On the other hand, employers strongly value loyalty at previous positions and evaluate candidates accordingly. Loyal employees also receive better exposure to geographic and functional man-agerial opportunities, which accelerate their careers when compared with “job-hoppers”.

Multinational companies also support this view. Kerry M DiSalvo of Deutsche Bank says, “The financial service firms, using either third-party or captive options for support, tend towards hiring loyal, dedicated individuals with sustained professional experience. These hires will have worked for each firm for a minimum of 3-5 years, progressing through the ranks. It is here a firm finds employees with whom their IP [intellectual property] can be most trusted.”

Foreign companies also place a lot of value on continuity and loyalty of their vendors’ employees. Of course, increased growth immediately translates into better career opportunities for employees.

Martin Holliss, MD of Research Insight based in London states, “The maxim that ‘people buy people’ is hugely relevant. We are much more likely to place long-term repeat business with suppliers who deliver a consistent experienced team. Such stability leads to more business, more profit, more responsibility and more satisfactionEverybody wins.” Assuming compensation is reasonable, senior leaders also suggest that learning and career growth should be the main criteria for choosing an employer.

An analysis of successful professionals in the US, Canada and continental Europe, shows that high-quality learning and career growth during the first 5-10 years are the most important predictors for success and wealth generation, especially, as the largest share of wealth is accumulated by a majority of people during the second half of their careers

However, in India, two years seems like an eternity to up-coming professionals, who make wrong career decisions and change companies merely for near-term, higher salaries. Employers state that this loss in career momentum outweighs the positive effect of higher salaries.

A typical example depicting India’s present situation are young professionals working in the business process outsourcing (BPO), information technology outsourcing (ITO) and knowledge process outsourcing (KPO) industries.

A majority of these professionals get the “two-year itch” and change jobs every 6-24 months, sometimes moving from high-growth companies to slow-growth captive back-office operations of large and medium-sized multi-national organisations.

Loyalists make it
A remarkable 85 per cent of the business heads surveyed considered loyalty in previous positions as one of the most important evaluation criteria for hiring and career advancement and 87 per cent of respondents feel that young professionals should not work in more than three companies during the first 10 years of their careers.

In fact, résumés from job-hopping professionals are substantially discounted, as future employers believe that if the person has not been loyal to the previous company, he or she is not likely to be loyal to them either.

In an overheated labour market such as India, where employers are forced to hire staff, these detrimental effects are not visible in the short term. However, as evidenced by the recent crisis in the financial services industry, where captive operations of investment banks have been forced to lay off employees or freeze hiring, the environment can change very quickly in India as well.

As a matter of fact, some financial services employers in India are now refusing to hire job-hopping professionals and with a slow down in the global economy, this trend is also expected in other industries.

In fact, 84 per cent of the surveyed business leaders stated that merely focusing on compensation (rather than learning and career momentum) and job-hopping every 6-24 months significantly damages the credibility and careers of young, ambitious professionals

About 88 per cent of respondents believed that in the professional services industry factors such as leaving the previous job in bad standing or unrealistic career expectations due to peer pressure are considered to be the most destructive attributes