Glassdoor Blog » Stress

Sunday Nights Fill Me With Dread…And Nine Other Signs It’s Time To Look For A New Job

onTargetjobs — Wed, 22 Jun 2011 15:00:28 +0000

Anyone familiar with the movie “Office Space” knows the phrase “a case of the Mondays” (as well as the freedom that can be found in bashing a copier with a baseball bat.) But how about a case of the Sundays? The weekend is supposed to be a time of relaxation and rejuvenation before another five days of the office grind. However, if the approach of Monday fills you with woe, sapping all the enjoyment from what should be a peaceful Sunday night, it may be a sign that it’s time to look for a new job. Here are nine other subtle – and not so subtle – indicators that you may want to consider a change of scene.

1. I’m a hamster on a wheel going nowhere.

Growth is a natural part of life. Many people outgrow their jobs and move on—it’s even expected in some industries. However, if you’re working in a company that does not promote from within or provide educational enrichment opportunities, you may feel as though you’re spinning a hamster wheel. It may be time to look for a job where your skills can continue to evolve, not stagnate.

2. I’d rather watch paint dry.

Watching paint dry is boring. If you’d rather observe this than go to work, your job must be excruciatingly dull. Maybe you’re overqualified for your current position. Maybe you’re in the wrong field completely. Whatever the reason, if your daily duties present zero challenge and you can perform them in your sleep, it may be time to look for a new –more challenging, exciting or suitable– job.

3. I’m sick and tired…all of the time.

Any career can be stressful at times. However, if yours is chronically so, it may be time to look for a new job. Continuous stress –and the anxiety and sleeplessness it can cause– puts a major strain on your immune system.

4. My job is just a job.

We all know money isn’t everything (though it sure isn’t just an illusion either). Sometimes circumstances require us to take positions that are not challenging or interesting but keep that mortgage paid. There’s nothing wrong with this. However, when circumstances are no longer such, it may be time to look for a new job – one that challenges you, excites you and fulfils you.

5. My boss is evil incarnate.

If your boss belittles you, torments you, persecutes you, steals your ideas, takes you for granted, ignores your pleas for change and basically makes forty hours (or more) of every week a living hell, it may be time to look for a new job. Life is too short to work for the devil.

6. What’s work-life balance? I’m on a work-life roller coaster.

Self-help gurus love to talk about “work-life balance,” or making sure your career doesn’t swallow the rest of your life whole. Unfortunately, some careers just don’t seem to fit with this concept (and some companies/bosses don’t even recognize it as valid). If you’re working in a position that requires excessively long hours or an erratic schedule, is prohibitive towards vacation time, and has basically chewed you up and spit you out, it may be time to look for a new job.

7. I’m the invisible man (or woman).

How does that old saying go? The squeaky wheel gets the grease? Unfortunately, this can be very true in many companies. You may be fantastic at your job, exceedingly pleasant to be around, well liked by co-workers and clients, but virtually invisible to management. If you’ve been passed over for promotions, recognition or increased responsibility more than once, it may be time to look for a new job.

8. My boss lives in a dream world.

True story here –once upon a time, after requesting a raise that was three years overdue, my boss informed me that not only was money just an illusion, but my mortgage was just an illusion as well. This person also believed that the placement of certain crystals at each workstation would protect the computers from viruses. It was long past time to look for a new job.

9. Everything has changed (and not for the better).

Just as people change, companies also change. A work situation that was ideal five years ago may have evolved into something much different. Maybe your great boss has been promoted and replaced with a bad one. Perhaps the company downsized and you’re now forced to cover the duties of five people. If your cubicle has been moved to a storage room in the basement (and your stapler has been stolen) it may be time to look for a new job.

Have you seen any of these signs in your own life? If so, don’t panic –you’ve probably been thinking about a new job for some time. While a change of companies (or even careers) can be scary, it can also be invigorating. So polish up that resume and prepare to explore a world where Sunday nights no longer fill you with dread.

Sunday Nights Fill Me With Dread…And Nine Other Signs It’s Time To Look For A New Job is a post from: Glassdoor Blog

Life A Mess? Most People Blame Their Jobs First

Aol Jobs — Fri, 03 Jun 2011 17:13:12 +0000

If you have a family and a job, chances are there is some degree of conflict between the two. So which is more responsible for the friction, the job or the family? Most Americans blame their job first, family second and themselves last, according to a recent study.

The study, conducted by Elizabeth M. Poposki, Ph.D., assistant professor of psychology at the School of Science at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, examined individual incidents of work-family conflict and tracked how blame for this conflict is attributed.

Sixty-four percent of those surveyed blamed work, not family, for their feelings of conflict. Twenty-two percent blamed only their family. Five percent blamed external factors other than work or family, and only 6 percent placed all the blame on themselves. Only 3 percent of those surveyed divided the blame evenly between both work and family. Interestingly enough, there were no gender differences in how blame was assigned.

Poposki also found that those who attribute conflict to external sources rather than blaming the conflict on themselves were more likely to experience anger and frustration following the conflict. In other words, if you blame someone or something other than yourself, you get more riled up about the situation. You go a little easier on yourself and others when you take the responsibility on your own shoulders.

And the angrier you are, the more likely you are to engage in negative workplace behavior such as employee theft, according to Poposki. Some people reason that “this job is wreaking havoc with my family, so the company owes me a little something extra.”

The study, called “The Blame Game: Exploring the Nature and Correlates of Attributions Following Work-Family Conflict,” goes into quite a bit of depth in regards to the results of placing blame, at home or at work. “This understanding may be important to future studies of the negative emotional reactions to work-family conflict including anger, frustration, shame and guilt,” says Poposki.

As certain politicians have recently demonstrated, shame and guilt at home can’t help but cross over into the workplace, and vice versa. Owning up to personal responsibility for the conflict helps in both spheres. – By Lisa Johnson Mandell

Looking for more career advice? AOL Jobs offers…

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Life A Mess? Most People Blame Their Jobs First is a post from: Glassdoor Blog

Buried Alive? What To Do When You’re Overwhelmed At Work

myFootpath — Thu, 12 May 2011 13:00:07 +0000

We’ve all experienced it: your boss walks into your office and hands you a new project, just as your phone rings about a daily deadline and an email pops into your inbox about meeting in five minutes. Your heart starts to race, your palms start to sweat, and it’s hard to catch your breath. You’re just getting your work day started and you’re already totally overwhelmed.

With so much to do and so little time to do it in, feeling overwhelmed, and the sensations of stress and anxiety that accompany it, are common to most workers. But the question of how you deal with it can determine whether your day is a success or a total feeling.

Here are some of our top tips for dealing with an overwhelming day at the office:

Make a list
When you’ve got too many things to do, one of two things can happen. Either you become so overwhelmed by your work that you freeze, or you start trying to tackle 8 projects simultaneously, which means that nothing ends up getting done.

Before you go into full on crisis-attack or panic-stricken mode, stop to make a list. Make one for what needs to get done today, one for what needs to get done tomorrow, and what needs to be done by the end of the week. Taking 20 minutes to review all of your projects can really help you prioritize your thoughts and plans (and help you realize that maybe it’s not so overwhelming after all.)

Talk to your boss
Sometimes you really do have too many things that need to be done at once. That’s why, in these situations, you need to talk to your boss. Sure, it’s tempting to tell yourself that you can get everything all done, if you just sleep at the office and don’t go home for the next five days. But is that realistic?

Rather than find yourself totally overwhelmed and behind on your projects, talk to your boss. Explain the situation, and that you need some help determining which projects to address first. By keeping your boss in the loop, you’ll be able to manage their expectations of what they expect you to have done, and also give them a heads up on projects that may need to temporarily move to the back burner.

Delegate
If you’ve got people who report to you, or others on your team who are helping you out, now is the time to delegate. You might want to think you can do it all yourself, but chances are that you can’t, and even if you could, you’re much more likely to make a mistake if you’re completely overwhelmed.

As you look over all of your projects, check to see what parts you absolutely need to do yourself. Then divide up what’s left, and give them to your team members who have the skills to deliver.

Turn off your email, voicemail, and all other sorts of mail
How many times are we all interrupted by phone during the day? How many times have you said “oh, I’ll just answer this one email” to look up and see you lost two hours to Outlook? Answering a call or writing an email might only take a few minutes here and there, but when you add them all together, it can be a major drain on your day.

While most of us like to be accessible throughout the work day, on certain crisis days it is perfectly acceptable to send your calls directly to voicemail or put an out-of-office notice on your email. This will free your schedule to focus only on what needs to be done. And all those voicemails and emails? They’ll be there when you get in tomorrow.

Say no
The truth of the matter is that many of us become overwhelmed because we just don’t say no. And in this economy, with many worried about heir job security, it’s only become more and more common to take on extra work. But as much as you want to please your boss, co-workers, and board of directors, stop the next time someone asks you to take on an additional project. Evaluate your workload and see if you really have the space on your calendar to take it on. If you don’t, be honest. Your co-workers and supervisors would rather have you tell them the truth about your workload than deliver an incomplete project because you didn’t really have the time to do it. – By Noël Rozny, myFootpath Web Editor & Content Manger

Interested in more from MyFootpath…

Who’s The Boss? How to Deal with a Promotion

Climbing the Corporate Ladder: How to Get Promoted

Weekend Tips for a More Successful Work Week

Buried Alive? What To Do When You’re Overwhelmed At Work is a post from: Glassdoor Blog

4 Steps To Taming The Job Search Beast

Jacqui Barrett-Poindexter, MRW — Thu, 21 Oct 2010 15:00:10 +0000

From the time I was young to my current entrepreneurial endeavor, I have wrestled with worry.

I found that my greatest worries rarely materialize, and the time I spend fixated on the problems – versus working out solutions – is wasted. As such, over the years I have retrained myself to focus on action over agonizing. The same holds true for job seekers: invest your time, energy and angst on the solution, living IN the moment to achieve goals versus agonizing and hand-wringing.

Here are four steps to taming job search worries so you can build some positive momentum:

1. Find an Emotional Outlet:

Whether you face a job search following a termination, or you simply quit your current employer, you must promptly seek an outlet to express grief, anger, shock, fear or sadness.

Akin to the residue of death or divorce, job-loss emotions are palpable, and ignoring them will infect your search with negativity, repelling job opportunities. Vent to your spouse or best friend, join a job loss support group or seek out a career counselor or coach trained in managing the sentiments of job loss; you MUST not “go it alone.”

2. Claim Your Office:

No fudging, such as carrying your laptop over to the cushy sofa, blending job-search activities with munching chips, drinking soda and watching “The Morning Show.”

Instead, find a nook in the kitchen, a desk in a spare bedroom or a section of your finished basement – and then nest: design an office space in which you are committed to performing all job-search activities. Consider your job search “a job,” and establish a schedule and professional environment that mirrors activities, contributions and goals at your future company.

Create structure, including a combination of interactive and introspective activities. Close your office at an appropriate time to rest and rejuvenate. Arise, shower, dress and be at your desk by 8:30 a.m.

3. Strategize Your Career Message:

The resume often is considered the first practical step toward executing a job search, and I agree! However, misperceptions around the process abound.

A resume is a critical, strategic marketing document that relies upon reflection, introspection and vision to fuel it with meaningful, targeted and compelling content. Many job seekers rush through resume building thinking they will speed up their search. Instead, they actually LOSE valuable time by creating a lackluster and unfocused message that absolutely fails and is tossed into the hiring manager’s “NO” pile. In today’s highly competitive market, there is no room for bland, lifeless career messaging.

As such, what may initially feel like a protracted career development process will actually shorten the time – often by weeks or months — to the job-landing finish line.

4. Articulate and Execute Your Plan:

Construct a written plan for leveraging your career resume to fuel networking, interview and job-cinching conversations. Within this, include research that taps into LinkedIn, Twitter and other resources to locate and network with target companies. Investigate Glassdoor.com for information on salaries, company reviews, interviews, etc., to further ferret out best fit organizations and strategies to entry. Begin selectively sharing your career solutions message.

These practical and actionable steps stamp out stresses and worries inherent in a job search. Though some stress is needed to propel you to action and make good decisions, equipping yourself with tools and tactics helps funnel that stress toward your goals, creating forward movement, and ultimately, landing you that next great gig!

4 Steps To Taming The Job Search Beast is a post from: Glassdoor Blog