You Know It Is Time To Look For A New Job When…

Beth Cliff, Tech Recruiter

Whether you are a true blue loyalist or an empowered rolling stone, it is not always about your generational or personal disposition. Sometimes the handwriting is on the wall, and sometimes there are no obvious outward indicators. But you know it is time to look for a new job when…

Your sales team starts jumping ship.

If your sales team is leaving behind the earned commissions and developed pipeline they have going, they know something. You should be paying attention to such strong signs of company disharmony.

Are they leaving because the product/service is not competitive over the mid/long-term? If the competitive / technological landscape is becoming an unaddressed and unmet challenge, say sayonara.

Is there a flaw in the compensation arrangement that the company has in place, which will deter prospective sales talent and unseat the current sales force? Without a good sales team, the whole company will be in jeopardy.

Your cash bonus or raise is replaced with stock.

When your company changes gears and company-wide offers stock in-lieu of that promised cash bonus or raise, take a hard look. Certainly stock is desirable in many cases, but to have future value, the company has got to be worth more in the future.

If you are at the equivalent of Apple in 1971 or Amazon in 1994 and you know that the stock will pay off the living expenses you are racking up on your credit card, or you have enough hours in the day to work a second job and keep your bills paid and get still get some sleep, then go for it.

If 3 out of 4 start-ups fail, which are you with? If you are at this decade’s version of pets.com or flooz.com, (sound of throat clearing). If your company isn’t getting adequate funding, it is time to say Adios.

Management seems disengaged or unresponsive to mission critical questions.

Challenge is the nature of business. When a company solves a problem for a business or consumer there is a reward by the marketplace. When the company misses the mark, the opposite is true. Was this Blackberry’s failing?

Management has got to have a handle on mission critical questions. You can’t scale Mount Everest if you don’t arrange for the right equipment and have your finger on the pulse of the weather. Lack of focus is a foreboding sign. It is time to say Tschüss.

Your company has been acquired without an articulated vision of how your department is golden.

When HP acquired Compaq there was plenty of contention stemming from product and sales team overlap. Internally some of the board and shareholders weren’t completely on-board and the message management trumpeted was more of damage control road show than an inspiring vision of leveraging new synergies.

Depending on where you fit in either organization, this can be a situation fraught with peril. If you are on the consulting team orchestrating the acquisition, your job will be guaranteed for a while. If you are part of a redundant department, watch out for Carly’s axe.

About the Author:

Beth Cliff, IT Engineering Recruitment Manager, and her team provide full-service recruiting firm offering both full-time and contract technical employees for engineering and sales/marketing teams. Beth has been recruiting since 1995, and she currently heads up Redfish’s East Coast operations. Beth’s expertise is full life-cycle recruiting in both agency and corporate environments.

About Redfish Technology – www.redfishtech.com:

Founded in Silicon Valley in 1996, Redfish Technology is an award-winning talent acquisition firm specializing in high tech and clean tech sectors. Partnering with growth mode companies, small and large, Redfish staffs executive functions and builds out the teams below. The company provides services nationwide and has offices in Silicon Valley, the East Coast, and Sun Valley.