Have you had situations where it wasn't choose between two items ... do I want Subway or McDonald's ... What if you are looking for a new career or a new job within your current expertise? How would you weigh all of the variables and decide which job to take? I offer that there is a way to take all of your concerns, your wish list, and use it to decide which opportunity is best for you.

Step 1: Get out a piece of paper and write down things you want to know about your next potential position. Keep in mind that this process works well for buying a car or a house or even choosing a recipe for Easter Sunday. For now we are talking about evaluating a new job and how to make them apples to apples when there are a lot of variables that complicate the decision.

Step 2: Figure out if any of the items on your list are MUST HAVES. Make these clear on your list that if, for example, the office is more than a 30 minute commute that these further than desired job opportunities will be excluded for making it to the final round. A quick note that things like relocation and lengthy commutes should be thought through seriously. If your dream job were to show up in another city or really far across the area where you live, you should think hard about it before crossing it off the list.

Step 3: Take your list of job evaluating criteria and rank them from most important to least on a new piece of paper. Make enough columns so that the jobs you are deciding between have a box in front of each item. Rank each position on a scale of 0 to 10 for each item with 10 being ideal. To do this you need to decide what a 10 is for each category. Be honest with yourself and don't worry about the total numbers, just be consistent as you look at each position and the criteria you've established.

Step 4: Total up the column and see how the different jobs compare. This simple example has each item ranked from 1 to 10. Ensure that if any of your items are more important to your decision, that they receive a heavier weighting. Perhaps the length of your commute may be ranked from 0 to 50 instead of 0 to 10. Another way to do this is to rank each item 0 to 10 then weight each criteria. It works the same way in the end, but may be easier to adjust if you build this into a spreadsheet.

Step 5: Take the top 2 or 3 rated jobs and put them side-by-side and see how they feel. Let you intuition take these items, see where you ranked them differently on paper and you'll know which position to take.

As always, please send any questions to me and I will do what I can to help.

Mark

 

 

Stormy Blues (Arne Bang Huseby) / CC BY 3.0