Deciding whether to move on from your current job or not and make a career change is often going to be a difficult choice no matter what. However, the last thing you want to do is just get stuck in a career that you don’t like at all without even realizing it. Here are some tips to guide you through your career change and get on your road to a better one right away.
You Don’t Care Anymore
In order to make sure that apathy has set in on your current job, there are some signs to look for in yourself such as-
- You do a lot of clock-watching-Staring at the clock or your watch over and over again is a sure sign that you don’t care about your job and don’t believe your job is going to ever lead anywhere.
- You make any excuse you can to leave your cubicle or office-If you find yourself leaving your office or cubicle repeatedly to go to the bathroom constantly throughout the day, or to talk to co-workers around the water cooler, to run errands, or a hundred other things, this is a sign your current job means little to you. Despite what you might assume to be the case, you might not always know that you feel this way.
- You constantly feel drained-A sure sign of creeping apathy is that you always feel tired at work, or a constant dread whenever you have to go there. It’s not a great idea to keep going to a workplace that makes you feel this way. Being forced to do things you hate or that mean nothing to you is going to have this effect on you. It’s also hardly a motivating position to be in. It’s unlikely to be very ideal for either you or your employer.
Nothing You Do Seems to Affect Your Environment
There are few things more frustrating than spending your time laboring towards a goal only to find that after you’ve achieved that goal, it appears to not even matter at all that you got there. Regardless of the money situation, no one likes to feel that their work environment wouldn’t be altered in the slightest if they weren’t there anymore.
If you start to feel this way, then you likely already have one foot out of the door in your head anyway. Being undervalued at work is just going to build up resentment in your mind. It’s going to be much better for everyone involved if you move on to an environment where people actually use your talents efficiently and to a greater effect.
Your Friends and Family Keep Asking You to Quit
The people you surround yourself with will often know how you feel intuitively. If it’s getting to the point that you are so unhappy that everyone around you can feel your irritation and frustration, then this is a good sign all by itself.
You Feel the Axe Coming
If it seems to you that people are being fired left and right and your time is next, then there’s no reason to just wait for the hammer to fall. Take action yourself and get some control back. Even if you don’t get fired, you may find that feeling like someone is about to fire you is a sign that you want to move on all by itself.
Your Job is Leaking into Your Life at Home
In order to determine whether you may be seeing signs of irritation, stress, or other negative effects from work leaking out into your everyday life, there are some steps you can take.
- Ask yourself how you feel when you’re at home: Is it similar to how you feel when you’re at work?
- Think about how you feel when you get back after being at work. If all you feel is initial relief and then dread about going back to work tomorrow, then you aren’t focusing on your friends and family very much and it may be affecting you.
- Consider whether you are always thinking about work even during the weekends.
Most people prefer jobs that they are either excited to get to when it is time to work or at least jobs where they have some work/life balance and it doesn’t leak into their everyday lives. You are going to feel miserable just about all the time when you both hate your job and also have it affect the way you feel and what you’re thinking about even when you aren’t at work.
If this is the case, then it’s going to be quite important to make sure that you get out of that situation quickly or it can bring you down and cause you a lot of problems like increased stress, and depression when you think about the future, and so on.
You might be surprised about how much better you feel when you open up new opportunities and break out of your current rut by considering a change.
Statistics show that more and more people are bringing their work home with them physically more and more these days, with more than a quarter of work being done outside of business hours for knowledge workers.
People need time to relax and be “off” in order to recover from the stress of working. If you aren’t doing that, then a new situation is going to be essential for you.
More Money Isn’t Helping
If you’ve received a raise before, and it didn’t make you feel more motivated, then this could be a sign that you need a new career that actually engages you and makes you feel excited about where you are and where you’re going.
If your work is that much of a chore to you that even more money doesn’t make you feel any better, then it’s a sure sign that you need a career change. This is especially the case if the following is also true:
If you’ve received a raise before, and it didn’t make you feel more motivated, then this could be a sign that you need a new career that actually engages you and makes you feel excited about where you are and where you’re going.
If your work is that much of a chore to you that even more money doesn’t make you feel any better, then it’s a sure sign that you need a career change. This is especially the case if the following is also true:
- Your Current Salary Was Enough at Other Jobs – If you’ve had jobs before where the salary you have now seemed like plenty, then that certainly indicates that something about this job is different and not what you want.
- Your Current Salary Would Be Enough with a Different Job – If you can imagine making the same amount of money that you make now, but in a different job, and that would seem like plenty at that job, that is a definite sign you should switch careers. In fact, if you can imagine that, then congratulations, you’ve found the perfect new career for you.
- You’ve Had Multiple Promotions in This Job – If you’ve been promoted a few times and it hasn’t helped you feel any more positively at your current place of employment, then this is a sure sign you should move on. This is because you should be asking yourself what you have to look forward to if even moving up the rungs of the ladder has no appeal to you at all.
What Should You Do Now?
If you do decide that it’s time for a career change, the next part is going to be finding a job, of course. The new one you should be looking for should match up with your new career goals. The important thing is not to panic after you’ve decided to leave. Making a plan can go a long way towards making you feel like you’re OK.
Let the past be in the past and instead focus on what you’re going to do next. Here are some steps to get you going:
- Identify what is too much in your current job.
- Use that to decide what other jobs you might want instead.
- Consider a job service to help you find a new job that’s better for your health.
- Write your resignation letter.
- Put in your two weeks only when you have a new job or are confident about being on the verge of getting one due to your plan.
You may even want to write down your responses to each of these steps to feel like you are doing something proactive and that everything is under control.
You can write your resignation letter at any time since you don’t have to deliver it until you are ready to put in your two weeks. Doing this can help you with motivation since it will help it feel more real in your mind and it will help you produce the bravery and determination to seek a better life.
Getting a profile going at a job-seeking company with AI options for matching is another step that’s well worth taking to get you where you want to go and help you feel better about the whole process. There’s no reason why you have to go it alone.
Visit Lensa.com once you’ve decided to make a career change. You can find the job you want right here.
