Switching jobs frequently was regarded as a blemish on the career for generations. A long service was an indication of commitment, reliability and professional maturity. The traditional career path was one that would go up, up and away and would start at the bottom, gain experience, progress up the ladder and finally retire from the organisation. It's a model that is being challenged by Gen Z. India's young people are joining a workforce where technologies, skills and even roles can evolve quicker than conventional promotion cycles. So, their eagerness to move on to new jobs doesn't necessarily equate with impatience. It might become more of a way to remain employable, more and more. The distinction matters.
The Randstad 2025 global study of 11,250 people from 15 markets revealed that on average Gen Z employees had tenure of 1.1 years over the first five years of their careers, while millennials and Gen X had tenures of 1.8 years and 2.8 years, respectively. But the research shows that this mobility is largely motivated not only by dissatisfaction, but by a search for growth and development as well. It is the same in the Indian labour market. Randstad's report on the 2025 India revealed that over half of the surveyed Gen Z and millennials indicated that they would be looking to switch jobs, with the top reasons being career development and work-life balance. But the image of the rambunctious young worker is only the latest way of concealing the shift in the nature of a career.
For earlier generations, it can be an investment to stay within an organisation. Tenure means institutional knowledge, promotions and security. However, in this day and age, it is not a given that the passage of time will guarantee one's career growth. Gen Z is thus posing a new question, “What am I getting out of staying?” rather than, “How long should I stay?” That improvement could be a new skill, exposure to a new technology, increased responsibility, increased flexibility, new mentors or it could just be a chance to work on something that matters.
{{/usCountry}}For earlier generations, it can be an investment to stay within an organisation. Tenure means institutional knowledge, promotions and security. However, in this day and age, it is not a given that the passage of time will guarantee one's career growth. Gen Z is thus posing a new question, “What am I getting out of staying?” rather than, “How long should I stay?” That improvement could be a new skill, exposure to a new technology, increased responsibility, increased flexibility, new mentors or it could just be a chance to work on something that matters.
{{/usCountry}}Deloitte's India Gen Z and Millennial Survey echo this change; 99% of the Indian Gen Z respondents felt that a sense of purpose is key to job satisfaction. Financial independence and work-life balance are still high priorities. Almost half indicated that personal belief/values were a factor in their refusal of job offer(s). But this doesn't mean that Gen Z is not interested in ambition; 96% of respondents from the Indian Gen Z said they wanted to be in senior leadership roles throughout their career. However, only 9% said that their top career objective is to become a leader. The message is implied, but strong: Progress is good, but it's no longer the only measure of success.
AI is the most crucial new factor. Gen Z's career trajectory will be defined by the emergence of AI, starting at the beginning. Some mundane jobs are being replaced with automation, and new jobs, which did not exist when the existing organisation hierarchy was established, are being created. According to Randstad's analysis of over 126 million job postings worldwide, job postings for positions with no or only two years of experience had dropped by 29 percentage points compared to January 2024. This changes the calculation when the employee is young. Three years to a promotion might not be appealing if the knowledge, abilities, and skills that go into that position may no longer be in demand during those three years.
Turning to switching can then become a career insurance. A job change might allow you to get access to AI tools, access to a new function, exposure to a new industry or a new skill that will lead to job growth. In this context, mobility doesn't always mean a way to get away from work, but also a means of investing in staying relevant. The behaviour is observed in India's work places. The survey further revealed that Indian Gen Z had a high level of confidence in using AI in their jobs, suggesting that AI is increasingly being utilised in learning and professional development. The emerging worker is, therefore, less likely to conceive of a job as the ultimate goal and more likely to view it as a stepping stone to developing skills.
It's in this place where the conventional jargon of job-hopping falls short. It may be drifting if a worker moves their job every year without gaining significant skills. Or someone who actually shifts from accounting to financial analytics, marketing to digital strategy or any other traditional tech role to a more AI-based role could be crafting a career portfolio. The difference lies in the intent.
In Randstad's Work monitor 2026 this wider change is referred to as the end of the linear career: employers are getting more aware of the trend of “portfolio careers”. It also states that there has been a huge increase in demand for the skills of AI agents in 2025. For young employees it should be a clear message: the employability of young people may increasingly be linked to the skill package they possess, not the number of years that they worked for one company. But there is a risk in this as well. Fragmented CV can result from a lack of mobility. Frequently changing careers for novelty is not a path of purposeful career development. So, Gen Z's challenge is to differentiate between ‘strategic mobility' and ‘restless mobility'.
It is time for employers to re-think their approach to retention
Increased wages are not the answer. Of course, there's money. And when young Indians are facing housing costs and financial pressures, it's a big problem. This is no longer just a matter of find a job, get a job, and keep a job, as it now relies on seeing a future within the organisation. It's a change that businesses must consider when thinking about the recruitment-to-promotion process. When a young worker has to leave their position to gain new skills in a technology or to transfer to another job role or to take on a new, meaningful job, the organisation is paying the worker to educate themselves. Rather than this, companies can establish internal mobility routes: Short-term assignments to other functional areas, promotion based on skills, project transfers, mentoring and access to new technologies. Learning should also be an everyday occurrence not a yearly drill. According to a survey conducted by Deloitte in 2025, 94% of the respondents in the Gen Z age group found on-the-job learning to be useful in their career growth. A manager's role is also significant. If a young worker is paid, but given no feedback, mentorship or visible path forward, then there's not much reason for him or her to take an investment approach to staying. Retention, it's not just about stopping people from leaving, but it's also about making it a good thing for people to stay.
Better wages, growth or flexibility isn't a new demand from Gen Z. The changes are the speed of the workers' responses to those preferences and the uncertainty of the future of work. Digital platforms bring opportunities to light. Skills go out of-date more quickly. AI is transforming low-level jobs. More and more organisations are engaged in flexible and project-based structures. In a labour market where this is the case, expecting young employees to show loyalty by staying for a long period of time could be a relic of the past. The more productive question for the employers is: What would be more valuable, to stay or to leave?
Gen Z may not be rejecting careers, they are choosing them. It's challenging the notion of building a career within one organisation. But the winners in this new labour market will not necessarily be the companies that convince young workers to stay on for life. They will be organisations that are continually providing them with opportunities to remain in the next phase of their evolution. The career ladder isn't going away. It's turning into a series of skills, experiences and options, and Gen Z wants to know where to take the next step before they take the next step.
(The views expressed are personal)
This article is authored by Anuradha PS, professor, CHRIST University, Bangalore.