She is under no contract or obligation to stick with one job for the long haul. She's free to check out her options and consider other job offers. And she has.

In the past two years, she's bounced around to four jobs: volunteer coordinator for two political campaigns, literacy coordinator for a community-based organization and--her current gig--community engagement coordinator for the Chicago Cultural Alliance.

"The benefit of job hopping, so to speak, is each time I changed jobs, I moved on for something: better pay, opportunity and mobility," said Shah, 32, of Logan Square. With each job jump, she became exposed to new people, places and mentors, she said.

"I find that fulfilling, while to a traditionalist it may seem like somebody who doesn't know what they want," she said.

Job hoppers, such as Shah, flee from office to office or leap from gig to gig in a relatively short span. Some switch after months and others after a couple of years, citing the need to change careers, beat a round of imminent layoffs or find fulfilling jobs.

Many job hoppers appear to be millennials. A 2008 survey by Experience, a career services provider for college students and alumni, showed 70 percent of recent grads left their first job within two years and 60 percent said they were looking for a new job.

Last month, The Associated Press reported more workers quit their jobs in the previous three months than were laid off. Despite Illinois' unemployment rate of 10.8 percent for May, which is slightly higher than the national rate of 9.5 percent, skipping out is a reality that may become more popular as better jobs emerge when the economy rebounds, experts say.

The short-timers can scare off employers because bosses fear such workers will leave them quickly, chasing another opportunity, employment experts said.

"The feeling is if they've left two or three jobs in six, seven, eight, nine, twelve months, they're going to leave here," said Tom Gimbel, CEO of the LaSalle Network, a staffing and recruiting firm downtown. "They're malcontent, never going to be happy. So why take a chance on them?"

Turnover is expensive for companies, he said. Companies spend money to post the job and recruit job candidates, and time on the interview process and training a new employee, Gimbel said. Morale in the workplace can also be affected when employees quit, he said.

Having more than one job lasting less than 12, and sometimes 18, months is seen as a warning sign, he said. Companies find job stability attractive in applicants. A job seeker with
10 years of experience under his or her belt should have held one job for five years, he said.
Some companies won't even talk to an applicant if he or she is seen as a job hopper unless the company is looking to fill a temporary job, he said.

But there's an upside to job hopping, said Raven Moore, 30, a legal assistant who lives in Bucktown. Hoppers often are multitaskers who can learn quickly, want to enhance their skills and challenge themselves to move to the next level, she said. She counts seven jobs in six years.

However, jumping jobs can be stressful if workers lack focus and can't define what they want to do next, she said. Moore decides to get another job when she feels the learning curve has flattened.

"I think people respect job hopping as long as you're able to illustrate you can get stuff done. Good work is about execution," Moore said. "If you're able to showcase you get things done and produce good work, people won't care if you job hop," she said.

Young workers are constantly looking for better opportunities and have seen how companies are not loyal to employees in this economy and question why they as workers should be loyal to companies, said Lindsey Pollak, author of "Getting from College to Career."

"The whole paradigm of how we work is completely changing. That old model of get one job out of college till you retire with a gold watch is completely, utterly gone," Pollak said.

When she talks to college students and recent grads about their careers, they tend to think of a one- or two-year plan.

"Much more now than ever, people are thinking about their job as an extension of who they are," Pollak said. They want their work to represent who they are and be fulfilling, she said.

"They're much quicker to jump around and find something meaningful," she said.

Job hopping is common for Michael Fineman's industry of venture capital and private equity. He snagged three jobs in a period of six years. Fineman, 28, left one job in search of a better work-life balance and quit another because of looming layoffs. He quit last month at Maranon Capital, where he had a two-year stint to pursue an MBA at the University of Chicago.

While his job moves have been lateral in terms of responsibility, "compensation has improved as I've gone from job to job, the general experiences and types of things I'm doing on the job has certainly changed," said Fineman, who lives in the Gold Coast. His change in jobs gave him the opportunity to expand his network of contacts and skill set, he said.

The downside to being a job hopper is explaining every time why he made the career moves. "As long as it's explainable and not performance-based, then it becomes more acceptable," Fineman said.

While there's an adjustment period of getting settled into a new job, Shah, who works in the not-for-profit sector, said her bumpy career path has been worthwhile.

"Regardless of all these job experiences, I've been able to grow as a person and that's important to me, more than anything else," she said.

LOTS OF JOB LEAPS WILL BRING QUESTIONS

What will employers think about your job-hopping experience?

Companies will notice frequent job changes on a resume, so it's best to address it, said Lindsey Pollak, 35, New York-based author of "Getting from College to Career."

"Explain to me what you learned from doing that, why are you smarter, wiser, more prepared and self-knowing because you've been through that experience," Pollak said. An interviewee can talk about why this job opportunity would be a better fit than previous jobs, she said.

When employers ask what the applicant's five-year plan is, that's a clue that what's really being asked is how long he or she plans to stay with the company, she said. An applicant should never say he or she plans to leave and instead should talk about intentions for the company, such as contributing to the organization and helping to build something great there, she said.

Also, she advises an applicant to make contact with potential employers to get them excited about the job seeker before submitting a resume.

If a worker gets the itch to switch jobs often or craves change, he or she may be best suited for entrepreneurship or start-up environments in which there often are new tasks and challenges. Applicants also can inquire about movement within the company, she said.

"There's nothing wrong with jumping around a little bit. It's the excessive looking for the next exciting thing that can be problematic," Pollak said.