Avoiding mistakes: do you ask this when choosing a new job?

Most of us are happy reading about the job market heating up. Some will finally find a job in a new year, some look to move up and forward. More seekers get to choose from a couple of options. How do you decide, which role to take? 

Interviewing candidates for jobs, I noticed that many people have a history of joining companies for wrong reasons. I usually candidates to walk me through their history covering the reasons of leaving and choosing the next job. Patterns emerge. Taking a wrong role repeatedly leads to the loss of interest, lack of fit or failure to stick, jumping companies. It is a problem worth thinking about. 

Also, I am often asked about the choice between a couple of offers as a mentor. A job closer to home or a job with a better chance of promotion? A newer technology or a slightly higher pay? 

So, here is what I do: answer with questions: 

What is important for you in your career in the long run?

How you define your success in the next few years?

How will each of the options contribute to that success? 

There are multiple types of career paths today. We will not discuss the entrepreneurs and freelances in this article. They trailblaze their own ways rather than choose between the job offers. We will also leave out the ‘portfolio careers’ - a combination of multiple engagements such as consultancies and board positions, gaining popularity for later years. While the choices between projects are important, they are ruled by different criteria, case by case. 

Let us talk about the most traditional career paths defining the choice between offers.

A large number of people adopt a ‘work to live’ approach. A job is the means to pay bills, support the family, often fund hobbies, arts or charities. While they still look for a stimulating environment and a good boss, they do not set a specific goal of the journey. Their next job selection is based on the comparison of pay, benefits, workload and commute time.

However, there are people who view their careers as a journey towards a destination and set priorities in a different way.

An Administrative Career.

One of the most traditional career paths is a 15-20 years marathons towards a top position in a large hierarchy, whether a commercial business or an army or a non-profit. It takes a number of lateral and vertical moves in the same or different organizations to rise  to the head of a function at C-level (e.g., CFO) or manage across multiple functions (e.g., CEO, COO, President). Each step of the journey helps to gain certain skills and experiences, grow the network and demonstrate the ability to get results. The value of each new role may be measured in the scope of P&L, the number of people reporting, assets in management or the amount of revenue. These numbers are considered for the compensation package and evaluating the candidate for the next role.    

While many people talk about their desire to build such a career, very few do it and their share in the network declines with time and career progression. 

First, there is a difference between a sprint and a marathon. Long journey takes years of discipline and concentration. It forces constant choices and the preference of long-term goals to the short-terms ones – spending time away from family making sales calls, studying for MBA mid-career, missing time with friends to close a deal. In many cases the success hinges on the ability to delay gratification – just like in Freud’s definition of maturity: less freedom, less ability to choose nice bosses or exciting projects, less time for the family and friends in order to optimize for the end-game. Furthermore, while many steps up bring a higher compensation, it is not a given. In fact, I know many cases when the executives signed up for a job with a cut in base salary, e.g., when moving to turn around a smaller company putting a higher stake on equity and career advancement. This is not for everybody. People start developing other priorities in life – children, aging parents, charities – and re-evaluate the desire to continue the marathon and make sacrifices. 

Second, moving to a bigger role often means leaving the comfort zone, often outside the functional expertise area. E.g., moving from the head of sales to a cross-functional P&L job means gaining an understanding of R&D or operations.  It means constant learning, imposter syndrome and a risk of missing an important item. Not many people feel safe and courageous enough to step outside of their competency on a regular basis. And if often slows down or limits their administrative career growth with time.

For someone, building an administrative career, the next job selection should come with a question: which of the options provides a better stepping stone to the next level? A lot of seemingly attractive projects end up been a dead-end. They offer an immediate increase in responsibilities and compensation, yet no path forward afterwards. I saw it happening to people from emerging markets going on assignment to the home country for a bigger role but finding it difficult to return back to the US headquarters. They got pigeon-holed, assumed to be successful in their native environment, yet unable to compete with their colleagues in global positions. They also weakened the contacts with the US part of their network. The same happens when moving within a narrow segment or staying for too long within the same function. Providing a better access to the next, bigger job becomes an important attribute of a role even if it comes with a lesser pay or title.

An Expert's Career.

A common misconception is that people management is the only way to build a successful career. While clearly not the case in arts – nobody mixes the desire to be one of the best violin players with managing a concert hall – medicine or science, it is somewhat murky in business and technology. However, there are top experts in their fields who command all attributes of a great career, including the premium earnings. They may acquire a small team but never measure the value of a job by the amount of resources managed. Their accomplishments depend on the new patents, complexity of the projects and innovation in the field. People who choose this path take pride in becoming the best experts in certain areas, a recognized authority, influencers and advisers, quoted in articles and recognized by ‘best in class’ awards. 

As in a case of administrative career, the experts often deal with a delayed gratification choosing a less desirable location or promotion for an opportunity to work with the latest technology or train under the recognized guru. And like with administrative careers, at some point priorities changes and a expert may decide to ‘cash out’: leaving the active learning and growth for a more lucrative pay or less stress in a less exciting job, e.g., switch from academia to commercial research, from active competing to teaching, etc.

Experts answer a different set of questions when selecting a new role. Will I enhance my expertise? Grow my relevance for the future? Learn something new? In this case a longer commute would be far compensated by working with a newer technology or with an advanced expert. Making a wrong choice backfires, ends up in boredom and lost momentum in the professional development.

Of course, one cannot cover all situations and career types existing today in a short discussion. There is also a ‘calling’ type of the career, often related to caring for others (e.g., animal shelters, medicine, religion) or self-expression (arts), which may be similar to the expert path but lack the competitive edge. There is always a combination: people try themselves in management only to discover that they enjoyed the expert path more. Or, vice versa, former experts become CTOs or heads of surgery units and master the administrative aspects of the job.

Furthermore, it often takes us a few roles to figure out what path we want to follow. Most of us start as experts by selecting a field, some get promoted as the best specialists in their areas and decide on whether to continue on administrative growth path or focus on the subject matter. The questions and answers are different at different stages of our professional growth.

Last, over the last few years we saw an explosive growth of the freelance economy, globalization, availability of funding and technology to start your own company. Combined with layoffs post-2008 and disappointment in large corporate environment it inspired a lot of people to mix the traditional career paths with entrepreneurship. 

But when choosing the next job in a more traditional setting, it is still useful to think about the path, the timing in the journey, and as a result – the questions to answer in order to avoid a mistake of taking wrong role.

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