It is a typical day at the office. Each hour drones on, and you emit a silent cheer with each that passes. Your neighbor has a radio set a little too loud, and you have heard that same soft rock classic three times already today. Perhaps your neighbor is singing along. The neighbor on your other side is having their usual argumentative phone call with their kid, who just arrived home from school and wants to go to the home of a friend - but they do not want their kid to go to the home of that friend.

When these nuisances have become the very things you recall from day to day, rather than work or project-related situations, obviously the motivation is not there, perhaps leadership is absent, nor is it the environment you seek. It is time to change jobs. This sounds simple enough, until the new job appears and you are supposed to review about the one you are leaving. With the new position in sight, the old job appears stale, unattractive, and bland. How tempting it would be to just grab everything, old and new, that you have stuffed in the gripe closet and throw it at the old job in a haste of good riddance? Tempting? Yes. Good choice? Never.

While it is important to state a clear reason as to why you are leaving a job, it is professional to do so in a manner that compliments the position for the time you spent there and in a way that aligns with the new job being a natural transition of the skills you acquired while at the old job.

Transition is rarely easy. It requires a person to let go of the old and embrace the new. William Bridges wrote about change in his book Managing Transitions. He writes that transition is an emotional process we go through to get from something old to something new. But, before you reach the new destination, you must leave the comfort of your current residence and travel through the Neutral Zone, an unfamiliar place that is neither home nor your destination.

It is the neutral zone where the danger appears. You are in an unfamiliar and often uncomfortable territory. You have let go of some of the past, and this sometimes can release impulses in people to feel like they are no longer linked to the source anymore, and their actions at that point can hurt long term. But as Bridges' model shows, while you will become familiar and nearly surrounded by the new, you never let go of some of the old. In terms of a job change, to some, this may be a source of comfort. Your old colleagues who became close friends, or maybe some of the skills you acquired at the old job that you now practice with pride.

To others, the old may haunt them if they burned their bridges. If a relationship with your boss became seared as you left, that is a referral you cannot count on. If your departure from the old company ended on a bad note, that is a company you cannot reflect on proudly in an interview. If you pushed your team away and criticized them for their obnoxious daytime habits, that is a team that will not support you. Even if you do not mention these events in an interview, many interviewers are trained to the small signs exhibited by your body language that contradict what you are saying. They will know.

A strong referral by any, and especially all, of your previous employers is the avenue to your next job. Hearing positive comments from someone that is familiar with your personality and work habits can often secure a job after a stellar interview.

That of the old forms the path to the new. Make it matter. Make it strong. Make it last.

Jennifer Chittenden is Client Relations Coordinator for Tero International, Inc.