Five months ago, career coach Meg Montford began counseling a regional sales manager who was miserable at work. His company was laying off employees. He felt powerless to prevent his subordinates from losing their jobs and became increasingly frustrated. With the job market lousy, he had no place else to go.

Finally, he got an offer to be president at a smaller firm. But he didn't jump right away. He wanted to make sure his new workplace wouldn't be like his old one, so he had some long conversations with the company owners to get a feel for their attitudes.

"We had to start looking at what his values were, what did he consider important to have," says Ms. Montford, who is based in Kansas City, Mo. "Morality and ethics came up as No. 1." Reassured by his discussions with the owners, he decided to take the post.

As the job market improves, many employees who have stuck it out at jobs they hate for the past few years are looking to make a change. Although they're lucky to have held on to jobs during the downturn, they were often asked to work harder -- sometimes taking on duties of colleagues who got laid off -- yet their compensation remained flat. Even if their workloads didn't get heavier, workplace morale in the tough environment often deteriorated.

Now as some of these employees receive outside offers, they face another dilemma: Should they jump at the first opportunity that comes along just to be rid of the old job?

It can be tempting to overlook potential problems with a prospective job when you're so eager to leave your current post. But career coaches advise weighing offers carefully to make sure you're not hastily jumping into another bad environment.

"You still need to make sure you're doing this for the right reasons rather than the wrong reasons," says Dave Opton, CEO of ExecuNet, an executive job search and recruiting network. Good reasons to switch, he says, include offers that promise challenge and advancement. Those are "the things that really give people job satisfaction as opposed to money per se. Money is a short-term motivator," he adds.

Recent studies indicate there are a lot of workers itching to switch employers, especially as the hiring outlook brightens. An ExecuNet survey of 406 employed executives found that 62% were not satisfied with their current job, and 97% of the dissatisfied executives said they plan to change jobs in the next six months. The two biggest reasons for wanting to jump were a desire for more challenge and advancement opportunities, and a more compatible corporate culture.

Accenture, the management consulting and technology services firm, surveyed 217 middle managers and found that one in five was currently looking for another job. Of those, nearly three-quarters said they plan to intensify their search as the economy and job market improve. "Middle managers probably have felt a little more of the brunt of this than other levels of the organization," says Ed Jensen, partner in Accenture's human-performance consulting practice. During the downturn, one way companies reduced their costs was by thinning the ranks of middle management, so the remaining managers saw their workloads and anxiety levels grow.

Career experts say the first thing to do is figure out what you dislike about your current job. Is it the workplace environment or your boss whom you dislike, or the actual work you do? If it's the former, consider looking for a similar job at a company with a different culture. If it's the latter, you may not need to leave your current employer; you could try finding work within a different department or a job with a different set of duties. Nella G. Barkley, president of Crystal-Barkley Corp., a coaching firm, tells clients to avoid looking for an outside job as their first step. Instead, figure out what you want from a job, and if you can find it at your current employer, consider that option, she says.

To help decide whether to jump when you do get an offer, career coach Deborah Brown-Volkman in East Moriches, N.Y., advises making a "wish list" of 10 things you want in your career. The top five are deal-breakers -- without them you won't take the job. Six through 10 are things on which you can compromise.

One of Ms. Brown-Volkman's clients, 27-year-old Jessica Schiffman, recently got herself out of an unhappy work situation. She had been working as an executive assistant at a retailer. Her boss demanded that she do personal errands for her, like taking her shoes to get repaired or buying flowers for her daughter's ballet recital, but otherwise didn't give Ms. Schiffman enough responsibility. After more than a year of searching, Ms. Schiffman received a job offer as travel and meeting coordinator for the CEO of a juvenile diabetes foundation in Manhattan. "I was like, yes, I want to get out of here desperately," she recalls thinking, "But I had to think about the positives and the negatives."

She was nervous about working with an organization's top executive. "Sitting under a CEO, you have all the insecurities -- can I do this? Am I good enough?" she says. But the new office was friendly. "Everyone is just so much more laid back and nice," she says.

She also took a lesson from her last job: to speak up if she's unhappy. "I need to voice my opinions and concerns," she says. "With you and your boss, you have to have communication."