Whiners pretty much end up losers!

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The worst thing you can do for yourself when looking for a job is 'whine'! Nothing turns off a hiring manager or a search consultant than a whiner.

Sometimes you might have a very valid reason to gripe about your current role/ manager/ company. But I have seen different people handle the same situation very differently.

You have the whiner who grates on your nerves after some time. The whiner sees the world as a hammer and himself as a nail! For a whiner, the fault always lies with the other person and situation and never with himself.


And then you have the other person, in a similar situation, who is able to present the facts in a far more mature and balanced manner. Who will explain the situation in terms of the challenges, the issues at hand, the efforts being put in to address the problem, and maybe even the futility of all the efforts, etc.

If you think you are a whiner (does anyone ever describe himself as one?), or if you are being confronted by one, here's a quick checklist of questions to ask oneself and take stock :

• If you think the situation is really so bad, why are you still hanging around? Isn't it better to move out and find a better place where these problems don't exist?
• If you are hanging around because there is no other option out there, then it should be amply clear to you that the market doesn't value you as much as your current organisation does.
• And if you are choosing to hang around, then it is obvious that you are deriving some value from the current role in the company, else you would have moved on.

And what most whiners don't realise is that they are making it even more difficult for themselves when they are out looking for their next job. Astute hiring managers clearly figure out the problem and the whiner usually comes across as a loser.

And guess what? The whiner now has one more reason to whine about!

I didn't want this post to sound preachy, but I realise it does sound a bit like that. But it does help us to pause once in a while and check to see if we are slowly turning into a 'whiner'.

Don't go down that path. Not only is it counter-productive in your job search process, but, more importantly, it makes you into someone that most people want to avoid interacting with. And that's the worst thing you can do to yourself!