Miserable in my job - should I quit before I find another?

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RosaCarolinae

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Hi, any advice would be welcome. I am miserable in my current job. I have been here for close to 9 years and I am just ready to be done. More than that, for the last couple of years here I have just lost motivation and have fallen ever further behind. Now, not surprisingly this causes anxiety, and I desperately just want to be done here and find something, anything else, for a fresh start. I always used to be a good worker; I don’t know what happened. I also have a quite a bit of education so I am technically overqualified for the job I have but I have had no luck getting a job in my field, so I have been stuck here, and I feel like my life just has no purpose. We haven’t even been able to have kids; I thought I would be able to be a mom but instead I am stuck spending most of the hours of my life in a job I dislike and used to be decent at but now am failing at.

What I would like to do is give a month’s notice now, and that should give me time to find something by the time a month has gone by, as well as additional motivation on the job hunt. My husband doesn’t want me to do this, as he fears (reasonably) that if I don’t find something in time, we will end up struggling financially. I know this is the more sensible approach, but I can’t handle it here any more; my life is draining away, and I have already given way too many years of my life to this job that I thought would be temporary until I found something better.
 
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One is more marketable when they have a job than when they are unemployed.
 
Are you looking? Have you applied? Has any of them called you? Over the past two years I have almost doubled my hourly rate. In this economy you should be able to do the same.
 
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I am looking and have been applying. (I need to be sending out more, though.) I had an interview a week and a half ago with a company that I was very interested in working for and thought the position would be a good fit. But then they chose someone else for the job.
phil3 said:
Over the past two years I have almost doubled my hourly rate. In this economy you should be able to do the same.
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That’s great, maybe it depends on what field you are in, though? I don’t see that happening for me. If I can just get something that pays roughly comparable to what I have now, that would be good. It seems like a lot of the businesses where I am are hiring, but a lot of those jobs are rather low pay. (Not that I need something high-paying, because we just need to cover the bills, but I need something full time that pays at least $13-14 per hour.)
 
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You may need to do an overhaul of your resume, since it’s been 10 years. I highly suggest going to the workforce center to get tips on how to bring your resume up to speed and more marketable. Nowadays, a real person isn’t even looking at the resume-- it disappears into the black hole of applicant tracking systems. Things like keywords are important to getting past the ATS.
 
I would not quit first. It is a lot easier to find a job when you have one, than it is to quit and have to explain to your prospective employer why you are not currently working. It is much better to say something like I am here because I am looking for opportunities where my skills can be better applied or can grow, etc., rather than I was unhappy where I was working, if you get what I mean.

Plus there is a risk that you may not find something right away and that may place financial hardship on yourself or your family.
 
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Before you give notice you need to test that theory that you can get a job in a month, especially now because a lot is employers slow up on hiring during Nov/Dec because hiring managers are out on vacation.

I don’t think a month is much time at all. And if you don’t have a job by then you will definitely have financial concerns plus then you will have to explain why you are unemployed during your continued job search.

I just all around do not recommend your proposed course of action.

You need to polish your resume, network, apply for jobs, and see how marketable you are all before you even consider putting in notice. And, I wouldn’t put in notice until I’d accepted a new offer.

The only way I’d recommend otherwise is if you were going back to school full time and not looking for a job until you completed another degree or certification, if for example switching fields.
 
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Doesn’t your husband work? Is he able to?

Sorry to say this, but it’s all too true – despite the laws on the books these days, which are rarely enforced, I might add – being an older woman puts you at a disadvantage when applying for work. Even though you might have a lot of experience, employers still tend to pay women less and there’s still a lot of ageism in the job market. I assume, because you’ve been working for the last nine years, that you would be an older applicant.

What field were you originally educated for? Why was it so hard to find a job in that line of work? Is there generally less demand for it, or has that particular niche become saturated with so many people working in it that there haven’t been any openings available for that long a period?

Since your education was almost a decade ago, perhaps you should update it, especially if it is in a rapidly changing field, so as to keep your skills in that area current. That way, you can offer prospective employers something they can use today.

Do polish up your resume, but here’s a word of advice: It’s perfectly legitimate to omit dates from a resume that would reveal your age. You don’t need to reveal when you were born or the years during which you attended school. Try not to give anyone a reason to discriminate against you unfairly. A job counselor once clued me in on that.

And despite everything, try to stay positive.
 
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JanR said:
Doesn’t your husband work? Is he able to?
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He works and he makes more than I do, but our situation would be very tight if we lost my income.
JanR said:
Sorry to say this, but it’s all too true – despite the laws on the books these days, which are rarely enforced, I might add – being an older woman puts you at a disadvantage when applying for work. Even though you might have a lot of experience, employers still tend to pay women less and there’s still a lot of ageism in the job market. I assume, because you’ve been working for the last nine years, that you would be an older applicant.
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I am sure that is true, unfortunately. It never would have occurred to me that I am old enough where I would have to worry about it, though. :slightly_frowning_face:What age approximately would you say there starts to be more discrimination against older woman candidates? I am approaching middle age, I guess you could say.
JanR said:
What field were you originally educated for? Why was it so hard to find a job in that line of work? Is there generally less demand for it, or has that particular niche become saturated with so many people working in it that there haven’t been any openings available for that long a period?

Since your education was almost a decade ago, perhaps you should update it, especially if it is in a rapidly changing field, so as to keep your skills in that area current. That way, you can offer prospective employers something they can use today.
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I don’t know if I want to say, except that it can be hard to find openings in the field, and I have been out of it for long enough that I am sure it hurts my marketability. I cannot afford to go back to school, much as I would enjoy it.
JanR said:
Do polish up your resume, but here’s a word of advice: It’s perfectly legitimate to omit dates from a resume that would reveal your age. You don’t need to reveal when you were born or the years during which you attended school. Try not to give anyone a reason to discriminate against you unfairly. A job counselor once clued me in on that.

And despite everything, try to stay positive.
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That is good advice; I always wondered about this, since dates of schooling are pretty much dead give-always of age. Oftentimes online applications require you to fill in blanks that include dates, though.
 
Do you live in the Nashville area? Have you ever done customer service or technical support in a call center?
 
I have a very hard time believing in this economy anyone would have a difficult time in finding a better job. You must have a very specific line of work that prevents you from improving or finding a better job.
 
I have a couple of interviews lined up, though they are for secretarial type jobs like my current job, not for the field went to school for. So it’s not as though I can’t get any kind of job whatsoever.

What kind of decent paying jobs are abounding in this economy? (Honest question.) People always talk about how the economy is so great, but they aren’t usually the ones looking for jobs. There are certainly plenty of low paying jobs out there.
 
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Why are you unable, or unwilling to say what line of work you were educated for? Why the secrecy?
 
As someone who hires folks, one also has more leverage when employed. When considering salary offers, knowing the person is unemployed and needs your job can be a factor.
 
It could just as likely be that God is hoping we use the reason he also gave us to make prudent decisions, like saying “I have done this for nine years and survived, so certainly I can wait another few months to find something better.”
 
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