- Do you go back home and start applying?
- Isn’t it tiring? You work 2 full time jobs.
- Do you keep it a secret from your coworkers or do you ask them for advice? Some industries are so small you need to talk to people within the industry. You may simply want to change departments within the same big company: management is going to notice if you start comparing job conditions and payment, they can sabotage you, even if you change within the same company.
- If you want to keep it a secret, what excuses do you tell the gossips?
Even if you’re not looking for a job, it can be fun to take an afternoon off, wear a suit that day, and don’t acknowledge any questions about it!
My fantasy is wearing a suit and applying to fast food jobs. And when they read my resume and ask why I want to transition from senior engineer to Night Manager, I want to say things like “I’m not legally allowed to talk about it” and then see how bad of a employee I can be before they fire me.
That exact scene (wearing a suit as an older guy to a fast food interview and pretending to be confused at their confusion) was in the plot of American Beauty.
Finding a job is more tiring than not finding one, but it’s hardly a second full time job. You can apply for jobs on nights and weekends fairly easily. Scheduling interviews sucks, but it’s hardly impossible.
If you’re looking for a new job, there’s nothing to gain by advertising it to management or coworkers, so I wouldn’t tell anyone unless you really trust them.
If you work in a place where the culture is good with people changing teams/departments, then you can try that. Some companies claim you can move internally, but it’s not really true, it would be upnto you to know if that is the case. Be sure what you want before going down this route, most things are going to be the same for an internal move, only the immediate manager has a chance to meaningfully be different.
If you’re jobless and in dire need of money, applying for jobs can definitely be a fultime job. If you’re employed and content, but just on the lookout for something better, applying for jobs can take as little as 15 minutes a day.
If your jobless and applying full time, it’s still only one full time job.
Fifteen years ago when I was looking, I took vacation or sick days off in order to focus on the search. For in-person interviews, I would take “doctor’s appointment” for the morning or afternoon as that office was pretty lenient on that excuse.
Yes, it is tiring and time-consuming; some things have to get sacrificed - I just chose to sacrifice the tasks at my current job.
As for transferring within the same company, if you are a good employee then “the company” is usually happy to have you stay internal even if it disappoints your current team. There is a much lower cost of an internal hire than external, and since you are still an employee your old team can still reach out for support if needed. In other words: talk to HR and see what their policies are. Your new boss will most surely talk to your current boss so it’s not going to be a secret.
Just look whenever you have the time. If you have to take a call or an interview during your work hours, just say you have an appointment. You don’t need to give any more information than that.
If you work in office, try to schedule things during your lunch.
Landed my current job with a 30 minute zoom interview that I took from my previous office. This came at the end of an 18 month process during which I carefully selected potential positions. I applied to 20ish positions, got about 5-6 interviews and 2 offers. The first one fell through because they couldn’t match my previous compensation package. Definitely worth it
18 month process of job hunting seems accurate at the senior+ level, especially as we get pretty picky about a lot of details.
Had you been unemployed, would you have jumped faster at those jobs?
Of course I would have! I have never been without a job since I started 25 years ago and this is frightening with kids studying and a mortgage. Jumping from one job to another is not really a thing in my field/country. People prefer staying where they are rather than taking a chance
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I don’t think that I have ever submitted more than 2 applications in a week. Most of the info in those is the same, so it’s just copy and paste from the last one or from your cv and then how you fit the person spec, which always the one involving most thought.
It hardly counts as a full time job though.
I don’t think that I have ever actually kept it a secret as such, but I would seldom have cause to mention it anyway until I get an interview. At that point it depends on my current relationship with my manager. Sometimes I have just booked a day off for no specific reason, other times I have told them. If it is a post in the same organisation I’d certainly tell them. If it was a place where yhe managers were that bad, I wouldn’t want to stay there at all.
I would just browse Indeed on my work computer. I didn’t tell anyone I was looking, but there are a few people that I wouldn’t lie to them about it if they asked.
Honestly, I think you’re overthinking it. What are they going to do? Fire you because they don’t want to lose you? That’s a valid unemployment claim.
I’ve done this every time I’ve looked for a job. If it’s the kind of company that would snoop on my browsing history and cause issues, it would just have motivated me to look harder 🙃
I’m speaking from my 20+ years of experience in tech, so this advice might not apply anywhere, but I’ve found the fastest way to keep increasing your salary is to switch jobs every couple of years. I usually got bored of a job in a couple of years anyway, so this also helped prevent burnout. Additionally, switching jobs at leisure like this meant I could negotiate new salaries harder at the new place and didn’t need to try and change jobs during an economic downturn or a bad job market.
Oh, and I’ve always regretted staying on in a company too long once I get the itch so I’d recommend starting a hunt as soon as you think a change might be good instead of waiting till you start hating your job!
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I just keep open lines of communication with key stakeholders and HR people in the industry. If I were laid off, they’d all know and I’d have a few offers on the table to pick from within the week.
