How to Decide if You Should Leave Your Job?

How To Decide If You Should Leave Your Job?

Is your work not exciting anymore? Do you feel like you’re stuck in a rut? Is it all just in your head or do you need a change?

Nick deWilde, Product Marketing at Guild Education, uses 5 lenses to help decode this:

1. The Future Alignment Lens 🧩
2. The Progress Lens 📈
3. The Potential Lens 🌅
4. The Personal Lens 👪
5. The Ethics Lens ⚖️

Let’s see how to apply them!

1. The Future Alignment Lens 🧩

A good job is aligned with your career goals. To check, ask yourself:

• Am I helping the type of customer I care about? • Am I solving problems that fascinate me? • Does the type of solution we provide (product, services, etc.) interest me? • Am I spending my time on activities (writing, designing, etc) that I want to master?

If there are one or two no’s, then it might be time to think about a change.

2. The Progress Lens 📈

Are you learning and building enough new skills to justify staying?

Look at last month’s calendar: • How many working hours were devoted to learning? This shouldn’t be less than 15% of your time. • Who were you working most with? Do they inspire you and help you build your skillset? • Did you achieve anything that will help you level up in your career?

3. The Potential Lens 🌅

Does your job have enough opportunities for advancement? Evaluate your growth potential by asking:

• Is my company growing? • Is my team valued? • Does my manager care about my advancement?

If the answer’s no to any or all of these, you might struggle with a lack of opportunities.

4. The Personal Lens 👪

Look for these signs to check if your job is causing unhappiness in your personal life:

• Your job is affecting your relationship with your significant other. • You don’t have time for people who are important to you. • Your job is negatively impacting your health (stress or not enough time for self-care). • You have no energy to do anything else after work.

Sometimes the stress is temporary. But if you're constantly stressed, then something needs to change.

5. The Ethics Lens ⚖️

A good job aligns with your internal value system. Here’s how you can check:

• Are you comfortable talking about your work with friends and family? • How would you feel if an article was published in the news about your work?

If your success depends on you violating your own ethical principles, it’s not a good fit.

Are you going to stay or leave?

Making a career change is tough. Here are few experiments to make the final decision:

• Talk to your manager and see if there’s a way to make things better. • Imagine getting a promotion with more responsibility. • Imagine being offered a lateral move in the company - new team, new projects.

Do any of these scenarios give you hope? If not, then start talking to potential employers and use the five lenses to evaluate job opportunities.