Jack of All Trades, Master of None? Exploring Factors That Influence Responses to White-Collar Professionals with Multiple Jobs

Although the prevalence of multiple jobholding is on the rise, especially among those work-ing in professional service occupations, our empirical understanding of the consequences of this occupational arrangement has lagged. To address this issue, we investigate percep-tions and responses to white-collar professionals with secondary employment across five empirical studies. Overall, we find that individuals who are evaluating potential service providers tend to discount multiple jobholding white-collar professionals along several dimensions. Among these, a perceived (lack of) competence in their primary jobs is one mechanism explaining why multiple jobholders tend to receive lower evaluations. Through this series of studies, we also provide incremental evidence regarding when this discount-ing effect is mitigated, including the availability of information regarding the motivation for holding multiple jobs, the perceiver's level of social identity complexity, and the professio-nal's primary occupation. Extrapolating from this set of empirical discoveries, we develop a framework that explains when and why multiple jobholders may be subject to social dis-counting. Our findings and framework suggest new research directions and puzzles to be explored at the intersection of multiple jobholding and social perception processes.