Why job-hopping and generalist expertise are now the fastest path to CEO role

The typical chief executive profile has changed as of late. The share of executives leading companies who are women or people of color is rising—albeit slowly. CEOs are also more likely to be older, including newly minted ones. At the time of appointment, the average CEO in 2023 was 55 years old, up from 47 in 2000, according to a new National Bureau of Economic Research working paper, published in April.

The paper’s authors looked at a sample of more than 50,000 U.S. CEOs and put forward several explanations for why new chief executives are tending older, including that companies are increasingly looking to cut back on risk. They might opt to trade the potential dynamism of a younger CEO with more experienced and stable guidance an older leader can offer. 

But in corporate America’s search for expertise in top roles, boards are now valuing candidates who have worked in different roles across multiple companies, potentially even in unrelated sectors. For the company stalwart employee eager to climb to the very top, the reality of corporate America today means their loyalty is unlikely to go rewarded.

The study’s authors found that, compared to in 2000, people who go on to become CEOs spend around 10 more years of their careers working outside of the companies they will eventually lead. Meanwhile, the number of years employees spend at their firms before becoming CEOs has remained roughly the same over the past few decades. 

“We interpret these patterns as evidence in favor of the idea that prospective CEOs transition across different positions, firms, and sectors to gather a broader skill set—pointing to a shift toward a boundaryless career in this segment of the labor market,” the authors wrote.

Job-hopping in vogue

Career-long loyalty to a single company might no longer be as highly regarded, but switching jobs is hardly a new phenomenon. In the U.S., the median amount of time employees spent with a company was 3.9 years in 2024, the lowest since 2002. That amount of time is actually similar to most tenure lengths in the 1980s and 90s, though that is likely because of an aging workforce skewing the statistics somewhat, as older employees tend to stay in their roles for longer.

Gen-Z and millennials might be known for being notorious job-hoppers, but the truth is most generations before them behaved similarly early in their careers, when young workers are more likely to be experimenting with different careers and job types. A report last year by the National Institute on Retirement Security found that even baby boomers held on average 12.7 jobs throughout their careers, with nearly half of those positions concentrated between the ages of 18 and 24.  

This might be a good thing, according to the recent NBER study. The authors note that one of the flashiest qualifications a modern-day CEO can have is “generalist human capital,” prioritizing knowledge gleaned from years of diverse work experiences rather than raw leadership skills. This type of experience is much harder to achieve within a single company or industry, pushing more firms to look at candidates with external experience to match.

The loss of reciprocity

That executive boards value diverse experience is fitting for corporate America today. While job-hopping early in one’s career has always been part of the working world, what has changed is how companies have approached the topic of loyalty. 

Workplaces used to value loyalty highly—exhibited through retention, measures of absenteeism, and engagement—and rewarded loyal employees with job security, pay raises, and other perks. But that implicit contract of reciprocity has broken down in recent years. Researchers at Stanford have pointed out that companies have, at an organizational level, become more calculative and future-oriented, and are now less likely to reward effort and loyalty if doing so doesn’t figure into their growth plan.

Employees have also become more loyal to their careers rather than to a single company. Part of the reason is that layoffs are now much more commonplace compared to 50 years ago, while several tangible rewards for being loyal have become rarer—such as company pension plans, which in recent decades have been almost entirely replaced by 401(k)s.

The loss of this implicit relationship of reciprocity has its downsides. Job security has suffered, and the new status quo could lead to lower job satisfaction and negative health consequences, given that most Americans’ health insurance is tied to them keeping a job. 

But for those employees who are able to job-hop successfully, studies have shown it can lead to more benefits later in workers’ careers, by developing skills, growing professional networks, and improving adaptability. Doing so might lead to more job opportunities for generalists, and potentially a better chance of someday breaking into a corner office.