Its Time For Change
As I have said in my bio and my first post, I was recruited for my first job directly out of college. Matter of fact, I was recruited about four months before I graduated, so throughout a good part of my senior year in college I knew that I had a job lined up once I graduated.
I was at my first post college job for a little over two and a half years, and I just recently quit. It took a lot of time, boredom, stress, anger, and finally dumb lunch (or fate depending on how you look at it) to leave. When I first started this job I thought it was great. I was learning new stuff, and making pretty decent money. It’s crazy when you get your first post college check and it is the same amount that used to take you a whole summer to make. When you start getting those post college checks, if their good checks, it takes a while to realize you may not be happy with your job.
As time progressed on my first job, so did the project that I was assigned to; old co-workers left, new ones arrived, the work environment began to become more hectic. Eventually I began to feel unappreciated at this job. I began to get extremely boring work and sometimes no work at all. I was not being included on the direction of work that I was developing ; I simply did not feel like I was being treated the way someone should be treated based on the amount of time I had been working on the project. I realize that I am young, and that I was fresh out of college, but I still didn’t feel like I was getting my just due. I simply continued on this path of feeling bored and unappreciated for nearly a year.
I also began to get extremely comfortable in being bored and unchallenged. I got comfortable in the fact that little was expected of me, therefore I got used to doing absolutely nothing, I got used to coming to work and nodding off or reading the paper. Although I was unhappy with my job, the fact that I was comfortable doing nothing is probably one reason why I stayed so long. I was so comfortable that I got scared to quit, I was scared of change. I started to feel like I might not be good enough to work someplace else. This is a horrible position to be in immediately after college because in order to grow in your field you have to be constantly challenged and learning new things. Yes, its true that all learning can not take place on the job, but working at a monotonous boring job early on can help set a precedence for your career; you may begin to expect to do nothing at different jobs, and you may become scared to take on tasks that may be difficult because you are used to monotony.
Like I said before, I was very unhappy with my job, but I constantly resisted doing anything about my unhappiness. I went months without talking to my manager about my feelings about work or actively looking for a new position somewhere else. Eventually I got upset enough with work to redo my resume and post it on job sites, my girlfriend and friends also started shopping around my resume as well. I began to get calls, emails, and letters from different recruiters wanting to interview me; I didn’t respond to any of these people. I had friends that tried to get my to come to their jobs, I turned them down too. Fact of the matter is, I was just scared to make the changes that were necessary to put me in a better state of mind. Even though I constantly complained about my job to my family and friends, I didn’t do anything.
What changed? Clearly, I eventually did change jobs. What made me finally take the leap? The opportunity to change was basically forced upon me and I was forced to stop putting off the decision on whether or not to make a change. During a rant with an old co-worker, who quit my project a few months earlier, I gave him my resume and thought nothing of it. A few weeks later I got a call, the woman asks me some questions and begins to try to set up a time for a phone interview. When I say this opportunity was forced upon me, I don’t mean that in the literal sense. It was a bit harder to ignore this woman on the phone the same way I ignored the emails, voicemails, and letters from other companies, because she worked with someone I actually knew pretty well, I didn’t want dude to look like he gave them a bad contact. After the conversation I agreed to do a phone interview with someone else in the company as well.
The company that my friend went to was extremely different the the company I was working with at the time. The company was at was over 10,000 employees strong, this new company had about 10 employees. The new company was also just starting out and trying to make a name for itself in the consulting industry. After the phone interview, I had an in person interview with the CEO, I probably would have never had a one on one meeting with the CEO of my old job. Their CEO was pretty young, and real energetic. As I sat across from him, I actually saw a person I wouldn’t mind being, a person that was taking control of his destiny through entrepreneurship. After our meeting, the CEO made me a pretty good offer. One would think that the pay combined with the fact that I am very interested in entrepreneurship and was unhappy with the current job I had would have made this a no brainer, I still rejected making the change. I started actively looking for reasons not to change jobs. I even found a different opportunity at the current company I was at in an attempt to not completely switch jobs. The new opportunity actually seemed very interesting, but it fell through. Once the attempt to stay at the same company and move to a new project failed,I finally accepted that it was time to make a change. All of this occurred within the last month so I will keep you guys posted.
I tell this story to illustrate the fact that change can be scary for reasons that no one but you (and sometimes maybe even not yourself) understand. I had to be forced, figuratively speaking, to accept a change. So far I am glad I did it.
