Doesn’t it seem like yesterday when colleagues would work at a company for 25 years and get that silver anniversary pin? Today it happens so rarely, it seems like something out of a history book. And it is. The average tenure of a job for professionals is 3.5 years. About 20 years ago, if a professional changed jobs and companies every 2-3 years he was considered a “job jumper” with little loyalty to any company. It was a severe red strike on a resume. Little did we know, these professionals were onto something.

There are some of us today who are always looking for that new job, a new place to land, that next career move. We keep our network alive and working for us, notifying us of opportunities that we may have never considered. We have embraced the constant change and don’t see it as a mark against us if we only stay in a company for 1.5 years.

But then there are some of us who feel the need to stay at a company for 10+ years, even if that means that we are clinging onto a dead-end job and really should find something new.

Who is right? What’s this trend of job-jumping all about?

We’ll be talking about a new career model called the “fluid career.” It is both freeing, in that it gives people more control to design more work-life balance in their career over time, and anxiety-producing as it can feel less stable to them if they define success as “a job that lasts at least 10 years.”  This fluid employment trend takes into account the growth in both entrepreneurship and the Gig Economy, reductions in employee tenure, increases in employee dissatisfaction and increases in employee turnover.

Dana Theus will be sharing her thoughts about why this “fluid career” model is relevant – and popular – today, how you can embrace it, and what it means for you.