The grass can always seem greener somewhere else. Maybe it comes from you hearing a story about someone your age or with similar experience that is making 30% more in salary than you are making today. Or maybe it is knowing about someone’s flexible work-from-home options or shorter working hours. Whatever the reason, there is always something that sounds appealing about making a move.
What might be less apparent to you is that for every story you hear about more benefits, or money, or better hours than what you experience today, those same people may have envy over some of your working environment options…and you don’t even realize it.
So how can you really know when your best opportunities truly are somewhere else? The real answer is that there isn’t always a clear real answer. What can make the decision more confident for you is if you take time to evaluate what will drive your long-term career needs and how your current employer fits with your desired future plans.
Determine What’s Really Important to You
At Corporate Path Leadership, we recommend that you start this process by identifying how important the following workplace characteristics are to you and your career:
- Work/Life Balance (work that allows you freedom in your personal life)
- Company Passion (how much the work your company does motivates you)
- Stability (how secure you feel with your company and your position)
- Management (the health of the working relationship with your manager)
- Co-Workers (how well you connect with and feel about your peers)
- Growth (your assessment of the company’s opportunity for future growth)
- Culture (how your company feels, celebrates, rewards, motivates, etc.)
- Learning (the opportunities for you to develop new skills and grow)
- Engagement (the level of collaboration and teamwork you have with your team, department, company, etc.)
- Senior Leadership (the respect you have for the leaders of your company)
- Skills Match (how much your position leverages your strengths/capabilities)
- Change (your comfort level with change, and how your company matches your comfort level)
- Challenge (how much your job pushes you to grow, and your comfort level with that push)
- Advancement (career advancement opportunities within your organization)
- Compensation (how well you are paid for your work vs. market norms)
- Benefits (what other benefits come with your position such as paid time off, bonuses, perks, 401K matching, etc.)
- Physical Office Environment (if applicable, how appealing is your office and the rules regarding how often you need to be there)
NOTE: Feel free to add in other characteristics not listed here that you think are worthy of including in your consideration set.
Evaluate Your Current Employer (or a New One)
STEP ONE: Rate the Importance of These Job Characteristics/Attributes
Once your consideration list is established, take your time to think about how important each of these factors is to you. You can either rate the factors on a “high”, “medium” or “low” importance measure, or be more precise and rate each factor on a scale of 1-10 with a rating of 1 equaling “not important at all” and 10 equaling “most important”. Whatever method you choose, this first pass should help you think more clearly about how these factors compare to each other.
For example: You might have compensation rated as “8” but realize that advancement, challenge, management, engagement and work/life balance are all a “10” rating.
STEP TWO: Rate Your Current Employer
The second step is to do an honest assessment of your current employer. Where do your ratings of your job fall below your importance ratings for that same attribute? These are all clues of areas of discontent – and also can help you realize other areas where your current position is meeting or even exceeding your current importance ratings. That is extremely valuable information to keep in mind before you jump for another opportunity!!
The table below can help you identify positive and negative gaps (and the numbers associated with those gaps) when considering how important an attribute is, and where your satisfaction with your current job rates.
STEP THREE: Rate a Future Employer
These same attributes are important areas to probe if you do have exploratory information conversations or formal interviews with another company. The last thing you want to do is move to another company to satisfy one variable (like compensation), only to realize the new environment performs worse than your current position in other highly valued consideration factors (like advancement, challenge, management, engagement, etc.).
You can use this list of considerations to help craft questions for a potential new employer. Then use the gap data to decide if the new employer might be a better fit.
For example: If collaboration is really critical for any position, ask your potential new employer if you can talk with someone who would be a peer to your role to find out more about how the company operates, culture etc. Then use that peer conversation to dig into questions that give you confidence (or not) that the new company can deliver on collaboration.
We’re Here to Help
The bottom line is that all companies and jobs come with both strengths and weaknesses. Your mission should be to discover where your current employer is meeting or exceeding your needs, what areas matter the most to you, and what new opportunity is the right one worth a move and upheaval vs. those opportunities that might look appealing at first glance but have hidden dangers within.
If you are still struggling with this important career path question, don’t hesitate to reach out to us for help. Sometimes a neutral third-party partner is your best way to boost confidence for whatever path you choose!