30代・2回目の転職は厳しい？実際に転職した理由と体験談

Preface

I will be changing jobs to a new company starting in January 2022.
Actually, I've been looking for a new job since around August of this year, and I finally received a job offer from a certain company in November.
This will be my third company, so this will be my second time looking for a new job.

I'm just a 35-year-old salesperson with no particular skills, but I'm glad I was able to find a new company I wanted to work for and change jobs.
To help me remember how I feel right now, I'd like to write down my thoughts about this job change.

Reasons for my first job change

The reason I left my first company, where I worked for about 10 years, was becausearticleI wrote it as such.
At that time, six reasons were given,The most important reason is that "there are emergency calls at night and on holidays."That was the point.
During my recent job search, I was frequently asked about my reasons for leaving my first company, and this was the reason I consistently gave.

"It's best not to mention anything negative when explaining your reason for leaving your previous job" could be considered a fundamental principle of job hunting.
However, this reason was true, and it was not something I could change through my own efforts.
Since our industry is inextricably linked to emergency response, I was prepared to accept it if they declined after I explained the reason.

For single people, an emergency response simply means their own plans are disrupted; it doesn't mean they can't handle it.
However, once you're married and have children, you often have family plans on weekends, so you can't immediately take action.
If I'm called out while out with my family and required to handle things that can't be resolved by phone, it becomes impossible to maintain a normal life.
If immediate response is required on holidays, then that time becomes working time, not a holiday.

I requested that the company improve this situation, and I myself proposed various ideas such as a rotating duty system, but for various reasons, no improvements were made.
I'll omit the details of that exchange, but since I realized there was no hope of improvement, I decided to leave my first company.

What I gained from my first job change

For these reasons, I went through the job search process for the first time and ended up working for my second company.
I was looking for a new job while still employed at my first company, and I think that period was the most mentally challenging.
For my next job, I was looking for a position within commuting distance that would not require emergency call-outs on weekends.

I won't go into detail about the second company, but it's a sales position within the trading company group, similar to the first company, and it's in a different industry with no connection to emergencies.
My annual salary has decreased, but I hardly have to work overtime, and I only have to work on holidays if it's scheduled, so the reason I changed jobs in my previous position has been completely resolved.
thereforeI consider my first job change to be a success because I was able to achieve what I wanted.

The main reason for leaving my first company was "emergency call-outs on holidays," but there was also the secondary reason of excessive overtime.
My salary included a deemed overtime allowance of 40 hours, but in reality, I worked 60 to 80 hours or more of overtime per month, and I was not paid for the overtime exceeding that amount.
(Incidentally, for emergency call-outs on holidays, I was paid for the time I worked if I applied for it.)
I think most companies have some degree of overtime, but my second company had a culture where it was almost non-existent, so I feel lucky about that.
Although my annual income has decreased, my hourly wage has actually increased.

Problems with the second company

My first job change seemed like a success, but once you get used to the new environment, new dissatisfactions start to emerge.
As a side note, there's a plausible saying about changing jobs: "The third company is most likely to provide the highest level of job satisfaction."
It seems that many people who start working at a second company realize the advantages they hadn't noticed while working at their first company.
Apparently, it's because they apply the lessons learned from those experiences that their satisfaction level at their third company ends up being the highest.
As I write this article, I've come to agree that this might indeed be the case.

Now, it was around the third year that I started to feel serious dissatisfaction and doubts about my second job.
Since I worked very hard until I was able to handle the tasks to a certain extent after joining the company, I didn't have any major concerns about the company itself.
Or rather, I might have been trying not to think about it too much.
There was certainly a bias at play, a reluctance to think that the company they had worked so hard to get into might turn out to be a bad place again.

I will try to be a little vague to avoid identifying anyone, but I will list the points I think are problematic about the second company.
These issues don't necessarily constitute immediate reasons for changing jobs, but they do contribute to the reasons for leaving to a greater or lesser extent.

There are too many managers.

The first problem is that there are too many sales managers.
The total number of people in the sales department isn't particularly large, but it's still an unusually high number.
In terms of proportion, more than half of our staff hold management positions (including executives and above).
Only about a third of the staff are at the supervisor level and actually perform the work, which is an unusual situation.

The main reason this situation exists is that the people at the top are not leaving.
If you stay with the company for a long time without quitting, you will be promoted up to a certain point, which means that the upper ranks will become increasingly crowded.

However, having too many managers (unnecessarily) means that we have to consult with many people, which makes the approval process extremely time-consuming.
Because managers often don't get along well with each other, situations frequently arise where the lowest-ranking employee has to report to all of their superiors, even though they should only need to report to their immediate supervisor.
Furthermore, perhaps because managers have more free time, they tend to intervene in practical matters based on their mood at the time.
Previously, they would leave everything to us, but now they suddenly want to do it together, which is a real nuisance for those of us on the ground.

In addition, there are many other things that regular employees have to be careful about, such as micromanagement where superiors try to know about even trivial matters, or having to submit distorted reports due to poor relationships between superiors.
There were many practical problems, but above all, I felt that the situation, where a large amount of personnel costs were being incurred for people who weren't actually doing any work, had significantly lowered morale, including my own.

The president is too kind

This is both a good and bad point about the second company, but one issue is that the president is too kind.
Since the only person in management is the President and CEO, the President is the top person in the company.
The problem is that the president is too kind-hearted, and as a result, he keeps employees who would normally be fired in management positions indefinitely.

Despite multiple people suffering mental breakdowns because of this manager, they keep changing subordinates, so the number of people suffering from mental health issues only continues to increase.
While it's true that taking disciplinary action might demoralize that manager, I question the leadership's ability to ignore the fact that so many people are suffering because of one person.

The president himself is a very kind person and cherishes the people who approach him, so his superiors are preoccupied with performing for him and are not focusing on customer-oriented sales.
The president often says things like, "I know it's tough working under Manager XX, but please do your best," but if he understands the problem, I think he should be managing it himself rather than leaving it to his subordinates.

The burden of miscellaneous tasks outside of work is heavy.

I think sales is a job within a company that involves a lot of non-routine tasks.
Some of the tasks might seem like menial chores, but as long as they relate to customers or the company, I don't mind them too much.

However, being forced to listen to your boss's personal matters during work hours is clearly abnormal.
For example, one executive is assigned a certain number of days each month to accompany the team, and this is done on a rotating basis within the sales team.
It would be fine if it were accompanying me to client meetings, but instead I'm forced to go along on personal errands like shopping, viewing autumn foliage, and scouting golf courses.
Moreover, that executive seems to think that accompanying him will allow him to go to various places without doing any work, which is a complete misunderstanding.

The sales staff are busy with daily schedules, yet they have to take on this duty a few days each month.
Because this executive has a track record of significantly increasing sales during the company's early days, he has a very arrogant attitude and is disliked by everyone within the company.
On the days I'm on duty, I have to listen to the same stories over and over again in the car I'm driving, like a broken radio, so I can say that the mental fatigue on those days is considerable.

The company is wasting a lot of money.

With society as a whole grappling with the COVID-19 pandemic, I believe many companies have suffered damage to varying degrees.
Even if no specific instructions have been given, each employee needs to make an effort to reduce expenses.
However, many bosses continue to waste money even in such situations.
Listing all the details would be too much, so I'll just write about the things that I consider to be particularly egregious.

- Commuting by company car despite receiving reimbursement for train fare.
At my current company, I can choose to commute by private car or by public transport.
For those who commute by private car, a gasoline allowance will be provided based on the distance traveled. For those who use public transportation, the cost of a commuter pass will be provided.
If your job requires you to commute directly to and from work using a company car, you can apply for permission to use a company car for commuting on a limited basis.

Some executives receive reimbursement for their commuter passes, but then use company cars to commute without permission, a stingy attempt at saving money.
This constitutes intentional fraudulent receipt of benefits and, depending on company regulations, could be considered a breach of trust or subject to disciplinary action.
But what's truly frightening is that some people see executives doing this and think, "Ah, that's clever," and try to imitate them.
Most employees are aware of these kinds of actions, but they either think they haven't been caught or they have no sense of shame.

- They engage in a lot of unnecessary entertaining.
Although it's becoming less common these days, I think there are still occasions when entertaining clients is necessary in business relationships between private companies.
While it may depend on industry practices, some managers at this company engage in excessive entertaining.

It might be acceptable if it's a major client and entertaining them is necessary.
However, many people entertain clients who clearly don't need it, simply because they want to benefit from it themselves.
I'm not entirely against entertaining clients, but I believe the best approach in sales is to maintain good relationships without needing to entertain them (though that might sound idealistic...).
When I hear someone complain, "I have to entertain clients again tomorrow," I can't help but think, "Well, you're the one who's entertaining clients unnecessarily."

No quotas

In my current job, there are no sales quotas.
Not being pressured by strict quotas may be a good thing, but it also has its downsides.
The current situation is like a concentrated version of the disadvantages of not having quotas.

The absence of quotas or numerical targets means that there are no clear metrics for evaluating sales performance.
This would make the evaluation criteria extremely vague, and it would come down to who is working and who isn't, depending on reports from above.
Therefore, it is commonplace for superiors to take credit for the hard work of their subordinates, or to blame their own mistakes on their subordinates.

Furthermore, the absence of quotas means that any sales activities undertaken spontaneously will not be included in performance evaluations.
With this kind of evaluation system, no one will take on any risky challenges, and everyone will be forced to adopt a safe, error-free stance.

For civil servants, whose jobs are virtually guaranteed to never be taken down, this kind of evaluation system would be perfectly acceptable.
However, I believe it would be difficult for private, for-profit companies to achieve sustainable growth under such a system.
In fact, during my time at this company, I felt that my superiors had a strong belief that "it's enough if the company survives while I'm employed here."
Some people will say quite frankly, "We don't have much time left, so it's okay for us, but you guys will be in trouble if you don't make sure you can support yourselves."
While this statement is true in some respects, when someone who has absolutely no motivation to work says it like this, it makes you think, "I'm not working here to earn a living for you, you know."

Because the upper management is filled with people who are only interested in getting away with it, I have become very worried about the future of the company.

Low competitiveness

The current low competitiveness of our company in our industry is one of the concerns for the future.
Because it's a fairly mature industry, differentiating yourself from competitors is difficult, and you're at a disadvantage in terms of capital compared to large corporations.
To be honest, I feel that we are barely able to do business thanks to the many companies with whom we have long-standing relationships and connections.

As I briefly mentioned in the previous section, we are still able to continue doing business with the company because we have just enough employees who were there during the time when the company grew significantly.
However, I feel that once those people leave the company, our business partners will have no reason to feel obligated to us anymore.

Every company probably goes through a period of generational change like this.
If a company has its own unique strengths and services, business relationships won't easily disappear even if the person in charge changes and personal relationships are lost.
Unfortunately, the current company lacks many of those unique strengths, so from my perspective, I think it will be difficult for them to succeed.
Without implementing any management strategies to break out of this situation, it seems like the company is simply continuing its downward spiral.

What I tried to gain from my second job change

So, I've written about various problems with the current position.
It's not that I dislike all of these things; similar problems probably exist in every company.
Now, I'd like to write about what I hoped to gain from this job change.

Two prerequisites

First and foremost, the premise is that what I tried to gain from my first job change"No emergency call-outs on holidays."Of course, I want to maintain it.
If we can't achieve this, we'll end up in the same situation as with the first company.

Also, like the current office"Less overtime hours"That's because I'd like to maintain it if possible.
Even if my annual salary were to increase, I would prefer to have about the same amount of overtime as I do now.
I feel that my quality of life has improved dramatically, thanks to a significant reduction in overtime hours compared to my previous job.

What I look for in a job

As mentioned in the previous section regarding problems such as "too many managers" or "too many extraneous tasks," it would certainly be preferable if such things didn't exist.
However, this is not something that can be investigated in advance, and it can happen at any company.

During this job search, I did a lot of self-analysis.
I identified what made me happy and what made me unhappy at work, and I reflected on what I truly wanted from my job.
As a result, what I look for most in a job is"It's about using specialized knowledge and experience to solve customers' problems."That was the conclusion we reached.

Because my current company has low competitiveness, our sales activities with customers are basically just "requests."
Our basic stance is to try our best to persuade customers to buy from us, even if they would be better off buying elsewhere.
As a salesperson, the most stressful aspect was having to ask customers to use our products even though I was aware that they were inferior.
Considering the other person's feelings, I felt like they probably found me annoying, and it was quite painful to suggest something that I myself didn't think was good.
In my previous job, I felt I was being helpful because I was able to find and propose solutions that matched the customer's needs.

Also, because I have a personality that enjoys "learning things I don't know," I find joy in acquiring specialized knowledge.
In my current job, connections and personal relationships are crucial, so even if I acquire specialized knowledge, it rarely leads to results.
However, in my previous job, the more specialized knowledge I acquired, the broader my capabilities became, and I felt a real sense of personal growth.
Therefore, in this job change, I looked for a position where I could similarly utilize my specialized knowledge.

When I was at my first company, there was a time when I thought I'd be happy with any job as long as it was easy and paid well.
However, now that I've switched to my second company and am working there, I've realized with surprise that I'm actually quite particular about the content of my work.
For my third company, I hope to find the most satisfying workplace I've experienced so far.
Conversely, if you're unable to change, it might be faster to change yourself rather than your environment.

Afterword

In this article, I've written about various things, including my reasons for changing jobs in the past and my reasons for changing jobs this time.
Writing articles like this brings back vivid memories of the emotions I felt when I decided to change jobs.
When I feel like giving up after changing jobs to my third company, I'll read this article myself to motivate myself.