Your parents might have had two or three jobs their whole working lives. That model is gone, and it isn’t coming back. If you’re starting out now, you’re going to change jobs more often than any generation before you, which means you’re going to interview more often too. That second part gets ignored, and it shouldn’t.
The number that changes the math
LinkedIn projects that people entering the workforce today will hold about twice as many jobs over their careers as those who started roughly 15 years ago. Twice as many jobs means a lot more transitions, and every transition runs through an interview. Do the rough arithmetic on a full career and you’re looking at interviewing many more times than the generation ahead of you ever did.
That reframes what interviewing is. When you interviewed maybe a handful of times across a lifetime, it made sense to treat it as a rare, high-stakes scramble: cram beforehand, white-knuckle through it, forget it all until the next emergency years later. When it’s going to happen regularly across decades, that approach stops making sense. You don’t cram for something you do often. You get good at it.
Hopping is the norm now, not the risk
Part of why the old anxiety around job-changing feels dated is that everyone’s doing it. LinkedIn’s 2026 data shows about 52% of professionals actively job-hunting. Movement is the default state of the market, not a warning sign about the people in it.
The stigma has faded to match. A varied history used to read as flighty. Now it more often reads as range, someone who’s seen different systems and adapted to each, provided you can explain what each move was for. The employers doing the hiring are moving jobs at the same rate; they’re in no position to hold it against you. So the frequency isn’t the problem. The problem is that most people are bad at the thing they now have to do repeatedly.
Everyone’s doing it, almost nobody’s ready
A gap jumps out of the same LinkedIn data. About 52% are job-hunting, and roughly 80% feel unprepared for it. So the market is full of people actively looking who quietly know they’re not ready for the conversation that decides whether they get the job.
That gap is the opportunity, honestly. When four out of five people walking into interviews feel underprepared, the bar to stand out is lower than it looks. You don’t need to be extraordinary. You need to be someone who’s actually put in reps while the field around you is winging it and hoping. Preparedness is rare enough right now that having some is a genuine edge.
And the reason so many feel unprepared makes sense once you see the frequency problem clearly. People treat each interview as a separate cram session, build nothing that carries over, and start from scratch every time. That’s exhausting and it doesn’t improve you. The alternative is to treat it as one skill you develop steadily, so each round starts from a higher floor than the last.
Treating the conversation as a skill
The mechanics of getting good at this aren’t mysterious, they’re just rarely applied.
The first shift is to keep the skill warm instead of letting it go cold between searches. The people who dread interviewing are usually the ones who only do it under pressure, when their job is already on the line and every conversation feels like it’s carrying their rent. Doing a little when the stakes are low, before you strictly need to, takes most of the terror out of it.
The second is to practice the part that actually decides things, which is talking through your experience under mild pressure without freezing. Reading about interviews doesn’t build that. Having the conversation does, ideally against something that pushes back and asks the awkward follow-up rather than a mirror that just reflects your prepared lines. This is where a tool like Openskill fits, quietly: a place to have that conversation and get pointed feedback before it counts, so the reps happen somewhere low-stakes. That’s the whole pitch, and it’s enough.
The third is to build a real answer bank over time. Every interview surfaces the same handful of questions about a hard call you made, a conflict you handled, a project that went sideways. Get sharp, honest versions of those once and refine them across moves, and you stop rebuilding from nothing every search.
There’s a compounding effect here that’s easy to overlook, because most people never stick with it long enough to see it. Your first interview after a two-year gap is rough, because you’re cold and out of practice and every question feels like an ambush. Your tenth, if you’ve kept the skill warm, is a conversation you can steer. The stories are tighter, the nerves are lower, and you can actually listen to what the interviewer is really asking instead of scrambling for something to say. That improvement doesn’t come from talent. It comes from having done the thing enough times that it stopped feeling like an event. Given how many times you’re going to do it, that steady climb is worth starting early rather than rediscovering it in a panic every few years.
The honest read
The era of the lifelong job is over, and you’re going to interview far more times than the people who trained you. You can treat that as a recurring ordeal to survive, cramming and dreading it each time, or as a skill worth building once and sharpening as you go. Most people pick the first path, which is exactly why the second one pays. When most of the market feels unprepared for something they’ll do over and over, being the person who quietly got good at it is a durable advantage, and it compounds every time you move.
Questions, answered.
How many jobs will people hold now compared to before?+
LinkedIn projects that people entering the workforce today will hold roughly twice as many jobs over their careers as those who started about 15 years ago. More moves means more interviews, which changes how much it's worth investing in doing them well.
Is job-hopping still seen as a red flag?+
Far less than it used to be. As frequent moves become the norm, employers increasingly read a varied history as range rather than instability, especially when you can explain what each move taught you.
How should I treat interviewing if I'll do it so often?+
As a durable skill worth building, not a once-in-a-while emergency. LinkedIn's 2026 data shows about 52% of professionals job-hunting and roughly 80% feeling unprepared, so a little steady practice puts you ahead of most of the field.