Encouragement and Advice for Employees Who Hate Their Jobs

There's nothing more discouraging than the moment you realize you hate your job. There are hundreds of reasons why a job you previously loved and coveted can become a drain on your happiness and impede on your career progress. A common culprit to job dissatisfaction is not liking your boss or peers. If you have amiable peers and a good boss, you might hate your job because you have outgrown the position.

What to do if you want to remain at your current company

Say you've become an expert on all of the duties listed in your job description and have even started learning the knowledge you need to acquire to rise to the next level. If you work for a large company, the first thing you should do is research the job postings for positions in other departments and functional areas. While you are looking, make sure the jobs you are interested in are at least one level higher than what you are doing now.

When you find some other positions, apply to them immediately and check the job listings daily. If you work for a large company, the human resources department probably maintains the job listings and looks at your application first before passing it on to the actual hiring manager. If this is the case, take the initiative and set up a meeting to introduce yourself to the human resources recruiter.

If the recruiter knows who you are and can put a face to the skills and accomplishments shown on your resume, he or she will be more apt to recommend you to the hiring managers before other candidates. If you stay close to the recruiter and occasionally send an email to her, she'll realize how motivated you are to move up in the company and may even set up an interview for you before the job is officially posted.

Keep up with your efforts and eventually the recruiter will come through for you and she will make you shine. Then it's up to you to shine in the interviews.

What to do if you want to leave your company

If the reason you want to leave has to do with the company itself or if you work for a small firm with no room for advancement, the only option that will preserve your sanity and happiness is to look for positions at other companies. If you're interested in working for a client or vendor of your current company, only send the word out about your job search to contacts that you can trust. The last thing you want to have happen is that your boss hears about your job search.

Social and professional networking sites like MySpace and LinkedIn are a good place to start looking. If you are currently working for a small company, you might want to move over to a large company so you will have plenty of room to advance. This is when you need to enlist your friends, relatives and online contacts who work at large corporations. Tell them how interested you are in working at their company and ask if they will submit your resume.

Most large firms have a referral bonus program where the employee can earn anywhere from $500 to $2000 and up, if their referral is hired. The amount of the payout depends on the position of the person referred. So it shouldn't be too difficult to get all of your contacts to submit your application and refer you to open positions at their companies. With hundreds of applicants applying for each job, a referral from an internal employee may be reviewed first, before non-referred applicants.

All of the career advice books on Amazon can't make you like your job if you really hate it. Whatever the reason for your job dissatisfaction, moving on can bring great rewards and change your life.