h/t Matt.

Related posts:

1. Sometimes A Chart Is Worth A Thousand Words

Following up on yesterday’s speculation on where the jobs are and ain’t.

Found this at Marketwatch, so give ‘em props.

Related posts:

1. More Chart-y Goodness
2. Gauging Your Workplace Worth
3. Jobs Report Shows Strength.

Here’s a quick job search hack for ye. Clients ask all the time: “How do I figure out who’s hiring?” Especially when the job market is tight, people don’t want to waste their time chasing openings that don’t actually exist.

My first answer is always: check the want ads. Sounds dumb, I know, but if you do a regular scan of the want ads in the paper or online, that’s the rawest data available. Especially if you’re doing a local job search, check the want ads regularly to try to get a sense of a pattern: which companies or industries in your area are strong and in need of help.

But my job search hack is this:

The companies and the industries that are doing the hiring right now are the ones that are the healthiest right now… the ones that are growing or doing well, even in a bad economy. Where can you possibly find out which companies are doing well? Actually, that information is readily available.

Use the stock market to figure out which companies/industries are growing and thus, which are likely to be hiring.

Here’s what I mean. Pick a stock screener. Any stock screener will do.

Yahoo Finance. CNBC. CNNMoney. Any of them will work.

Now, what you want to set the screen for is companies that are growing right now. If a company is doing well, it’s probably expanding, and that means hiring.

So, don’t worry about the stock price or stock performance. Stock prices can go up and down for any number of reasons that might have nothing to do with the company’s performance. Apple just announced record profits for the quarter but the stock is in the toilet.

No, what you want to set your screen for is revenue growth. Set your time line for at least the last 6 months; setting it to a time line of one year or to show you year over year growth is even better.

You can even set the screener to select for given industries. If you want to get into healthcare, say, the screen can return the fastest growing healthcare companies over the last year.

The results of your screen will tell you which companies are growing the fastest, bringing in the most money, and most importantly, expanding. Hopefully, this also means they’re hiring. I just did a screen on the CNBC website to see companies with 100% or more year over year revenue growth and got a list of 684 companies across a number of industries.

Of course this method is not foolproof. Not every company you’ll return on your screen will be hiring, or hiring in your area or specialty. But this is a good way for getting a gauge of who’s healthy and who’s not – of seeing which industries are growing and which aren’t.

PS- What about non-publicly traded companies? Is there a place to find the fastest growing small companies? In fact, there is. Every year, Inc. Magazine publishes a list of the 5,000 fastest growing private companies in America. Here’s their most recent list. Notice that there are pull-down menus to select for industries or states. You can also see the top 100 growth companies by metro region here.

PPS- Also, Fortune Magazine has a famous yearly list of fast growing companies. Check that out here and here.

Related posts:

1. Job Search January Roundup
2. HotJobs To Tell You Who’s Still Hiring
3. The Stock Market As A Signal Your Job Is In Trouble

In my interview post earlier in the week, I mentioned counseling people about what to wear to a job interview. Then I ran across this post on CareerJournal.com (via this post on Snakes and Ladders) which solicited feedback from readers regarding interview attire. I encourage you to read the both articles in their entirety, but I’m going to use this opportunity do a quick summation of the articles here, and throw in some of my own thoughts and commentary about interviews and best impressions.

Keep Your Car Neat?
I myself had never considered this before (maybe because the inside of my car is a disaster zone) but it does make sense. Someone interviewing for a position requiring organization skills and attention to detail might not want to show up for an interview in car full of 3 years of discarded newspapers and stratified layers of long-forgotten coffee cups and soda cans. You are how you organize yourself… in all aspects of your life, not just your dress.

Women Should Dress According To How They Want To Be Perceived
As the article points out, “…women lack a clear executive uniform — which means they have more rope with which to hang themselves.” Women should take time to carefully consider the image their clothing will project on a first impression. It’s a fine line that can change from situation to situation. What might be “professional attire” in one office, might be consider dowdy (read: old) in another.

Don’t Try To Buck Office Culture… In Either Direction
Here’s an excellent thought:

Dressing to fit in with an office’s individual character shows respect and commitment. At one Des Moines, Iowa, insurance-industry company, the president asks job candidates to interview in business-casual clothes because that’s how the office operates. Regularly, candidates show up in suits. “If he can’t follow the simplest instructions about how to dress, I certainly don’t need him on my staff,” is the executive’s response, according to a staff member who wrote me.

Twenty-Somethings Can Be Problematic
Maybe it’s because their business role-models stay in shorts and sandals (I’m talking to you, Mark Zuckerberg). I’ll never forget the first time I had to talk a recent college grad out of hand-delivering a resume in flip-flops. I thought, “Boy, that’s one for the record books.” Since then, I’ve had to make similar interventions half a dozen times. I think the bare minimum anyone should settle for when interviewing a twenty-something is khaki pants and a collared shirt. Basically, the old Banana Republic uniform.

Any Haircut Can Cut It, As Long As It’s Clean
I think the days of long haired hippie people being unable to apply are long gone. At least I hope they are. The color of hair amongst your average Starbucks barista crew can run the rainbow gamut. I think, depending on the work environment (pink mohawks might not cut it in the funeral home business) any reasonable hairstyle should be tolerated so long as it’s neatly and consistently kept up. There’s a difference between pig-pen hair and the oh-so-carefully gelled and coiffed mussed up hair that looks thrown-together but is actually likely the result of hours of careful primping (now I’m talking to you, Kevin Rose).

Avoid wearing a new suit.
This is actually a well-known old-school tip. You want a suit that looks expensive, but not one that looks right off the rack. You want to give the impression that you wear this suit every day and you’re comfortable in it. If it looks like you borrowed it for the day, then you’re making the wrong impression.

Related posts:

1. What To Wear To A Job Interview
2. Things To Avoid At Your Job Interview
3. The Virtual Job Interview – Job Interviews Via Skype

You’ve no doubt heard the old saw that your resume only has “X number of seconds” to catch a reader’s eye.

Part of the problem is, most people just use the same dull resume templates found in Word… or whatever your word processing program is.

A well-designed resume is eye-catching and professional-looking. You’ll know at a glance that a well-designed resume is no off-the-shelf template. The information on the resume is organized in a clean, easy-to-read way that emphasizes important information at a glance. A good design uses basic concepts of typography and layout design to present your information in a dynamic way.

Whether or not your resume sells your skills effectively to the reader depends on how well it’s written. But if you’re just concerned with resume design, there are 4 quick things you can incorporate that are guaranteed to make your resume look better then most of the others you are competing with.

I’m going to show you how to use varied text, bulleted lists, columns and horizontal lines to organize your information effectively and, most importantly, stand out.

Bold, Underlined Or Different Sized Text

This one is simple. Your resume should be the same font throughout the entire resume. But you can and should vary the text for section headers and other items.

For example, let’s say you’ve selected Times New Roman for your resume. That’s fine. It’s easily readable to both humans and machines and looks professional. I’d recommend 11 or 12 point font sized for most of the text.

• But let’s say for your name at the top of the resume, you use 18 point and bolded.
• For your contact information under that, you choose 14 point, not bolded.
• For every section heading of your resume (Objective, Qualification Summary, Employment History, Education, etc.) you chose 14pt bolded and underlined.
• For each company name in your career history, you keep the normal text size (11 or 12 point) but you bold and underline.
• For the name of your position at each job, you bold but do not underline.

These are just examples. You could also try writing some header sections in all caps.

The idea behind all of this is simply to break up the monotony of the text by highlighting important info. Your eye is very good at catching patterns, so if the reader can at a glance see that everything that is bolded and underlined is the name of a past employer, then it’s easy to organize that information at a glance.

The key point to remember is to remain consistent. If you make one section heading 14 point, make sure they all are. And don’t go crazy and have dozens of different text sizes and types. Just a handful of variations helping to organize the information is fine.

Bulleted Lists

I’ve mentioned before that a key to writing an effective resume is to “show not tell.”

A quick and effective way to do this is to use bulleted lists in your employment history.

Look at the image to the left.

My recommendation is to use a normal paragraph form to describe your previous position and your duties in however many sentences is appropriate.

Then… below the paragraph describing each position, list your most important accomplishments, awards, etc. in bullet form. You know, things like, “Increased sales 24% division-wide.”

Do this for each job. The paragraph section describes the job, your responsibilities and the outline of your experience. And then below the paragraph section you have a bulleted list highlighting key accomplishments and data points from that job.

Note: some people go crazy with bullets on a resume. They turn each new idea or sentence into a bullet until the entire resume is one long bulleted list. I hate that.

Use to bullets to emphasize important information only. If you make everything a bullet, then the bullets lose all power to highlight or emphasize. Save your bullets for information you want to stand out.

Columns

Columns are a good way to organize lists of information. For example, if you have a set of skills or certifications, instead of one long list of only one or two word items each (leaving lots of whitespace down the page) try organizing the information using columns.

If you have a word processing program that can utilize tables and other page design elements, you can quickly set up rows of columns.

An easy way to do this same thing using only the keyboard is to just use the TAB button like you used to on a typewriter. Tab the words over until they line up in nice, even columns.

Horizontal Lines

The best, quickest way to make a clear delineation between bits of information is to use horizontal lines. Take a look at the sample resume picture at the very top of this post. Even though the image is so small you can’t make out the typing, the horizontal lines make it easy to see the different sections of the resume.

Again, don’t go overboard with the horizontal lines. At most, use small, thin lines to separate each section of your resume as in the design above.

More commonly, I’d simply use horizontal lines at the top (to separate your name and contact info from the rest of the resume) and at the bottom, as a kind of content footer.

Some people even get super fancy and use lines to create boxes around their resumes, but I don’t recommend this for most resumes.

If you want a quick way to make different kinds of horizontal lines, you can use some simple keyboard shortcuts which are built into Word. For example, you can create a quick double line by typing in three equal signs right in a row and then hitting enter.

In Conclusion

Using the simple typographical and graphical elements listed above, you accomplish two things at once. First, you organize the information on your resume in a way that makes it easy for the eye to sort through at a glance. Second, you’re giving your resume an eye-catching design that is a cut above of what most people are capable of producing. Your resume will stand out visually, and it will be easy for you to highlight pertinent information that might catch a recruiter’s eye.

And of course, engaging the help of a professional resume service is probably the best way to make sure you have a resume that stands out.

Related posts:

1. How To Make Your Resume Stand Out
2. Ask Brian- Best Resume Tip
3. Quick Job Search Tip- Use A Stock Screener To Find Out Who’s Hiring

I once gave you my one best tip for writing a better resume. This has prompted several people to write and ask if I have a similar one “best tip” for job interviews.

I do, and it’s a very simple one.

Zen And the Art of Job Interviews

When it comes time to prepare clients for a job interview, I go over all the usual common sense tips: dress well; be clean shaven; try to use proper language and grammar; familiarize yourself with your own resume (you’d be surprised how often people get tripped up by info on their own resume) etc.

I also try to concentrate on the mental stuff: be confident; try to give the impression that hiring you will be a boon for the organization… i.e. you’ll be able to deliver results; seem eager to work at this company. To this last end, I encourage my clients to do actual research on the employer. You want the hiring manager to think they’re about to hire you for your dream job; knowing something about the company goes a long way to leaving them with the impression you’re super motivated to join their team.

But the one thing I always end the preparation session with is this advice:

BE LIKEABLE.

What? Be likeable? Seems like a trite bit of advice. But my reasoning is based on my own experience as someone who does the hiring.

The secret to the job interview is the human element. After all, that’s what a one-on-one interview is for: to find out the intangible qualities you have that can’t be put down on paper. People forget that.

Your resume has already indicated that you’re qualified for consideration. What the one-on-one interview is really all about is determining if you’re normal or if you’re a wacko.

Let’s say you’re applying to work at one of my two companies. If you are applying to be a writer, I would only have considered you if another writer has vouched for you or if I know you by reputation in the industry. In all cases, I’ve only agreed to interview you because your resume showed you to be qualified. The unqualified resumes didn’t even get callbacks.

So if you’ve made it to the interview, chances are I think you’re qualified. Or, at least, amongst the qualified. All I’m worried about now is confirming your qualifications, and more importantly, figuring you out as a person.

So, a good portion of the interview with me will be questions based off your resume. I basically just want to make sure you aren’t lying. So, I’ll ask some questions to try to trip you up. If your resume was all truth, you should have no problem with any of this.

And yeah, I’ll ask you some questions about your work history and your professional philosophy (and maybe some personal or personality questions, though that’s usually not not my style). But I’m really just asking any of these questions so I can get a handle on who you are and how you operate.

The interview is mostly about, will I enjoy working with this person?

In fact, almost every part of this entire process is me trying to suss out a couple of basic questions: Can I work with this person? More importantly, will I enjoy working with this person?

In other words, the interview is… at it’s bottom… Are you a psycho? No? A jerk? No? Then will I enjoy working with you more than the last person I interviewed?

And I would argue that this is really what 85% of interviews are all about: likeability. Weeding out the jerks and psychos and picking the person you think you can get along with best. It’s the personal element that counts.

So the best thing you can do in an interview is be personable, friendly and likeable.

Now, this runs counter to most traditional interview advice which has built the job interview into this bizarre nightmare grilling session where the interviewer is out to get you and any wrong answer means certain rejection. Reading some job search advice books, you get the sense they’re preparing you to testify before a judge or, at least, get interviewed by Bill O’Reilly.

I think this is wrongheaded. At best, it over-prepares you. At worst, this sort of advice scares the crap out of you and turns you into a nervous wreck. And as I’ve said before, you don’t want to be nervous, you want to be confident, competent and pleasant.

And yeah, some companies will put you through the wringer, asking literally hundreds of questions to try to trip you up. But they’re doing that, again, to weed out the jerks and psychos. If you answer honestly, as best you can, then you’ll do fine. Cause I’m assuming you’re not a jerk or a psycho.

So, in summation…

• Relax.
• If you’ve gotten to the interview, the interviewer probably already thinks you’re qualified. You just have to make sure to prove them right.
• Just answer honestly.
• Don’t try to over-think questions. Answer the way you would answer, not the way you think you’re supposed to answer.
• The interview is about finding out who you are as a person. So, just be the person you already are.
• Be truthful, thoughtful and most importantly, likeable.

Related posts:

1. A Successful Job Interview: My One Best Tip
2. How To Prepare Yourself For A Successful Job Search
3. The 5 Dirty Little Secrets Of A Successful Job Search

I think I referenced a post from WiseBread yesterday. They’re a good multi-author blog covering a range of topics.

I ran across this post by a woman who used to do the hiring and recruiting at a previous job. She has a couple of good points about what makes a good interviewee… from the interviewer‘s perspective. My favorites:

5. Make Getting the Job Your Priority and Do Not Show Your Ulterior Motives – A lot of the times it is hard to guess how an interviewer will interpret what you say. In my experience you should only show that you want the job for the job and nothing else. (…)

3. Read Your Own Resume and Know What is on It – When I interviewed a woman for my last company I asked her how much she knew about MySQL and Oracle since both of them were on her resume. She told me that she knew MySQL is made by Microsoft and Oracle is open source, and I asked her if she were sure and she nodded confidently. Then I told her she was wrong and she confessed that she wrote those things because her friend told her to just write as many technical keywords as possible so that job board search engines will pick her resume up by the keywords. The lesson here is that it is fine to put popular keywords on your resume as long as you actually know what they are. It is also helpful to read your resume from time to time and refresh your memory about past projects.

The post has much more, and I truncated some of the points. Go read the whole thing:

Five Interview Lessons Learned from Horrible Interviews

Related posts:

1. Job Interviewing: Ten Tips for Success!
2. Quick Job Search Tip- Use A Stock Screener To Find Out Who’s Hiring
3. The Secret of a Successful Job Interview

I’m not a big fan of motivational posts. I much prefer to give you tangible tips and hacks, so this is probably as close as I’m going to get to this sort of thing.

But the proper job search attitude is important, and I’ll tell you why. You can’t land the sort of job you deserve if you don’t think you deserve it. Here’s what I mean.

The Wrong Attitude

All too often, I’ve seen clients approach a job search in the same way they would the welfare line. They feel embarrassed or unworthy. They feel like they’re asking for a handout or, to quote Scarlett, relying on the kindness of strangers.

Look, we all have to look for a job some time. And more often then not, a job searcher is in a quest to improve his or her career lot, not because they’re in desperate dire straights. Think of your own reaction to learning that a friend is looking for a job. Your first thought is not, What a loser! Your first thought is: I wonder if I can help?

We all have to look for a job some time

Yet still, people act like a job search is some great, arduous quest where you, the supplicant, are always on bended knee waiting for some all-powerful hand of fate to pluck you up and save you only by some great accident of chance.

This is absolutely the wrong attitude.

The Situation Is In Your Favor

First of all, no one gives anyone a job out of pity or charity. A person is hired because an employer has a need to fill. In essence, the true job search balance is the other way around: the candidate is doing the employer a favor by agreeing to provide his or her labor at a fair market value.

Secondly, it’s the hiring manager who has his butt on the line, not you. If you don’t get hired by a given job, it’s no sweat off of your brow… you just move on the the next interview. But if the hiring manager can’t fill the position – or worse, fills it with the wrong person – then operations will suffer, profits will suffer, the hiring manager’s reputation will suffer.

Thirdly, notice the formal way in which a job search transacts itself. The employer makes “an offer.” You are free to accept or decline. In fact, you are the one with all the decision making power. You can come and go at any time. It’s the employer who is sitting there with an unfulfilled need until you come along to solve his problem.

I make all the above points to try to disabuse you of the wrong job search attitude. You are not powerless. You are not a beggar. As the jobs seeker, you, in fact, hold all the cards.

The Proper Attitude

This might seem like a trite bit of mumbo jumbo, but it’s actually quite important to have a properly confident mindset.

Think of yourself like an NFL free agent. You never see a cocky, highly paid, famous wide receiver begging a team to hire him (you might see him cry if his team loses to the Giants, but that’s another story). Just the opposite: the NFL free agent takes the attitude that he is a rare, prized commodity. He can score. He can help you win. He’ll be doing you a favor if he deigns to sign with your team.

NFL free agents don’t fear a job search. Hell no! They dream off free-agency. That’s when they make the big bucks.

Think of yourself like an NFL free agent

You’re just like that free agent. You are a skilled and talented professional. You can bring success and innovation to any job you sign on to. You will improve any team you join. I’m not suggesting you take on the prima-donna airs of an NFL star, but you should take on his air of confidence. This is your year of free-agency. This is your chance to sign a better five-year deal and join the franchise you always really wanted to play for. This job search is actually a very good thing. This is your chance to move up and make the big bucks.

Remember, the employer has a need to fill. You are a possible solution to the problem. The quickest way to get hired is to get across to the employer that they will be immensely glad they hired you. You will not just fill their vacancy, you will improve it. You will solve some of their problems. You will take the position and make it perform like it never has before. You will help the company earn more money. You’ll help the company shave costs. You’ll bring dynamism and new, brilliant ideas to the team. In fact, you’ll be such a great hire, the hiring manager will see his reputation enhanced just because he was the one who was smart enough to hire you.

This is the impression you want to leave in the hiring manager’s mind. And you obviously can’t do that by projecting an attitude of neediness, desperation or embarrassment. You need to be relaxed, and more importantly, confident.

I used to do this simple exercise with my clients. Imagine three candidates interviewing for a job:

1. Candidate A interviews with a hiring manager and leaves the impression that, hey, she’s a warm body and she’s better than nothing.
2. Candidate B interviews with a hiring manager and leaves the impression that they are competent and can fill the position adequately.
3. Candidate C, however, convinces the hiring manager that he is a potential superstar, someone who can transform this organization and make everyone rich and make the hiring manager look good.

All three candidates can be hired in various situations. But who do you think gets hired EVERY time?

You want to be Candidate C.

So every time you begin a job search, you want to start with confidence. Keep reminding yourself:

• I am a rare and valuable free agent.
• I have something to offer them.
• This is my chance to move up and make the big bucks.
• I can convince them that if they sign me, we’ll all be winners.
• They’ll be lucky to hire me.

This is the proper job search attitude.

Related posts:

1. A Successful Job Search Attitude
2. The 5 Dirty Little Secrets Of A Successful Job Search
3. Why You Didn’t Get That Job- Part 2

If you have career or job search question you would like answered on this blog, click here to Ask Brian.

Reader John writes:

“I’m looking to relocate (only three hours away from where I currently live) and have heard that some employers will just toss your resume if they see you are not local. I guess they think they’ll have to pay relocation expenses or don’t think you can interview easily. I don’t really care if they don’t cover moving expenses and I am available for interviews at their convenience. At the moment, I bury the following line, ‘I am relocating to *** and have the ability to meet at your convenience.’, in the third paragraph of my cover letter.

Is that enough or is there a better place to explain I’m looking to move to the area?”

Brian answers after the break:

Brian Sayz:

I’ll be honest with you, John. I don’t think three hours away is going to make that big a difference. I mean, some people commute 3 hours to work (insane, but it’s true)!

Long distance job searches are common. People do it every day. And imagine doing something like interviewing for jobs in California when you still live in New Jersey. People do that every day too. Those are much tougher than your situation because the employer knows they’re going to have to reimburse the applicant for a plane ticket and hotel room. So they really have to want to interview you in a situation like that. In your case, it’s just a car trip that you can do very easily yourself. Three hours away is really nothing, especially if you’re talking about locations within the same state.

So, I think you’re probably going to find out this isn’t as big a deal as you’re anticipating.

Put that information at the very end of your first paragraph

But since you brought this up, I don’t see why you should bury the line in the third paragraph of your cover letter. It’s important info. If I were writing your cover letter, I’d put that information at the very end of your first paragraph.

If you’ve written the cover letter properly, your first paragraph should be 2-3 sentences introducing yourself, declaring the position you are seeking at the company and briefly explaining your career history and qualifications. Something like this:

“In, response to your advertised opening in Someplace, I would like to introduce myself as a candidate for Name of Position. I am a seasoned and qualified Such And Such Professional with a proven track record of success doing X, Y and Z.”

Then, add on a quick sentence about your locational status:

“I currently reside in Timbuktu but I am in the process of completing a permanent relocation of my family to Minas Tirith. I am available to meet in person and discuss this position at any time.”

Then proceed with the rest of your cover letter.

Bonus Long Distance Job Search Tip:

Since we’re on the subject and I don’t want to do a whole separate post discussing this, here are some of the things I have seen people do when attempting a long distance job application:

• Do you know anybody who lives in the area? Family, friends? Can you use their address temporarily for the job search? If so, that solves the problem right there. Don’t worry about the phone number. Cell numbers especially are all over the map these days. I haven’t lived in New York City for 3 years now, but the area code on my cell is still 917.
• Declare in your cover letter something along the lines of “I will be in town for the next four weeks on personal business, so I will be available to meet anytime at your convenience.” The employer doesn’t have to know what the personal business is, or even if this is really true. As long as you show up on time, they’re none the wiser.
• Bonus tip: I hate to use networking as the cure-all example to solve every problem, but if you’re really encountering resistance to your non-local status, that’s a situation where networking is invaluable. If you know someone in the company who can get your resume into the right person’s hands… Let’s just say, the phrase, “I have a buddy who is interested in a job with us…” can open more doors and overcome more obstacles than anything in the job search universe.

Related posts:

1. What Should Be In A Cover Letter
2. Ask Brian: Confidential Job Search?
3. The Number One Cover Letter Mistake

Earlier this week, we featured a young woman who was considering changing her career path… before she had even gotten started. I, along with several of the commenters, advised her to stick it out a bit longer and fight for her dream.

Still, it got me thinking: When is the right time to consider a career change? We’ve talked a lot about saving your job, finding a generic new job and generally advancing your chosen career path in earlier posts. But we haven’t really talked about the situation of career changers.

So, I’ve drawn up a list of circumstances under which I might counsel a client that it’s time for a career change. If you find some or most of these situations fit you, then you might be in the career change market.

1. You’re no longer excited about your career.
   This probably falls into the “no duh” category. But seriously, life is too short. If you find you just can’t hack it anymore; if getting motivated to get up every day is becoming too much; if you’re just not having any fun anymore, then what are you waiting for? Job happiness is out there for everyone. Being too timid to take the leap is no one’s fault but your own.
2. There’s no future in your current career path.
   Sometimes it’s not you that’s the problem… sometimes it’s your job that has run it’s course. Maybe you still love your job and you’re proud of all you’ve accomplished, but you’ve gone about as far as you can go. Why not look for new challenges and new horizons? Your only alternative is to sit around resting on your laurels and living in the faded glory of past accomplishments.
3. Your industry is struggling.
   Despite our advice to Dee to stick it out in the face of the troubles of the print newspaper industry, the health of your industry or career field is a valid consideration. For example, I spent the last several years helping clients begin new careers as real estate agents. It made sense at the time: it was a red hot industry. Now, a lot of those clients are considering transitioning back out and I don’t blame them. One day the real estate market WILL recover. And there are still good real estate agents out there making money. But again… life is too short. There are other careers out there that won’t require swimming against such a strong current for the foreseeable future.
4. You’ve identified a new challenge.
   Again, maybe you’re perfectly happy where you’re at. Still… still… there’s this THING out there… this new idea or this new job… it’s gotten under your skin and you’ve become fascinated. You want to give it a try. You can’t help yourself. Isn’t that part of what makes life great? Chasing those new interests and new dreams?
5. You can afford to cut loose from what you’ve invested in your old career.
   I’m speaking here in both a financial and an experience/reputation sense. Sometimes you’ve reached a point in your career where you can afford to take new risks, and it’s almost silly not to. If you fail, you’re not really out all that much. And besides, isn’t this what you’ve worked so hard for all these years: to earn the freedom to take chances now and then?
6. You have skills and experiences that can transfer.
   Here you’ve been sitting in this career backwater for years and no one’s been looking for you. Suddenly, there are all these new opportunities and your skills and experiences are in great demand. If you’ve got a skill set that you can suddenly utilize in a new or exciting way, it’s at least worth considering if the grass is greener elsewhere.
7. You’ve reached a state in your life where this career path doesn’t fit with your lifestyle.
   Trying to start a family? Need more free time or (conversely) more money? Maybe you’re in the latter half of your career and you want to slow the rat race down a tad. When your job doesn’t mesh with your lifestyle, that’s always a good time to reassess. You never want to be living to work. You want to be doing the opposite.
8. If you don’t make the change now, you never will.
   Sometimes opportunities come around that are once in a career or once in a lifetime. If you let them pass you by, you might find yourself wondering what if. This is also a situation to consider when addressing time-of-life issues. Maybe you’ve got the opportunity to do something now that financial, family or even career considerations won’t allow you gamble on in the future. If it’s now or never, then it’s worth thinking hard.
9. Better income, greater recognition.
   This one’s another “no duh” situation. If you can make more money while getting at least the same level of satisfaction, then why not? And if you’re at a place where no one appreciates you, what are you going to do, sit around and hope everyone wakes up one fine day? Why not go now and get the recognition you deserve for your hard work?
10. It’s good for your career in the long run.
    These days a variety of experience and the ability to adapt to new situations is an overwhelming advantage. It’s no longer about working your way up from the mail room. Jumping from job to job and even career to career is now very common. Here are just 2 exampes: IT… you need to be the fluent with of lots of different technologies and languages, master of a variety of positions and projects. Or take the young woman dreaming of being a CEO some day. Meg Whitman cut her teeth at Procter & Gamble and Disney before eBay came calling. She didn’t know much about the web, but it was her experience in other industries that eBay was really looking for.
11. The idea of starting from scratch is appealing.
    Some people discover the career ladder is not for them. Try testing your entrepreneurial mettle. Become your own boss. Or jump ship to that cool new startup. Your career could use the shakeup.
12. It’s time for a geographical move.
    Finally, is it time for you to start over in a new town in a new part of the country? That’s often the best time to start from scratch with everything and make a start on a completely new career path.

Related posts:

1. Career Change After 50 – How to Market Your Experience
2. Career Change- Should You Join A Start-up Company?
3. In Career Planning, Follow Your Heart, Not The Ebb And Flow Of The Economy Or Job Market