Can a job be detrimental to one's career? (employment, applying, unemployment)

[mcb1025]

Is it possible that a job can be a detriment to one's career? I realize with the high unemployment, a lot of folks would just be happy to have that steady flow of income. All that aside, if you have a job that isn't really adding to your skillset and you work for a company that doesn't offer much room to grow, is it possible that this can be detrimental to one's career? Those that argue that any experience is a good thing, is it really? I mean, if you're not getting any new experience, only the same old experience day after day, is this really going to help one's career? Should you jump ship as quickly as possible if this is the case?

[wannabee]

Yes of course it can be detrimental. You sometimes gotta do what you gotta do just to pay the bills. Ideally you would want to have a lot of experience in one field (or a couple of related fields). It is far better to be under-employed than un-employed. A gap in your employment looks worse on your resume than a job you feel is not very challenging. Don't jump ship until you receive a bona fide offer. Good Luck!

[yellowsnow]

Yes, it can.

Since I already have a 32 year history of uninterrupted employment, I just say I took a couple years off to remodel my house. Which I did/am doing. I can choose whether of not to bring up the fact that I had a couple low pay temp jobs during that time period.

If I'm applying for another low pay job, I use the other low pay jobs as experience. If I'm applying for a real job, I probably won't bring it up at all.