Career Change: 10 Red Flags
On December 22, 2023 by MisoIf your Google search made you land on a 10 Red Flags for a career change titled page like this one, you are someone who is looking for a way to get out of a job that is not serving you anymore. It may also be because you realized that you have chosen the wrong career path.
Either way, I just wanted you to know that you are not alone in this frustration. Especially after the lockdown of the Covid-19 pandemic, the increasing number of people changing careers around the World has hit the highest rates. During that period, many people had enough time to think and reflect on their careers. Thus, it was obvious to most that a change is inevitable.
But how do you know that it is time for you too?
What are the red flags that you are in the wrong place with the wrong people?
Let’s look at 10 signs that you should consider when thinking of changing careers.
1. No opportunity to grow
It is a sign when your job does not provide any room for improvement either within the organization or in general. It may be the result of a mundane workload being all about errands. Thus, you may end up not doing any quality work bringing you the job satisfaction you aspire to. Or, in a more serious scenario, it may be a result of mobbing directed towards you.
2. Toxic colleagues and organizational culture
You may be surrounded by toxic people and organizational culture which makes working difficult even for the simplest task. Excessive gossiping, constant negativity, lack of motivation of your colleagues, lack of integrity and competence of managers, etc. can be the cause of such an environment.
3. Your evaluation of your performance scores low
This is a sign when you don’t perform as well as before when you compare your current performance to your past performances. This may be because you may believe that you are not contributing to your role as much as before. After all, you stopped growing at your position and job.
Or from a different angle; you may lose motivation to bring new ideas and innovations to the table because you were rejected the last time. Therefore, your evaluation of self is low.
4. Start feeling overqualified
You may lose interest in improving your work and not care about your performance. A different result from what point 3 is indicating, you may feel that you are too competent for the work you are doing. Therefore, you may face undervalued and over wasted in terms of your skills &abilities, and knowledge.
5. You start resisting change
Since you cannot grow at your job, you start resisting every change related to it. You may feel burdened even with the smallest changes because you feel already overwhelmed. Starting to use new software for instance becomes such a burden to you. You don’t want to learn and adapt to new information and ways.
6. Losing network
You start spending less time with co-workers for either work-related or social purposes because you are not interested in networking within the firm anymore. This may be because you cannot see any future for yourself at that organization. Also, it may be because of the toxic environment mentioned in point 2 above.
7. Health issues start arising
The most horrific of all signs in my opinion is the one of sinking health conditions. Constant headaches, fatigue, lack of quality sleep, eating disorders, etc. may arise due to reasons such as overworking, burn-out, etc.
8. Change in your attitude at work as well as in social circles
This is a sign when you become more complaining, stressed, unmotivated, or even depressive due to the negative work environment. You don’t enjoy your hobbies or time with your friends. You may even feel like staying at home and doing nothing in your free time because you are overwhelmed at work during the workdays. Even if you go out, how bad your work and colleagues are is all that you talk about.
9. Losing interest in growing even outside work
Not only within your organization but also your activities outside of work are negatively affected by low motivation. You end up being less interested in getting training related to your job, etc. You are slowly losing interest in improving yourself in general.
10. Losing hope for the future
Due to all the above-mentioned reasons, you lose hope for your future career goals and opportunities. You get anxious about the future and feel stuck in a loop that seems to be never-ending. Your goals and aspirations may not be the topic of your talks. Just living to pass the day, your days may feel like de-javu.
Some of the above signs are not entirely related to general career path concerns but only to job or organization specific. Therefore, solutions may differ based on your concern type. Still, all these signs are serious and worth to be tackled to fix with the right steps.
Don’t worry, you are not alone!
You are not the first one and won’t be the last. So many people feel stuck in the same situation and trying to find a way out. You just need to be clear with what you want and persistent to pursue the necessary change.
To know what needs to be done in terms of actions in career change journey, kindly follow the coming posts.