As we’re about to say goodbye to another year, is the writing on the wall and is it possibly time for you to say goodbye to your employer before they say it to you?
At some point, it may just hit you that it’s time to leave your current employer and get a new job. Whether it’s because you hit a wall and can’t progress any further or because things have just changed and made it clear that things are getting worse and not better, sometimes it becomes obvious that a change of scenery is in order even if your first reaction is just to ignore things and keep plugging away to try to make things work.
When I look at people I’ve helped find a new job, they tend to fall into two basic categories:
1. People who were already searching proactively for a job when I first contacted them.
2. People who were not actively searching for a new job when I first contacted them.
These days, it’s rare when you speak to someone who isn’t at least “keeping their eyes open” for a new opportunity. Typically when I call someone up to introduce myself as a recruiter the person will mention that they’ll consider a new opportunity if a decent one came along. You don’t get too many people who flat out say they don’t want to talk or just listen.
It’s hard for me to figure out the ratio between people who I’ve placed in new jobs who were already actively searching for a new job versus people who hadn’t been actively searching for a new job, when I first contacted them. Suffice it to say though that job searching tends to often be a reactionary event where people react to something at work and then start looking for a new job as a result rather than searching proactively.
Certainly there are a number of things you might be experiencing that could indicate a job change is in order:
- You hate getting up in the morning and going to work.
- You’ve hit a ceiling and can’t see yourself progressing any further.
- You find yourself constantly complaining about the people you work with, your boss, etc and are tired of having to deal with some of them.
- You were promised something (ie. promotion, raise) that hasn’t materialized and with no good reason.
- You have no one to mentor you or you work for a boss who knows less than you do.
- Office politics or nepotism seem to play a part in the success of people and you’re on the outside looking in.
- You’re in a fast-paced industry (ie. IT, technology) and your skills are getting stale.
The last point is an interesting one to me because working in IT recruitment, I can recall times when a person turned down a job offer or turned down the opportunity to even interview for a job based on the technology that the company used. In some cases, the person wanted to work on a certain platform that was either not used or underutilized at the company I’d mentioned to them.
This is part of a bigger issue that often causes people to think about switching jobs: they feel like they aren’t progressing and feel like they’ve stalled and will eventually start falling behind their peers who work for perhaps more progressive companies or in more progressive positions. They see what other people have and they’d like the same thing and realize they aren’t getting it – and aren’t likely to get it – from their current employer.
As we’re reaching the end of the year when people typically reflect on the prior 12 months and take stock of the year, this is also a good opportunity to think about your career and where it’s headed. If it seems to have stalled like the economy over the past year, perhaps it’s time to do something about it.
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