Stability

[Kalyan Anand]

On average what duration with a company is considered stable and not treated as job hopping ?

[Deepak Bala]

There is no such limit as far as I know. I tend to look at it the other way. As long as the job is interesting and pays well people will stick around. I know a person that left after 2 months. His job was to run a report and send an email, when in fact he wanted to be a developer. His case cannot be considered 'job hopping'. So there is no general answer to your question. Was the question raised to address a specific problem you have ?

[kaustuv saha]

There is no stable duration as such. As long as you have right reasons to quit, this shouldn't be a concern for any company interested in hiring you.

[Jeanne Boyarsky]

I beg to differ. If one is an employee (rather than a consultant/contractor), a large number of short term jobs is a flag.

Suppose a candidate has worked at 5 companies in the past two years. It tells me one of the following:

candidate had bad luck and worked for a lot of start-ups that went out of business

candidate doesn't like to stay at one place long - why should I invest in training him/her if he/she is unlikely to stay at *my* company

candidate is bad and got asked to leave/fired/laid off at all these jobs - why do I want him/her

I don't have a specific duration I can give you for "job hopping". I've seen 1-2 years in passing for this.

I think Deepak's example of having one very short job is different. One job isn't a trend.