Quick to quit? An experimental study on employers' perceptions of job-hoppers to explain their hiring chances

Axana Dalle, Senne Jaques and Stijn Baert

Working Papers of Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, Ghent University, Belgium from Ghent University, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration

Abstract: Although job-hopping has become more prevalent, its implications for recruitment appear to be less favourable. Drawing on a scenario experiment with professional recruiters, this study examines the threshold at which job-hopping is penalised, the underlying perceptual mechanisms, and the factors that moderate these effects. The results indicate that substantial negative effects emerge from three prior employers within a five-year period and intensify as the number of prior employers increases. Moreover, contrary to expectations of potential benefits, job-hopping elicits exclusively negative perceptions across four theoretically derived clusters: work attitudes (perseverance, responsibility, motivation, and accuracy), career dynamics (loyalty, bore-out risk, and adaptability), human capital (past performance, in-depth experience, and willingness to learn), and social capital (team spirit, interpersonal problems, and communicative skills). Among these, the hiring penalty is most strongly associated with negative perceptions of perseverance, in-depth experience and interpersonal conflicts.

Keywords: Job-hopping; Hiring chances; Signalling; Scenario experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J24 J62 M51 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 57 pages
Date: 2026-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp, nep-lab and nep-lma
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:rug:rugwps:26/1149

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