Most of us know job security is an illusion. Thousands of bankers who had stable jobs at seemingly stable institutions, found themselves without a job after the 2008 financial crisis. There are many other examples of people that worked for growing organisations where they had a bright future, who suddenly found themselves dismissed. Job security is therefore not a reason to stay at a job. But are there any good reasons to leave a job, particularly if you love it? Here are a few.
More Money: The most obvious reason to quit a job that you love is more money. It doesn’t matter how much you love your job if you’re stressed about bills every month. Money won’t make you happy, but stress can certainly make you unhappy. Also consider what more money would do for saving for a house, or paying off a mortgage. Perhaps you want to travel more, or send your kids to a particular school. More money would help you achieve these goals. One word of advice however, make sure you do indeed actually have your next job before you quit your current one.
Better Work-Life Balance: A lot of really fulfilling jobs are completely consuming. Some require you to be ‘on’ at all hours, whereas others may need you to work weekends. Even if it is just responding to emails, remember you need down time to avoid getting burned out. Even if you love what you are doing, or believe in your organisation’s mission, there comes a point where you have to recognise that your work-life balance is off skew.
Better Long-Term Prospects: Perhaps you are happy, well paid and have a great work-life balance. But where are you going? Are you missing an opportunity that could be better than where you are now, that could help your career grow too? It is worth checking in with yourself and a good search-based recruitment consultant every now and then to find out if there is a position out there that is a great ‘next step’ for you and will help your long-term career prospects.
There Is Nowhere Left to Go: Have you reached the ceiling of what you can accomplish in your current job? Does growth depend on someone leaving that may never leave? Eventually, if there is nowhere left to go, most people either become unmotivated or unhappy. Particularly for technology sector roles that are often based around a project—i.e. an integration, implementation or upgrade—once the project is complete, it makes more sense to find an exciting position at another company than to wait around for the next project.
Try Something Different: If you are not enamoured with what you are doing now, or have been doing it for a long time and are ready for a change, perhaps it is time to try something different. This could be something in the same sector, or a complete career change. Think about what it would feel like to wake up tomorrow morning and go to a job doing ___. If that feels right, start thinking about how you will get from A to B, and then make it happen.
Ready to make something happen in your career? Speak to one of Oliver Parks’ friendly recruitment consultants today.
About Oliver Parks
Oliver Parks Consulting offers search-based recruitment solutions to the technology sector, specialising in the ERP, CRM, CMS, ECM, BI and Open Source Technology spaces. The firm’s multilingual consultants operate in narrowly-defined niche market segments, enabling them to gain extensive knowledge of the people and companies operating in each technology. Oliver Parks has a proven track-record with more than 100,000 candidates worldwide and more than 300 clients globally.