Use the Job You Hate to Build Your Career
If you’re stuck in a job that you don’t like, don’t quit right away. Instead, ask yourself how you can use your current position to build your next career.
Why? Because, as explained in a recent article on Fast Company, if you don’t take the time to ask yourself why you hate your current job, you might not know what to look for (and what to avoid) on your next one.
Start by identifying any aspect of your job that you enjoy. Do you prefer some tasks or projects over others? Do you enjoy working alone or do you enjoy working closely with other people? You should also ask yourself what you are learning in your current job, because all of these hard-won skills will help you find your next job.
As Fast Company says:
If you feel frustrated with what you are doing, pay attention to the times when you feel energized and time flows effortlessly. Take a mental note so you can build the most of your career in the future. At the same time, don’t discount the parts of your work life that seem boring and repetitive while you are still learning. Most likely, they will give you the knowledge and experience you will need in the future.
I prove that you can learn a lot from a job you hate, and that includes both your resume and character building skills. For example, I was a telemarketer and it taught me not to take rejections personally. Likewise, I embarked on some of my early jobs, whether I was in food service or office administration, with the naive assumption that only one dirty job (cleaning the freezer, cleaning the file cabinet) needs to be completed. once. Nope. Every job involves tedious and / or dirty work that you want to avoid but you can’t – and that kind of work tends to be cyclical, so you can get used to it.
However, it is also worth paying attention to the work that you are constantly putting off. As I explained earlier this year, in a post on why quitting a job makes you a better employee :
So look at what you leave unfinished at the end of a typical workday. If this is a low priority job, you may be a better employee than you think. If this is a top priority, it might be time to find a job that you can spend your days doing the kind of job you excel at – be it doing similar work for a company that provides the kind of structure you need to get it done. , or work that allows you to focus on work that you naturally prioritize.
Basically, your goal in any given job should be to figure out what you want to do in your next job. You should also consider how you need to prepare to get the job, be it networking, additional training, or updating your resume.
Ideally, you would be doing this kind of prep work whether you love or hate your current job because no job lasts forever – but if you find yourself in a job you hate, think it’s time to speed up your strategy. …