Most hiring managers were taught to be wary of a resume with three jobs in four years. That rule of thumb is older than the labour market it was meant for. Plenty of strong operators, controllers, planners and sales reps have moved often, and some of them moved for good reasons. Others left because the employer never gave them a reason to stay.
The job is not to ignore short tenure. It is to read it properly.
Why the old rule misleads
A fixed cut-off, such as "no one under 2 years per role", filters out two very different people. One keeps leaving when the work gets hard or the boss pushes back. The other moves every 18 months because each role added a new skill, a bigger scope or a better title, and the current employer had nowhere to send them next.
If you screen both out, you shrink your pool in a market where skilled trades, operations leads, finance staff and data people are already hard to find. Statistics Canada's job vacancy data and the US Bureau of Labor Statistics JOLTS series have both shown vacancies staying elevated in many of these occupations. A blunt filter is a luxury few mid-sized employers have.
Four questions that sort the two groups
In a screening call or first interview, ask about each move, not just the latest one.
- What did you own when you left that you did not own when you arrived? Growth shows up as scope: a bigger budget, a new line, a larger territory, a system implementation.
- Why that employer next? A candidate moving toward something can name it. A candidate moving away from something usually talks about the last boss.
- What would have kept you? The answer tells you what your own retention gaps might look like.
- What did you finish? Look for completed projects, a close cycle owned end to end, a plant start-up, a quota year. Leaving before the work is done is the real warning sign.
What to check on the resume
Some patterns matter more than the number of jobs.
- Titles that step up or widen, even if pay moved only a little
- Contract or project roles that ended on schedule, which is not job hopping
- Moves that follow a plant closure, acquisition or restructuring
- A consistent thread, such as the same function across different industries
- Gaps in finishing: several roles ended within 6 months with no stated reason
Contract work deserves a specific note. Many finance and AI and data professionals work in 6 to 12 month engagements by design. Reading those as instability misses the point.
Where the real risk sits
The larger cost is usually on your side of the table. When a capable person has been in the same seat for 3 years with no change in scope, they will look at the market. Pay matters, but so does a visible next step.
A few moves that cost little:
- Rotate people across lines, shifts, accounts or close processes so they pick up a second skill
- Name the next role and what it takes to get there, in writing, at the annual review
- Let strong people lead a project outside their job description
- Pay for the certification, trade ticket or tool training that makes them more useful to you
- Review pay against the market yearly, not when someone resigns
A food manufacturer in the GTA that Traverse worked with hired over 20 people in 18 months across production, skilled trades and office roles. Part of keeping that growth stable was being clear with new hires about where each role could lead, from line operator to lead hand, or from clerk to a planning seat. People stay when they can see the route.
Adjusting your process
You do not need to lower standards. You need better ones.
- Replace a minimum-tenure rule with a short list of questions about scope and completion.
- Train everyone who interviews to ask about each move, not only the last one.
- Check references on what the person delivered, not just on whether they were reliable.
- Be honest in the job posting and interview about the growth available. If the role is a 2-year stop on the way somewhere else, say so, and decide whether that suits you.
- Track your own exits. If people leave at 18 months from the same team, the problem is probably not the candidates.
What to do next
Pull the last 5 people who left your team and write down why each one actually went. Then look at the resumes you rejected this quarter for short tenure and ask whether any would have passed the four questions above. That one exercise usually changes how a hiring manager reads a resume.
If you would like a second opinion on a candidate's work history, or help building a screen that separates growth from churn, a Traverse recruiter can help with that.