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What To Do When a Job Isn’t What You Signed Up For
An acquaintance emailed me in pain. In her twenties, she’d just graduated from a good college and was doing everything right. Until, suddenly, she wasn’t. Hence the pain.
She wrote in her email:
Three months ago, I accepted my first job. The aspects of the role that were the main reason I took the job have been removed, and I am mostly assisting with something else that does not interest me at all. I have made proposals for activities related to my original role, but this is no longer what they are looking for.
I am not learning or doing what I hoped to, and sometimes the challenge seems more than it’s worth. I don’t want to quit because I am not the type of person to give up, and I would also hope to get a good reference on my resume. However, I also don’t want to feel like I’m wasting my time doing something that isn’t helping me achieve my goals instead of finding something that would help me.
Should I stay, or should I go?
The “…but this is not the job I interviewed for” experience is called a bait-and-switch. They sell you one thing yet give you another. They’re handing you a very authentic-looking “mud cookie,” asking you to pretend it’s real and eat it.