Reasons You Might Need A Career Change.

Reasons You Might Need A Career Change.
Are you feeling stuck? Sometimes people don’t know why they are unhappy in a job, they just know that it doesn’t feel right.

These seven factors each contribute to how you feel about your work, and once you recognise the problem it can help you to decide if it is a career change you need, or just a change in your current working conditions.

1. Does your work match who you are as a person? It could be that you have changed, the job role has changed, or the business you work for has changed. But whatever it is, if there is in-congruence between you and your work then you are going to feel uncomfortable. It is a bit like a bad knee – It still works but the bones are grating against one another!

2. Do you have balance in your life? Everyone needs different levels of worklife balance, but if your current balance doesn’t match what you need then you will constantly feel that things are not as they should be.

3. Are you being recognised for the work you do, and is that recognition in a form that suits you? For some people a simple “thank you” is the recognition that they need to be satisfied at work. For others it is small tokens of appreciation while some need to have their good work made public. None of these are better or worse than the others, just different, but if you are getting no recognition or the wrong sort of recognition for the work you are doing, then you won’t be feeling happy in your job.

4. Are you comfortable with the boundaries of your current job role? If your job is elastic-sided, that is you keep getting new and more things dumped onto you and this is getting you down, then your boundaries need to be negotiated. Most people like to know what they are expected to do so that they can live up to those expectations. If you don’t ever know what you are responsible for, then how can you ever feel that you have completed your work properly? This will particularly bother some personality types, especially those who like everything in their lives to be orderly.

5. Are your values in harmony with the organisation you work for? If you are going in one direction and you feel that you are on a different path from the organisation that you represent, then there will always be a sense of your work being without purpose.

6. Have you just been there too long? It doesn’t matter how great an organisation might be, sometimes the time comes to leave just because you are really “over it”. This can also tie in with you feeling tired or unwell.

7. Does the risk of changing your job within the organisation, or changing careers altogether, fill you with dread and fear? It is one thing to not be happy at work and choose to stay for a number of practical reasons. That’s your choice, with you in control.

It is quite another to choose to stay simply because you are afraid of making a change. That gives you a sense of being out of control, forced to remain when you don’t want to.