From the course: Planning Your Career and Your Life

The signs of being in the wrong place

From the course: Planning Your Career and Your Life

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The signs of being in the wrong place

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- What are the signs that the job you're doing is not the perfect job for you? Well, I would say, first of all, if enjoy or achieve drop below 70%, or both of them are below 70%, so maybe you're loving it, but the achievement has gone below 70, or you're achieving quite a bit, but your enjoyment has gone below 70. Now, I don't know what 70 means exactly, but I think you will know what I mean by dropping below 70%. It's got to be pretty good. And why might they drop below 70? Well, it could be lack of support. It could be that your boss doesn't support you. I can remember my boss blaming everything on HR and HR blaming everything on my boss. And I remember thinking, well, you're all just lying to me, but it could just be bureaucracy. "Oh, sorry, Chris, it's the system. "There's nothing we can do." You know, that's a sign that it's time to get out. They could just be indifferent to you. You're just one person in hundreds and they pass the blame between each other. So, that's a sign it's time to get out. It could be just a lack of fit with the culture. So, for example, there's a company near me who are pretty ferocious. They fire the bottom 10% every year. In every department, one person in 10 gets the chop, and I don't want to work somewhere like that. It must be horrendous. People must have to drop their friends in it or whatever. I just, ugh, I can't face that. But it could also be there's a culture of working very long hours or drinking. I worked at a place back in the 1980s where everyone used to drink a whole load at lunchtime. And there are other companies where in the evening you have to socialize and go out and drink, and I personally can't be bothered with all of that. So, it might just be that you don't fit with the culture. It might be that the company's great, but you just have a bad boss. And I think a bad boss can really make a big difference. They can ruin your life if you're not careful, and I'm going to come back to bad bosses later on. But if your boss is no good and you can't manage to move across to a different boss, then that could be a reason to leave. A big one that I've mentioned before is not learning. I think if you're not learning anything new, that could be a problem. And it could well be that the organization is really, really good, and there's nothing much for you to do, or that they're sort of keeping you down. They're not allowing you to take on bigger challenges because they're just keeping you in the area that you are good at, and that's fine for them, but you have to develop as well. So sometimes the organization won't let you grow and that's a reason to leave, for sure. It could just be that you can't see a future. It could be, I mentioned the police earlier on, that you don't really want to go up the management tree, and although you quite like what you're doing, you just can't see where it's going to go next. So I think those would be my big danger signs and if you're suffering from one or more of those, it probably is time to look at changing your direction.

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