Being in a job too long or not long enough?

In most jobs, it can be hard to make much of an impact in less than a year, yet many young people dislike their first jobs enough that they leave them for another job before they've had a chance to "make their mark." If you don't take the time to establish yourself, your boss won't have much to say about you when you need a reference. And in many cases, an early departure annoys the employer who hired you and now has to recruit and train someone new.

It certainly doesn't help your résumé, moreover, to have little job experience and most of it with employers for less than a year. The people who will review your application know that you can't have learned much in six to ten months. While the job may have felt endless to you, in "job years" that period of time is really very short.

For middle-aged employees, the downside of being in a job too long mainly involves perception. You can be seen as "on the shelf" or not promotable, lacking in ambition or initiative, or old-fashioned and bereft of fresh ideas. On the other hand, when you're around for a long time, others may view you as an expert, the go-to person in certain areas, and a valuable resource for training and mentoring new hires.

If you're "stuck" in a job where you don't feel valued but you haven't been there long enough to leave, try an attitude change. Decide you are going to learn at least one new thing each day, and keep a record of what you are learning. Before you know it, you will have written the next entry for your résumé and laid the groundwork for a better, more exciting job.

—Julie Miller Vick '73 H'97 P'12. As the senior associate director of career services at the University of Pennsylvania, Vick works with Penn doctoral students and postdoctoral fellows. She is the coauthor of the Academic Job Search Handbook and writes a monthly advice column on academic job-hunting for the online version of the Chronicle of Higher Education.