You are happily employed at a great company and you receive an email from a job site that says “we found these five great jobs you might be interested in” the delete button is a very easy answer. Why would anyone open such an email when you are happy with what you have? You don’t look at other women/men when you are happily married (ok, usually) so why would you look if you are in a happy job? Well for a start you hopefully love your partner more and in a very different way to your work. For other reasons, read on.
Know the market
No matter how happy you are in your job, it pays to know the market. If people desperately need someone with your skillset, then your job should be paying you more. This is simple supply and demand. Checking suitable jobs regularly will allow you to keep up on demand, average wages and how your role is evolving in other market areas.
Have a goal
Often jobs that are recommended for you are based on a few keywords. The job may actually require far too much experience or expertise in other areas. That is ok, you are happy in your job so it doesn’t matter what experience you need, but it may in the future. Take note of the skills they require and the different career paths you could go on. You may identify where you want to be in five years’ time and exactly what skills you need to work on to get there.
Market shocks happen
While you love your job and we are sure that your job loves you, sometimes people lose their job; for any number of reasons. If this happens to you, you shouldn’t be entering the job search market cold. If you have saved some of the best jobs then you will already have some leads when you start to look. While many of those jobs may now be filled it will still give you some ideas of where to look.