You Feel You’re in the Wrong Career? 10 Signs to Determine

A tough decision or a tougher life? Your choice!

Does spending most of your adult life doing your job mean you are in the right career? Unluckily, it doesn’t always become clear right away which career you belong in, and working satisfaction affects your mental health. To determine which position you are most suited for, you will need to go through a series of trials and errors. Now, how can you tell if you are in the wrong career currently?

What Is a Wrong Career?

It’s a job that doesn’t help you develop as a person or achieve your full potential. It lacks the features and advantages you look for in the ideal career. Even though this career may have been your top choice for years, your priorities have changed, and you now realize that this is the wrong path for you.

What Led to the Wrong Career?

Numerous factors can lead to you waking up one morning in the wrong career. It could be due to external factors like limited career opportunities in the geographic location or chosen industry. You may have been forced to start any job that offered a financial return by internal factors such as the poor experience you had when you first entered the workforce or financial obligations.

You are in the wrong career if…, as we’ll explain in the following paragraphs:

10 Signs to Determine You’re in the Wrong Career

There are obvious signs that your current career is the wrong one for you. You should take these signs seriously when you evaluate the other aspects of your life because attributing these signs solely to the wrong career could be misleading. Instead, they serve as excellent indicators when everything in your life is stable aside from your career.

1- Boredom and Calling in Sick Most Times

Being unhappy and dissatisfied at work can make you feel ill, miserable, and bored, which makes it challenging to motivate yourself to go to work each morning. You feel burned out and tempted to call in sick all the time. This is a red flag. If you go through this, you might need a vacation or a job change.

2- You Feel Overworked and Underpaid

You constantly feel exhausted, overworked, and underpaid, which is the biggest sign that you are in the wrong profession. A fulfilling career should make you excited and not make you feel overworked. If you start to feel this way, something needs to change.

Change is important, and it’s never too late to make a change, especially if it will enable you to pursue a career that you will enjoy, regardless of whether you are just starting or have been employed for more than ten years.

3- You Feel Like You Are Not Being Challenged

It might be time for a career change if you feel monotonous, uninspired, or tired of your current job. When we apply our knowledge, skills, and creativity to our work, we achieve job satisfaction. Therefore, it’s wise to look for a passion of your own.

If you don’t know where to begin and don’t have a passion, consider the activities you enjoy doing and the things you would never get bored doing, and then start considering a career in that field of interest.

4-You Feel Called to Do Something Different

You might not be so sure what you were called to do, but you feel you are not engaged With handling your current job. Because they are afraid of the unknown, most people do not pursue their passions. As a result, they spend the majority of their lives trapped in the wrong career. Go for it if you feel inspired to take a different path!

5- Feeling Disengaged

Poor engagement with the team and the company’s goals results from a lack of motivation and the inability to complete the necessary tasks. Nothing makes you excited or gives you the necessary energy to work. There is no stress, but there is nothing to learn. You isolate yourself, which makes working with others challenging and ineffective.

6- Daydreaming Becomes a Regular Habit

It’s common to picture yourself as an influencer who occasionally collaborates with superstars. The thought of switching jobs frequently, though, can be unsettling. Consider the traits your ideal job would have, and once you’ve identified them, abandon the wrong career and begin your most suitable one.

7- Stuck in the Past

It wouldn’t be helpful to become addicted to the past and go over the earlier decisions that led you to choose your current career. Finding reasons to blame your major, the university you attended, or even prior experiences that helped you land your current position will only make matters worse. Start looking for other options.

8- Spending More Time on Job Websites Than on Work

Sometimes having a little FOMO (fear of missing out) is healthy. Spying on the benefits that you can have in other careers could be helpful when they appear satisfying and encouraging to decide to leave a wrong career. However, browsing job listings and discovering that the benefits seem normal could exacerbate the situation.

9- Your Performance Is Getting Worse Without a Clear Reason

Your boss informs you that your output is unsatisfactory, your coworkers have voiced their concerns about your lack of focus, and your performance has declined. Consequently, you don’t feel at ease doing the work. It might be the workplace or the actual work itself. It’s time to think about switching to a new, better-suited career.

10- Your Mental and Physical Health Are Collapsing

If you feel chronic exhaustion at work without exerting much effort but are not experiencing stress or work burnout, then your workplace is not feeling like home. Your career is not what you deserve. You’re wasting your time on unfulfilling work that doesn’t help you achieve your goals. Feeling undervalued and working doesn’t help you to live the life you wish.

What to Do if You Chose the Wrong Career

Before taking any action toward your career, have second thoughts about all the input you have in your hands to prevent misunderstandings or making wrong decisions. It could be the workplace, not the career. You have to be determined about this.

It could be a personal life matter that affected your clear vision of your career, try to separate your personal life issues from work and check the results. A pessimistic opinion about your career could be developed based on temporary frustrations you are facing that could be easily solved by a vacation or time off.

If all signs confirm that you need to leave your wrong career and start a new one then;

Define the Values That You Prioritise

To avoid making the same mistakes, know the values you need to find in your new career. Remember that no career is perfect, therefore you have to determine the most important values to you, that make you bear any work and stress.

Determine the Extra Needed Qualifications

Moving to a new career usually requires learning new skills and gaining updated knowledge. Before choosing a career, define the materials that you like to learn and the skills that could be enjoyable for you to acquire.

Compare Career Opportunities

Now that you have to highlight the career opportunities that might have your interest. To learn the information that will enable you to make the best choice, try to listen to experts in these fields. With their extensive experience and in-depth knowledge of numerous industries, career counselling consultants in Whitecollars can also assist you with this task by introducing you to the professional benefits and drawbacks of each path.

There are several points of comparison between each career and another that you should take into consideration. They include average salary, career development opportunities, dominant values, benefits, etc. Make your career decision based on the most crucial factor.

Choose Your Career and Start Moving

When you’ve chosen the right career for you, you want to be equipped with the knowledge necessary for a seamless transition. Join online courses, workshops, sessions, and any other communities that are relevant to your career or that are interested in it. By doing so, you will have planted the first seeds of the network that will serve as your new private entrance.

Building strong relationships with the new network will help you meet individuals who are at the same stage as you and other experts who are ahead of you. This gives you the chance to learn how someone in your position advanced, and you might end up on other people’s referral lists. Find suitable job portals and apply to entry-level jobs that match your qualifications and skills.

4  Strategies to Choose the Right Career for You

There are different strategies you can follow to make sure you are choosing the right career, you can use them all or use the one that suits you best.

1- Explore Yourself

Knowing what you like, dislike, and find uncomfortable about yourself may sound generic, but bear in mind that you are the same person who goes about his daily business and performs his job. A human’s primary motivation for all of his actions is to find pleasure and avoid suffering. These emotions have their roots in value, interest, and characteristics.

Here are some questions to know more about your sources of pleasure and pain.

2- Define Your Work Triggers

Everyone has different motivations for going to work, such as financial gain, personal fulfilment, or giving back to the community. Even when you are nearing exhaustion, there are still factors that encourage you to keep going. Your inner core was explored in the first strategy; the second one connects it to the work elements to define the connectors. You lose your ability to work if these connectors are severed.

Choose careers that will keep your motivators strong and stable. This could involve choosing a career with a high entry-level salary, flexible work hours, or balanced life work. Keep in mind that no job has all the benefits; choose the most crucial ones to help you decide.

3- Make the Future a Factor in the Decision Equation

Think about the career’s potential opportunities in the future before choosing it. Forecast and analyse what’s coming. Does the career have a lot of room to expand, advance, and continue? Or maybe automation or AI will one day take care of everything?

The question should also be applied to the industry and yourself, is there any area to develop your skills and promote? Could you become a member of a company’s high board through this career?

4- Choose a Career That You Have Its Needed Skills

Leaving the wrong career for a new one does not mean starting from scratch. You still possess the knowledge and abilities you gained while pursuing the wrong career.

Less new skills to learn will make it easier to start, but if the right career requires a lengthy preparation period, it’s okay to invest this time in learning for the sake of the right career. Try to use what you already have in the new career and determine the skills you need to cover.

Though there has been much debate on the subject, choosing the wrong career could seem like a deep issue that needs a lot of effort to solve. However, by knowing the source of the mistakes and avoiding making them again, you can find the right career that covers all your needs and demands.