They are amidst us. They don't seem to treat doors as some rockers do-more a matter of perception than reality. They don't have any particular spring in their step either. They are, still, job hoppers. Some of them are compulsive job hoppers, often incurably so. If there's some strange kick they get from it, fine, they ought to be free to hop their careers away-so long as they don't trample on others' freedom. But such lofty liberalism mustn't stop us from asking why they do it. So, why do they?

Roll, Roll, Roll

Viresh Kamath, a seriously anchored executive, who, as president of an FMCG firm until 2000, was able to propel his company from Rs 30 crore to Rs 200 crore in sales over just five years. Then the dot-com bug got him, and he's been job-hopping ever since: From his doomed dot-com to an it firm, from there to a pharma company; and now possibly, as the buzz goes, back to an FMCG job.

Is Kamath looking to resurrect a career gone wrong? Perhaps. According to Purvi Sheth, a consultant at search firm Shilputsi, returning to a sector starts getting trickier over time. But that hardly stops a hopper, or does it?

Not if getting out is the dominant thought in the hopper's mind. In the observation of D.N.B. Singh, hr consultant and author of Do Not Dig A Grave... And Bury Your Career: "Most people jump jobs for comfort reasons. They cannot get along with the boss, and since they're often functionally superb, they don't see the need to adjust to the reality of the organisation.''

Job hoppers' careers typically have "a sad inning" or two, which they try to conceal in their biodatas, says Ronesh Puri, Managing Director, Executive Access. As an executive recruiter, he has seen candidates failing to mention job tenures of under six months, or sometimes even two years. "Nearly 60 per cent of the CVs floating around today are not authentic," he estimates. Sad.

Yet, job hoppers have diverse motivations, according to Anita Ramachandran of Cerebrus Consulting, so don't jump to conclusions prematurely.

Wholesale Whiners

"First, there are those who seem forever unhappy with their jobs and feel the grass is greener on the other side," says Ramachandran, explaining the 'compulsive' aspect of much hopping behaviour. Consider the case of a whiner in his late 30s who left an FMCG job to join a telecom firm, but got tired of it and moved to another service provider-only to whine again. Last heard, the man had become a strategic planning associate with a BPO company. The whines are subsonic so far, but a lot of eyes will go rolling up if he starts.

Dullsville Distraught

For managers looking for job excitement, being stuck in Dullsville can be reason enough to hop-in the hope of escaping monotony.

Take the case of this FMCG man who went to an MNC bank. In less than two years, he left-for a drastic drop in his yawn-rate as vice president (marketing) at a cargo company. No luck. So he joined a telecom company. More ennui. Next, he resurfaced at what was supposedly a hot and happening dot-com, but turned out to be cold and unhappening. After a brief stint at another telecom firm, he's back at a bank.

Lemming Leavers

En masse departers cite the same reasons that others do for moving jobs, with the crucial difference that they do this more out of 'groupthink' than individualism. There's safety in numbers, they feel, and if their peers hop, so do they. Three years ago, three equivalent level executives at a single FMCG firm switched simultaneously to telecom (two different companies), hopped about in this industry, and eventually returned to their old employer.

Peter's Prodigals

All too often, managers hop their way up the corporate hierarchy-only to reach their level of incompetence, in accordance with Peter's Principle. The next thing they know, their key performance areas are in jeopardy-and out they go. A headhunter cites the instance of "a great talker and a good presenter" who he recruited for a pizza major, only to discover "one helluva bad implementer". The poor fellow hopped to a multiplex company within months, lasting about a year, before shifting to a retail chain in the Gulf.

Cinderella Celebrities

Some top honchos, alas, become brands. Consciously or not, they start shaping the firm in their own image, and often succeed so well that their personal profile casts a shadow on the rest of the corporate identity. Any resentment caused puts them at risk of being ousted.

The story of an entrepreneurial wiz with an Ivy League MBA is particularly poignant. With a career spanning oralcare and it, this manager became director of operations at a beverages major, and then the chief of a cafe start-up-before leaving to do his own thing. The strength of his own profile has rendered him unemployable, perhaps.

Triumph Turners

There is a rare, but important tribe of hoppers too: That of special-task artists. Armed with a diverse, but circumstance-specific set of skills, they see themselves as adding value only on rescue missions. Turning a firm's fortunes around, for example...after which they prefer to bail out, for the next challenge.

There's the example of an executive who hopped from an imaging business to set up a direct selling operation, and then to a telecom, and again to a consumer-care start-up-only to be at the stage of the business he excelled at.

"Turnaround or start-up artists," says Atul Vohra, Partner, Heidrick & Struggles, "are visionary and highly innovative managers with excellent leadership skills and the ability to harness and channelise the energy of the team." Often, too, they are people who know exactly where they're driving to-and keep their vision on that road and grip on the steering, irrespective of the hops they make.