How long should you stay in your first job?

• The general consensus for how long you should stay in your first job.
• When this rule doesn’t apply.
• How to leave your first job with grace.
• Why you shouldn’t get too cosy in your first job.
• How to find more opportunities in your first job if you feel you aren’t moving forward.
• How to explain a short period of employment in a job interview.

The general consensus is that you should stay in your first job for at least a year.

Here’s why this can be a good idea:

As you’ll already be finding, you learn heaps in your first job. This is your first chance to put what you learnt at school or uni into practice in a real life setting.

Even if it isn’t the dream job (and very few of us jump straight into a dream job!), the experiences you pick up will be great for boosting your CV in your next job.

As long as there are good opportunities with your current employer, the longer you stick it out, the more you’ll learn – simple as.

While it’s very common for job hunters, and especially younger job hunters, to move around a lot more than they used to, you don’t want to appear flakey.

We’re not saying that leaving your first job after less than a year will seriously damage all future job searches, not at all, but if you only stayed for a matter of months, expect some questions on this at interview time.

Unless you’re applying for temporary contract roles, no employer or recruiter hires someone with the expectation that they’ll only last a few months. Recruiting is expensive, and you’ll definitely raise a few eyebrows if you quit your first job soon after taking it.

To re-emphasise, the ‘rule’ here is only a guide. If your first job really isn’t for you, that’s your call to make. However, if you’re experiencing any of the following scenarios, that might make your decision easier:

We’ve all got bills to pay, so it’s not uncommon to take jobs we’re overqualified for while we wait for something better to come along. If this is you, it’s unlikely you’re gaining a lot of valuable experience, so hanging around for a year might not be a smart career move.

It’s sad, but it happens – not every employer is a good employer. If you’re uncomfortable in your job, and have unsuccessfully tried to resolve the situation, you don’t want to put up with it for a year. This could be anything from being underpaid to unethical behaviour from your boss or colleagues.

Perhaps you applied for a role on an impulse, or an employer approached you through your Trade Me Jobs profile. If it’s an opportunity that can’t be missed, well it can’t be missed.

If the reason you’re thinking of moving on is tied to a feeling of lack of opportunity in your current role, we recommend trying to actively seek these out before you head for the door. There are a few ways you can find extra learning and development opportunities at work, including:

• Creating a professional development plan: these are generally made with the support of a manager. Essentially, this involves talking to your manager and telling them a couple of skills that you’d like to work on. Together, you can then brainstorm ways for you to do this. Having your manager help with this is great both because they might have resources to, for example, send you on a development course, and also because they can pass on their own advice and experience.
• Volunteer for projects: when your people leader is looking for someone to take the lead on a project, make sure your hand is going up. Ideally, this will be something that’s just that little bit outside of your comfort zone, because this is how you grow.
• Attend talks: it’s quite common for businesses to both bring in guest speakers, and provide the opportunity for internal people leaders to talk on what their team is up to. Try to attend as many of these talks as possible, they’re both a chance to learn and to network with other professionals in your sector.

Now, we’re never going to tell you to leave a job that you love. However, it’s also important to regularly do some critical reflection on your career and whether it’s still offering you everything you want. Part of this involves thinking about whether you’ve settled and become too comfortable in your role, just because it’s familiar. Here are a few reasons why this isn’t a good idea:

• You won’t be developing: if you’re too comfortable for too long, chances are you aren’t being challenged regularly enough. While you don’t want to feel out of your depth at work, it’s important that you’re learning new skills and developing as a professional, particularly in your first job.
• You’ll lose motivation: at first what feels comfortable and familiar might eventually start to feel boring and uninspiring. The problem is, once you’ve made this realisation, you might have sat still for so long that it’s hard to move into another role.
• Employers will notice: if you eventually move on from a role that you became too comfortable in, employers will likely be able to tell from a CV. If they can see that you stayed in a role for a long time, and didn’t gain a lot of skills, they may well think that you’re not dynamic enough for their team.

Once you’ve thought about it long and hard, and still come to the decision that you need to leave, it’s time to extract yourself with grace. Here’s how:

Your employment agreement will have a section on notice periods, and what’s required of you. Read this before telling your boss about your decision.

Especially if you’ve had a bad experience in your first job, it can be tempting to shout about your plans to move from the highest mountain top. Don’t. The last thing you want is for your boss to hear about your planned departure from someone else. This will make an already potentially awkward conversation worse.

Organise a meeting with your boss first to tell them about what’s happening. Thank them for the opportunity, and explain why you’re moving on.

Keep things professional – this is really important. If you hated the job, this isn’t the time to tell them (FYI, there’s never a time to say this). As long as the conversation went well (and most employers are understanding when staff decide to leave), this is the perfect time to ask for reference to provide to your next employer.

Once the conversation is finished, you need to write a resignation letter to formalise your decision.

In this discussion, you might find out you were more important to your employer than you thought. Depending on your reasons for leaving, before entering into the conversation, consider if there’s anything your boss could offer (a pay rise, promotion, new responsibilities) that might entice you to stay.

Whatever your notice period is, keep working hard and offer to help with hiring your replacement, or transitioning your workload to another employee. You want to go out on a high and for people to remember you for the right reasons.