In the first part of this article we looked at why you are wanting to change job and ways in which your current employment might be adapted to spare you this event. We now consider when you should leave your current job.
Getting the timing right
Quitting at the wrong time will cost you. It’s a fact – letting your heart rule your head will hit you in the pocket. Being serious, though, here are some bad times to jack your job.
Just before you go on holiday
You may be doing this to cause the maximum aggravation to your outgoing employer. Make your notice coincide with your holiday and you leave them well and truly in the lurch. That’s fine but what happens when you start your next job and the first thing you say to your new employer is, “Oh, by the way, I’ve got two weeks holiday booked next month”?
Just before your annual bonus
It may seem ‘neat and tidy’ to start a new job in the New Year but if that is just before you get paid your Christmas bonus, you are dipping out on money that you have already worked for. Very few companies will pro rata the bonus (e.g. if you leave in November getting eleven twelfths of your bonus) and even fewer will send it on to you (we’d like to hear of one that does). Not only that, you will be missing out on your Statutory Bank Holiday at Christmas, Boxing Day and New Year’s Day.
When there’s overtime to be had
Most companies have a time of the year when demand for its products or services is at its peak. Do your colleagues keep pace with this demand? Do their holidays mean that staff coverage gets a bit thin at times? If so, overtime may be available and, if you are after the money, hang on and grab what’s going.
Just before a pay rise
If you’re negotiating a salary for a new job, the question you are guaranteed to be asked is, “How much are you currently being paid?”. Not that it’s any business of the interviewer but they’ll ask it just the same. People are like sheep – one follows the other. Therefore, if you are saying, “Beat this” about your salary to new employers, you want the ‘this’ to be as high as possible so hang on for your pay rise.
Unless you really have to, don’t leave without giving notice or after having had a row at work. Whatever was said, face it down and serve your notice period like you are supposed to. Leaving in a grump will give you problems in the future – when you try to get Unemployment Benefit or when your new boss (or would-be new boss) takes a reference on you and gets told that you breached your contract of employment (that’s what it amounts to so they’re perfectly entitled to say it). If you haven’t got a job lined up, think of the consequences – do you really want a period of unemployment on your CV?
Being ambitious and career-minded are good attributes but be careful you aren’t just jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire. Leaving a job should be a last resort – the thing to do when all other options have been exhausted.
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