Should you change job during the pandemic? 5 questions to ask yourself

Are you ready to take a leap in your career, but worry that the pandemic situation? While we do not have the exact answer as to YES or NO to your dilemma, we can guide you in making the correct decision by prompting you to ask the questions that matter.

Read on to find out:

1. How bad will the industry in your new job be affected by the current situation?

If you are migrating to the industry that is badly affected by the pandemic situation, then it is no brainer that you should not go. Businesses in tourism, brick and mortar retail, beauty services, real estate, etc. are the sunset industry during this period. Even after the pandemic, it will take a while for the industry to recover in terms of financial growth. This will affect your subsequent year salary increment, promotion, and also possibility of retrenchment due to LIFO (late-in-first-out).

On the other hand, industries like medical, lifescience, telecommunication, online retail, logistic and semiconductor are booming due to new demand.

2. How bad will the industry in your current job be affected?

This is the opposite question to the first one. Assess how badly your current industry being affected by the pandemic. Or is your company already suffering financially before the pandemic and the situation gotten worse right now? If that is the case, you need to bail yourself out as soon as possible and go into the sunrise industries that we mentioned above.

3. What is the nature of your employment contract now vs the new job?

Are you employed under contract currently and will be accepting a permanent job at a new place? Congratulations on the good move for such a case. However, if the situation is vice versa, do not make such haste decisions. What's more important is having a permanent job for security.

4. What is your career prospect if you were to continue working in your same job?

This is a difficult question to ask and it is also part of Question #2. While the future is still hazy right now, you should look back into the previous year of your career progress at the current company. There are a lot of factors in assessing your career prospects, such as company financial stability, your current function in the company, what industry are you in, who are the customers that your company is serving, etc.

We do not have a single formula to answer this question, but we will leave it up to your own judgment.

5. Do you get any negative vibes about moving to a new job or staying in the current one?

When we talk about vibes, it is referring to your own intuition. Some may argue that intuition is not real, it is just instinct, but we beg to differ. Intuition is information that you cannot compartmentalize into a specific category or having a scale to measure its existence.

Vibes are your relationship with your boss, relationship with your coworkers, your job satisfaction, your working environment, the relationship with your family having to stay in the job, etc.

Identify your intuition and reflect upon it. If you need to discuss this with your family or friends, do so. That way you can validate whether your intuition is correct or not.



If you are looking for a new job right now, do not be swayed by other people's two cents. By answering the 5 questions above, you know best whether you should or should not jump to a new job. In every job change, there is a push factor vs pull factor. Make sure you balance the both and find out what is the best for you.