Right time to Change Your Job (Take 2)

Here is Take 1. A couple of folks i know, are confused about changing jobs. They are bored of their current profile and see exciting opportunities elsewhere. But the biggest problem on their mind is the recession.

Is it right to change your job during an ongoing recession ?

An easy answer is "There is never a wrong time to do the right thing!". But this is oversimplified. A common myth that people fear is the Last In First Out myth. The employee will be the first to asked to leave. I have seen a lot of forwarded mails from so called expert Economists who warn about this.

When a company decides to hire during an ongoing recession, it means that the decision to do so is very well thought over one. The reason i say this is because, hiring folks and laying them off within months is very bad management. This shows that particular dept. in bad light and obviously a lot of tough questions from the higher management would have to be answered.
Also, a lot of companies have a complete hiring freeze. Not even if the best candidate comes along, would he be recruited. So the one in need would need to try very hard to justify the need to hire to the higher level management . Also the higher management would want to shuffle work among existing employees instead of hiring new folks. Hence, if such a company is hiring chances are that they really need you. It could also lead to some challenging and interesting work/responsibilities for you. Here is an excerpt from the above links:

But a recession can be an excellent time to take a new job, provided you've done your due diligence, says Sam Gordon, a recruiter with Harvey Nash Executive Search. "Firms that are recruiting in a downturn are doing so because the roles they have to fill have a major importance to their organizations," he says.

Such strategic roles are unlikely to be cut if a company has committed to investing in them in spite of a downturn.


Another thing is that your current job is not entirely secure anyways. Hence, if your job was not challenging enough or you were doing repetitive work, chances you haven't learnt a lot. And if you are fired, you are stuck.

Also, the screening process for available positions will be tough. The companies would look for the best fit not just-good-enough fit or ok-but-not-sure fit. So brushing up knowledge is surely not a bad thing to do.

Earlier, i was convinced that one way to beat recession is to go get a degree or such. But after reading this very interesting insight , i rejected that thought. Some excerpts from it :



Most jobs are better than they seem: You can learn from any job.
When I worked on a French chicken farm, I thought I’d learn French, but I didn’t, because I was so foreign to the French farm family that they couldn’t talk to me. However I did learn a lot of other things, like how to bargain to get the best job in the chicken coop, and how to get out of killing the bunnies. You don’t need to be learning the perfect thing in your job. You just need to be learning. Don’t tell yourself you need a job that gives your life meaning. Jobs don’t do that; doesn’t that make you feel better? Suddenly being in the workplace doesn’t seem so bad.



Applications to the military increase in a bad economy in a disturbingly similar way that applications to graduate school do. For the most part, both alternatives are bad. They limit your future in ways you can’t even imagine, and they are not likely to open the kind of doors you really want. Military is the terrible escape hatch for poor kids, and grad school is the terrible escape hatch for rich kids.

Graduate school forces you to overinvest: It’s too high risk.

Lastly, obviously one should just follow their heart it always know whats right.

Yes, its easy blog about such things . Easier said than done right?
I am blogging about it after following my heart and changing my job during the so called recession.