Feeling Stuck in a Toxic Workplace? Here’s How You Can Change That!

Are you feeling like you are not moving up in your career? Then read on..

Is there a specific reason why a person might start to look for a new job when they are already employed with a company? Yes, there could also be plenty of reasons for someone to feel bullied into continuing a dead-end job or feeling trapped in a toxic work environment. Pat Adams a client of ours was feeling the same. He felt helpless and was feeling peer pressure in his job which as a result led him to contact us in finding meaningful employment.

Pat describes himself as a ‘professional tinkerer.’ He has many patents registered to him, and thereby his passion and interest for inventing things led him to a very successful and rewarding career in business intelligence and programming in the last two decades. His favorite part of the job was helping people understand and comprehend the data that he usually works with during his daily routine. “I love developing reports which give information and details to many people such as clients, managers, and many others and help them envisage it,” Pat revealed.

Yet, despite enthusiasm and the experience that Pat has, he was stuck in a workplace where his reporting manager created a toxic environment to work in, not just for him but for all others working with him in his department. Pat knew that the only way to change his current situation was by looking for a better opportunity elsewhere so that’s when he contact us to help him during his job search.

Coping with a Toxic Work Environment

After having a little chat with Pat, we learned a few facts about his workplace like the continuous refusal for a raise, the daily stress he, and his co-workers had to go through for an instance when customers emailed the IT department quite frequently their malfunctioning servers. The company also had several negative reviews on performance so that didn’t help their cause to keep afloat on daily tasks.

“My manager was borderline abusive and made it difficult to work with him,” Pat laments. “He rejected my idea of a raise. I suspect the reason he gave me of having bad customer reviews was to keep us from finding potential employers. I felt suffocated.”

In addition to the boss who was making life harder than it already was by sabotaging the employees’ job search, Pat was nervous about finding a new job because of his current age.

Tackling Self Doubt

“I realized that my age was an issue,” Pat told us in relevance to age discrimination being a hurdle during a job search. He further mentioned how he had faced this issue during his previous job search as employers were responding on how overqualified he was for a job he applied for when he thought he had the perfect mix of skills to perform in that type of role.

Age seems to be a limiting factor for Pat. Regardless, he does not wish to slow down any time soon. “I don’t have a retirement age in mind as I enjoy my work. But I understand what goes through a potential employer’s mind when I walk into the room for an interview,” he frankly said.

On the contrary, Pat’s age has worked in his favor, and instead of going looking for jobs, Pat is accustomed to recruiters approaching him asking for his extensive technical expertise. As a matter of fact, this is how he was hired for his current position. Despite the continued interest, Pat has mostly ignored the opportunities present to him because of his age. When having plans to leave a toxic workplace, there should be a consideration to secure new employment first so, as the first step, it is vital to refresh the resume, cover letter and the content for the LinkedIn profile because by describing yourself on paper will help you make a lasting impression on your future employer. Plus that will be the first impression they have about you so, you definitely want to make that count.

Visualizing your Ideal Career

Pat was passionate about inventing and creating new technology useful for business intelligence applications and users. So, we edited Pat’s resume, cover letter and consulted him on his LinkedIn profile based on what he wants to do during the next phase of his career. Instead of portraying his accomplishments as ‘doing,’ our writing team formatted the resume in a way that the language used in his achievements takes precedence over other qualifications. Our writing team quantified Pat’s achievements to make it stand out by following the recommended resume writing methods.

The Need for an Exceptional Resume

Pat did not have the desire or the time to sit and redraft his resume for each position he is interested in applying for during his job search.

Pat also told us that he was exhausted when he is not sure of what details to add and remove so much so that the time and effort it takes to edit is a reason for him not to want to do it in the first place.

He’s right. Editing out your resume is a time-consuming task, and it doesn’t stop there. You also must update the content and make it specific to the job you are applying for, especially if you have years of experience in the industry. Deciding which information and detail to keep and which to get rid of was Pat’s biggest challenge during his job search. A resume talks about a person’s past accomplishments and achievements which will pave the way to their future job. It is the same reason why many job seekers find editing their resume very difficult as it can be quite a challenge to be 100% objective.

Pundits would say that your resume must grab the hiring manager’s attention during the first six seconds. However, Pat wasn’t sure how to summarize the years of experience, and he wanted an employer to appreciate his diverse mindset and various talents he possesses that can add immediate value to their current operation. Luckily, for Pat, he found us through a mutual friend who has had great success with their job search. From there onwards, he worked with us and managed to find employment in two short weeks. Pat initially had a 5-page resume that included information that was outdated and irrelevant for the jobs he was interested in applying. Our writing team reviewed his experience before recreating his resume according to a resume format Fortune 100 companies prefer when hiring candidates and spent over 48 hours researching the job openings to determine which keywords would be better matched with his expertise and interest.

Pat only had good things to say when we asked him about the process of the rewrite. He said, ‘Everyone (at thejobhelpers.com) was very personable, friendly and nice and created a comfortable atmosphere that made the resume rewriting process extremely easy.’

Pat decided to limit the tinkering he does to his inventions alone and let the tinkering of his resume in the hands of experts in the field. Today, Pat takes pride in his resume and recently received several high paying offers from multiple companies.

Do you feel like you are having trouble finding employment? Contact us today to get yourself out of the career sinkhole, and you can thank us later!