Unmistakable Signs Your Job IS in Jeopardy!

Being a career coach for the past 16 years and having worked with almost 6,500 clients globally I have come to recognize patterns that repeat themselves when it comes to my clients careers. By carefully listening to what they are saying and by probing with some in-depth questions about their experiences at workwith their boss and management, and with their peersI am able to predict with high degree of accuracy what the next fateful milestone is going to be in their current job and what they must do to protect themselves.
How do I know this? I know that my predictions came out to be true is when my clients tell me their regrets for not listening to me when I signaled them to make a change and to take preemptive action. This pattern recognition also works for me when something positive can be affected through proactive action that my client can take, such as getting their next promotion, securing a juicy assignment, or asking for more responsibilities as a prelude to their next promotion.
I want to limit the scope of this blog to the warning signs that spell trouble and signs that require you to take immediateeven preemptiveaction to protect your rsum, your career, and your sanity. So, what are some of the telltale signs that you need to recognize and to take charge of your job and your career? Here is a partial list:

1.Bosss feedback: You are going about your job thinking that everything is going well. No one has yelled at you for a while and your boss has not hauled you in their office for a chat. You have planned a long family vacation to take some time off. Suddenly, you get an email from your boss that says, Jim, I want to give you some feedback after you return from your vacation. On your last day of work before you are going away on vacation with your family you get anxious and pop your head into your bosss office to acknowledge the ominous email and politely ask if there is something that you should know before you disappear for a while. To further provoke your anxiety your boss says, I do not want to ruin your vacation, so let us wait until after you come back. Now, you know your vacation IS ruined, but you put on a brave face and go away, fretting all the while about that feedback when you return.

Upon your return you cannot get hold of your boss. Your anxiety level has reached its peak after a ruined vacation and you are now even more stressed than before you went away. Your boss is busy in meetings, traveling, and is just not available, yet you see your boss whiling their time away gossiping and giving short shrift to their job. Finally, you catch them and anxiously ask about that feedback they mentioned five weeks back, before your vacation. Your boss calmly responds, Oh, that feedback! Its nothing serious, but I just want you to be aware that Sallyyour skip-level bossfeels that you need to put more effort in your emails and reports to make them more effective. Personally, I think that they are OK, but that is what she has told me to convey to you.

You go away shaking your head, not knowing what you need to improve to please Sally. You make some random efforts to improve your reports and emails for the next few months. The next surprise is that your boss calls you for a meeting in their office. You walk in and see your boss, Sally, and an HR representative waiting for you. The only words you register from your boss in that confused state is, Jim you have 30 days to find another job!

2.Your workload: Over a period of a few months (less than a year) you see your workload diminishing. Initially, you are comforted by how you will have more time to catch up with all those things that are pending on your desk and you get excited about getting rid of that backlog, even writing a blog or an article about your project. But, what troubles you is that the workload keeps getting lighter and lighter. You complain to your boss and ask why in the middle of a task it was suddenly pulled away from you and given to one of your peers. Your boss gives you some flip response: Oh, weve some more important project for you to give in a few days, so we wanted to free-up your calendar. Well, that exciting project never materializes and now you are spending your time in your office counting your Spam emails in your inbox.

3.Key meetings: Yet another sign that you are on your way out is when you stop getting invited to meetings where you were previously required to attend. Some of those meetings are about the projects that you are leading or where you are playing a key role. Worse is when you can attend these meetings, but no one asks you for the status of your task.

4.Missing emails: Suddenly you discover that you have stopped getting emails about your project or task and you find that out when one of your team members forwards you an email on which your name was previously on a distribution list, with a query. You go to the emails author and ask why your name was taken out. That person responds by pointing the finger to your boss who requested that your name be taken off the distribution. You go to your boss and ask, when you hear some lame excuse such as, Oh, he misunderstood what I said. Ill make sure you are back on the list. You wait, but you stay out of the email loop from then on.

5.Reversing past actions: Yet another sign that you are done in your job is when, after you are suddenly removed from your project for a more juicy assignment, you realize that some of the decisions you had made on the project are being reversed openly. Since you no longer have any say on that project you just watch this from a distance and wonder what is going on. Soon the entire project takes on a new path and you fail to recognize anything about it.

Of course these are just signals that affect your immediate work and how you are treated before its time for you to exit, either voluntarily or otherwise. There are factors that go outside your sphere of activity and about which you must also be vigilant. Some of these factors include worsening financial condition (sales, margins), acquisition by another company, or negative media coverage about your company. Any of these factors should give you ample warning about your future in your current company. You must take charge and act preemptively to protect your career and your rsum.

Good luck!

About Author

Dilip has distinguished himself as LinkedIn’s #1 career coach from among a global pool of over 1,000 peers ever since LinkedIn started ranking them professionally (LinkedIn selected 23 categories of professionals for this ranking and published this ranking from 2006 until 2012). Having worked with over 6,000 clients from all walks of professions and having worked with nearly the entire spectrum of age groups—from high-school graduates about to enter college to those in their 70s, not knowing what to do with their retirement—Dilip has developed a unique approach to bringing meaning to their professional and personal lives. Dilip’s professional success lies in his ability to codify what he has learned in his own varied life (he has changed careers four times and is currently in his fifth) and from those of his clients, and to apply the essence of that learning to each coaching situation. After getting his B.Tech. (Honors) from IIT-Bombay and Master’s in electrical engineering(MSEE) from Stanford University, Dilip worked at various organizations, starting as an individual contributor and then progressing to head an engineering organization of a division of a high-tech company, with $2B in sales, in California’s Silicon Valley. His current interest in coaching resulted from his career experiences spanning nearly four decades, at four very diverse organizations–and industries, including a major conglomerate in India, and from what it takes to re-invent oneself time and again, especially after a lay-off and with constraints that are beyond your control. During the 45-plus years since his graduation, Dilip has reinvented himself time and again to explore new career horizons. When he left the corporate world, as head of engineering of a technology company, he started his own technology consulting business, helping high-tech and biotech companies streamline their product development processes. Dilip’s third career was working as a marketing consultant helping Fortune-500 companies dramatically improve their sales, based on a novel concept. It is during this work that Dilip realized that the greatest challenge most corporations face is available leadership resources and effectiveness; too many followers looking up to rudderless leadership. Dilip then decided to work with corporations helping them understand the leadership process and how to increase leadership effectiveness at every level. Soon afterwards, when the job-market tanked in Silicon Valley in 2001, Dilip changed his career track yet again and decided to work initially with many high-tech refugees, who wanted expert guidance in their reinvention and reemployment. Quickly, Dilip expanded his practice to help professionals from all walks of life. Now in his fifth career, Dilip works with professionals in the Silicon Valley and around the world helping with reinvention to get their dream jobs or vocations. As a career counselor and life coach, Dilip’s focus has been career transitions for professionals at all levels and engaging them in a purposeful pursuit. Working with them, he has developed many groundbreaking approaches to career transition that are now published in five books, his weekly blogs, and hundreds of articles. He has worked with those looking for a change in their careers–re-invention–and jobs at levels ranging from CEOs to hospital orderlies. He has developed numerous seminars and workshops to complement his individual coaching for helping others with making career and life transitions. Dilip’s central theme in his practice is to help clients discover their latent genius and then build a value proposition around it to articulate a strong verbal brand. Throughout this journey, Dilip has come up with many groundbreaking practices such as an Inductive Résumé and the Genius Extraction Tool. Dilip owns two patents, has two publications in the Harvard Business Review and has led a CEO roundtable for Chief Executive on Customer Loyalty. Both Amazon and B&N list numerous reviews on his five books. Dilip is also listed in Who’s Who, has appeared several times on CNN Headline News/Comcast Local Edition, as well as in the San Francisco Chronicle in its career columns. Dilip is a contributing writer to several publications. Dilip is a sought-after speaker at public and private forums on jobs, careers, leadership challenges, and how to be an effective leader.

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