How to Tell When It’s Time to Look

Faint praise. Not enough work to do, or a lack of opportunity for advancement. A feeling of sheer misery. All are signs that it's probably time to look for another position, experts say.

“When you’re jumping for joy when the weekend arrives and when you can’t bear the thought of the weekend coming to an end. When you lie awake nights dreading to get up and [go to] work Monday morning. When you sit there like an automaton at your desk with the files in front of you,” elaborates F. Spencer Gordon.

Now enjoyably at work as a partner at Henslee & Gordon in Towson, he knows the signs from personal experience at other jobs, reports the Maryland Daily Record. His first was a bad fit: Although Gordon wanted to do criminal defense work, he wound up in private practice working on asbestos cases. The next time around, he was initially happy as a public defender but eventually found the cases monotonous.

However, it's important to find another job before departing, if at all possible. And if in a performance review the firm focuses on specific problems that the associate needs to address, that may be a sign that the associate needs to swallow his or her pride and do so rather than give up and look for another job or, worse yet, quit in a snit. The firm's goal is to correct problems, so a review that isn't glowing isn't necessarily the beginning of the end, points out Cindy Allner, chair of the Miles & Stockbridge recruiting committee.