Is it time to update your resume? While surfing the internet, I found this wonderful advice from Marilyn Haight on five signs that it’s time to be looking for a new job.

One: When your CEO fires your COO, his “right-hand man,” saying things like:
“[He] has been an important part of the … team for [X] years and provided strong leadership and counsel…”

If the important “right-hand man” got canned after doing a good job over a period of years, your chances of surviving by doing a good job in a position farther down in the hierarchy are not promising.

Two: When your CEO talks in read-between-the-lines, jargon-filled language saying things like: “We’re trying to accelerate the pace of our transition and improve operational execution…”

If a message is that obscure, it could be that it’s meant to hide bad news. And “execution” could be a Freudian slip.

Three: When your CEO announces that he’s going to make “sweeping structural changes to the company, along with an unspecified number of job cuts designed to ‘eliminate bureaucracy.’”

The number of job cuts is usually unspecified when it’s big enough to scare you into thinking your job might be included in that number.

Four: When the company’s quarterly net income drops three, four, or five times in a row.

This scares away the owners of the business—the investors; if the owners are bailing out, that’s a big sign.

Five: When “…a number of acquisitions of small affiliated companies…” precedes a large drop in quarterly earnings, especially one as large as 38 percent, and especially after a smaller drop or two.

Money is tight, and the shortfall has to be made up somewhere. Cutting jobs could be the logical source.