Have you encountered a career bottleneck period?

According to foreign career experts study, the career bottleneck period is usually cyclical with most claiming that it first emerged 3-5 years after employment, with claims that it may also affect the workplace newbie. In most cases, those who are working and entering the bottleneck period would lose enthusiasm and their resistance will reduce when encountered with challenges. Furthermore, the job objective is not clear anymore and they may have no plan for the future. Stuck between the pressure led by senior workers’ outstanding achievement and newbies’ tough and studious attitude, it seems that they met the unspeakable embarrassment and obstacles and entered into an unbreakable bottleneck. Of course, working people with different levels and ages would encounter various bottleneck periods and we can diagnose that if you have met your own bottleneck period. 

Symptoms during the career bottleneck period: 

• Job burnout

In other words, it means you have lost enthusiasm for the current job and got tired of your current working mode. You would complain about the present situation but have little impetus to change and also, you don’t have strong motivation to struggle for any internal and external opportunities. Taking things as they are while sick of the monotonous work would often happen to the working people staying at the same position in the same company for over 3 years. 

• Lost in a fog

The current job is not their favorite and they can’t see a glimmer of light for the future as there are leaders staying on top before and fierce competition among newbies after, while their own ability and performance has yet reached the optimal level, which lead to the standstill of career development. It feels like they have plenty full of ambitions, but don’t have opportunity and effort for realizing it. 

• Anxiety and sense of urgency

Now there are a growing number of working people who left their current career platform due to a variety of reasons and longed for a new satisfactory job. However, because of a variety of internal and external reasons, as time goes by, when they failed to find the right opportunity, their mental state would change which then lead to the anxiety and sense of urgency. 

• Pause and ponder

Though they are not content with the current situation, they couldn’t give up for some unknown reason. Regarding to the comfortable work inside and the better working opportunity outside, they failed to make a decisive decision. 

So, how to step over the career bottleneck period? According to experts, the only thing that could let a person insist on one thing for a long time while not caring about the torment led by the trivial and errands, is the heartfelt love and passion for the job. If you are now in the bottleneck period, you should not only fully recognize yourself, but identify the needs of work comprehensively. So long as the company set the position and you accepted it, you should have expectations for this job. Of course, if you have excellent capability, you could remold the position so that it could suit to the requirement of your own development. 

For those newbies entering into the workplace, they should by all means avoid eagerness for quick success and instant benefit. It is suggested that the newbies holding far too ambitious goals should embrace the attitude of learning knowledge and increasing experience. Instead of blind job-hopping, they should learn to bear hardships and stand hard work as well as guard against arrogance and insist on playing “lasting battle”; for those career people who have been at the same position for a long time, they must guard against the “mercy killing” led by idleness and inertial busyness. Once they hold with the stable work, they could have job-hopping boredom syndrome and be afraid of taking risks and adventures. Though they are busy for business at ordinary times, they lack the professional platform and space for improving ability and find that they are driven out of the market and stuck in unemployment dilemma at last. It is suggested that they should take time to think and adjust the career track as well as improve their comprehensive ability even though miscellaneous work occupied all their energy. For those working people who often change their work, there exists the emotion of “hate the job while at post”. They can’t see the prospects for development and thus take aim at the new position on the new platform but would follow the same old disastrous road. Thus, working people should pinpoint their own interest or advantage and make the most of their strengths on the suitable platform, this way, they could go further and more steadily on the right working track.