Sometimes we make mistakes in life and unfortunately sometimes mistakes occur specifically in terms of the jobs we accept.

Have you ever accepted a new job and several days or weeks after starting, you begin to think that you’ve made a terrible mistake?

Studies that I’ve read show that people typically feel they’ve made a mistake switching jobs within about 8 weeks of starting a new one. During this time, they start seeing the new company as it really is and perhaps start noticing things aren’t exactly as they were led to believe.

I’ve helped people get new jobs and then on their first day, their manager forgot they were starting or didn’t even have their desk ready for them. When stuff like this happens, people start wondering if they were really wanted by the company afterall?

Perhaps the job isn’t as desirable as you thought. Maybe you suddenly wonder why you wanted to leave your previous employer so badly?

I know of a few people who quit a job, started a new one and within 2 months were back again working for the old employer. Whether or not they were happily working again for the old employer is another story I guess…

When looking over a person’s resume it’s often interesting to read their experience and see stability in their employment, where they stayed with their employers for a few years…and then suddenly see a job where they only lasted 8 months or something similar. I immediately wonder what happened.

Did they get laid off?

Were they fired?

Did they hate the job, quit and get a new one?

Sometimes it’s a case where a better opportunity came up and they left to take it.

While you don’t want to build a resume where you look like a job jumper, jumping from company to company in a short period of time, you also don’t want to stick around in a situation that just isn’t working.

It is best though to make sure you look before you leap: if you’re thinking about quitting a job you recently started, it’s best to think about exactly why you want to leave and first make sure it’s the right thing to do.

In my experience, waiting and seeing often ends up being the best thing and your new job ends up being exactly what you had hoped it would be.

Two weeks notice is probably the most common amount of notice that a person has to give when leaving a job. Three weeks or longer is also common especially for more senior positions.

Conversely, the company you’re working for typically agrees to pay you for the same amount of time if they decide they no longer want you to work for them (ie. due to a layoff or downsizing for example) and let you go. So in this instance, they can pay you to not work for them for a few weeks or longer if they terminate your employment without cause.

We already discussed quitting a job with little or no notice given and why you want to avoid this for various but something I didn’t cover in that post was the legal reason(s).

Depending on your job, your company and your personal situation, leaving a company without giving proper notice could become a legal issue if your (former) employer decides that they want to hold you to giving whatever notice is specified in your work contract.

Granted, most companies aren’t going to take former employees to court to enforce the notice period but I have heard of specific situations where this has happened. I’ve also heard of situations where a company enforces the non-compete part of a work agreement when one of their employees decides to leave voluntarily and takes a job with a competitor.

Depending on your job, your leaving the company without giving the required notice might cause the company to be hurt monetarily or otherwise and in this case, they could decide to take you to court to make you pay – literally – for injuring them.

The easy way to avoid this is to give proper notice when quitting and ensuring that you abide by the terms of your work agreement. Sometimes in practice this can be difficult if (for example) a job pops up and they want you start earlier than your notice period will allow. In this case your best bet might be to speak with your current employer and see if you can get a shorter notice period and see what happens. It could be a lot better than simply quitting early and hoping or expecting that nothing further will happen.

We’ve already spoken about a few issues related to resigning like writing a resignation letter and also the fear of resigning and leaving your current employer.

But another issue that often pops up related to the resignation process is something that can occur even before you’ve got a job offer in hand, something that can hurt you if and when it happens.

It’s when you indicate to a hiring manager or recruiter that you can immediately leave your current job and start a new one right away. The issue is of course is that if you’re working currently, chances are that you have some sort of notice period that you have to give. It’s probably 2 weeks minimum and might be as high as 3-4 weeks in some cases.

So when you are in an interview and show your enthusiasm for a job and suggest that you can quit your current job right away, an alarm bell usually goes off in the head of the interviewer because they basically hear that you’re going to leave your current employer in the lurch and quit suddenly without notice.

Then they wonder how long it will be before you do the same thing to do.

Contractors – people who work on contract jobs – can be notorious for this. If a person has been working on contract for many years, they get used to a process whereby they start looking for a contract before their current one has ended so they can (when possible) leave one contract on a Friday and start a new one on Monday and avoid being unemployed for any length of time.

Typically though, they experience things along the way that cause them grief like when they are verbally promised that a contract will get extended so they don’t bother looking for a new job and then the extension never materializes and they’re out of a job.

Or when they are told their contract is ending so they reluctantly look for a new job and get one and are then told by their current employer that their contract can be extended after all so they’re stuck trying to figure out how to either get out of the new contract they just signed or let their current employer know that they can’t accept the contract extension because they’ve signed a new one elsewhere.

So while contractors have to deal with stuff like this, hiring managers do too and if they’ve been burned by someone leaving a contract or full time job with little or no notice given they typically don’t want to get burned again. In other cases, the hiring manager has made a mistake by telling an employee that they aren’t needed anymore and then lose the employee to another company and then realize they still need this person but it’s too late to retain the person since they’ve been hired elsewhere.

When this hiring manager hears you telling them that you plan on leaving your current job right away and can start with their company immediately with no notice given, they probably start thinking about the situations like the ones mentioned above and fear that when you inevitably decide to leave their employment at some point in the future, you’ll do the same to them.

I’ve spoken with hiring managers on several occasions who have told me that they’ve had problems with various staff members leaving them in the lurch and quitting without giving notice and how this hurt them. This especially hurts on projects and other time sensitive jobs where suddenly losing a key team member can cause costly delays.

Typically, they consider that employees who leave a job without giving notice have little tact or professionalism. When you make it look like you plan on quitting your current employer by giving little or no notice, you tend to give them the same impression of you.

For anyone following Conan O’Brien’s divorce from NBC, it’s an interesting look at how things work for some people when they leave their employer under less than ideal circumstances.

Getting paid to not work for your employer any longer is something most people won’t experience in their life. Some of you may have experienced this phenomenon during your career especially as the economy has soured over the past year or so but most of us won’t know the feeling that Conan has ie. getting paid tens of millions of dollars to not report to work any longer.

The best way to resign from an employer is to do it honestly and with consideration given as to the terms of your employment ie. if they require two weeks notice, you give them two weeks notice or whatever your contract dictates.

Unlike Conan – who got to badmouth his employer to many laughs during the last few nights of his show – the best way you can leave your current employer is in a good way and without badmouthing your employer as you exit stage left.

At this point you don’t want to burn any bridges as you’re leaving the company. Not only is it the right thing to do, you never know when you’re going to run into these people again.

Plus you might need their help in the future as a reference.

And if you happen to be resigning soon, here is another chance to check out a resignation letter template you can use for yourself.

Are you afraid to quit?

If you’ve never resigned from a job, resigning or quitting can be a difficult thing especially if you are close with your boss, colleagues and company and if you feel a sense of loyalty to them.

I can think of a few occasions where job searchers I was working with sailed along through the job search process until the job offer stage and as soon as they accepted the offer and it came time for them to resign…that’s where the problems started.

I remember one case early in my recruitment career where I’d helped a young guy working in copier sales get a job with one of the major copier companies, a good sales job. He was currently working for one of the small, independent sales agencies that also sold copiers but as his new job was actually with one of the major copier and office equipment manufacturers, it was a much better job in the short and long term. More money, better employer, better long term prospects.

But when it came time to resign, he suddenly changed his mind. I still remember the conversation.

“I started thinking about the job and decided that it’s better for me to stay where I am for the time being” he said.

He started listed all sorts of excuses that seemed to justify in his mind why it was the right decision:

“I’ve only been with this company for a year and I think I should stay here for another year at least before changing jobs.”

“I’m thinking about moving to a different city in the future so it doesn’t make sense to change jobs at this time.”

I remember trying to convince him that the job he’d accepted was the right thing for him (which I truly believed it was) but I just couldn’t convince him. In this instance, it was his first job out of school and for some reason he couldn’t quit even though he was going to go to a better and higher paying job.

I’ve had other occasions where a job offer is accepted and as soon as the resignation phase kicks in, the candidate has difficulty resigning so I walk them through the process, help them put a resignation letter together, help them figure out when and how they’ll tell their boss and then have them call me on the phone to let me know when they’ve resigned.

In the vast majority of time, things turn out just fine.

A big part about resigning is convincing yourself in advance of what is about to happen and understanding that you are about to make this change for the better by moving to a new job. Perhaps thinking about the reason(s) you started interviewing for a new job in the first place can help to jog your memory, too.

The first time I resigned from a company wasn’t easy because I liked my boss and colleagues but I was working in New Zealand at the time and had decided to move home so there was a bigger picture for me to consider.

Another big part of resigning is planning ahead to reduce the stress you’re facing. It can be a bit difficult sometimes when you get a new job and finalize the offer on say a Monday and are expected to start in two weeks but are required to give two weeks notice. In this case it takes planning ahead and perhaps a bit of negotiating. If you accept an offer on a Friday and are expected to start two weeks on the following Monday but also need to give two full weeks notice to your current employer, well you’re going to have to resign on the same Friday you got the offer or first thing on Monday morning at the latest. Properly planning ahead takes stress away and makes things go smoother.

If you’d like to read more about the resignation process and view a sample resignation letter I have put together, check out the post called A Resignation Letter Example You Can Use.

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.

The rule of the day relates to quitting your current employer and exiting with class.

The last thing you want to do when you leave a company is burn any bridges. This isn’t the time to spill your guts about everything you hated about the company – although you might have a chance to take part in an exit interview and get some things off your chest – but I’d remain civil anyways.

Remember to plan ahead and give the proper notice period when quitting. You don’t want to leave your employer in the lurch by quitting early without their consent. I remember doing a reference check for a woman with her former manager and the only thing he mentioned was that she had quit suddenly without giving proper notice and that he didn’t want to do a reference for her as a result. I guess she’d forgotten about doing this. Her former manager obviously hadn’t.

I’d also try to help out and wrap up loose ends before I left the company so that I don’t leave anyone holding the bag and wondering what to do with the work I was handling. I recall a colleague leaving our company and me getting some of her work dumped on me without any direction as to what to do. Other than wasting my time trying to figure all this out, it left me with a bad impression of this former colleague since she didn’t bother to fill me in before she quit.

A clean break is the best way to leave your current employer.

You never know, you might have to work with these people again.