Hi Kally,
I’ve followed your blog for a while, and I’m enjoying it and your input very much. I think many others would agree.
I was hoping to reach out to you to hear your perspective on an issue that I currently have. At the very least, I am hoping to vent a bit, because I feel like I have the need to get some stuff off chest.
So here’s the deal:
I’m working abroad, as a Financial Advisor. I have an MBA and I graduated in 2013. When I got this job, I was very happy, and kind of scared at the same time. Moving away from my home country as well as taking on this seemingly (and in reality also) hard job, was intimidating.
I’ve worked in this position for a little over a year now. My contract is until further notice. My salary is constructed as base + commission. Due to bad times in the market, I’m largely dependant on the base salary, which is not a lot, but sure enough to get by on, especially combined with my girlfriend’s salary. This is not, however, the issue here. Salary is vital, sure, but secondary to me. I find comfortability with company values and mental stimuli to be more important. The feeling that I can develop, learn more, and look up to my superiors, personally and professionally.
I don’t agree with many of their personal values. I don’t feel like I learn new things anymore, and I’ve kind of lost faith and feel rather hopeless oftentimes. I can go on and on about how much I think I could run the company 10x better than they can, but, again, that’s not the issue here. This is just backstory to why I feel a little down.
Long story short, I don’t want to be in this position for this employer any longer than necessary (i.e. until I find another job). The trick here is that it must (at least preferably) be in this city as I am in now, because of my girlfriend’s job. We’ve talked about long distance, but don’t want to try it. So, we’d like to work in the same city as each other. And I don’t want to move back home without a superb job, and I can’t just quit my current one until I’ve found another one here. Also, I hear it is easier to find a new job while employed, because it looks attractive to employers.
So, in essence:
* I lost faith in my employers after maybe half a year (both personally and professionally), which; * Affects my motivation (and salary, because, commission) * My confidence is low when browsing for vacancies, because I feel like I haven’t done or learnt anything for many months now
Ugh, I feel like I’m losing the red line here. Sorry about that. Even though this email is long now, I could go on a hell of a lot longer about many other aspects to this. Internal communication is crap, there are no goals and follow-ups, there’s no values (only money, money, money). I’m sick of it. I want to look up to my bosses and take pride in being part of the company. Now, it’s just a job that supposedly looks good on my resume. But I want more. Also, I haven’t got enough money to just quit and look for other jobs, so I can’t really quit and look for jobs full time.
Based on this total mess I’ve presented you, do you have any experience of anything similar to this? What would you do?
I suppose the obvious answer is to just suck it up and continue to look for another job.
Thanks in advance, John I*
Hi John,
First of all, thank you for writing to me and appreciative of your compliments. It is always nice to have readers dropping an email to me, whether to say hi or to tell me their problems.
I don’t know about you but I find that typing out my frustrations and anger in an email helps to ease out the cranks in my mood and usually by the end of the email, I feel much more calmer. I do hope it is the same case for you.
Let’s dive into your issue now. Kudos to you for taking such a big leap into the unknown and move to a new country! It is very hard and difficult for those who relocate. Just simply tell us to adapt and settle down doesn’t cut the frustrations and confusions we feel on a daily basis. It takes a whole lot of time and effort.
You have more or less listed out your own solution here.
– You want to be in the same city.
– The amount of salary is secondary but still important.
– In need of constant challenges and learning experience
– You need a job to replace this current one.
Yes, I am going to tell you to suck it up while continue to look for another job. However, I am going to throw you some great recommendations that you can explore while job hunting.
1) Don’t be too eager to jump into any other job that comes along the way. You don’t want to jump from one erupting volcano to another erupting volcano. You’ll end up being even more miserable. Choose wisely on your next job. Open up your eyes, ask around and do research on the companies that you are applying for.
2) Instead of begging for challenges in your current job, look for it in other avenues like doing short courses. You can find short FREE courses at coursera.org and edx.org. The courses indicate how much time you need to commit to per week and it is okay to drop off a course when you get too busy, you can always pick it up from when you left off in another time.
I strongly advocate the free courses as it will divert your frustrations somewhere else instead of hammering your emotions towards disliking your job and you get to have new challenges and learn new things! The best part, it is totally free! You can choose to take up courses to enhance your existing skills like “Influencing People” or you can try your hand out at something totally unrelated like “Sharpen Vision: A Poetry Workshop”. Whatever it is, this is something you can add onto your resume.
3) While job hunting, you can also explore being a freelancer. With your expertise, you can find business and individual seeking financial advices from a 3rd party instead of directly through a company. Or at best, you can write financial articles and earn some quick bucks here and there. It gives you the challenges you crave for and perhaps if you’re really good at it, you find find yourself with a good reputation and freelancing jobs might come pouring in. By doing this, you are accumulating new experiences and also something you can list in your resume.
4) From what I understand, many parts of the world are experiencing economic downturn this year, some countries have already started feeling the heat. So don’t quit your job just yet, instead divert the frustrations away temporary. Picking up new skills and adding on new experiences, will create more dimensional outlook on your profile, making you more attractive to the future employers.
Above are my suggestions and I do hope that it works out for you. Happy job hunting.
Regards,
Kally@MiddleMe.net
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