Job Search Mistakes

It happens way too often, but sometimes there's a job that you're interested in, it seems so exciting to you and then you get on board and discover it's not what it was cracked up to be. That's what happened to someone I was representing a while back who declined going on a final interview for me and, instead, accepted a position that she called “her dream job.” Perfectly understandable that she would do this. The show has nothing I’m going to complain about. But the issue is now her dream job as turned into a nightmare. What you do?
So, when you are put in the position of having to deal with this, I think there are couple of simple steps to take that will help you figure out whether this is just a temporary occurrence or something that you need to take action about.
The first thing is just talk with your colleagues to see whether the circumstances you're in or normal or unusual. Sometimes, a firm, sometimes a department or group, is dealing with a crisis of some sort. As such, it's “all hands on deck.” People are scrambling around and all that well-planned, well organized stuff that your future boss was talking with you about is out the window. You may find out that this is going to be a one-week or two-week occurrence every six months or so and that's something that you can tolerate. Or, maybe it’s a one-time thing that they’ve never had happen before and, thus, you can breathe a sigh of relief.
I had one person, years ago, who called me up and, when they followed this advice, learned that they were the fifth person in that seat in the last eight months? 9 months? I don't remember exactly but some short period of time and thus there was a signal in that quite obviously. So, often it's a temporary occurrence and it’s important to find that out.
So, once you know that, from there, meet with your boss and talk about the circumstances and see how long he or she expects this to go on. Sometimes, this change is permanent, like when there is a reorg that is putting the department in a different role and that's happened in the two or three weeks before you started or in some period of time after your conversations with firm have ceased and they’ve gotten into the offer phase and no one has communicated the change to you.
So, if this is a permanent change, then you have a decision to make. Frankly, obviously dust off the resume and start looking for new position. Don't lie about where you're working or speak bitterly. Speak in matter of fact terms that allow people to understand your circumstances.
If some people are going to be horrified about what you've you decided to do, that's fine. More often than not, you're going to get an empathetic response. . . As long as you don't act angry, as long as you don’t go ballistic here. I must, in all candor say, sometimes, employers exaggerate the good qualities of a job without doing a good enough job of describing the difficult parts of it. The result is employees are frequently shocked about what their stepping into. It's unfair and it happens. The question is, what you do about it? I’ve given you two preliminary steps before dusting off your resume-- speaking to colleagues to see if this is atypical and, then from there, speaking to your boss to understand clearly speaking (in speaking to your boss, I’m not about talking about attacking your boss. I’m just trying to understand what's going on because you had a particular impression of the role based upon what he or she said), you just want to understand.