Hey cultivator. Welcome back to my channel in today's video.
I want to answer a question I see come up at least once a week inside of my
private Facebook group, cultivate your career, which by the way,
is linked down below in the description box.
It is a free community of likeminded corporate professionals who are really
looking to Uplevel their careers. So if you haven't joined us yet, join us.
one of the questions I see come up quite often is should I quit my job before I
have another job lined up?
And this question is truly so personal. Like,
I don't know how to answer that for somebody without getting to really know them
and understanding them. So as a career coach,
I would never come out and tell you yes or no. However,
I will ask some questions to help you really narrow in on the decision that is
right for you and help you gain clarity so that you can feel really confident
in your decision,
whether it's you're taking the leap of faith or you're deciding to be more
practical and just wanting to find that cushion. So in this video,
we'll dive into some main factors that you need to consider,
but before we do so,
if you haven't yet already hit the like button for the YouTube algorithm,
please do so So that YouTube can spread the love.
Without further ado let's dig in.
So the first question I want you to answer honestly,
is whether or not you have at least six months of living expenses saved up,
that you can dig into.
My sense is that if you are thinking about leaving your job without another
lined up, it's because you have this toxic work environment,
toxic boss, um,
toxic situation that you just feel is not worth staying around for.
Now.
What I have seen a lot of job seekers fall into is leaving their
previous employer,
but then having this like urgency around finding the first thing that comes
along and not really getting to be selective about the next opportunity,
because they're realizing shoot, I need to pay my bills.
I'm so behind racking up all of this credit card debt,
I just need to take the first thing that comes along. And in my opinion,
when you're in that mindset, you kind of repeat the cycle, right?
You find another opportunity. You realize you hate it.
And then you're kind of going through the same motions again.
So in order to be very intentional about your job search,
I want to make sure that you have at least six months of savings lined up.
And this means that you have calculated down to the penny.
This is how much I need realistically, to not only survive,
but to sustain my minimum living style that I can see
myself living with for the next six months, maybe right now, you know,
you can calculate all of the things that you are splurging on,
but you don't necessarily need,
I'm talking about what are the essentials plus the things that you know,
you're going to splurge on,
what is that monthly budget or what is that lump sum over the six months?
And do you have that saved up? Because if the answer is yes,
then I think you're in a good position to confidently, you know,
resign and focus the next six months on your job search. And by the way,
a lot of conventional historic wisdom tells us financially,
we should have six months of savings lined up because we never know what's going
to happen in case of an emergency, just FYI.
A lot of companies are kind of moving a bit slower in their job search
process because they're wanting to find the right candidate.
So it's not like back in the day where you can go into a office or an
organization, fill out a paper application and generally get hired on the spot.
Uh, for the role of that. You probably want to go into,
especially for companies that have a really strong reputation,
they're taking their time, right? They're kind of sifting through at least,
you know,
here's our four to six candidates for our first round interviews that we want to
vet from there. Maybe it's two, three weeks,
maybe a month out that they start to schedule the onsite interviews after the
onsite interviews.
Maybe that's like another two to three weeks to debrief with the team.
And then they decide to kind of extend the offer,
but then there's the negotiation period. And then there's the background check,
which can take about two weeks to finally onboard you with a start date.
So in general,
they say that you should anticipate at least six months for your job search
and therefore you should have at least six months of cushion saved up.
And by the way, if your answer is no to this,
that you don't have six months of saving lined up,
you can absolutely come up with a plan of how you're going to cover that amount.
For instance,
maybe you decide that you want to be a part of the gig economy in the short
term. So you're not necessarily replacing your last salary,
but maybe you just realize, you know, with my rent, with my utilities,
with all my basic needs, including food, water, um, you know,
all of the daily living essentials,
my monthly budget really only comes out to like $2,500.
So come up with a plan on how you can come up with that amount after
taxes. So that again, you have the cushion,
the stability of covering your needs while you then continue job
searching for that longer term position. I see it time and time again,
there is nothing wrong with contract assignments.
There's nothing wrong with gig economy jobs, you know, Uber Instacart, um,
being able to drive Uber or Lyft or walk the dog.
All of that is all in good.
As long as you have a plan and an action to recognize that this
is a short term need for my longer term vision.
The second question I want you to think through is whether or not you have a
pattern around short employment stints,
or a lot of gaps of employment on your resume.
So I would never tell you to stay in a position that you are completely
miserable at,
and you are feeling like it's doing a lot of mental and emotional
damage. Um, if you, by chance are feeling that at all,
then your likely bet is to just leave without having something lined up.
If you cannot tolerate it any longer. And again,
it's doing more damage than good. What I do want to share though,
is I have a lot of job seekers who asked me the question of,
am I less marketable when I'm unemployed or, um,
as it seen as a red flag,
if I have this like three months employment at this one company.
So what I'll share is from a recruiter's perspective,
it's typically not a big deal.
If you have one or two situations where something happened and you have a good
reason to back up, why you ended up leaving by the way,
if you want help with answering B how to address unemployment or short
stints on my resume video, let me know in the comments down below,
but I would say is a red flag is when you have this
pattern of leaving jobs under one year time and
time and time again,
or you have a lot of like unemployment gaps where you're almost
covering it by just leaving off the months. You know,
you just have year to year on your resume for dates of employment. Now,
if there is a pattern there, then I would say,
this is where you want to be a little bit more cautious. Um, and by pattern,
I just mean, you know, looking at your resume and the past five years,
you've had three of these. That's when I would start to think about, okay,
for marketability,
how can I secure something before I jumped ship again,
unless it's 100% toxic and you just need to get out of there, by the way,
if you do fall into this camp of wanting to find a job as soon as possible,
be sure that you have downloaded the dream job roadmap PDF,
which is also linked down below in the description box.
It walks you through the seven steps of what you need to be doing in order to
land a dream job as soon as possible.
My final question for you is what is your heart's telling you?
Oftentimes, I have found that we as humans,
like to think from our head more than our hearts and deep down inside,
we know what we need to be doing yet. As Oprah has said,
we tend to ask everybody for opinions because we're afraid of the answer deep
down with the inside of us.
So if you are knowing in your heart of hearts, deep down inside,
you just have this really strong intuition and gut feeling that the best thing
for you to do is to really design, then do that with full confidence,
that everything okay is going to work out in the end.
And it truly will like oftentimes people find their path. Yeah. And,
um, you know,
some type of decision is a catalyst for another opportunity.
And I had actually seen this time and time again in my own career,
because I personally have been in toxic work environments where I realized,
you know what, I don't need to deal with this. I'm going to go ahead and resign.
And I found a better opportunity. Um, you know,
even weeks in some cases later, um,
and in a few cases a few months later,
but I fully trusted that something better was waiting for me around the corner.
Once I made that decision to confidently resign and just know that that's what I
needed in that moment. So I want you to go back to,
what is your heart telling you?
What is your gut telling you if you're not entirely sure you just don't feel
like the strong pull and sensation to make that executive
decision for yourself.
Then I would absolutely come up with a plan until you feel that.
And you'll know when you feel that to oftentimes again,
we already know the answer, but we're really afraid or scared,
but I really want you to lean into that fear and just know that everything you
want is on the other side of fear. As my mentor, Jack Canfield says,
let us know in the comments below what else you factor in when making this
decision and or share a time when you have quit your job without something lined
up and how that worked out for you, let us know down below.
And if you enjoyed this video again, please like share subscribe.
I'm releasing this video next week. And until then,
I hope that you continue to cultivate your life and your career take care.