When is the right time to quit?

To quit or not to quit a job is never an easy decision to make for many of us. This is because of the many factors one has to consider before making that hard, and sometimes painful, decision to throw in the towel. Besides negatively impacting your career, resigning your job needlessly can disrupt your personal life for a long time. But staying in an undesirable job is also not advisable either.So, when is the right time to make that all life-changing decision and call it quits?If you notice one or more of signs, like if you are consistently underperforming, that is a red flag that you need to pay attention to and ask yourself whether staying in the job is the best option, experts say. Emmanuel Ndizeye, a human resource administrator at Kigali School of Finance and Banking, however, advises that before making a final decision to resign, one has to make sure that he or she has assessed the negatives of the decision.“Even if you are certain you are in the wrong job, there are risks that come with quitting. For example, you may damage existing relationships, lose needed income or taint your curriculum vitae (CV) with an ill-fated resignation.Ndizeye advises people switching jobs to do so when they have already secured better roles in other firms.Otherwise, quitting is not an emotional or impulsive decision one makes in order to avoid a negative situation like malice from a senior colleague at the workplace.“If you hate your job, you should leave but this should be after you have gotten another job, especially the one you feel comfortable about,” he says.Vincent Kimani, a human resource and business consultant at RUMA Consult, urges people who want to quit to do it honourably. He says it civil to give a resignation notice to a current employer, but this should be after signing a contract with the new organisation to avoid disappointments.“Once you have signed a contract with a new employer, the next thing to do is to give your current employer a resignation notice. Usually, you give a one month notice, depending on how long you have worked with the firm,” Kimani says.Whatever the case may be, before you throw in the towel, ensure that it is the right thing to do and never burn no bridges.