How To Tell It's Time To Change Jobs

1. You’ve Lost Your Passion
People get so used to their day-to-day they often lose track of their passion amongst their routine. If you’ve grown fed up of the same managerial requests, tasks, and projects that used to excite you (beyond what’s reasonable!) it’s probably a sign you’ve lost passion for your job. It may be time to change environment all together for a fresh challenge and a new perspective.

Still unsure? Look out for chronic fatigue, excessive impatience, snapping, eye rolling and finding it increasingly harder to get out of bed. Ask your friends if they’ve seen any recent changes in you or in the tone you use when talking about work. Above all, if you are not happy or passionate about what you do, you won’t perform to the best of your ability and effectively hindering your true career potential.

2. Project Dead Ends
Have you been promised the opportunity to work on certain projects and learn skills that the business still hasn’t followed through with? Maybe its budget restraints, projects being given to someone else or not your manager's priority? Try pitching a business case for a project you want to take on. Look at where they can take budget from, costs analysis and the benefits it will bring to the business. If they don’t like it, ask them why and how you could have improved your business case. If that doesn’t work or gets followed up with more empty promises, it may be time to move on and use this as a basis for the requirements of your next role.

3. Lack of Promotional Opportunities
Is there a hiring freeze where you work or people in positions above you that aren’t going anywhere anytime soon? Why wait when there are thousands of companies actively looking to fill promotional opportunities with you right now?!

There are many benefits to going for a promotion elsewhere. For example, getting a promotion in-house comes with the added pressure of colleagues adjusting to your new role and the change in dynamic that follows. Also, you’re much more likely to get a better pay package externally with in-house promotions commonly offered at a lower pay increase margin.

4. Your Potential Is Not Valued
Does your manager take credit for your good work or fail to put you forward for exciting projects they know you are good for? It could be that your manager is intimidated by your success or wants to keep you where you are for selfish reasons.

It’s not uncommon for managers themselves to be unmotivated or actually lag the skills needed to most effectively identify your talent and the effect of your work on the team’s success.
Remember, when your talent isn’t valued it's incredibly hard to remain focused and passionate. So either way, it may be time to start looking elsewhere.