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I HAVE a friend who worked for seven companies...in a span of four years! Shocked?
If someone changes jobs so frequently (he has worked for an average of less than seven months for each of his last seven employers), then he must be very poor indeed, at building a steady career.
It must imply that he can't get along with his employers, is not a team player, is over-ambitious or is just bad at his job.
One company, one assignment
Well, this person is none of those things. In fact, he is quite competent. And the reason why he appears to 'change jobs' with such bewildering frequency is that he was not a full-time employee of any of those seven companies.
He takes on an assignment with specified deliverables for a company, completes that assignment, and moves on to the next, usually with a different company.
Although people who work like my friend are hardly unknown, we don't even have a clear name for someone who works in this mode. The closest names are probably 'consultant', 'contractor', or 'temp', but each of these words has many meanings and none of them really captures the essence of this type of professional.
Only a tiny fraction of professionals in any field today work in this manner. Most organisations still depend on full-time employees to do their work. But is that set to change? I believe so, at least over the next few years.
With it, our notion of the professional career will undergo a change too.
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Illustration: Abhijeet Kini
