6.  Five years into your career and you’ve only had one promotion.

Getting your career started is hard.  I know.  But if you’ve only had one promotion in the past five years, either you’re doing something wrong or the company you work for has limited opportunities for you for whatever reason.  Try to figure what’s holding you back.  This may mean leaving your current job.

5. You’ve been with your company for a while and no one above your immediate boss knows who you are.

Wherever you work you want to be well known, liked, and viewed as indispensable by the higher-ups.    There is nothing wrong with some self promotion.  I’m not saying be arrogant but make your accomplishments known.  Do this and your career will be on the fast-track.

4. You are strongly considering teaching English overseas.

I know this sounds tempting to those who have corporate burnout or are frustrated with the start of their career, but if you take a couple years off to teach English early in your career you’re going to return older and broke.

3.  You’re perpetually in “grad school”.

I think we’ve all known people who aren’t sure where their careers are going or what they want to do so they decided to enroll in graduate school.  Bad idea.  Grad school is for those who know exactly what they want to do.  It’s for people who have a passion in their desired area of study.  What you don’t want is to graduate from grad school with $85,000 in debt and still unhappy with your career.

1.  Every day is the worst day of your life.

I’ve had these feeling before.  You go to bed at night and you get that ill feeling in your stomach.  Almost like it’s the first day of school.  This is the biggest warning sign you can get that something is wrong.  Maybe it’s an issue at work that can be resolved or maybe it’s the job itself.  If it’s the job itself I would advise that you figure out what type of job what make you happy and start looking immediately.