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How to know and what to do about it.
"How do you know if you're in a dead-end job?" may sound like the start of a bad joke, but it's no laughing matter.
On the road of life, particularly the job portions, there are many sharp curves, steep hills, detours, construction and dead ends.
Some routes- that is to say, some jobs- lead to more interesting destinations. Others may not lead to a new destination (job), but are scenic and the journey alone is worth it. However, a growing number of American workers find they are in jobs that lead to nowhere.
In a Conference Board survey last year, only 50 percent of those surveyed were satisfied with their jobs, down from 58.6 percent in 1995.
Perhaps even more telling is the 2005/2006 Salary.com Employee Job Satisfaction & Retention Survey, which indicated that 65 percent of those surveyed were in the process of looking for a new job in the next three months. After compensation, the top reason given for looking for a new job was career advancement- cited by 35.6 percent of women and 40.1 percent of men- with the third reason "boredom" cited by 21.5 percent of female respondents. Those figures translate into a lot of dead-end jobs.
Of course, it's important to note that one person's dead end is another's pleasant cul de sac. Many workers want flexible jobs so they can better balance work and life. They don't want to be on the fast-track and they don't want to have work more than 40 hours a week or be married to their jobs.
"A dead-end job sounds like a negative when perhaps, it's the job you've always wanted and that's as far as you want to go," explains Lorna L. Sura, executive assistant to the publisher at the Hour Newspapers in Norwalk, Conn.
So maybe you're at the end of the road, but that doesn't necessarily mean you're at a dead end. You can find fulfillment within your current job or your life beyond the 9 to 5 grind. But if you find your job has become a grind, are worried that it may be a "dead end" and you want to find an exit path to a better...