“I woke up with a sense of disillusionment, for the 3rd month in a row. I knew I had to quit,” M tells me.
That’s not the story here because so many of us feel disillusioned with our jobs at some point in time.
What’s unique is that M never looks for other jobs before he quits. He uses his very long notice period (3 months in India) to look for jobs.
He says he cannot get into the zone of looking for a transition when he is still interested and engaged in his current job. And once he has lost that engagement, he wants his company to know that immediately; because, in his words, that’s the fair thing to do.
Not all of us have M’s confidence though. More importantly, not all of us are ok with taking that kind of a risk.
But M’s story gets me thinking. Why do we quit and how and when do we look for jobs?
Firstly, there are two broad buckets of reasons why people quit their jobs.
One, the push.
Unhappiness with the current job. That could be the role, the boss, the company culture, the money, the industry, that long-overdue promotion, some perceived / actual unfairness.
It is disillusionment, the kind M felt, with the overall RoI (money + job satisfaction vs time + energy spent).
Two, the pull.
An opportunity that comes your way seems too good to pass. Maybe it pivots the career (more on this in a different article), perhaps it gives you exposure that you wouldn’t get in your current organization and role.
It’s like a nice carrot (or carrot cake) you don’t want to miss.
But, no matter what the reason is, the question still remains.
How do you parallel process looking for / interviewing for a new job while still giving your mind-space to the current job?
If disillusionment is what is pushing you out of your current job, do consider doing what M does. A sabbatical or a break to actually think through what you want and find a job objectively is always a better position than knee-jerk job changes. As someone who has done a knee-jerk job change when I was younger and less patient, I can tell you it often-times doesn’t end well.
But, but. Not always will we have the luxury of taking a break and looking for jobs. So this is for the rest of us.
You do owe your current job the time and energy it requires because you decided you cannot do 1.
That means you keep pushing, focusing on the good things (however few or many they are) on the current job. Because it pays the bills.
That means you compartmentalise, however tough that is. Just like how we are encouraged to compartmentalise our personal and professional lives, searching for a job is personal too.
Also, that means, if you have decided 1 is not for you, you wait till a job convinces you enough to jump ship. Known devil-unknown devil etc.
Searching for jobs can be a short sprint, or a long relay. Look out for my next issue to read about how to keep calm and quest on, without being bogged down by ghosting recruiters and lukewarm interviews.
Good luck!
If you find value in what I write, and you have applied some of these learnings in the past, perhaps you would like to support my work. Click here to donate.
P. S. Views strictly personal. None of the events mentioned in this post refer to the organisation that I am currently associated with.
Thank you for writing this. This really helped me. Looking forward for the next week's issue.