Changing jobs during COVID-19

thomas_

What are your thoughts on changing jobs during COVID-19?  I’m facing an increasingly hostile and micromanaged work environment and I’m just tired of it.  Also, I feel like I’m underpaid for my area.

The current work environment and pay situation have me seriously consider jumping ship.  My biggest fear is getting offered a job with a firm start date and putting in my two weeks, only to be told that the new position is cancelled and being stuck without a job.

JDMurray

Yes, job requisitions can be very "ephemeral" in the present situation, especially in the USA with nobody knowing how the economy will be affected by the results of the upcoming presidential election. Requisitions can be cancelled (to save money or because a contract was not awarded), frozen (to wait and see), or reassigned to a different department (possibly in a different geographical location) at anytime during the hiring process. Those situations have always been a possibility when changing jobs, but may be more likely to happen now.

If you get an offer that you can't resist, and you have vacation time saved up, you can delay giving your two weeks notice until you are actually working at your new job and on your old job's vacation time. If your old job won't grant you your vacation time, you at-will yourself on the spot and you are 100% done with them. There is no law enforcing that you must give two weeks notice--especially in an at-will employment state.

Of course, you can be laid off soon after you come on board your new job too, but that's always a possibility at any time for new hires (i.e., "last in, first out"). You just have to make sure that you are prepared for that eventuality.