Nine Signs It's Time For A Career Change

It’s never too late to make a career change, but choosing when to make the jump isn’t a decision to be taken lightly. If you’re not happy in your current line of work, you need to think about whether you just need a new job or whether it’s time to take your career in a new direction altogether.

Do you find yourself complaining about your job all the time? Do you find yourself unhappy at work, regardless of which company you work for? If your family are fed up of listening to you complain about why your job is terrible and you find yourself searching for truck driving jobs instead of working, it’s a clear sign that all is not well and it might be time for a new challenge.
Are you more stressed than usual? All jobs have some amount of stress occasionally, but if you’re stressed most days at work, this isn’t good. If you find yourself taking your stress home with you and you’re struggling to shake it throughout the evening, a change is probably a good idea.
Are you bored at work? If you’re struggling to find any motivation to get any work done and are procrastinating in order to put off large tasks, there’s probably a problem. Your job might not always be fun, but if you’re bored all the time, make a jump to something new.
Have you been in the same job for a long time? Most jobs naturally change and grow over time, or your career should progress. If you’ve been stuck in the same position for a long time and have no real idea of where you want or should try to go upwards to, you might have exhausted your interest in your career path. If you’re struggling to make a plan for progression that interests you, this is a good sign that its time to move on to something new.
Do you dread going to work? If when you wake up in the morning, you immediately start dreading getting to work, this is a clear sign that you should be moving on. If this dread is creeping into your Sunday nights too, don’t hang on any longer than you have to and instead try to make a switch to something that keeps you excited and interested.
Do you think about quitting a lot of the time? If you’re forever drafting your resignation letter or fantasizing about how you’ll tell your boss you’re quitting, then you should start seriously looking for something else. We all have bad days at work, but if everyday you think about when you can quit, you shouldn’t stay.
Are you feeling burned out and tired? If you’re tired out all the time, it could be fatigue caused by work stress. If you’re overworked, you could easily end up becoming burned out. Burn out can occur when your job has become too demanding for you, or you can’t shake off work based stress. Burn out can become very nasty, so if you feel this coming on, it’s time to step out and move on to something else.
Are you under-performing at work? If you’ve lost interest in your job, it can be very hard to motivate yourself, meaning your performance might slip. If you’re struggling to concentrate at work, this won’t help your job performance either. You can also guarantee that if you’re away that your job performance is sliding, then your boss is probably noticing that something is wrong too. It might be better to take the step to leave your job and do something before you get pushed out for poor performance. It will be much easier to find something new if you left your last job on good terms instead of being fired.
Are you finding excuses not to go to work? If work is the last place you want to be, you’re probably finding all kinds of excuses to do anything else. Perhaps you’re taking more sick days than usual, or have booked a lot more vacation days than you normally take, or are asking to work from home more often, this is a clear sign that you’re unhappy in your current job.

Making a career change is a big leap, but you can do it. If your career isn’t fulfilling anymore, then a change of job might not be enough to help. A new line of work can push you to develop new skills, leaving you a lot happier in the long run.