When to make your career move
By Rosalyn Page | smh.com.au | 04 August
On cold winter mornings it's tempting to snuggle under the covers rather than face the day. And we can sometimes do the same thing with jobs.
Rather than move to a new position to take on fresh responsibilities and challenges, we stay in the same comfortable job, year after year. So, how do you know when the time is right to leave a job? And how do you know if you've already stayed too long?
Professor Mark Wooden, deputy director of the Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, conducts an annual Australian labour market survey. His most recent report found 16 per cent of people had changed employers in the previous 12 months. Those aged under 25 were significantly more likely to have job-hopped than other age groups, with movement slowing significantly as people hit their 30s.
Kate Williams, principal solicitor specialising in medical negligence in the Sydney office of Slater & Gordon, has experience both sticking with jobs and moving on when the time was right. A 14-year law veteran, she has held five legal positions with different firms.
She believes there's a time for change and a time for staying put.
"[In my profession] it's important to move to other firms in the first five or six years," she says. Williams sees it as crucial to try a variety of positions to gain experience, which will help you find your calling.
As we move through our careers, the need for such rapid change often abates, according to Wooden's labour research. "Most workers, especially once they enter their 30s, can expect to remain with their current employer for many years," he says. The focus for more mature workers is job satisfaction and opportunities to advance. If either of these are lacking, it may be a sign that it's time to change jobs.
Career counsellor Marijke Wright says, in deciding whether to jump, you should look at whether there are opportunities for advancement in your job. The competitive employment market may mean your employer will do what it takes to keep you.
"Training opportunities, developing new skills, good managers, work-life balance and opportunities for advancement are some of the key things that employees are looking for in a job," she says.
Wright says if you decide to go, the benefits are likely to be substantial. These include gaining career experience and broadening your professional networks. You are also likely to encounter unplanned opportunities that arise just from taking the initiative to leave your current environment.
On the downside, changing employer means you may find yourself at the bottom of a new corporate ladder and need to spend time re-establishing yourself.
Williams says most people in her line of work tend not to make a lot of moves once they are established. "You'd hope that after about five years you'd stay put with one firm," she says. "Employers won't be happy to have spent all that time training lawyers and then have them leave."
She sees pros and cons in switching jobs. "If you move positions, you'll have to take on someone else's case load and they have already made decisions about the case but you might not be willing to make the same decisions about taking litigation," she says.
Williams says provided you have job satisfaction there's no real reason to explore "grass-is-greener" options.
"It's hard work wherever you go," she says. "If [you've] job satisfaction, you ought not need to move."
Ken Gilbert, from human resources consulting firm Mercer, says you're less likely to need to move on if your company is flexible. "Employees ... are demanding greater autonomy in how they schedule and deliver work," he says. "[That may be] moving from long-term to contingent, from full-time to part-time, or from on-site to telecommuting."
Companies are willing to adapt to workers' demands because of the high cost of replacing staff. Gilbert says the cost of hiring a new employee "ranges from 50 per cent to 150 per cent of the annual salary of the new employee (in addition to their salary)".
First published by Smh.com.au on August 04 2008
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