Are You Displaying Classic Career Change Symptoms?

If your job prevents you from spending quality time with your family, prohibits your ability to enjoy outside pursuits, leaves you impossibly stressed at the end of the day, consumes your every waking moment, bores you completely, challenges you less and less, feels out of synch with your interests and abilities, or presents little opportunity for growth, a career change could be in order. If you identify with any of the following statements, you're probably ready (and perhaps overdue) for a leap to a new career.

1. Faced with a choice between going to work and submitting to a triple root canal, you'd be hard-pressed to pick the least painful option.

2. You pride yourself on your in-depth knowledge of every brand of aspirin, migraine remedy, and antacid under the sun.

3. You've got hair loss of epic proportions, not from premature balding, but from repeated friction caused by that glass ceiling you keep bumping your head against.

4. Your daughter didn't speak to you for a week after you bought her a deluxe Easy-Bake Oven for her birthday. (You later learned that she'd turned 18 and it wasn't even her birthday - it was your son's.)

5. You recently filled out a volunteer firefighter application, convinced that your years of experience battling burnout could be put to good use.

6. When talk turns to current television programs at parties, you contribute by discussing who shot J.R.

7. Parties? What parties? You haven't been to a non-office party since your graduation celebration. (And who's J.R., anyway?)

8. The last hobby you can remember having time for was constructing Popsicle stick birdhouses in fourth grade.

9. Your Monopoly game is missing all of its "get out of jail free" cards. (You keep handing them to your boss in the hope of escaping from your cubicle.)

10. Your biggest workplace thrill is the day they restock the vending machines.

11. For on-the-job excitement, you change your computer password every 15 minutes.

12. The last time you and your significant other had a night out was at the premier of "Jaws."

13. The literary figure you most closely relate to is Dilbert.

14. Your leisure reading consists of your company's financial statements and training manuals.

15. If asked by friends or family what you enjoy about your job, the only response you can truthfully offer is cashing your paycheck.

Reprinted with permission from The McGraw-Hill Companies, excerpted from The Career Change Resume by Kim Isaacs and Karen Hofferber. Copyright 2003. All rights reserved.
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Karen's Bio: Karen is senior resume writer at ExecResumes. Her goal is to prepare clients for career advancement through powerful resumes and career coaching services. Karen is a Certified Professional Resume Writer (CPRW), demonstrating advanced proficiency in the creation of winning resumes and cover letters. She has served as the Resume Advisor on Monster.com's Resume Tips message board and writes informative articles on how to write a winning resume. She provides advice on how to develop a resume that does more than just chronicle job experience, but sells as an effective executive marketing piece. Her passion for helping her clients achieve their dreams is evident in every resume she produces. Karen's dynamic personality and unwavering support help drive her clients to achieve their goals.

Karen coauthored The Career Change Resume: How to Reinvent Your Resume and Land Your Dream Job (McGraw-Hill, April 2003). She was the featured resume expert on Mark Larsen's Morning Magazine radio show in August 2003. Karen won high praise for sharing her creative approach to resume design as a speaker for the National Resume Writers' Association's interactive chat.

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