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.
