When you’re employed, it’s difficult to know when it’s the right time to start looking for a new job. But even if you’re happy at your current role, sometimes it takes a move to a new job at a new company to reach the career goals you’re aiming towards. This is especially true at companies that are limited by budgets, such as startups, or at companies that have a strict and rigid organizational structure, such as large corporations.
If you feel like you’ve reached a stopping point at your current role, or if you feel like you can advance faster at another company, consider these five benefits to landing a new job today.
Salary/title bump
The first benefit is the most obvious: if you did well at your prior job and are looking for the right next role, you should come out of your job search with a better title and a bump in salary. The next job you choose to accept should present an opportunity for career progress in compensation and responsibility, both in your resume and for you personally.
The most important thing to consider for this to become a reality is how effectively you conduct your job search. If you look for the job you have, rather than the job you want, you’ll end up in the same place as you started. Instead, aim at a role that is one step higher than your current title, and negotiate for a salary that is a good percentage higher than what you’re getting today.
Faster upward mobility
Sometimes, companies have an inflexible structure regarding who gets promotions. Other times, you’ll be working with bosses who aren’t seeing upward mobility themselves. In the first case, you might experience times when you’re passed over for a responsibility bump. In the second, you might be limited to only the role of someone reporting directly to your boss, especially
If you’re next in line for your boss’s job and they won’t leave, or if your company’s promotion culture leaves you high and dry, a move to another company can not only give you an immediate bump in your title, but also clear a faster path towards greater upward mobility. Most important to consider is avoiding falling back into a company promotion culture like the one you’re in right now, as you’ll only face the same problem again in just a few short years.
Leadership opportunities
It’s common practice for a company to hire managerial-level professionals from outside their own internal pool of talent. This can cause a lot of frustration if you feel that your hard work and effort shows the capacity to lead your team after your manager departs for greener pastures. Often, the only way to get around this problem is to look for leadership roles outside your own company.
Moving to another company, whether in your industry or outside of it, will open up the opportunity for you to apply to managerial roles rather than subordinate roles. To prep for such a role, make sure you brush up on your people management skills by taking the lead on some projects, your budget management skills by paying attention in your team’s next budget meeting, and your teamwork skills by collaborating with your colleagues across departments on your next major task. This will get you ready to lead wherever you end up next.
Culture swap
Hate working for a large, soulless corporation? Feel lost and overwhelmed by a tiny, fast-paced startup? Dislike the people you work with? These and other similar issues are clear signs of a cultural mismatch between you and your company. If you feel like you’re out of place and don’t belong where you work now, making the move to a company that better fits your work and lifestyle will present an immediate benefit.
If you want to make this type of switch, it’s important to avoid the trap of returning to the same exact company culture as your current situation. It’s more common than you might think, as professionals often only think about companies similar to their own, or ones in their industry, as options for their next career move. Do a bit of smart company research (hint: company career websites talk a lot about culture), understand what you want out of your next workplace, and look for a place where you’ll feel more at home.
Better work-life balance
If your company or your manager makes it a habit to overwork their employees, there’s a chance you’ve spent a good chunk of what should be your personal time either in the office or working from home. It’s common in both large corporations and small startups, and it happens for different reasons, but it hurts employees either way. Being overworked results not only in poor results and mistakes, but also in a dip in job satisfaction.
Moving to another company will give you the opportunity to refocus on yourself. Throughout your job search, you’ll be able to target companies where employees are happy with their workload and satisfied with their work-life balance. In offer letter negotiation, you’ll be able to ask for more paid time off or vacation days. Just be sure to look out for signs that a company’s employees neglect to take their vacation days out of fear of job loss or pressure from their boss or peers. Company review sites usually provide great signals for this type of problem.