Is Our Country One Big "Transfer Portal"?

The skill of detecting and categorizing career patterns is increasingly valuable in today’s “transfer portal world.”

By now in the US, most Americans high school age or older are familiar with the term “transfer portal.”  It refers to the 2018 rule passed by the NCAA that says a college student athlete is allowed to change schools without penalty.  Before this rule a student athlete could change schools with a penalty, which was they would have to sit out the following season.  This would effectively limit the number of times a student athlete would transfer to one.  This new rule eliminates the penalty of sitting out a year, so allows for multiple transfers for a student athlete. 

And over the years, the transfer portal has been met with criticism throughout corporate America and beyond.  The criticisms include: it’s ruined college athletics; it is out of control; players have no loyalty; players are just chasing the money; Lane Kiffin is the devil in a visor (the Lane Kiffin belief might not be in the majority, but a lot of people really don’t like that guy!).  And while there are some positive opinions out there, the negative ones outnumber them.  By a lot. 

Now here’s the irony…I can tell you, with confidence, that the transfer portal has hit corporate America!  So some of the people complaining about the state of college athletics may have to look in the mirror before throwing any proverbial stones.

I suppose it shouldn’t be a real surprise that the “corporate transfer portal” exists now given the evolving dynamics of today’s workforce.  And maybe even having the term “transfer portal” in our lexicon, and the prevalent debate/discussion about college sports, contributed to it entering the job market.  In turn, companies have increased their employee retention efforts – upgrading office amenities, offering wellness benefits, catering lunch in-office.  Though those are more to counter what could be the biggest employee retention factor post-Covid: weekly in-office policy.  The two days a week norm right after Covid seems to have gone away, and most companies are at least three days a week in office with a thought to increase it to four days. 

The days of blackballing a person who has changed jobs every two or three years are long gone.  Now I do a double take when a person has been at a company for more than 5 years!  It used to be that I wouldn’t present a resume of a “job hopper” to a client to avoid hearing “why would I want to hire this person?  They’ll likely be looking to leave in a few years, and I’ll be back at square one.”  And I agreed with that sentiment, and in part I still do. 

To be clear, I’m not saying this new normal of the “corporate transfer portal” is patently bad.  It’s just different.  I’m also not saying “job hoppers” can’t be good hires; not at all.  Many “job hoppers” have those career patterns for reasons that aren’t performance related.

Professionals change companies for various reasons, and it’s happening more frequently in today’s world.  Having a trusted, seasoned recruiter who knows the right questions to ask a candidate will prove critical to a successful candidate pool and eventual hire.  Recruiters have a database of conversations to call upon that gives them good intuition on how to categorize a candidate’s career story.  So go easy on the college athletes who may play for 3-4 schools during their college career.  The window for them to maximize their value is 4-5 years, whereas yours is the rest of your life.