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Job-hopping ensures big bucks

By Tracy Burrows, ITWeb contributor.
Johannesburg, 09 Mar 2001

Changing jobs frequently would appear to be the best way to secure a high salary. Fuelling this trend is growing numbers of headhunters enticing professionals to move to greener pastures.

The survey found that salaries are inversely proportional to the number of times a person changes jobs. Those who have changed jobs most often, earn the highest salaries overall, and those who have never changed jobs earn the lowest salaries overall.

Fewer than 5% of the survey respondents said they had changed jobs more than six times. The median salaries in that group were the highest at around R327 000 per annum. Those who had never changed jobs (around 24% of the respondents) had a median salary of around R180 000 per annum. The median salary showed a steady increase in proportion to the number of jobs held.

Not surprisingly, those who changed jobs most often were aged between 35 and 45. Those newly-entering the market, and those older than 45 who belong to the old school of staying loyal to your corporate employer, had changed jobs least often.

Most of the respondents (63%) said they had been approached by a headhunter or recruiter during the past 12 months. The most popular targets for headhunting were application developers, general IT management staff and Y2K experts. Most of them had been approached at least twice, but a substantial number had been approached up to five times in the past year.

Headhunting grows

Andries van Wyngaard, MD of Prodyn Resource Consulting, says that over the past two years there has been more movement in the IT industry than in any other as South African businesses across the board have become IT-intensive. "Staff turnover is high, with widespread headhunting and people moving from job to job in search of higher salaries, experience and exposure."

People are moving from job to job in search of higher salaries, experience and exposure.

Andries van Wyngaard, MD, Prodyn Resource Consulting

Andre Besselaar, head of Innovative HR Strategies, says IT recruitment agencies have turned into "search consultants".

"Placing South Africans internationally is a very attractive business due to international IT skills shortages and the declining rand against the dollar and the pound. The retention of staff therefore becomes a major challenge."

But headhunters` promises should be taken with a grain of salt. Janette Cumming, MD of Paracon Holdings, points to the headhunters` practice of targeting and then unsettling a person who could be perfectly satisfied with their position, salary, and the company they work for. But the headhunter creates a seed of doubt, leaving the target thinking: "There are bigger and better things out there, I should be earning 50% more."

Cumming warns that headhunters often make promises that are not met, leaving the person high and dry, and causing much bitterness within companies.

But headhunting agencies are only doing what they are commissioned to do, says Cumming. "Often companies identify the person they want and tell the headhunter, `Go get them`. So the headhunters are just an intermediary - the companies are as guilty as they are."

Word of mouth

Judging by these survey findings, most professionals resist headhunters` attacks; 17% said they had been headhunted for their present position as opposed to the 63% who had been approached by a headhunter.

Interistingly, despite the popularity of many Web-based job search services, only 3% got to know about their present position via the Internet and only 8% found the position advertise in a newspaper.

Nineteen percent were placed by an agency and 19 through "other" unspecified means.

By far the largest group, 38% of the sample, got their present job through personal contact or initiative. This founding high-lights the imbalance in supply and demand, where those with the right combination of skills don`t even have to advertise them as word of mouth does the job.

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