might not be things that are readily available to you.
I can think of numerous cases where I’ve interviewed someone who has been with the same company for say 10 or more years and has decided to look for a new job.
The first thing I ask is “why?”
Why do you want to look for a new job after having spent all this time with the same employer?
My first thought is that something has gone wrong. A new manager has arrived that the person doesn’t like. Perhaps the company has been going downhill and they just decide it’s time to get out.
In some cases the person has done the same job for the entire time they worked at the company which can cause a problem in and of itself. If someone has spent many years in the exact same role, future employers might assume they aren’t really motivated and were simply comfortable in the company. Not too many employers look for unmotivated employees who are just looking for a place to hang out from 9-5 each day.
If they’ve worked in different (ie. progressively more senior) roles during their time at the company, well that’s a bit different. In that case, you can see a track record of achievement and of jobs that required an increasing skill level and level of responsibility.
Still, I can recall times when I was presenting a candidate to a company for a job where the candidate had been with the same company for 10+ years and the hiring manager asks the same question I did: Why does this person want to leave the company now, after such a long time there?
The second question – even if the hiring manager doesn’t ask it out loud – is probably “what are the chances we’ll go through the interview process, do references, offer them the job, and then the candidate will change their mind about leaving the company or accept a counteroffer to stay because they never really wanted to leave the company in the first place?”
A further question that often arises is whether or not the person who has spent a significant amount of time with the same company is a person whose skills have become stale. Working at the same company, using the same technology, working with perhaps the same people, facing the same issues. Has the person actually progressed and learned or simply done the same things over and over again?
It reminds me of an old joke: “He doesn’t have 10 years of experience. He has 1 year of experience 10 times.”
This is in the case of a person who has simply done the same thing over and over again in the same job and really hasn’t progressed or learned much during the 10 years.
Staying at the same company for many years is certainly not a bad thing especially when you consider the current economic climate but it can mean that if and when you start looking for a new job for whatever reason, you have a few things to consider and think about not the least of which is where and how to start your search.
