Deciding to find a new job
The perfect job begins only when we decide to look for it. This may seem intuitive, however, you might be surprised how often a person jumps from one job they don’t like to another job they end up not liking. So, how do we ensure we are not one of the individuals in that statistic?
We start by being clear about what we want and what we need, in other words, something perfect for us. The perfect jobs (yes there is of course more than one) all include the following attributes:
- A compensation package that motivates you to want to work
- A job description of activities that you want to do
- A company culture within which you want to develop and grow
Now we’re clearer about the things we need to consider in our search for the perfect job, how do we find it?
An online search
Online searches can be fraught with rabbit holes, so it helps to have a starting strategy that avoids this pitfall. It is best to think of target roles in terms of content rather than a particular job title. Why do I say this when some of you may be thinking I want a managerial or director-level position or I want to be a Machine Learning Engineer? It is simple. The job description is the better indicator to assess whether the role will challenge, stimulate, and fulfill you. Job titles can be incredibly misleading. A director in one company may be a team leader in another, or a network engineer in one company might be a Desktop Technician in another. This issue is largely side-stepped by understanding job descriptions.
Online searches should also involve social media. LinkedIn is a powerful tool for finding helpful connections or contacts in a target company, making it a useful resource for identifying the perfect job. We can use it to identify individuals who currently, or formerly, work in the organization. From them, we can get a sense of job content and job descriptions, as well as company culture. LinkedIn is the one social media tool where most people are happy to receive cold connection requests. We can ask for help or support in making an introduction or ask for a little more information about the role or the company. Note, this is not about selling something – that continues to irritate the average person. Keep in mind that LinkedIn is a professional networking tool by design, so use it to your advantage.
Taking on new challenges – a route to the perfect job
The decision to leave an existing employer is a significant one for most people. A time of upheaval and change – so we are best served to consider making meaningful changes. So, if we’ve worked in one industry sector such as pharmaceuticals or in one job type such as bookkeeping or marketing event management, it might just be time to consider branching out. If we expand our thinking beyond bookkeeping to other roles in finance or accounting, we open the door to more possibilities. The same is true if we extend this idea and think outside of our existing industry sector – all industry types need good human resource (HR) employees. The same is true for many other job families like marketing, finance, or sales. So simply looking outside of our existing industry type can dramatically increase career opportunities.
Tackling the elephant in the room – proper pay for that perfect job
To most of us, at least to a degree, money (or total compensation in HR speak) matters and motivates. This means that it is important to understand the salary range applicable to the job for which we are applying. There is no point in pursuing a job with a range that is significantly off where you want to be, and similarly, it is important to be realistic about the salary range. Taking this step often means learning the art of negotiation. It certainly helps to have friends in the legal profession or recruiting trade. They are helpful resources to offer practical and meaningful advice that helps in our negotiation with a potential employer. It matters because being paid in a fair manner increases the positive impact we have on our working environment.
Final Thoughts
By changing the way, we think about the perfect job and bringing it down to:
- What we want to do
- What we believe is a realistic and fair compensation scheme for that role, and
- How we conduct a job search
We dramatically increase our chances of getting what we want. As the saying goes “there is no time like the present” to decide to get the perfect job!
Your turn
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Cartoon credit: Nansclark