“I Thought I'd Just Withdraw Passing If I Didn't Like It."Choose a job you love and you will never have to work a day in your life." –Confucius
Being happy in your job means, choosing the job that is best for you. At times, this may seem easy. At other times, it may seem difficult and confusing. In this chapter, we'll look at how to decide if a job is right for you. We'll also discuss how to field simultaneous job offers and what to say to potential employers. By looking both at how to make decisions and how to interact with potential employers, you can feel confident of your ability to choose a job you will love.
Making A Wise Decision
There are several ways you can make sure you're making a good decision about a job offer. First, you can look at each job you're offered and analyze its strong points and its weak points. Second, you can see how the job matches up with your mental list of things you want in a job. Third, you can listen to your emotional reactions, or your "gut feelings" about the job. Of course, if the last time you listened to your gut feelings you ended up swimming in a snake-infested lake in the middle of the night at an off- campus party, you may want to be a little careful on this one.
The best way to start making decisions regarding job offers is to analyze the strong and weak points of each job you're offered. Each will have a few things you will really enjoy and a few things you will not enjoy. This may sound like your calculus class, except, of course, there wasn't anything in that class that you really enjoyed.
"Make a list of everything you like and everything you don't like in the job you're considering, and write it all down," says psychologist Dr. Diane Goebes. "Assign a number to each trait and compare different jobs this way." Developing Your Rating System to be honest, using some kind of standard system to rate jobs for which I interviewed never occurred to me. I simply went to interviews, tried to decide whether or not the job looked good and then floundered my way through the decision-making process. The problem with this was that it was easy to get confused and to give one small aspect of the job an overblown importance.
You may find yourself doing this too. For example, you might interview for a job in sales with a major corporation. During your interview, it might become clear that the job has five basic components. The job might involve interacting with the research department, learning about the company's products, developing a new client list, calling upon clients and making monthly presentations to your department. The first four parts of the job may appeal to you, but making a monthly presentation may not.
However, you shouldn't make the entire decision based upon the monthly presentation because this is only one-fifth of the job. In a situation like this, if you are able to use some kind of standard rating system for judging the job, you might see that it is heavier on the plus side than on the minus side. Of course, living at the beach and forgetting about the job search is heaviest on the plus side, but unfortunately, that is not an option.
There is an exception to this rule of judging the job on the sum of its parts and not on any one part alone. This is when one small part of the job looks so horrible that it would ruin any pleasure you could take in the rest of the job. Or when one small part of the job makes you feel so excited and fulfilled that it would nullify any qualms you would have about the rest of the job.
Situations like that are not too likely, so you should try to take a more balanced approach and come to a decision by looking at the complete picture.
In the job we've been discussing, if the thought of making an oral presentation makes you cringe, it's probably not a good job for you. However, if getting up in front of your boss and co-workers once a month simply doesn't appeal to you, but it's something you could deal with, this might actually be a good job for you. You may even be able to have your employer send you to a public speaking seminar to improve your skills after you land the job,
In developing a system for rating each part of a prospective job, you don't need to do anything complicated. Depending upon how you like to approach things, you might not even need to write anything down. As long as you have a firm idea in your own mind as to the factors you will use in judging your job options, you can develop a system that will work for you. "Develop a list of criteria by which you will judge a job," advises career counselor Marilyn Goldman of Horizons Un limited.
As you are faced with making decisions on job offers, you may be surprised what you will learn about your career goals. For example, you may find that you don't care what you're doing as long as you enjoy the people you work with. Or, you don't care about the people you work with as long as you're doing something that will affect the world. If you don't care about either what you're doing or who you work with, you might be able to replace one of your old professors.
If you find your career goals have changed slightly as you've progressed through your job hunt, you shouldn't feel distressed or confused. This simply means you've learned more about yourself from all of the work you've put into your job hunt. For example, maybe you realized during an informational interview that you don't really want to work for a major corporation. Or that you've got to have a job which has a lot of variety or you'll be bored after two weeks. Take whatever it is that you've learned from your job hunt and incorporate it into your system for making decisions.
“ Want To Work In A Green Office In A Large Building By The Sea''
To come up with a standard method for judging each job alternative, make a list of things that are important to you in a job. You can then use this list to judge each job you're considering. Your list might include categories such as the personality of your future boss, the workload, the overall office atmosphere, the salary and the possibility for advancement. It probably shouldn't include the degree to which you can date your co-workers or your proximity to all the great after-work hangouts.
The key to making your rating system work is to tailor your list of important job qualities to your individual needs. Perhaps you're ambitious and you tolerate criticism well. You might rank the possibility for advancement as most important and the personality of your future boss least.
On the other hand, you may be a laid back person who is looking for a relaxed office atmosphere where you can achieve things in your own way. In this case, you might rank the personality of your boss as most important and the possibility for advancement least.
It's easy to toss around these job characteristics and talk about picking out which are the most important to you, but it can be hard to say since you haven't had a "real" job yet. However, you can figure out what matters to you if you'll think about the things you liked and disliked in your summer jobs.
I worked in an ad agency one summer, and I sat near a woman whose job required her literally to spend the entire day on the phone. I learned from that job that while I like to interact with other people, I probably would have developed a personality disorder, as well as some kind of crippling neck condition, if I ever had a job that involved that much phone work.
I remembered this after I graduated (yes, I know what an achievement that was) and it helped me steer clear of an entire range of jobs within the general field in which I was looking. Try to remember what really bugged you in your summer jobs, and think about what really pleased you. Use these past experiences to figure out what you'd like in a job on a daily basis. I should probably break it to you now that it may be hard to find a job with adequate nap time. Rating your offers after you have decided how important you find each job characteristic, further develop your rating system. Using a set of numbers from one to five, with one being a positive reaction and five being a negative reaction, rate the job for which you've just interviewed.
Perhaps you would give the workload of a particular job a one, noting that there were a lot of exciting projects going on, but that no one seemed to work later than 6:00 p.m.
You might give your potential boss a two, noting that she is friendly and easygoing, but a stickler for small details. You might also give the office atmosphere a two, noting that it is a small office where people socialize outside of work and therefore must like each other.
You might give the salary a four, noting that it is lower than the other two jobs for which you have interviewed. Finally, you might give the possibilities for advancement a four, noting that no one in the office appears to have started out in the job for which you're interviewing.
When you jot down a number next to each job characteristic, include one or two explanatory phrases so you will 186 remember why you assigned a job trait a particular number. At this point, it may seem like you'll remember everything from each interview. However, if you've had fifteen interviews in two months and you're trying to decide between three definite offers and one probable offer, you may have a hard time remembering the details of each job. You may also have a hard time remembering why you ever wanted a job in the first place.
Here's what your rating table might look like in this example:
A. Workload: 1 (I'd be doing 2 research projects at a time during busy season/people leave by 6:00)
B. Potential Boss: 2 (friendly, picky about little details such as format for interoffice memos)
C. Office Atmosphere: 2 (looks like they get along well)
D. Salary: 4 (lower than other 3 interviews I've had)
E. Potential for Advancement: 4 (small office-looks like someone else would have to leave for me to move up)
As you look over your ratings for the job in our example, you might decide the job isn't perfect, but it's a good one for you. You gave high ratings to the parts of the job that matte the most to you and lower ratings to the parts of the job that didn't matter as much to you.
If this were the only job offer you had received, and you felt comfortable with it, you would probably want to accept it. If you were comparing this job to one that rated a one or a two for every category you evaluated, you'd probably want to take the other job. It's important to note that the decision-making process is very personal. This same job might be a poor choice for someone who cares most about the possibilities for advancement and the salary and least about the workload, the office atmosphere and the personality of their boss. We'll talk more about this later.
Discovering Your Dream Job
The second way to make a wise decision is to see how the job you're considering matches up to the things you need in a job in order to be happy. As you develop your system for rating each part of the job, you should also develop a parallel rating system. In this parallel system, you can compare the job on which you're deciding to an imaginary checklist in your mind.
If it's important that you work for a company where individuality is prized and you can wear jeans to work on Fridays, put that on your mental list. If you want a job where everything is clearly defined for you and you know exactly what your boss expects of you, put that on your list.
This process of matching the job offer to your mental picture of the ideal job might not seem that helpful, but it will make your decision-making process much easier. Maybe you want to work in a fast-paced, quickly changing setting. Or you don't want a job that requires a lot of meetings and group efforts. Look closely at each job for which you've interviewed and see how well it matches up with what you want in a job.
The third way to rate a prospective job is to look at your emotional reaction to the job. Even if all of the "facts" you unearth about the job are favorable, there may be something that keeps you from wanting to work there.
For example, you might interview for a job in engineering with a small construction company. The person you'd be working for may appear to be fair and reasonable, the hours about what you'd expect and the office environment a good one. But there may be some unspoken thought on your part that makes you hesitate to accept the job.
Maybe you never thought you'd work for a small company and you know you wouldn't be satisfied with one. Maybe the job looks nice enough, but for some reason, terribly boring. Even though these thoughts may seem illogical, include them in your rating system. If you aren't honest with yourself in rating the jobs for which you interview, you won't be able to make a balanced decision based on the complete picture.
You can also use these gut level feelings to decide that a job is a good one for you, even though the "facts" are not in the job's favor. For example, you might interview for a job with an ad agency, and everything will look great, except they'd be giving you the toilet paper account.
Maybe you never envisioned yourself spending all of your waking hours thinking about toilet paper, and, for this reason, you decide you could never take the job. Except the person you'd be working for was really great...And you'd have your own assistant...And there would be a chance for a promotion within six months.
After you weigh all of the aspects of the job, you might feel that other parts of the job compensate for its subject matter. Even though your emotional side is telling you to turn the job down, your rational side is telling you to accept. It's fine to go on gut feelings if you've looked very carefully at a specific job. In fact, it's important to listen closely to your gut feelings, especially when they're negative.
"Job hunters should listen to their gut feelings," says Dr. Goebes. "They have a right to reject the people, the location, the salary, the benefits or whatever."Making Your Own Decision As you use your rating systems, it's crucial that you accept or reject job offers to please yourself, not to please other people. It can't be said too many times that you need to base your job hunting decisions on what you want since you are the person who will have to live with the consequences of your decision.
Finding out what it is that you want requires you to be candid with yourself. If you proceed honestly during the decision-making process and admit to yourself that large companies intimidate you or frequent travel tires you, you can weed out jobs falling into those categories and select a company at which you'd be happy.
However, if you're secretly afraid to weed out large companies, or jobs which require travel, because you think good job hunters shouldn't weed anything out, you may find yourself in a job for which you are ill-suited.
"Look at the pros and cons of each offer you're made," says career counselor Sherrie Pavol Bereda of Career Concepts. "Think about where you want to be five years from now." As part of being honest with yourself, you also need to make sure you aren't accepting a job for the wrong reasons. There are a variety of "wrong" reasons to select a job.
In general, any time you take a job because you feel you should, and not because you feel you want to, you have probably accepted a job for the wrong reason.
"Go with what's really important to you," suggests Dr. Goebes, "not with what should be important to you." When you are trying to decide on a job, it helps to think of the job as something concrete which you could pick up and put on a huge scale. You can weigh the good parts of the job and the bad parts of the job. If most of the job appears to be bad, but there is one overriding factor which tips the balance of the scale so it is suddenly much heavier on the good side, this may be an acceptable job for you. Just use caution.
There are several overriding factors which have this effect on job hunters, such as money or prestige. Its O.K. to accept a job on the basis of pay or prestige alone. However, you need to make sure that you aren't being temporarily blinded to the negatives of the job. If the charm of a high salary or a fancy title wears off, you may be left with a job so weighted down on the bad side that you can't believe you ever accepted it.
In other words, make sure that money, prestige or other factors don't become bad decisions for you. If you truly feel they alone would outweigh any negatives for you, then you're probably being honest with yourself and the decision is a good one.
If, on the other hand, you think the job looks miserable, but you feel you shouldn't turn down a high salary, you are probably about to make a bad decision. It all comes down to understanding your own needs and selecting a job that closely matches up with what you really want.
In some ways, it's hard to talk about good decisions and bad decisions, because, as we've discussed, every person's good decision is different. For an aggressive risk-taker who thrives on constant change and interaction with other people, a job in sales or state politics might be a good decision. A job in accounting or in research might be a bad decision. For someone who likes to work independently, the reverse would be true. And for someone who wants a job more in line with their collegiate life-style, a job as a professional party attendee or as a sleep research participant might be most appropriate.
There are a few ways to figure out what would constitute a good decision for you. If you're making a good decision, you're looking at every single aspect of the job. You are noticing the bad and the good, and you are making a judgment as to how the two would balance each other out.
As you make a good decision, you are also comparing the job that you've been offered to your mental checklist of things you need in a job. You are listening to your gut feelings about the job. And you're doing what will make you happy.
Now that you've thought about your own decision-making process, you need to figure out how to best communicate the decisions you make to potential employers.
"Yes, I'll Take It"
First, it helps to remember that there aren't any rigid rules on how to accept or reject a job. As long as you're polite and honest, any way you choose to accept or reject a job offer will be appropriate.
In other words, there's no hidden protocol you must follow. Unlike that time you and your friends crashed that black- tie-party which turned out to be for distinguished alumni, and you ended up with your pictures splashed across the campus newspaper, you don't have to have that uneasy feeling that something you're doing is not quite right.
If you already know your answer is yes, you don't have to ask for more time to make it look like you're taking the offer seriously. Simply tell the employer you're excited to have been made an offer and yes, you are very eager to work for his company.
If you already know your answer is no, you don't have to delay giving the answer to soften the blow. As you've probably found, employers have a pool of job applicants from which to draw, and while they may be disappointed to lose you, they won't suffer for too long. So don't feel guilty about declining an offer that's not right for you.
When you say no, you can simply tell the employer you appreciate having had the opportunity to interview there, but you don't feel the job is an appropriate one for you at this time.
If you find it easier, you can say you're waiting on another offer or you've had something promising come up. However, it s best to be as honest as you can, and a straight no will usually suffice.
Remember to follow up your verbal response with a thank you note, even if you know you don't want to work at this company. Again, you never know to whom you may be referred if you impress someone during your job search, and valuable professional contacts can grow from brief meetings and even from turning down a job with a certain employer.
Finally, if you're not sure what your answer is, you don't have to make a decision on the spot. Instead, you can ask for more time so that you can make a good decision.
"Ask for a week to decide," recommends Pavol Bereda. "Never accept a job as soon as it s offered unless you're absolutely sure."
According to employers and career counselors, it's not unreasonable for job hunters to want to think about a job offer before giving an answer. These experts differed, however, on the amount of time they considered acceptable for job hunters to request before giving employers a decision. Some felt a few days would be the longest amount of time acceptable for job seekers to request. Others felt it would be O.K. to ask for as much as three or four weeks,
GE's Peter Bowen says, "After I make an offer, I give someone a month to decide, and if they need more time, I'll give them an extension,"
Ford's Darrell Washington explains that the length of time available to job hunters to make a decision often varies with the job. "It depends upon the function. In some areas, like finance or engineering, we don't have the luxury to allow a lot of extra time to a job hunter [for decision making,] in other areas, we are not in such a rush,"
The best solution, according to career counselor Susan Schubert of Schubert & Associates, is to ask the interviewer how much time you may have to think about it. "Rather than picking a time frame out of thin air, ask the employer how much time you have to make a decision."When It Rains It Pours
This brings us to the second thing you need to remember as you communicate with potential employers. At some point, it is almost inevitable that you will receive a job offer from one employer while you're still waiting to hear from another employer.
This probably doesn't sound like much of a problem now, but figuring out how to deal with simultaneous offers ahead of time can save you anxiety and uncertainty a few weeks down the road. At that point, the timing of your response may be critical.
When you're trying to juggle simultaneous offers, you need to interact honestly with all of the employers involved. For example, if you get an offer from one company, and you're still waiting to hear from a second company, ask the first company for a little time to make a decision. You don't have to tell them you're waiting to hear on something else. "It doesn't bother me if someone needs more time," says Bowen. "It's all part of the dialogue between myself and the candidate."
After buying some time with the first company, you can then call the second company and explain that you've received another offer, but that you wanted to wait until you had heard about their job. Politely ask for an update on your status. "It's good when job hunters call back and let us know they've received an offer elsewhere," says Perpetual Bank's Terri Goslin-Jones. "That gives us an opportunity to give them a decision in time."
Chrysler's John Stone agrees. "If someone gets an offer from another company before we've made a decision, they should call us and say they're being seriously considered elsewhere."
Luckily, most companies are fairly understanding when it comes to simultaneous job offers. Employers realize that you're interviewing with other companies too, and they know you will be getting other job offers and making some tough decisions.
"Honesty is the best policy," says Bowen. "I wouldn't want to lose someone, and if they needed to know if they had an offer, I'd do my best to accommodate them."
Perhaps the worst thing you could do when faced with two or more offers would be to make rash or hasty decisions. Maybe you don't feel like you can ask the first company for any extra time. The interviewer may have already told you the company is in a huge rush.
Perhaps you don't feel like you can ask the second employer to give you a decision more quickly. Your interviewer may have commented in an off-handed way that she couldn't stand it when job hunters called and pestered her after the interview.
You have several options here. You can play it safe and go with the offer from the first company without knowing if you're going to get an offer from the second company. Or, you can take a risk, turn down the first offer and hope the second company comes through with a job. Finally, you can go to Tahiti and forget the whole thing.
If you go with the first company and decide against the second company before you get an offer there, make sure the job available at the first company would really make you happy. Use your various rating systems to assure that you wouldn't get the job and spend the rest of your life wishing you'd waited on the second company.
If you make the other decision, that of turning down the firm offer from the first company and hoping for an offer from the second company, make sure the job with the second company is worth this risk. You should also consider how you'd feel about continuing to look for a job.
It might not be any big deal to you if you feel confident you will soon have other offers. However, if jobs appear to be tight in your region or you think you've exhausted all of your possibilities, risking losing both the first and second companies might not be worth it.
It's good to remember that up until the time you accept a job offer, you are still judging the company and the job it has available. It might sound as if it's too late for this, but you can tell a tremendous amount about a company and about the person who would be your boss by the way he or she reacts to your request for more time. Or, in the case of a second company from which you are hoping to receive an offer, you are requested for a more rapid decision.
If an employer is rude to you or angry because you're either asking for more time or asking for a more rapid decision, it might tell you what it's like to work at this company. If this makes the employer angry, how is he or she going to feel when you make the inevitable mistake or two that all new employees make? Or when you're sick and you miss a big meeting? If you feel that an employer is trying to pressure you into making a quick decision, take this into account when you make your final decision. Luckily, most employers don't operate this way.
"We don't want to pressure a candidate into making a decision that might not be right," says Stone. "We are interested in finding a match."
Finally, trust your instincts. You've come this far, and you've probably learned a lot about what you want and what you don't want in a job. Take each aspect of the job into consideration, and proceed confidently. If you take your time, you can choose a job you will love. For successful ways to beat the job hunting blues that invariably seem to plague even the most motivated job seekers, see the next chapter.
Choosing A Job You Will Love
- Start thinking now about what is important to you in a job. Do you care more about the office atmosphere or about the substance of your work? What did you like most about your summer jobs? What did you not like? Spend some time jotting down your thoughts about work.
- Start keeping notes on your interviews. Even though it seems like you couldn't forget the details, write down your impressions of the people with whom you interview. Describe the major responsibilities of each job for which you interview. If you had a chance to observe others in the office when you interviewed, did they appear happy? Busy? Energetic? Friendly? Even before you get an offer, go ahead and rate each job for which you interview. This will put you one step ahead when you do start getting offers.
- Write down any questions that occurred to you after you walked out of the interview. If you get called back in, or if you receive an offer, it's perfectly appropriate to ask these questions now. For example, would you be expected to pursue some type of graduate degree after you've worked at the company for a few years? If you took the job, would you get a performance and salary review in six months to a year? Would you be working with other new employees or would you be the only person on your level?
- Congratulate yourself on your progress! You've come a long way, and you are now an expert job hunter. You are sure to find the right job soon.
