What to Do If You Hate Your New Job
If you hate your new job, should you quit right away – or should you continue?
The answer, of course, “depends on the circumstances.” Some jobs are so toxic that leaving as soon as possible is a smart move. However, if you need money, don’t want to look like a peddler at work, and / or want to make sure you don’t accidentally jump into a job that you hate as much as your current one, it’s worth taking the time to hang around.
At least not for long.
In The Financial Diet, Bree Rodi-Manta describes what she did after realizing three days later that she hated her new job:
I knew that I needed to leave. But how could I accomplish this? Two years with low wages (in Toronto at least) and negligible student debt didn’t offer much protection , especially if it wasn’t big enough to quit my job without knowing when I would get a new one. I was not an accountant or an engineer. I had a degree in English and two years of experience in a local magazine.
Rodi-Manta spent seven months doing a part-time job, perfecting her skills and making contacts, doing her best to succeed in a job she hated. Her work paid off and she was able to find a position that suited her better.
When I got the [new] job, even though it was challenging, I felt like I could relax for the first time in months. I didn’t have to spend every minute of every day looking for a backup.
If you are thinking about the same step, you may not have to spend every minute of every day working on your next career. Captain Clumsy , who gives a lot of advice on when to quit and what to do if you’re stuck in a job you don’t like, suggests spending time both “looking for a new job” and “looking for a new job.” ways to enjoy life now: “
First order of business: Set aside four sacred hours a week for future career activities and four sacred hours a week for fun. You can break this clock into small daily chores or big chunks, but you need this time. It’s not obligatory.
Allocating time – and making time for fun – can also help you stick to your goal of finding a better job. After all, as we wrote earlier, trying to do too much at once can make it difficult to get things done.
But what kind of job should you look for? Alison Greene of Ask the Manager recently wrote on Slate about the “dream job myth , ” noting that if you’re looking for a job you love, finding a job with the right workload, atmosphere, and team / boss is more. more important than finding a certain type of job in a certain type of organization:
What makes people think about their dream job, such as the type of job or the prestige of the company, can be quickly surpassed by a terrible boss, a toxic culture, a huge workload, or any other factor that will change the job. you were thrilled about what you were afraid to come to every day.
If you’re worried that leaving your new job too quickly will make you less attractive to potential employers, here’s another tip from Alison Greene of The Cut:
To be clear, one short stay doesn’t really matter. (And not a single series of short-term jobs that have been designed as short-term jobs, such as contract jobs, internships, or other jobs that are necessarily time-limited.) They are short-term, so changing jobs becomes a problem. It can be a little tricky because often when people leave work quickly, they are not going to continue … but if you end up unhappy with the next job you take, you will be more locked up than you were with. first, because if you leave this early, too, you will look like you have a template. This means that if you do quit your job quickly, you really need to check the next well and make sure you can stay on it for a long time.
In other words: don’t quit a job you hate until you find a job that you enjoy.
Otherwise, you may hate your new job again .