Evaluating Career Opportunities: It’s Not Just About the Numbers
Here's an article I wrote recently for Pragmatic Marketing, which appeared in their February newsletter. Thought I'd reprint here and share a little link love. And for the record, I am not the one that used the word "expert" to describe myself; that was their editorializing. Anyhoo, here it is (with much thanks to my editor, Mary Peterson!)
Evaluating Career Opportunities: It’s Not Just About the Numbers
Ready for a change? Looking for a new job? Here is advice from an expert on what to look for when evaluating new opportunities. By Heather Hamilton
There are few decisions in life that have a bigger impact on your future potential than selecting a new job. Sure, there are matters of the heart: marriage, children, etc. But when making a career move, you need to use your head and do your research. The time to start deciding is before you start looking. While we are conditioned to evaluate opportunities based on compensation, there are a wide range of other factors that need to be weighed. So creating a framework for evaluating opportunities before you start looking will help you say yes to the right opportunity and walk away from everything else.
Evaluating multiple competitive offers sounds like a great scenario to have to deal with, doesn’t it? The idea that several companies are vying for your skills; that you have options. But if this is the point at which you start really assessing your options, you are at risk for making a hasty decision. There are different decision making styles, to be sure. But some preemptive filtering based on your personal needs, your preferences and your long term career goals will help alleviate some of the noise around the decision making process. Be smart and go into the job search with a clear idea of what you want. By targeting the companies and industries that can meet your objectives, you’ll be able to toss off the ones that don’t meet your criteria and work your way down to a few offers from which you can choose. By deciding with both your head and your heart, you will experience a better outcome.
Ready to start sending out resumes? Whoah there, Tiger. Once you decide you want to make a move, it’s hard not to start taking actions, but life’s most important journeys take a little extra thought. Do you have a company targeting strategy? Or were you just going to float around the internet and see what’s there? First thing you need to do is assess your values. I’m not talking about whether you love your mother and let cars cut in front of you in traffic. I’m talking about what is important to you, in your next job and in life. Only you can make those decisions but I can offer a few things for you think about.
What do I want to be when I grow up?
It’s hard to think about your career end game. There’s a position out there for you where your dream job meets your talents. So many of us think about our next role, but not beyond that. We want it all and we want it now. Unfortunately, life doesn’t work that way. To a company, you are a collection of skills; sure there’s a person attached. But the business transaction is money paid for work done. So when they hire you, it’s for what they know you can do and that is generally based on proof of what you have already done.
I started out recruiting in the temp space, which isn’t really recruiting as much as it is placement. People walk in your door and you find them temp positions which may turn into full-time positions. I was getting my feet wet and it was great experience. I was also impatient and ambitious; and I wasn’t going to take over the world working in an office complex in Oakbrook Terrace, Illinois. My dream job: editor. But that wasn’t going to happen either. My realistic job goal was to be an in-house recruiter for a well-known company. That position was another 3 job moves away. It took five years from beginning to landing at Microsoft. How do I know I took the right path? I’ve been here for almost nine years and still loving it.
I receive resumes all the time from people that want to get into marketing at Microsoft but lack any marketing experience. My advice to them is to find a position that allows them to utilize the skills they have and to foster new marketing skills; a transition position, so to speak. The company pays for the skills you have, you gain new skills in the process. In my transition from temp recruiting to Microsoft Staffing Manager, I was doing just that. It’s hard to think of a succession of positions as baby steps toward a bigger career goal. But that is the smart way to do it.
So what does this mean for you? You need to identify that next big career milestone, assess the skill gaps between where you are now and where you want to be down the road, identify a subset of those skills that you want to gain in your next position and then find companies and industries that both value your current skills and will help you develop the new ones. Where can you find this kind of information?
- in company job descriptions, corporate career sites
- by networking with people in different industries and companies
- engaging with bloggers at companies that have knowledge of the work you want to do
- web searches
- conference presentations, user group meetings, MBA Alumni socials, etc.
- talking to recruiters
The information is out there. It’s just a matter of knowing what you are looking for.
Location, location, location
This isn’t as simple as deciding whether to move or not. You should have in mind a short list of places that you would be willing to move to for that right position. Of course, being married with children makes this a bit more complicated (but in a good way, I am told). This is something to be thought through BEFORE you start to look for a position. Most every recruiter you talk to will have stories about getting a candidate through the entire interview process before that candidate discusses with their spouse the idea of moving to the new location: “my spouse doesn’t want to move” is an incredibly frustrating response to an offer, in the eyes of a recruiter. It says that you didn’t prepare for the interview (and while it may not matter this time, you don’t want to burn a bridge with that recruiter).
Some people are fairly mobile and can pack up and move at any time. Others have houses to sell, kids in school, concerns about building a network of new friends. Your job is to know which one you are and which locations will meet your needs if you are willing to move. And beyond things like cost of living and weather, you need to think about lifestyle and social networks that you will be able to build in the new location. There are a number of online tools focused on evaluating and comparing cities, including homefair.com. They will help you calculate differences in salaries, real estate costs, schools and the social scene.
Don’t forget that most large companies offer a range of resources to potential recruits based on their geographical locations. Some may set you up on an area tour or allow you to work with a relocation specialist before an offer is even made.
The Work Environment
This is where a little bit of heart comes into the evaluation process. What kind of work environment is going to get you jazzed to show up every day? Where, in the past, have you felt most “at home” at work? What types of people do you want to surround yourself with? Who can you learn from? Some of these questions around the immediate team you will have to assess as you go through the interview process. But much of the corporate culture questions can be answered before you start your search.
If you put off thinking about this until you start interviewing, you are running a risk. Let me be clear about one thing: on the interview day, companies are making their best impression. That’s not to say that some don’t leave a bad impression, despite good intentions. But what you get on the interview day, while it may provide glimpses of reality, is not reality. You get what the company chooses to show you. Your best bet is to research this online. For larger corporations, you’ll find references to corporate culture and atmosphere in articles and discussion groups. For smaller companies, you may have to dig deeper into blogs and social networks. At the very least, you need to give it some thought before you show up for the interview. Which will bug you more: the guy playing foosball outside of your office or the fact that you need VP approval to spend $100 on a trade magazine subscription? Think about it.
The people you work with will most likely have the biggest impact on your job satisfaction, yet this criteria is rarely given the weight it deserves in the job change decision. My best and worst work experiences involved managers that I clicked with or seriously didn’t.
There’s probably not a lot of research you can do on this before you know who you would be interviewing with but it sure is something that you should be thinking about throughout the interview day. A little soul searching about the types of peer and manager relationships that enable your best work is in order. How involved do you want your manager to be? How much time do you want to spend with peers and in what type of environment? Do you leave your work at the office or will these people be part of your social circle? Through networking and research, you can find some actual employees and ask them to tell you the truth – the good, the bad and the ugly. Every company has its blemishes but when you understand what you are getting into, you’ll be happier about your decision.
Career Progression
Speaking of long term thinking, what if you could build a career in one company by trying out different roles? Could you get to your career sweet spot in one company and if so, why wouldn’t you want to? Not every company is thoughtful about internal movement. At the same time, the company that is most willing to take risks on you based on your record of achievement is the company that you are already working for. So it would be a little silly not to think about building out a career inside that company. Checking this out is fairly straight-forward. First, look at the company’s career site to see if they have the types of roles that you could see yourself moving into down the road. Then look up the bios of people working at that company and look for evidence of job changes within the verbiage (for example, if someone “has held a variety of roles”). And again, it would be wise to engage your network to discuss this with employees of some of your target companies.
Compensation – The Big Picture
Sure, compensation is important; it pays the bills. And you probably know to check the cost of living (or cost of housing, tax rates) estimates in any locations you are considering. But there’s more to think about when it comes to compensation. You definitely have to look at the big picture. Something may sound like a “benefit”, but if it was something that you were paying for before, it impacts your compensation. It might make sense to pull together an Excel spreadsheet and work this through. Think about things like child care reimbursement, medical deductibles/co-pays/flex spending accounts, transportation assistance (bus passes, car pools), reimbursement for cell phone or Internet, corporate discounts, levels of coverage for medical/dental/vision, legal assistance programs, paid holidays and vacation time, tuition assistance, health programs (weight management, smoking cessation). The list goes on and only you can determine what is important to you. But comparing base compensation from company to company really doesn’t adequately show whether you will be financially better or worse off at another company.
A Final Note…Plan Ahead
There should be other categories that you are assessing based on what is important to you in your life and you will certainly weigh some categories more heavily than others. The point is to know what these categories are and think about them now and frequently (especially as you are starting a job search).
I often tell people that when you think about building out your personal network, when you need to start looking for a job, it’s already too late. The time to build your network is when you already have a job, when you have something to offer those in your network and when your judgment isn’t impacted by the fact that you HAVE to find a new position. I think about the prospect of weighing the merit potential next roles in the same way. The type of company loyalty that existed for prior generations is dead. Now, people stay with companies as long as the relationship is mutually beneficial and the current situation is better than the prospect of looking for a new position and the change and risk associated with it. It’s a pretty simple formula. So right now, even if you are very happy in your current position with no immediate intention of moving, you should have in mind where your next career move might potentially be. And to do this, you need to take a hard look at what truly makes you happy at work and create a simple model for evaluating your next step.
Heather Hamilton manages Microsoft Staffing's central team responsible for marketing candidate generation, research and community. In this role, she leads Microsoft’s efforts to build a pipeline of qualified marketing talent and creates strategies aimed at delivering the industry’s best talent to Microsoft’s hiring teams via prospect research and community building programs. Aside from managing a talented team of staffing professionals, Heather is probably best known as a blogger. She is a requested speaker on topics related to candidate outreach and community building and her blog, One Louder , has resulted in significant press interest including The Wall Street Journal, the New York Times and Fast Company. Contact Heather