Choose between career options
Picture from Unsplash
Recently I have stumbled upon two really attractive career options - both with awesome perks and exciting prospects. Not exactly the same direction - for those who are dedicated into one specific department or industry (kinda the chosen-for-life type), I do have high respect to specialists as such, yet I see myself more of being a generalist, who are adaptive and resilient in assessing business situations and solving problems. So the question I face with, is that how to choose between two opportunities that I am seemingly equally passionate about.
Despite my creative mindset of being content creator (writing songs, blogs, etc.), I do have a scientific approach in making decisions with my career. I need that kind of rationale to support decision-making, to really dissect the matter into smaller pieces and reason each of the aspect. As the saying goes, “eat the elephant one bite at a time.” This helps me think through the decision not just clinging on the exciting parts and assuming that bummers can be tolerated, but more important forming a holistic view of the opportunity, so everything can be evaluated relatively fairly on the same scale. It also boosts my confidence and convinces myself of the prioritization and focus of energy. By the end of the day, you are the one and only one that is needed to be convinced, right?
Now I would like to share with you how I evaluate and make decisions between two career opportunities.
First question - what is the metrics. What are the things that you are looking for? Some might think that “well, I would like to have clear directions and interesting tasks. I am not particularly smart to come up with ideas and lead, but I can get things done,” while others might think that “to me performance-to-pay is what I value. I can bring in sales once I go out to the field. For that I would require a strong business especially marketing support. I need materials to show my clients.” These are all valid, but I would really like you to think about what are the aspects that you would value, which are your metrics. For me, I picked the following 7 metrics to measure the two opportunities (one is abbreviated as MIM and another MC). Here is my draft:
My Handwritten Notes
Let me explain a bit more of each. Each metric needs to be defined in a way that makes sense to you, that you know what you are referring to when evaluating by the big caption. In other words, don’t just throw big captions out there, like growth potential and flexibility. Substantiate them. It might have different connotations to different persons, which might not necessarily be reconciled with yours. You need to think a little more in depth of what that means to you.
So for me,
Growth Potentials: potentials to get promoted and raises. This is to say that when you work hard, you will be compensated accordingly, either by promotion to higher position or raises if you are happy with where you are but can deliver marginally (or add additional values) than requirements. Performance-to-pay is definitely important. Never sell yourself short out there!
Skill Development means that I can learn new stuffs and develop new skills. Learning new stuffs could be everything - ranging from business process knowledge, industrial insights, to market information. New skills could be different aspects of analysis, or understanding of different drivers and ramifications, etc. The point is that I am hungry for knowledge, so I am looking for the next opportunity to expose me to new facets and take me to the next level.
Gain on Professional Brand is what I came up with when thinking of myself as a business entity on my own. Whatever experiences that I put on my resume, they need to add values to my core competencies in the labor market. I could take on being a grocery deliverer and earn some money - it could be good experience, but adds minimal positive impact to my professional brand. We are in a competitive environments, so all our time and energy need to be utilized to maximize our professional brands (or profits of myself in the sense of a business entity).
Flexibility here I am specifically referring to the flexibility of going in different directions later in the career. As I mentioned earlier in the article, I perceive (am aiming to further develop) myself as a business generalist than a specialist. I have been working in different departments, including marketing, supply chain, and finance, and I have been working in different environments as well, from the startup in central Boston to the multinational manufacturing giant across 38 countries. My next opportunity is going to train me further to develop holistic and robust understanding of business operations. So if I want to change my job in the future, I will have the flexible and stronger professional brand to march forward in my life.
Well-paid. I mean, yeah. Research the industrial average and then adjust your expectations based on your strengths and weaknesses compared to other of similar positions.
Interesting and Fun is speaking to the working and living environment. If the job matches my above metrics, the job responsibilities should be fairly interesting and fun to me, so should colleagues. I am a firm believer that you are only as good as your friends (or colleagues since we are talking professionally here) are. So here I am considering working environment to be less rigid - meaning not so much of corporate theater (if you know what I am talking about) that it is impairing the productivity and satisfaction of the job. Some big companies also have small communities, interest clubs, annual Christmas party, etc. to pull people together. It definitely depends on the colleagues, but in general appropriate amount of socialization is great for fostering a vibrant working environment. Second is the living environment, meaning where the work location is. I moved from East Coast to the South, where natural environments are amazing. Trees are beautiful but … definitely not the fun city on the East Coast. I miss the delicate and delicious sushi (not the deep-fried ones in South) just to begin with.
Stable & Strategic. I found this to be relevant especially when the pandemics hit where millions of people lost their jobs. This ties back to the core competencies, where I need to be the timeless gold to shine regardless of times. I define this metric for the job to be the one that “makes the business better in good times, and critical/essential in bad times to turn around the situation.”
Now that we have the metrics. Next step is to prioritize.
The way that I do this is by weighting the metrics. Important to note is that when weighting the metrics, different career phases matter. For someone who is early 20s starting up, skill development might matter more compared to a 30-year-old where professional brand could carry a higher weight. When the person gets to 40s, 50s, 60s, different ages have different valuations of things that matter in life at the stage. For me, who is fairly young in my career development, I weigh Reputation and Flexibility as equally important of 20%, and Skill Development and Stability follow with 15% respectively. You can refer back to the picture where I did my weighting to see for all metrics.
Next it comes the core step of scoring!
Now that we peel the orange by slices, we can think independently without interferences of other factors, on each metric. Everyone is on the equal scale of 0-10, and you are the master to choose your destiny. Get a friend to talk it over, which I found extremely helpful to have a third person to critique and bring up points that you might have been blinded by other thoughts. No one has 360 degrees of vision. I talked it through with my significant other, where I first explained the methodology, then my metrics. We did the weighting and then scoring together, mainly led by my thought yet he offered valuable insights and considerations which were in my blind spots.
Final step is to calculate the weighted average.
You simply multiply each score by its weight - and voila - you have the scores to compare. You see in my case the two positions are really close, MIM scores 5.8 while MC 5.55. What is amazing about having metrics is that it really allows me to see where the biggest differences come from. Looking at the scorecard, both Reputation and Flexibility MIM scores 7 and 6 respectively compared to MC 5 and 5, where these two metrics are what I value the most at my current stage of career. Now I know where to focus on pulling extra strings to complete the application package as perfect as I could and proactively prepare to the fullest for the interview, to increase the probability of landing the job. What I realize is that, later on in the career, it is no longer fishing from the ocean, meaning sending as many identical, or semi-customized but no real substances, resumes and cover letters as possible, hoping that one would respond out of a hundred.
Final Words:
A book recommendation here which has impacted my thinking process is The Long View by Brian Fetherstonhaugh, where he talks about similar metrics but more focused on long term career strategies - where you are today to where you want to be tomorrow. A small book but a powerful tool to help navigate your career!
The Long View
by Brian Fetherstonhaugh
Hope it is helpful. Wish me luck! Let me know your thought!
