4 signs it's time to change jobs

4 Signs It’s Time To Change Jobs Or Companies

Today we’re going to be talking about when should you leave your job. So it can be really difficult to understand if you’ve been in a particular role, let’s say for a few years, maybe 3, 4, 5, 6 plus years. How do you understand or how do you know for yourself when it’s the right time to move on to a new opportunity?

So in this article, we’re going to be talking about four things that I look for in terms of when I’m trying to decide in my role, if it’s time to move on and pursue a new opportunity.

#1: You’re not learning and growing in your current role

So the first sign that it’s time to move on to a new role is that you’re not learning and you’re not growing in your current role. So it’s super important that if we want to keep moving in our careers, if you want to keep taking on new opportunities and make more money and get more bonuses and promotions, it’s really important that we’re learning, that we’re becoming more capable, we’re improving our skills and our experiences and our abilities to deliver value for the companies that we’re working for.

So if you are on a role, but you’re not learning, you don’t feel like you’re actually progressing, but instead you’re stagnating, you’re kind of plateauing and you’re sort of coasting along, that can be a red flag that it’s time to move on and pursue a new opportunity.

Now, don’t get me wrong, it’s great to be in a position in your role where you feel very comfortable and you feel very on top of things and you can sort of coast along because you don’t always want to be going through times in your career that you’re being pushed to the absolute limit, even though you might grow from those experiences, it’s not really a sustainable way to pursue your career. But if that sort of coasty plateau is sort of the norm for your role, then that might be the sign for you that it’s time to move on, that it’s time to pack up your bags and find what the next role is going to be.

#2: There’s no clear path forward for you in the current role or company

Sign number two that it might be time to look for a new role is that there is no clear path forward for you in the current company that you work in. So in the last company that I worked at here in Australia, the company structure was actually very flat, which was great for project management and for communication. But in terms of understanding what the next role was going to be for me, in many cases, that role did not exist. So while I was still learning a lot from all the projects that I was working on, there was no clear path forward to a more senior role for me in the company unless someone else decided to leave essentially. And that could be a tough spot to be in if you don’t see what the next role that you want to step into is, and actually having a game plan and a strategy in place and your professional development geared towards landing that next role.

#3: You don’t like the people you’re working with

Alright, sign number three in terms of deciding when it might be time to leave the company, is that you’re really just not enjoying working with the people in your team. So for me personally, it’s a very important value. That work is fun and enjoyable, that I like the people I work with. We’ve got good rapport and that their values are pretty much aligned with mine. But if I end up changing teams and moving to a team where I didn’t like the people I work with, we butted heads all the time. I had to sort of bite my lip because I was afraid of saying the wrong thing. Then I would probably consider moving companies. So if you don’t like the people you work with, if they’re toxic, bad people that you don’t align with and you just don’t get along with, that might be a sign too that you want to consider moving roles.

#4: The company is in bad financial shape

Alright, so my fourth sign that it might be time to leave the company is that the company is tanking. So you might hear through the traps or even through more formal announcements from the company,

But the company isn’t doing well. The company’s in bad shape, the finances are in a bad spot. They’re looking to do cost cutting and redundancies and restructures. That could be a sign to you that, alright, cool, it’s time to pack up my bags and move on to the next opportunity that maybe provides a more stable financial environment and more stability in your particular role.

Now, from my experience in my last role, I actually worked for a public company, which meant that they were listed on the share market here in Australia. That gave us a lot of transparency in terms of the performance of the company, so we could see if the company’s on the skids, if financially things are pretty tough. But also because the company was public, that meant that they had to actually be very proactive in managing their costs because they had to report their numbers to the share market and be accountable to that.

And that was actually part of the reason why I decided to leave my last role and move to a company that was larger, but also was a privately listed company, not on the share market, and they had a lot more freedom and financial stability in the company as a whole.

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