There’re several reasons why people quit their jobs. Quitting a job is fine as long as you know what you’re walking into while taking up new employment.
Often, things go wrong or not as planned when we leave the present employment to take a new one. That dream job we always wanted could prove to be a veritable nightmare in every aspect.
The best way to ensure that we don’t rush into a new job or venture and do it in a planned, phased and calculated manner is to consider a lot of things before we quit a job.
In this article, I will be discussing some of the most important things to consider before you quit a job. These might help you to take the right decisions that would work in your favor.
Therefore, let’s begin by finding out the main reasons why you might want to quit a job.
Why People Quit a Job?
As I mention earlier, there’re countless reasons why people quit their jobs. And if you’re one of those that’s planning on leaving your present employment, here’re some of the main reasons that might be influencing your decision.
Better Career Prospects
Better career prospects are the primary reason why people leave their jobs. Usually, they look for higher positions that involve more responsibilities. It also provides you with opportunities to utilize your skills and experience better at a new job and thus grow your career as a professional in the field.
Higher Pay
The prospects of getting higher pay that what you’re getting from a current job is also one of the main reasons why a lot of people leave their jobs and look for newer ones. That’s fairly understandable considering that we all need to meet expenses of our household and save for the future.
Overwork
Unfortunately, we sometimes become the victims of overwork. In such cases, it’s usually the fault of an employer because they might not be able to hire enough manpower to work at specific roles. Hence, a lot of workload comes upon us. And we do the excess work as part of our duties.
Lack of Appreciation
Lack of appreciation from the employer is one of the topmost reasons why people quit their present jobs. As a matter of fact, various HR managers and research papers clearly indicate that an employee t that doesn’t get the appreciation they deserve are more than willing to quit the job.
Outgrowing an Employer
If you’ve been working at a specific job for too long and find there’s no scope for further career growth, you might be tempted to quit the job. This is natural because everyone seeks growth in terms of career and finances from their current employment. And nobody wants to stagnate at a job.
Relocation
Sometimes, we wish to relocate to a place where living is cheaper or to be closer to the family. In such cases, we leave the present job and look for employment at the place where we intend to live. As a matter of fact, lots of millennials are now relocating to places near their parents, despite being independent.
Office Politics
Obviously, there would be some degree of politics at every office. However, there’re times when it becomes unbearable and we’re drawn into this cesspool even against our will. In such cases, we may wish to leave the job to find another, hoping that office politics doesn’t exist or is minimal.
Lack of Training
When employees find their skills are going outdated and redundant to meet the current industry standards, they’ll often leave the job. That happens when their present employer fails to provide them with adequate training that helps employees to update their skills and remain relevant in the job market.
Chronic Illness
This is a very unfortunate situation, but often, people are forced to leave their jobs due to a chronic illness that prevents them from playing their roles efficiently at an organization. This can be very stressful because leaving a job due to chronic illness might imply lesser money for the medical treatment.
End of Contract
And sometimes, we have to leave a job because the contract expires and the employer doesn’t wish to renew it further. The renewal has more to do with the nature of your job and not with your efficiency. That means, if the employer doesn’t require your skills after the contract period, you might have to leave the job.
Now that we know the top 10 reasons why you could leave a job, let’s look at the things to consider before you quit an employment. Actually, there’re lots of things to consider. Therefore, in this article, I will guide you by discussing the most important factors to consider before quitting your job.
Top 12 Things to Consider Before Quitting a Job
This guide about things to consider before quitting a job is for both, freshers as well as experienced persons. Unless you consider these top things before quitting your job, you might end up in an undesirable situation.
While I’m not against you quitting a job, I fully support doing so in the right way to ensure that your exit from a present employment is hassle free and the new job is as enjoyable as it can get. If this sounds interesting, continue reading further.
1. Length of Service
The first thing to consider before you qui a job is your length of service. Because, you lose that seniority at your present workplace when you resign the job.
As you would definitely know, it takes several years of hard efforts to build up seniority at any organization. It’s quite possible that you joined that organization at a junior position and moved up the echelons due to hard work and excellent service.
When you join a new employer, you will have to do without a lot of benefits that you could take for granted such as flexible working hours or certain other privileges that you could get as a senior employee.
Therefore, compare what you’ll be losing by means of your seniority and what’re the gains of taking a new job. Because once you quit, there’s no point in regretting what you’ve lost through your seniority.
2. Possibilities to Freelance
About 49 percent of the American workforce or about 58 million people in the US work as freelancers. At the same time, it’s possible to freelance only if you’ve the necessary skills for the freelancing work job market.
Therefore, find out if your skills are marketable in the freelance work market before you quit your job. Generally, most freelancers work online. Therefore, you should also be able to do your work online with full efficiency.
Freelancing holds a lot of benefits. One of them is working with flexible hours. And the second but most compelling one is the ability to earn more income than what you can make from a regular 9am to 5pm office bound job.
As a rule, most freelancers continue their fulltime jobs and work as freelancers during their free time. And once they start earning enough money from freelancing, they quit their regular jobs. This is also one thing you should consider before you quit a job.
3. Job Security
Job security with the new employer is one more very important thing to consider before you quit your present employment. Usually, an employer will hire someone on probation for some time, before offering them a confirmed job.
Therefore, you’ve to check how secure you would be during that period of probation with the employer.
This could prove very tricky since there’re no proven methods to gauge job security. It usually depends upon the aptitude we exhibit for the new job and how soon we sync in with the corporate culture of the new employer.
Usually, any new employee takes between 45 days and 120 days to settle at a new position with a new employer. That’s because you’ll require some training on the practices and technologies that the new employer uses. And these could vary vastly from your previous employer.
Even if you have enough experience, it does take time to start functioning to your fullest abilities when you switch jobs. Therefore, find out how secure would your job be during probation and even after you’re confirmed at the role.
4. Opportunities for Pay Hikes
Obviously, you’ll want to take a new job only if there’s a better pay package. Even if money isn’t your main consideration while applying for a new job, you would get a little more salary than with the previous employer.
That’s because the new employer wants to attract you to join them since your experience and skills could prove important to the organization.
However, things must not stop at getting a higher salary when you’re hired. As a matter of fact, you should explore whether the new employer provides adequate opportunities for salary increments regularly.
These could be either incentive-based, meaning you get a higher pay for excellent performance. Or they can be seniority-based since some companies automatically raise the pay when an employee logs in a specific number of years. Consider these before you quit a job.
5. Employer’s Reputation
Unless you’re joining a large corporation that operates globally and has a superb standing, it’s worth checking out on the status of your new employer’s reputation. Often, there’re some things about an employer that’re not known to the public.
And if your new employer has a poor reputation for any reasons, you could also get that tag inadvertently. Therefore, an employer’s reputation is something to consider before you quit a job.
Nowadays, top job boards such as Indeed.com and Glassdoor.com among others, carry reviews from current and past employees of any company. Reading these can help you arrive at a fair estimate of the employer’s standing.
An employer that looks perfect otherwise, might be an organization that has a poor reputation because of unfair labor practices or even frauds. Therefore, you’ve got to consider these factors before you quit a job. Working with an employer of shady reputation can ruin your career too.
6. Employer’s Stability
An employer has to be stable enough to remain in the market so that your job remains secure. Nowadays, we have this startup culture. A lot of startups offer very attractive positions and high salaries to attract the best talent.
Depending on which figures you believe, anything between 60 percent and 90 percent of all startup ventures flounder and fail during the first two years. The main reason is paucity of funds and inability to remain profitable.
If you’re considering a job switch, it’s fine to join a startup as long as it’s stable. Else, you might suddenly find yourself unemployed, if the startup winds up operations for any reason.
Therefore, one of the things to consider is the employer’s stability both in the market and as a workplace. You can find job security and growth only if an employer is stable. Therefore, look for employers with a proven history of stability and growth only.
7. Career Growth
Joining an organization at a specific designation is one thing and growing your career is another. Therefore, consider whether the organization that you wish to join has offers enough opportunities for career growth.
That’s because you definitely wouldn’t like to stagnate in any organization, even if you get regular pay increases. You’ve to be constantly moving up the corporate ladder in any organization, if you’re looking for real career growth.
Some organizations hire externally for filling up higher positions. If that’s the case with your new or would-be employer, there would be no career growth for you.
Because, the designation that you would deserve after putting in a specific period of service, would go to someone else hired afresh from the job market. Unless an organization can offer career growth, you would soon outgrow the employer and lose interest in the job
8. Learning New Skills
Does a prospective employer provide in-house or external training to their employees? This is a very important factor to consider before you quit a job. That’s because you might be getting training from your present employer, which is helping your skills to stay relevant for the job market.
But if the new employer doesn’t provide such training regularly, your skills could go outdated and redundant for the job market. And this is a situation that you need to avoid at all costs.
Learning new skills is also possible for you if you’re willing to spend some money on online course. Fair enough. But find out whether the new skills that you acquire at your own expense would be relevant to a new employer?
If they’re going to use outdated systems for their processes, your latest skills will prove nothing but useless. Therefore, always find employers that would give you and other employees, the training that’s necessary to stay abreast of technology and latest industrial practices.
9. Staff Attrition at New Employer
Before you quit a job, find out something about staff attrition rates at the new or would-be employer. And if these are alarmingly high, the best thing is not to quit your job and move to the new employer.
High staff attrition means there’s something wrong with either the employer, workplace or employees. And you certainly wouldn’t like to be hunting for a job once again after a few months.
These details are often hidden from new hires. However, you can find reviews of an employer on Google or Indeed.com, Glassdoor.com and other websites. That would help you to get a fair idea about employee job satisfaction and attrition rates at the organization.
As a rule, avoid employers that have a high attrition rate because there’re no guarantees you would be able to make a career there or even get a pay hike regularly.
10. Suitability for the New Job
Getting a new job at a higher position and better pay is welcome any day. However, consider whether you’re actually suited for the new job that you’re applying. And even if you do crack an interview successfully, it’s always better to check how much of the role you can play at a new job, before you quit the present one.
This can be done easily by reading the job role description that usually appears on a job advert or post.
Often, the skills we have aren’t really enough to take on additional responsibilities or play a new role with an employer. At an interview, the employer will assess you only on basis of your qualifications and experience. In most cases, they don’t assess whether you’re suited for the role.
That’s because they assume you’re applying for the job because you’re suitable. In such cases, take own skills inventory and find out your strengths and weaknesses in fulfilling that particular role at the new employer.
11. Opportunities to Travel
Though this might not sound important, one more thing to consider before you quit a job is whether the new employment offers you opportunities to travel. Understandably, not all jobs require traveling.
But if you’re in a profession that does involve travel, it’s best to find beforehand. The reason behind this is, you can learn a lot about the way your company does business at different locations. You also get to meet colleagues at distant places and learn about the way they work.
Such exchange of ideas and learning new things is very vital nowadays. And traveling to other locations to work or oversee other staff often paves the way for promotions and salary hikes.
Therefore, check whether the role you’re applying also provides opportunities for travel. Also, if you’re averse to travel, you might like to shun jobs that require you to go outside your location frequently.
12. Work from Home Facilities
Nowadays, we’re living in the new normal. That’s the reason, most companies are hiring employees that can work from home and online. The new normal makes it almost compulsory for us to work from home because it’s important to minimize the risk of the Covid-19 contagion.
Therefore, before you quit, find out if the new employer is offering work from home facilities. That way, you can also work as a freelancer on do side gigs online during your spare time.
Also, working from home is here to stay. As more and more organizations move their processes online, they’re looking only for people that can work efficiently from home. Therefore, you should have this skill. And consider the facilities of work from home before you quit a job.
Importance of Considering Things Before Quitting
You might be asked about the reasons you wish to quit a job during an interview with a prospective, new employer. Therefore, it’s best to be ready with the answer. At the same time, an interview also provides you with ample opportunities to ask an employer about their expectations from you at the role you’re trying to get.
Normally, every employer will disclose things that’re in their favor. The very fact that you’re at an interview points out that an employer is interested in your services. Hence, the question: are you ready to quit and what’re the things to consider before you quit a job?
Quitting a job wrongly can indeed harm your career irreparably that is why you should always know how to quit a job on good terms.
Working for an employer that you know is better than diving into a job with an employer about whom you have only a faint idea. Therefore, it’s worth considering all the points that I’ve written about before you decide to quit a job.
Considering these things before you quit a job will also give you a fair roadmap of your career. That means, you will not divert from your set goals, but go about achieving them properly.
In Conclusion
When you consider these things before you quit a job, you can be fairly secure. This means, you will not put your career or reputation or even your financial wellbeing in danger. Never commit the mistake of quitting a job without considering these important factors. Hopefully, you would be able to use this guide to build own dream career.