Imagine you have a reasonably secure job at the moment which you mostly enjoy but are getting fed up with the travelling. A recruitment agent contacts you with a similar job, similar package, less travelling.

Sounds great but given the economic climate is this a good time to be switching companies?

Is it worth the risk bearing in mind there would be no way back to the current company if it all went horribly wrong?

how big is the company you would be moving to? if its a large multinational, then why not. If its a ma & pa sized company then I wouldn’t.

Depends how much of a risk and what line off work, me i’d sit tight in a Devil you know kind of attitude.

I wouldn’t change for a similar job…just something significantly different. It just means you’ll waste another couple of years building up a standing in the new company that you probably already have in the current company.

What sort of business is it?

Small IT company (<200 people), same as I am in at the moment. Small enough to become top dog in 6 months rather than a few years.

I feel pretty secure where I am, so probably not.
Unless it was for a total change, away from IT. I f**king HATE IT!!!

Surely it depends on just how much the travelling is doing your head in? If that’s all extra to your normal working hours, I’d be questioning if it’s really worth it.

I’d say it’s a decision to be made based on your personal level of risk taking, rather than the attitude to risk of the forum as a whole.

I’m currently looking to switch and have sone interviews aranged for the next weeks. wanna move from a small start up company to a medium sized company.

I’m in a pretty similar situation WCA.

We’ve moved down to Northumberland for my wife’s job, but I still have my old job in Rosyth so I’m doing some work from home and staying in Edinburgh the rest of the week.

The original plan was for me to move jobs as well, but I in the current circumstances I’ve decided to stay put and ride it out.

Agree with Ian, and only you know the fine details – you probably have a feel for each firm’s likelihood to survive and for the prospects for you within each.

Staying where you are is not always safer, if your present employer is in worse condition than the prospective new one.

Nick, in your position you need to be dead sure that the company you’re moving to is secure and has an excellent product and support, and has the potential to stay that way.

I moved for similar reasons to yours a few years ago, to a company with very shonky software to sell. It screwed up my career completely – once news of the bad product got around, I couldn’t sell a thing. Result – less money, bad sales record (which had been excellent before) , couldn’t get back onto the ladder except by joining desperate shonky companies which perpetuated the problem. Don’t move unless you’re sure.

If you have a good transferrable set of skills what can possibly go wrong? As long as the changes of job happen over a reaonable time frame you should be ok. Would like a job to be able to change out of. 😕

You can only guess at the likelyhood of either your present or the future company getting into bother. If a company is actively recruiting you could take some assurance that they have a fairly sunny disposition at the moment. Are your current employers doing the same?

If you look at things more pessimistically when it comes to the crunch it can be a bit last-in-first-out when choosing who to give the boot too. And a redundancy packages reflect the time served.

Traveling with work can get you down, but I’d make any decisions while you’re not travelling. I used to spend a fair bit of time away from home when I first set up in business, it could get me into quite a glum state, but doing it was what made all the rest of my work viable.

I’m in a similar situation to Moses post ^^, I changed jobs just under 2 years ago under the impression that with a smaller company I’d be able to progress faster etc ect, all sounded good. Obviously this was while the £ ws still strong against the $ and before all the credit crunch stuff.
Got made redundant just before Christmas along with about 18 others and I’m now in the position where I HAVE to change jobs, probably even career. It’s not that there aren’t jobs out there because there are, it’s just that people are still very nervous about hiring and you need to be very good to convince them rather than just “above average” like 2 years ago.

Is there some way that you can negotiate with your employer re the amount of travelling, perhaps arrange teleconferencing (I’ve no idea what you do so please excuse me if that’snot practical). Or spilt your job with another employee? You may find that they don’t want the hassle of recruiting someone to replace you (especially if you’re reasonably experienced and/or good at what you do) and that with a bit of discussion things can be resolved to improve your work/life balance?

If a company is actively recruiting you could take some assurance that they have a fairly sunny disposition at the moment.

Skid- WCA is in sales. After the rats leave the sinking ship, companies have to recruit salesmen fast. They make promises they can’t keep. Often the most frequent recruiters are the worst to work for, as they have rapid turnover of p1s5ed off staff.

True

Go for the company who’s receptionist seems most “open minded”.

moses – that is good advice. All looks good from what I can see in Google and they say it is very good in their adverts. I will do some more digging I think. Current place is okay but not great with a number of redundencies in the US. UK is all right at the moment (largely because of the deals I have pulled in 🙂 ).

We do use webexes and conference calls a lot but still need to travel once or twice a week for Face 2 Face meetings and partner meetings.

I guess I will meet the new guys and see exactly what they are about after a bit more googling.

trailmonkey – Good point! make a change from internet porn in a German hotel.

Oh, based from home so I will have to use the wife instead 😉

you are still closing deals and we are in the grip of a recession, ok lots of travelling (me too) but unless the deals dry up I would stay where you are.

Lots of speculative sales employment going on now with unachievable targets, many companies also interviewing when there is no real job just in case someone exceptional comes along.

I would think very carefully

i am tech pre-sales rather than pure sales. I support a team of sale people so I have one level of isolation.

I would think very carefully

Nah, let STW do the thinking for you.

Take the new job, if they’ll include at least 12 months of income protection insurance in the package ?

aha…

“UK is all right at the moment (largely because of the deals I have pulled in ).”

Typical presales ;0)

Income protection insurance – now that IS a good idea. I will check out the costs and see if I can recharge it to them

Typical presales ;0) – Yep. All success is down to me! I am a fighter, I am a tiger, I am a winner!

Sorry about that last bit, I came over all American Salesman for a moment there.

WorldClassAccident:- I’m looking to perhaps get into pre-sales changing from my current techie role, how did you get into the game? (sorry for a bit of a highjack – I did try to email but can’t see an address anywhere!)

Andy
andy@defusal.net

I’d say go and have a look at the new job – the company clearly has it in mind that more staff are needed, no company in their right mind would be recruiting now if they felt there wasn’t a need.

“All success is down to me! I am a fighter, I am a tiger, I am a winner! “

Yep, that is me in some non-descript hotel in a Euro city, 8am before a presentation ;0)

I very nearly left my existing emplyment last year,(October) – I heard nothing from the new employer as I was expecting documentation through the post (Ie, contract of employment to review etc) nothing came so I phoned them, I was informed that the early signs of the economic situation was evident at the new company and that they were shelving any new enrolment. Not too long later my present employer announced some redundancies and asked for volounteers etc, I went and got my pay off figures just to see how much I would get – it turns out that it was quite a lot of money and I was also entitled to take my pension !! I was really glad I had not left the company cos I could easily have been layed off by the new employer without a bean –

Winners never quit and Quitters never win!*

*If you never quit but also never win then it can be unpleasant

I work ni IT and am job hunting at the moment, my job is quite stable due to teh small size of our team within a large company but sometines stability is just not enough.

Go for it, unless theres even the slightest chance you’ll be out of work because of changing jobs.

Have you checked out their financial status??
I can run a credit report for you if that would help?

I’m not so keen on my IT consultancy role due to the travel and have mentioned to agents when they call to let me know about anything close to home. Was told about one at a large multinational 3 miles from home; would mean a 20% salary cut but asked to have my CV put forward as have so little travel is worth a lot to me – could ride in the Surrey Hills every evening…!

bumley -US based company. If you can still check them out please drop me a mail

Life’s too short to spend it sat in a car on the motorway.

On the subject of IT tho, if anyone’s got any contracts going let me know, as I’ll be finished at the end of March.. :/

WCA – Would drop u a mail if I could see your address!!!

Mail me company name and i’ll see what I can dig up – nikiburnley@fsmail.net

Imagine you have a reasonably secure job at the moment which you mostly enjoy but are getting fed up with the travelling.

no imagination required – unfortunately depressingly familiar.

“Would you change jobs at the moment? ” erm…… yes, but my job is total sh*t, hope that helps 😉