Everyone has bad days at the office. But what should you do if you are increasingly convinced you’ve taken the wrong job? Should you quit right away, or try to make the position work for you? And how can you put yourself back on the right career path?
What the Experts Say
“Every job is going to have tradeoffs,” says Dorie Clark, author of Reinventing You: Define Your Brand, Imagine Your Future. Your biggest challenge is to figure out whether the problems are temporary or baked into the nature of your new role. That’s where it pays to start asking the right questions, of both yourself and your boss. “Most people who take the wrong job haven’t done enough research going in,” says Priscilla Claman, president of Career Strategies, Inc., a Boston-based career coaching firm. But don’t assume that the job can’t change in ways that will encourage you to stay. Here’s how to make a bad career move work for you.
Be realistic
“No job is perfect,” says Clark. Some jobs offer a competitive salary, but a terrible commute. Others put you behind a desk for more time than you’d prefer but promise more opportunities for advancement. Ask yourself, “what did you want from this job and are you still going to get it?” says Claman. Is the role a good stepping stone to a better job down the line, or does it allow you to spend desired time with your family? “A good job will have many positive things and a few things that bother you,” says Clark. But if you are already fantasizing about exit strategies after only a few weeks, don’t ignore those signs. “You owe it to your job to think about it long term,” Clark says. “And if you are already out the door in your head, you aren’t going to serve yourself or the company very well.”
Explore if it’s salvageable
Think about whether the issues that are troubling you are temporary or structural. All those dreaded late nights at the office may come to an end in a few months’ time with a project’s completion. On the other hand, you may detest the sales part of your new sales job. If you are having questions or doubts, go to your boss and explain your concerns. “The worst thing you can do is to blindside people and up and quit,” says Clark. “You can’t have this conversation 100 percent in your head.” Come armed with ideas for how your job could adapt in ways that are better aligned with your skills and goals. You may find that your boss isn’t aware of the mismatch, and is open to deploying you in a different way. “It may be possible to get the job you want if you play your cards right,” says Claman. Or you could find that your definitions of success for the role are radically different. Either way, you’ll have more information to help you make your decision.
Look for development elsewhere
If you do decide to stick it out, whether for financial or personal reasons, remember that there are other avenues for professional development and stimulation outside the office. Consider taking online classes or joining volunteer professional activities. “If your job isn’t giving you what you need to develop,” says Clark, “that may be your opportunity to take a leadership role in a professional organization to make contacts and build skills that help you further down the line.”
Put out feelers
If you decide leaving is your only option, “start networking as soon as possible,” says Clark. Consider reaching out to your past employer to see if your old job is still available. If you are convinced you are in the wrong job at the right company, get to know people in other departments so that you can ask polite questions about whether people there are happy, how they ended up there, and whether there are positions that might better fit your interests and skills. Developing a personal network within the company is one of the smartest things you can do if you want to stay but in a new role. “People will hire people they know and trust over the best external candidate,” says Claman. “So you have a huge advantage.”
Understand the risks
Quitting the wrong job may bring you relief, but it will also likely create a blemish on your resume. Most employers will understand that it is inevitable you will make a mistake once or twice in the course of a long career, says Clark, “but if you are changing jobs every four months for no clear reason, that’s definitely a warning sign about your reliability as an employee.” Make sure you develop thoughtful responses to future questions in interviews about your short tenure at the job, emphasizing that you felt it wasn’t a good fit for your skills and goals.
Take the high road
Resist the temptation to tell your tyrant boss what you think of her on the way out the door. “Do not get mad and do not burn bridges,” says Claman. “Because you never know when former colleagues will be valuable to you.” Employers are obviously going to be upset that their choice didn’t work out and they have to go through the process of hiring all over again. “You want to be respectful that it’s a hassle for them,” says Clark. “Be humble enough to thank them and try to leave on good terms.”
Take care with the next step
Just as you need to be careful about how you exit the wrong job, you should take care before making the next move. Don’t let your eagerness to leave your current job push you into another role that proves to be a bad fit. Consider where you went wrong in your last search and don’t be afraid to ask hard questions of prospective employers — questions like what success looks like at the company and how managers handle challenges. If you want to avoid making the same mistake twice, “look before you leap,” says Claman.
Principles to remember:
Do:
- Remember that no job is 100 percent perfect — there are always trade-offs
- Approach your boss early with your concerns — there may be room for adjustments that convince you to stay
- Consider outside avenues for professional development to spruce up your resume
Don’t:
- Blindside your boss and abruptly quit — give your employer a chance to hear and respond to your concerns
- Feel obliged to stick it out — you owe it to yourself and your boss to find a role that works for you
- Let the wrong job push you into another bad role — think carefully about your next move
Case study #1: Proactively build your skills
Elisabeth* wanted out of her job. As a marketing and special events coordinator for an outdoor sports company in the Bay Area, she’d worked hard for months to prove herself worthy of a promotion. But she was hurt and frustrated when her managers told her she wasn’t right for the available role. So she “made the decision to leave and took the first thing that came along,” she says.
It was a lateral move, and there were warning signs it was a bad fit from the start. “Even when I was interviewing, I knew it wasn’t where I wanted to be,” Elisabeth says. But because she felt she had no room for growth at her current company, she felt compelled to move on. Unfortunately, her misgivings proved right. Her manager was often inaccessible and the work felt repetitive and dull. “There was no room to be creative,” she says. “I didn’t have any authority to do anything.”
She began looking for new work almost immediately. But she also made a conscious decision to beef up her resume with professional development classes during her search. “I knew that this role could potentially be seen as a blemish on my resume,” Allison says. “I didn’t want to give an employer any reason not to hire me.” She took online courses in HTML, Adobe, and Excel and listened to webinars for job-seeking tips. She also sought the advice of friends working in human resource positions about how to tackle questions about her short duration at the company.
Eight months later, she landed an executive administrator role that expanded her duties outside of marketing. Today, she’s the office manager for a personal finance firm, managing budgets, expenses, and operations. Leaving the wrong job helped me find “things I didn’t know I would like,” she says.
Case study #2: Know your strengths
Christine Pechstein, a Kansas-based career coach for people with disabilities, loved nearly everything about her job. Her boss gave her a great deal of autonomy, she liked her coworkers, and she believed in the mission of the nonprofit where she worked. But as a single mother, she wanted to make more money than she knew the organization could offer her. “I was happy, but I knew I needed to keep my options open,” she says.
When a program manager position at a local foundation opened up, Pechstein jumped at the chance. The move increased her salary by a third, but almost immediately, Pechstein began to feel as if she’d made a mistake. Instead of interacting with clients, she was confined to a desk, dealing with grant proposals and other paperwork. “It just didn’t fit my strengths,” she says. “I’m more about people and creating programs. In the new position, I was no longer forging a path. I was following a path. I missed being in the trenches.”
After six months, she emailed her former boss, who was still interviewing candidates to fill her old position. She had to go through the standard application and interview process to get her old job back, but she left on good enough terms that the job was soon hers. She knew she’d have to take a pay cut and felt bad about disappointing her new employer, but “it was a gut feeling,” Pechstein says.” I knew it was the move I needed to make.”
Today, Pechstein puts the lessons she learned from the experience to work each day as a life management coach, helping focus clients’ career aims. “People think if they just had this job or made this amount of money, everything will be fine,” she says. “But they get those things and they are still miserable and feel they are missing something.” She tells clients that she knows what she preaches from experience: “Getting the job can’t be the only goal.”
Click here to read the original article.
