Shortlist: 5 ways to reassess whether your job is right for you

Before moving on to pastures new, we should reassess the pro and cons of our current role, advises executive coach and mentor Bev White.

From time to time, we all feel like leaving our current job in search of new challenges, better pay or more opportunities for learning and development; maybe we’ve become disheartened by our organisation’s way of doing things.

Often, moving elsewhere can be the best way of climbing the career ladder or finding a role that better aligns with our goals and values. Nowadays, it’s becoming more common to change jobs every three to five years.

But before we make such a significant decision, it’s worth reassessing the pros and cons of our current company and our position within it. Sometime, simply making a few adjustments to our approach in our existing job may help us to re-engage with our career without having to make a stressful external move.

Here are five things to consider doing before you jump ship and move on.

1. Instigate regular career conversations.

Unfortunately, many businesses still insist on having annual appraisals. While these are well intended, they often are nothing more than a box-ticking exercise; employees are left to ‘get on with it’ for the next 12 months. Businesses and teams rarely stay the same for a year, so objectives soon become outdated.

In order to break this cycle, take matters into your own hands and instigate regular and informal career conversations with your line manager. This way, you can have more frequent touch points to check that you are still on the right track – constantly learning and amending your career path along the way. Don’t forget to create (or refer to) your Personal Development Plan. 

2. Find out about training opportunities.

One of the main reasons employees look for a new job is the desire for development opportunities. But have you made this sufficiently clear to your manager or HR department? After all, if you don’t ask you don’t get.

Rather than leaving your job feeling frustrated, ask your manager what training you can be put forward for.

Even better, do your research and prepare a list of opportunities you’d like to pursue. If you can show the impact your learnings are likely to have on your professional development and the new skills you will be able to offer the company, managers will be much more likely to consider it. Nowadays, all good organisations should be looking for and encouraging LQ – a person’s desire and ability to grow and adapt to new circumstances and challenges throughout their working life.

3. Find a mentor.

A great mentor is usually someone who has more experience than you and is outside of your immediate working realm. They could be in a different team or outside of your company, but make sure that your mentor has relevant skills and experience from which you can learn.

Your company may already run a mentoring scheme, which would be worthwhile investigating, or you could find your own mentor – someone who you respect and admire. You could even help your organisation to develop such a scheme.

Mentors can share their hard-earned knowledge, helping us to work through our own personal challenge and overcome obstacles – and perhaps suggesting ways in which we could develop our current role. A mentor could help to re-invigorate our career (or enable us to see it through fresh eyes), sparking passion for our current role and organisation.

4. Investigate an internal move.

If you still like your company but feel you may have outgrown your current role, be sure to find out whether an internal move might be possible.

Many organisations are keen to hold on to talented people, so approach your manager or HR department about opportunities to work elsewhere within the business. It could be that you love your job in marketing – but want to try marketing for the private sector arm of the business, instead of your current public sector role. 

This will give you the change you crave, but in a less drastic way.

5. Make change happen.

Are you fed up of making requests for change and never getting anywhere? Maybe it’s time to be braver, take control and drive the change you want to see.

Has team cohesiveness gone awry? Then be the person to get everyone working well together again, rather than waiting for someone else to do it.

Think the junior team has a lot to learn in order to be truly effective? Take control of their learning and development and bring everyone up to speed together.

Some of the very things we can get frustrated about – which make us want to change job – can be fixed if we apply a bit of energy, bravery and grafting – helping to re-engage you in your role in the process. After all, there’s no guarantee that we won’t come up against the very same things in a new job outside of our current organisation.