Three jobs in three years, all for defensible reasons, and every recruiter asks the same question
First one I was laid off. Second, the team got reorged out from under me nine months in. Third I left because I was about 20% under market and they told me flatly the band wouldn't move.
Every single one of those is fine on its own. Stacked on one page they read as "this person can't sit still," and I can see the recruiter deciding it before I open my mouth.
I've started getting ahead of it with a one-liner in the first two minutes — layoff, reorg, comp — and moving on quickly. Lands maybe half the time. The other half they circle back to it at the end anyway. Anyone got phrasing that actually closes the question instead of just delaying it?
2 comments
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AnonymousAnon Two of those three weren't your decision, so I'd stop counting them as job changes when you talk about it. "I've made one voluntary move in three years" is completely true and it reframes the entire question.
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AnonymousAnon I do some of the screening for my team, so from the other side: the stacked three-reasons version helps less than people think, because the length of the explanation is itself a signal. What lands is one sentence covering all three, then immediately talking about what you actually built at the second one. Brevity reads as "this doesn't worry me," and then it stops worrying us.