Do you love your job? And if not, what are you going to do about it?
I recently came across a woman by the name of Alison Doyle. Ms. Doyle is a career expert, author and consultant. While I have never met her personally, she strikes me as a sensible no-nonsense kind of advisor. Among other things, Ms. Doyle is a guide on the About.com Job Search website. (You can learn all about Ms. Doyle on this page http://jobsearch.about.com/bio/Alison-Doyle-2335.htm which also has links to her site, Facebook, Twitter, etc.)
Anyway, this brings me to a topic that she wrote about today… “Do you love your job?”… Well.. do you? The article includes a poll, and as of the writing of THIS post, 232 people had voted… 58 people said “I love my job” (I’m one of those people)… 45 said “I hate my job”, 24 said “My job is boring” 40 said “It’s a paycheck” and 65 said “I want a new job”. That’s a lot of unhappy people.
So, where do you stand? I spent many years hating my job. In theory I loved it, I was mostly doing what I wanted to be doing… I wanted to love what I did, but, I was so miserable, bad things were happening all around. It was just a very negative situation and the constant worry it caused was effecting my personal life AND my health. I was scared to make a move – I had been there since I was 18 and I really didn’t know what the “real world” was like when it came to job searching, etc. I heard so often how bad the economy was and how giving up a solid job would be a terrible mistake. When I made the decision that I had no choice but to make a change, I was really scared. I cried over the decision, and frankly, it terrified me. I had just bought my first house, I had just gotten married. It could have been a disaster, or, it could have been the best thing that ever happened to me professionally. Luckily, it was the latter.
This change did not come easy, I put a LOT of work into my job search. I treated it like a marketing campaign. I created a brand for myself and approached the job search as if it was a business venture. That work paid off. Next month, it will be 2 years since I joined Arnstein, and I couldn’t be happier. I am doing what I love, I am challenged, I work with a really fantastic group of people.
If you aren’t happy in your job, is it time to make your move?
Good Morning, Linda —-
Your message and commentary could not have arrived at a better time.
I am currently in transition, between leaving a job to which the daily travel was arduous and time-consuming, and the litigation workload was overwhelming for someone making a transition from working basically pre-lit insurance claims for the prior 9 years, to working with a complex litigation caseload. The attorney for whom I recently worked is undeniably brilliant, but moves at the speed of light. Even with putting in overtime nightly, I still too often found myself left in the dust.
So, with some new-found humility, but with more determination than ever to update my procedural knowledge of litigation practice, and especially my technological skills (I’ve taken a recent free tutorial that you posted, which has helped me tremendously to have confidence in e-filing procedures), I am on my quest to find a challenging but “do-able” job again. I have a wealth of experience in developing and helping settle Personal Injury, Medical Negligence and Wrongful Death cases, and hope to find my niche again in a law firm that has those specific needs.
One of the “upsides” of this transition is that I now have the time to comb through the compendium of Settlement Demand Letters that I’ve written in personal injury cases in recent years; redact the names of the clients, and send them to you as work samples to include in your “Doc Bank”, for the benefit of paralegals who are called upon to write Settlement Demand Letterss and Mediation Summaries. I’ve always been proud of my analytical and writing skills, which translate into the ability to augment negotiated pre-suit settlement, Mediation result or verdict potential for my client, and the lawyers with whom I have worked. I’ve always considered the outcome for my personal injury clients to be a very special, sacred trust. Hopefully, the work sample Demand Letters that I’ll send you later today will better equip other paralegals to produce the same satisfying results or their clients and employers!
All the Best,
Karin Zimmerman, Legal Assistant