Are you running from a job or to one?
This is the question I pose to anyone seeking my advice about a job change, one I specifically asked a friend recently when she told me she was considering leaving her company.
She had to stop and think before answering me because, like many people, she was ready to jump when a “great opportunity” appeared. There were issues with her current job, and she was feeling burnout. She was being asked to complete tasks beyond her job scope due to a lack of resources. She knew that she wasn’t maintaining boundaries even in areas where she could have done so. Unfortunately, that’s what often happens; we don’t stop long enough to decide if our problems with the current job will follow us to the new one.
Being honest about your motivation for leaving a job is the first step to making a successful career transition. I call this understanding if you are running from a job or to a job. Running from a job can happen if you don’t like your boss, your role is no longer a good fit, something is happening within the company that you disagree with, or if the long-term future of the organization is in jeopardy. These are all perfectly acceptable reasons to leave a job. However, they can lead to poor decision-making based on emotions and artificial time constraints.
If you are running from a job, it is no different than running from danger: You experience tunnel vision as you look for your escape plan, your heart rate goes up, and your fight-or-flight response is activated. When we make decisions in this highly emotional state, we lose the ability to think logically and creatively. We often see only binary options and select between them.
Conversely, running to a job often begins with dreaming, soul-searching, and strategizing. You may consider: What am I looking for? Why am I making a move? What’s in it for me? You should ask these questions before changing jobs, not after. Starting here will help you not merely leave a job but also find a new one that provides additional experience, a strategic change, or an opportunity that’s more interesting or fulfilling.
Regardless of your reasons for leaving a job, you want to do your homework on the new job. Learn about the business, the team, the culture, the leader, the work, and all the requirements and expectations. You must approach every job search as though you are also interviewing the company.
If you think it is time for a change, start by understanding your motivation. Suppose you recognize that you are running from a job. In that case, you can minimize the stress responses associated with fleeing a bad situation by forcing yourself to consider alternative solutions. This will help you start to switch the way your brain thinks about this decision. Until you are honest about what is happening in the current situation, the problems that you’re running from will likely follow you to the new job.
I am not advocating staying in a bad role. There are plenty of reasons to leave (and maybe even run) from a job. However, you need to be aware of what you are doing and its associated risks. I encourage you to take time for self-exploration and awareness so that you can make informed decisions.
A few ideas to get you started include:
- Reflect on your feedback from previous performance reviews to identify gaps in your skills that a new job can fill.
- Make a list of the facets of your current job that you enjoy, and make sure you take at least some of that with you to the next job.
- Review job postings of future roles to see what areas of development still exist for you.
- Compile a list of the things you have learned in your current job and those you hope to learn in a new job.
- Create a wish list of intangibles that are meaningful to you, such as travel, market or industry, remote vs. in-person work, geography or relocation opportunities, among other features.
Regardless of your reasons for leaving a job, you want to do your homework on the new job. Learn about the business, the team, the culture, the leader, the work, and all the requirements and expectations. You must approach every job search as though you are also interviewing the company. Too often, we think that the hiring process is about the company finding the best person for the job. We tend to forget that it is also about finding the best job and company for ourselves. Use your network to identify connections who can give you insights on the team, conduct research on the company using simple Google searches (or check Glassdoor), look for news stories and public financial statements, and leverage your time in each interview to ask probing questions to learn as much as you can.
So back to my friend … do I think she will leave? Maybe. It might be her time to go, but based on our conversation, I am not convinced it will be for the specific opportunity she called me about.
