Whom are you fighting at work? Plus A reason a hiring manager WILL prejudice your CV.

Are you fighting time?

Your colleagues?

Your boredom?

Your diet?

Your systems?

Your workload?

Your compensation?

Your benefits?

Your boss?

Your habits?

Your dreams?

Ask anybody why they are unenthusiastic or disengaged at work I would place a strong bet that one of these areas comes up. Yet every single one is in a person’s control. The answer is simple. Change. You don’t like your colleagues, change them or ask your self “do I need to change?” You’re bored, why? Change. You have cravings for those donuts but are resisting, you are making positive change, keep doing it! Your systems suck, be the catalyst for change, demonstrate efficiencies – it may not happen overnight but don’t suffer in silence. Your workload getting you down, why? What can you change, can you delegate, can you say no? Can you change timelines? Can you escalate the issue? Are you actually lazy and procrastinate so things build up? All these things you can do that will affect change, if none of them work then change jobs. But you have to be real with yourself in the first instance.

Many people take the nuclear option first which means they are talking to someone. “I want out, I’m working crazy hours and can’t see the light at the end of the tunnel so I want a new job”. Ok what do you want?” asks the recruiter. “I don’t know” is often the reply.

So if you want out but you don’t know what you want then go back over the list ask yourself who are you fighting, 99% of the time it will be you are fighting yourself. You just need to embrace a bit of change first.

With the ability to look for a job in seconds, it can be the easy way out. But here is the reality, Employers like sticky people. I’m not saying work for the same company for 20 years or even 10, but every hiring manager who looks at a CV will immediately cast dispersions for various reasons if a person’s CV is littered with roles performed for less than 12 months. I want someone who is going to work with us to help drive change and you can’t do that if you jump ship when things get a little tough/busy, I want to see some tenacity and drive. I want to ensure I create an environment that allows for it to happen, and if that does not exist then fine move on, but do it in the knowledge that the next hiring manager is going to ask the question, “Why did you leave your last job?” and trust me you better have a better answer than, “so many things were wrong that I needed to find a better challenge”. The challenge would have been to stay for 12 more months try work through some change and help the business first. That is the person I’m going to hire. Now I know this is a general comment and that there are some proper rubbish places to work so this is really aimed at advising those peeps who are fighting themselves, stuck in a rut in actually not a bad place to work. Ask yourself the tough questions, managers ask these questions when you see engagement dipping. Just ask them first – who or what they are fighting? Then ask them, what can they change?

At Junior level roles we expect to see a little turnover in roles on the CV as you find your place in the world but trust me as you progress up the career ladder we are looking for a little more tenacity and experience combined with a little stickiness. Just look at the CV’s from people your respect either in your org or others, I guarantee they have hung in there at a few places where others have run.

Change is a constant how you adapt is what matters….