The age of Great Resignation is already a year ago where people were quitting blatantly or quietly. Now, with the economy tightening up, the pulse check seems to say people are flocking towards job that provide more stability. I’ve had a time when I dove into reading blog posts and watched Youtube videos to get a sense of what the heck I was doing with my career. Navigating these crossroads can be both thrilling and daunting, especially if you haven’t had the chance to experiment with the different options through internships or other opportunities. I’ve switched my careers a few times under the name of soul searching as well and while I can’t say I don’t have regrets, I am overall very happy with where I have landed.

Here are 3 questions I asked myself to ensure a gig-switch that was right for me.  

Speaking from my experience as well as that of my close friends who discussed this at some point, boredom is the number one indicator that you might benefit from finding a new position at or outside your current company.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that you should find a job that’s constantly exciting, fun, and thrilling. Those jobs are very rarely witnessed, if at all. A job can’t all be fun, mainly because it’ll have parts that you don’t like. For instance, when I was working in a consulting role, I dreaded writing reports and building power point presentation for the sake of formality. But that’s just part of a larger function that served a purpose. By boredom, I mean meaninglessness;  you’re doing the job just fine but aren’t learning something new or growing a skillset, and find yourself questioning 

“Why am I even doing this?”

To grow your career, especially in the early stages, you need to be learning and honing the skills that’ll stick with you for several years or decades to come. If you’re not actively doing so, then that’s a big red flag that your growth is stagnated in your current role. 

This is a great timing to talk to your manager about stretch assignments or exposure to different projects that will provide you with the growth opportunities you need and want. If you’ve already done so and nothing has changed, then it’s time to start cleaning up your resume.  

Are you close to your manager or supervisor? So much so that you can talk about things beyond your last weekend or how you hate the directions of the company? If not, you should start spending building some rapport to start talking about the real stuff that happens behind meeting doors and what exactly they do on a daily basis. This is because a good manager will not only be your best advocate or backup for work related emergencies, but also a great compass that points towards your future if you stay on that path.

This is called the Manager Test and it’s been the most useful tool that I’ve used to make decisions when I decided to pivot from my consulting gig. It’s a simple principle. Once you gained some understanding of the deliverables and expectations about your manager’s role, ask yourself this:

“Will I be happy with myself if I can step into that role?”

When I joined a consulting company before my current role, I had the chance to witness how the partners and other senior leaders ‘lived’ beyond the fancy title: endless back to back meetings, 5AM flights, dinners with business partners, all whilst delivering all of the million other tasks that landed on their plate. Oh, and as the cherry on top, the professional yet cheerful tone they wore every morning.

It was astonishing to see how much they were able to endure and digest in terms of workload and it also didn’t take long for me to realize that I’d probably be miserable in that 6role, if I could even get there. I would’ve needed 4~5 promotions to get to where they were, which would be years of proving myself over and over. While this challenge seemed charming, I also knew my stage in life didn’t align with this either, and I was able to make a pivot in my career in the next few months. 

If you’re just starting out your career, there might not be a huge gap between a job and a career. This would be especially true if you have a highly specialized education and training to become a doctor, lawyer, nurse, etc. However, as you continue to grow within your roles, you may face a time when you have to think about what you are OUTSIDE of your current job. A job is what you do while a career is what you are. You may be perfectly happy with what you do every day but are not thrilled when you imagine where you’ll stand if you stayed in the path after 20 years. Or, you might dread going to work every morning but don’t feel too bad about the future prospects of the career if you could weather out the next few years. Depending on the answer, you’ll be able to determine what you want to change and how to do so. 

In my case, I worked in a consulting role for several years working with healthcare organizations. When I started my soul searching phase, I tried asking the following question to see if what I was doing aligned with what I aspired to be.

“Can I do this for the next 10 years?”

Feel free to adjust the number of years to 5 or 30 as you find fit but try to imagine a period that seems like a good stretch for you to build something meaningful. For example, as a consultant I felt alright doing the day to day work (despite some rough weeks here and there). But the idea of staying on that path for 10 additional years just didn’t feel right. I realized I wanted to have more long-term ownership with the accountability on the decisions I make for a business. Moreover, I wanted to build, create, and run a company or a division, which didn’t seem to jive well with the project-based life-cycle of a consultancy. So for me, I had to switch my career to something new, which helped me narrow down the list of companies I wanted to apply for and eventually make the jump.