Reapply for Your Job

This idea I am about to suggest is going to seem crazy and a lot of people may disagree with me but my current experience has made me believe it to be true. I think that we should have to reapply for our jobs/apply for new jobs every six months.

Think of this like a new level of performance review. I feel as though this would be good for both employers and employees for several different reasons. First, you would have to update your resume to show your employer what you have accomplished over the last six months. Wouldn't you work a little bit harder on projects if you knew that your employer would see you listing it. Also, it would force people to have constantly updated resumes. It was a real pain updating my resume last year when I hadn't done so for almost two years. Remembering all the projects I had worked on was surprisingly difficult.

The second reason for people to apply for their job is that it could be a confidence...or a reality check. I don't know about other people but getting a call back from a company is a real confidence booster. And getting that rejection email is really depressing. If you turned in a new resume, interviewed again, and then your company hired you back wouldn't that be a real make your day and motivate you to keep working hard moving forward. Also, if your company told you that they wouldn't hire you back (there would have to be rules so they couldn't just fire you), then you hopefully would work hard to improve your short comings.

I, also, think that if you had to reapply for your job every six months, then you might actually take the time to determine if you still enjoyed your job. It takes a lot of energy to apply for a job. So when you don't enjoy it then you probably would just apply for a job you may actually be happy at. I sure would have at one of my previous companies.

Finally, wouldn't it be good for company's if they knew that their employees did not want to continue work for them. This is where the process would cut both ways. Hopefully, a company will see that there are constantly losing employees during this process and fix some of their issues. Most won't I know but some may actually see the pattern. Also, it may show companies positions that people hate and again they can improve that area.

I know this is an out there idea and would need serious refining. For example, how do you keep employers from just firing people after six months. Obviously there would have to be a rule where a company didn't hire you back after three reapplications (1.5 years). But my experiences has shown mean that something needs to change in the performance review process. Either companies don't do them or they are so infrequent that employees don't know until things are to late.

Let me know what you think of this idea.