You switched jobs three times in three years? It sounds like you voluntarily changed jobs. Was that the case? If so, are you concerned about marking yourself as a job hopper?
No. Successful projects don't look bad. If anything I hope it helps me stay clear of companies that would assume otherwise and fail to contact my former bosses used as references. I stayed 4 years at the job before those 3. My current job I told them up front in the interview I planned to stay for 2-5 depending on the amount of growth. Honesty seems to go farther than loyalty IMO.
Let me preface by saying that I haven't been in a position to hire someone.
However, I think switching jobs a fair amount can even be a benefit. It depends on what your references say. If they really think highly of you, it's not only a good reference, but also says that you really impressed someone in a short amount of time. In other words, you learned what was needed and were productive very quickly.
Now, you can certainly argue, "why would I hire someone who will only be here a year and half?", but if that person is a great person, they're going to produce more than a lot of people would be in 2 or 3 years.
Maybe, I'm just biased and think that the best people like to change it up a lot to keep things interesting.
I'm replying to both parent and grandparent comment. I'm really trying to be helpful here and not rain on your parade.
Do you expect to find a job in the future by submitting your resume? If not, then you can happily ignore what I have to say.
I run part of a growing software operation. As part of my current role, I've looked through well over 500 resumes to fill a variety of positions over the past few months. This isn't my primary task. This is just one of my many responsibilities. As such I have to develop filters to assess a resume to see if we are going to phone screen or pass. If we don't have strong filtering, then we would wind up overloading our staff with phone screening. They won't have enough time to do their "real" work. So we need to err on the side of caution and accept false negatives and skip over some capable folks because they fail a filter. Is this fair? no. Is this a reality? Yes. There is only so much time in the day. I'm not going to overload my staff and I don't want to spend my own nights reading resumes and holding phone screens.
So although you are a unique and wonderful snowflake who may be on the far right of the performance bell curve, if you've hopped from job to job, I won't really know why by looking at your resume. I will just see a red flag that you might be a flake, you might get scared at commitment or have poor staying power when the going gets tough, or you might have trouble getting along with people. Your 2 page resume is probably not going to address those concerns. If your resume is much longer than 2 pages, I'm going to find an excuse to mark pass on it to for a variety of reasons (but that is another story).
I'll give your resume the 2-3 minutes attention I can and mark pass and go on to the next resume.
Your filter sucks. Not from a fairness point of view, but from a you're-not-doing-your-job-very-well point of view.
In my experience, length of stay doesn't correlate accurately with technical skill at all. It's often quite the opposite - 3-5 years of experience at BigCo. with lots of TLAs means that you couldn't find a better job elsewhere. Ditto if they've worked 12 months in a crappy PHP shop and couldn't hack it. If someone's worked 3 jobs in 3 years, with growing responsibility in each position, and a mix of technologies, that's generally a good sign.
I've also seen awesome programmers, with crappy resumes (ie. badly formatted, with all of the good stuff at the end). If you're filtering on anything other than "do they sound like a good/great programmer", then you're missing out on some good people. Try other mechanisms, like networking and code screening if your workload is too high.
"length of stay doesn't correlate accurately with technical skill at all"
They're not looking for technical skill - at least, not as a primary factor. They're looking for people who will stick around even when things get crappy, will put up with internal political maneuverings, people who will grit their teeth and deal with annoying coworkers and will tend to stay even when there's better short term offers.
For the company this is a win on a number of levels. Less cost of retraining new hires and the lost productivity that comes with new people entering a shop. Less need to get institutional knowledge out of people and in to documented systems. Freedom to experiment with new directions, because if things go south, they'll have a 'loyal' team who will stick around anyway.
These aren't necessarily good or bad, just how it is.
So, keep that in mind. Companies often are not looking for top-notch software skills, but a 'whole package', and they'll way often settle for 'good enough' on the whole package, even if it means average software skills.
Except that it's a false economy, and rarely works that way in practice.
Either you have decent technical talent, or the dead sea effect. If your workplace is mediocre, and you're good - you'll leave. The only people who "stick around when things get crappy" are the people who have to - either for life reasons or because they can't find a better job anywhere else.
Your company might win in the short term, but once you've gone too far down that path, you'll start losing and never recover.
I agree TLA scanning is stupid and no indicator. I never said I did that, so don't assume I do. I look for interesting stuff they do. But if they show a trend that they can't seem to hold down at a place for any length of time, that is still a big warning sign.
When I was looking for a housemate a few years ago, I got inundated with responses. I threw out people who were French, people with AOL accounts, and anyone who mentioned any sort of dietary restriction. I chose very random things to eliminate people, just to pare the population down.
That said, I don't think "guy held too many positions" gives you any sort of signal. This may help you get rid of every other applicant, but I doubt it will improve the average guy you interview. Being choosy about resume length also seems fairly random to me.
If you are being inundated with the wrong kind of candidates, it probably means you aren't advertising the position exactly right. Churning through every resume on Monster isn't going to lead to much.
"I threw out people who were French," -- haha, just curious, what beef do you have with french people. i.e. why do you think you can't roommate with them?
I think the job hopping taboo varies between companies. I've done a lot of resume screening for a company of ~50 employees. I prefer to see a variety of interesting jobs (even if they were 1 year each) over one long stretch at a single position.
When I interview someone the most important questions to me are "What value can they add?", "Does their skillset overlap or fill a need in the skillset of the team?", "Will their personality and career goals mesh with the position?".
The resume is fodder. It helps to not add fluff or make fairly easy tasks sound overly impressive. What did you learn, add, or improve in a given position? What would you do different? Why was it a success/failure? I think it makes sense to use it as a potential red flag if you're looking to fill a managerial position that is expected to last 5+ years.
I have to agree with this. If a company has 6-12 month projects using common tools, then the short-term stuff on a resume might be an advantage - come in, do the work and then (possibly) leave. Almost a consultant hire. However, if the environment has a steep learning curve or it's a multi-year project then yeah, it's a sign that the training costs might/will not be recouped. Different strokes for different folks - and I assume people choose their companies with more diligence that companies filter resumes?
Until you consider the safety net you need if things go to hell in a handbasket. Is that $60K living at or below your means? Does it consider enough to sock away so you don't have to eat cat food in retirement or cover your real expenses if your job is pulled out from under you?
