Avoiding 7 Key Job Mistakes

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Your Situation or Challenge:

Hi, I’m a marketing communications specialist for an electronic components company based in the Northeast.  This is my second job since graduating from college 3 years ago with a bachelor’s degree in marketing communications.  My first job was with an advertising agency, but I quickly learned that that highly competitive environment wasn’t a good fit for me.  I kept taking on things people asked me to do, just to keep up with everyone else.  I soon ran out of time and energy to get everything done I said I would.  I think I got out just in time.  I was sinking!  Luckily, I had a very good client relationship where they wanted me to join their marketing department.  I jumped at the chance.  Now, I think I’m doing pretty well in the early months of my job, but I find myself worrying a lot about making the same mistakes again.  Yes, I’m concerned that I will drown again in all the things people want me to do, but I also worry that I could fail at other things like having problems with my peers or not being taken seriously by senior management when it really counts.

Your Question to Dr. Robert Wiley:

 Can you help me with some kind of road map so I don’t crash in my journey here?

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In previous blogs, I talked a lot about personal learning and positive action steps most people will benefit from to get a job, deliver strong first year performance, get promoted early and build sustainable career passion (and success).  In this blog, because of your questions, I am focusing my attention on managing the “dark side” of success – avoiding key mistakes that many of us make that can derail us in a current job and even longer term in our careers.  By being insightful about these potential mistakes and taking preventative actions, like in your situation, you can greatly reduce your risk of job failure and, thereby, substantially increase your probability of job and career success.

Avoiding 7 Key Job Mistakes

Over my 25+ years in human resources management and people development, I have commonly encountered the following 7 key job mistakes that often result in poor performance and even job loss:

1. Taking a job that doesn’t fit you
2. Failing to leverage your strengths and manage your weaknesses
3. Losing sight of your performance priorities
4. Misunderstanding what your manager really wants and needs
5. Failing to build effective interpersonal relationships and influence
6. Lacking a broader perspective around your job
7. Losing credibility

Below, I have identified some of the fundamental considerations for each of these mistakes and suggested practical actions for managing or avoiding them altogether.

1. Taking a job that doesn’t fit you.  I noted in my October 16, 2011 blog that a person’s risk of performance anxiety, frustration and possibly failure increases substantially when the gap between job skill requirements and their current skills exceeds about 20%.  A 20% skills gap doesn’t condemn someone to performance failure, but the probability of failure increases rapidly as the gap approaches 40% or more.  The skills I am referring to include technical / functional based “hard skills” and social / personality based “soft skills” that are needed to varying degrees in almost all jobs.  I previously suggested a systematic approach to assessing the presence of any significant job / skill gaps.  To avoid this potential derailment mistake, I suggest you avoid taking jobs where your skills gap is near 40% or greater.  This applies to promotions you may be offered as well as new hire opportunities.  Job failure often begins at the start when you take the wrong job for you.
2. Failing to leverage your strengths and manage your weaknesses.  Making sure you have the right job/skills fit as you start a job usually requires a great deal of objective insight about your own career-oriented strengths vs. weaknesses.  I previously suggested a thorough self-assessment covering strengths vs. weaknesses in several areas including work activity preferences, aptitudes and skills, core personality characteristics, work/life values, career dreams, company culture, and manager personality.  As suggested by many experts in the field of career development, it is critically important to know and leverage your strengths.  This means doing work that is strongly supported by the strengths you have or that you will rapidly develop.  It also means knowing your weaknesses (knowledge, personal characteristics, hard skills, soft skills, etc.) and either (a) avoiding work that requires substantial competence in your weak areas, or (b) ensuring that you have others around you who’s strengths will directly compensate for your weaknesses to get the job done.  Option (a) is available to any working individual, while option (b) is much more available to managers and team leaders.  For either option, what really matters is that you manage your weaknesses so they do not interfere with your job performance or derail you in your career progression.
3. Losing sight of your performance priorities.  In my December 19, 2011 blog, I recommended taking charge of creating a written performance plan, with clear objectives and measures, as a key to succeeding in year 1 on a new job.  I suggested that maintaining a sharp focus on achieving those objectives, by using a project management approach, is an important ingredient to your performance success.  It is equally important to avoid getting sucked into spending a lot of time on a daily or weekly stream of requests or demands from others that do not directly contribute to achieving your written performance objectives.  In the management world, this is known as setting your business priorities and staying focused on executing them (and getting the targeted results) before taking on less important projects or activities.  While all of us do some work activities that seem unrelated to our primary performance objectives, a guiding principle for job and career success is to never lose sight of your performance priorities (your 6-8 most important job objectives).  When you do, you can become like a sailboat without a rudder – blown about this way and that by whatever wind prevails.  Whether in sailing or in your job, the risk of doing this is running aground or capsizing.
4. Misunderstanding what your manager really wants and needs.  While most employees have multiple stakeholders (such as one’s manager, co-workers, internal customers, external customers, senior management, etc.), the one with the largest and most immediate impact on your job success is likely to be your manager.  If you do not accurately understand what your manager wants and needs from your work, your job success and security will quickly falter.  Of course a key part of understanding what your manager wants and needs should be reflected in the detailed performance plan I referred to above.  But, this is usually only half of it.  The other half involves how you do your work and how you interact with your manager so that he/she (and you) can be more successful.  You need to understand and deliver the work processes and quality of results your manager expects.  You also need to understand and deliver what your manager needs in your approach to information, communication, preparation and interaction.  As I noted in my January 17, 2012 blog, managers are people who vary enormously in their personalities and approaches to their jobs.  The most successful employees quickly learn how to interact and work with their managers in a way that effectively accommodates their personalities and management styles.  Failure to do so will soon lead to mutual frustration and disconnection with your manager.
5. Failing to build effective interpersonal relationships and influence.  Without contradicting what I’ve said above, it is also usually important to one’s job success to build effective, influential working relationships beyond the one you have with your manager.  Most employees have co-workers or other employees around them where some degree of collaboration or mutual assistance is necessary to achieve the desired results.  If so, failure to effectively collaborate can damage the results your manager expects and reflect negatively on your performance.  Even if this were not the case, other employees’ opinions of you can affect how your manager views your contribution and potential.  Many companies institutionalize this reality by periodically using written “360 degree” feedback to clarify how an individual employee is viewed by their key stakeholders.  Any substantial amount of negative feedback can damage your performance review and continuing job prospects.
6. Lacking a broader perspective around your job.  Going to work and just doing your job, no more and no less, may seem like an ok idea, especially if you usually think in terms of doing what you’re paid for.  Most managers, however, think in terms of what value your job must contribute to the results of their department, business unit and company as a whole.  If you fail to learn and communicate how your job performance contributes to the broader organization and overall enterprise results, your manager and other employees are likely to see you as narrowly focused and replaceable (somewhat like a cog in a machine).  Failure to substantially understand how your contributions fit into the bigger picture also tends to reduce the effectiveness of your basic performance because you will be less able to come up with new approaches or solutions for the business.  Senior management of your company is likely to be particularly unimpressed with employees who don’t proactively connect themselves to the bigger picture, particularly when such employees seem otherwise interested in pay increases and promotions.
7. Losing credibility.  There are lots of ways to lose credibility as an employee, all of which you should be aware of and consistently try to avoid.  Here is a partial list of some of the most potent ways to lose credibility once you have taken a job with your employer:

• Exaggerating or lying – it seems that only politicians can get away with exaggerating or lying, since the public seems to expect it in their role!  Everyone else cannot do it very much without losing their credibility.  When other employees cannot rely on what you say, they tend to denigrate and dismiss you in their minds and in their decision making.
• Failing to meet commitments – an occasional “miss” on delivering expected results can be acceptable, if circumstances dictate it and you have consulted your stakeholders ahead of the deadline.  Frequent failure to meet your commitments, either timing or results, will carry the message loud and clear that you are not reliable.  If you are not reliable in a business setting, you have little credibility since businesses thrive on meeting their commitments to customers, suppliers and employees.
• Talking negatively about others – it is all too easy for many employees to make sport out of talking negatively about others particularly behind their backs.  This may seem to some like a cool thing to do, especially when people are trying to impress others or form alliances.  However, it is a credibility killing behavior that soon backfires into distrust toward the speaker.  Listeners will quickly begin to wonder when it will be their turn to be criticized, and they can also wonder if the speaker is covering up something about themselves by focusing negatively on others.
• Failing to collaborate – cooperation across functions and business processes is almost the essence of today’s complex business organization.  It typically takes the coordinated effort of many specialized employee roles to produce, deliver and get paid for the company’s products and/or services.  Simply stated, collaboration is a business necessity up, down and sideways for the vast majority of employee roles.  When one is reluctant to collaborate on the job (or ineffective at collaborating), other employees recognize almost instinctively that this employee’s credibility may soon be at risk.  The loss of credibility in this instance has to do with violating a basic necessity of the organization.  If you do that blatantly or consistently, you will soon be seen as someone who cannot be trusted to be a team member.
• Being self-centered – while being self-centered can be related to failing to collaborate, they are not identical.  Being self-centered is often about giving most of the credit to yourself and little to others, and it usually involves an obvious pattern of focusing on your own concerns, preferences and ideas ahead of or instead of others’.  Self-centered employees may be collaborative in the sense that they expect others to collaborate with them (i.e., follow their direction or meet their needs) rather than the reverse.  With consistent self-centered behaviors, an employee will soon be negatively categorized and even shunned by many other employees.  People do not typically like feeling “invisible” or “second class” in their relationships with other employees.
• Failure to lead as a leader – while the vast majority of employees are not in management or supervisor roles, those who do must be consistently competent at leading others, or else much of their credibility in the organization will be lost.  The basics of leading others involve giving direction, engaging collaboration and motivating employees to achieve the organization’s objectives.  When a manager or supervisor cannot do this competently, the common view is that they are weak (as a leader) and, therefore, have little credibility in the organization.

To recap, there is a positive side to sustaining success in your job and career, and there is a negative side.  The positive side is based on knowing and leveraging your strengths and preferences.  The negative side is based on knowing and minimizing your weaknesses along with knowing and avoiding key job mistakes that can derail you from your job or even your career.  Take care of both sides and you will almost certainly find success!

Dr. Robert Wiley

Succeeding in Year 1 – Building Influential Work Relationships

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Your Situation or Challenge:

I started a new job two weeks ago.  This job is kind of a change in career direction for me because I have moved from a creative role to an account management role in advertising.  I think this is the right thing for me since I really like working with people most of the time.  But, I’m concerned about being successful in this new assignment, particularly since my new boss has a reputation for being very demanding.  When she hired me, she told me to take a few weeks to see how things work in the firm and bone-up on the two accounts I have been assigned to.  She said that I should come and talk to her any time if I have questions, but she’s constantly booked with appointments and emergencies.  I’ve talked to several of my co-workers who say that you’ve got to get a good performance review in your first year in this firm or you are history.  They tell me that my boss is tough to work for and can be unpredictable.

Your Question to Dr. Robert Wiley:

How can I make sure I get a good performance review in my first year?

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In my previous blog, I addressed primarily the first of four key success drivers for your first year in the new job:

1. Fully meeting or exceeding the measurable performance objectives of your job

2. Effectively adapting to your manager’s performance expectations and style

3. Building broader, influential relationships

4. Learning how to contribute to the total business and organization

In this blog, I am addressing drivers 2-4, and here are the key action steps I will cover:

A. Develop an in-depth, influential work relationship with your manager

B. Accommodate your manager’s personal view about how to make a strong contribution to the organization.

C. Build influential relationships with co-workers and other stakeholders

D. Communicate your contributions to the total business

A. Develop an in-depth relationship with your manager

Beyond accomplishing your defined performance objectives, a key goal should be to build a very effective working relationship with your manager.  This usually requires developing a substantial understanding of his/her background, personality and work preferences.  As a veteran army officer said to me recently, “You can’t influence someone until you really get to know them.”  You want to influence your manager to support you, enable your superior job contribution and fully recognize/reward your performance at the end of the year.  To do this in your first year, you need to get to know your manager well, much faster than the average employee does (which is often 2-3 years).  To accelerate your knowledge, you will need to assert yourself in taking advantage of early opportunities to interview and draw out your manager.  Managers are usually quite willing to talk about themselves with their employees, when asked, particularly early in the working relationship.  You need to go counter to the typical new employee tendency to observe somewhat passively and be cautious about seeking “personal” information about their manager.

Here are several areas that you will want to draw out information about your manager, if you can:

1. Career background and key career accomplishments

2. Educational background and attitudes about education

3. Family background and how this influenced them

4. Current family situation, hobbies and personal interests

5. Personal strengths – predominant personality characteristics, preferences and leadership style

6. Your manager’s personal view about how to make a strong contribution to the organization.

Below is a selection of useful questions to ask along with some practical concepts to organize your thinking in these areas.

1. Career background and key career accomplishments.  Show an interest in your manager’s career background and, as needed, explain that understanding this will help you work with them better.  Ask, “Would you mind telling me about your career and the contributions you think have been most important?”  Ask for details and the outcomes of various situations, like a series of career stories.  You’ll be amazed at how much your manager will enjoy sharing this information with you.  To deepen your insight, ask them to tell you some details about how they handled some of the situations in their career stories.

2. Educational background and attitudes about education.  Ditto the above for educational background.  Ask, “Would you mind telling me about your formal education and how that affected your life since?”  You should be looking for clues about their key motivations and learned values that have affected their orientation at work.

3. Family background and how this influenced them.  With the rapport that can result from discussion of the above topics, many managers will be comfortable talking about their family background.  They may even volunteer quite a bit of information without prompting.  Ask, “What things influenced you the most growing up in your family?  Or, “what was it like growing up in your family and how did it affect you?”  Again, you should be looking for clues about their key motivations, learned values and preferred ways to do things.

4. Current family situation, hobbies and personal interests.  Since you are not hiring your manager, it is perfectly acceptable to inquire about their spouse or significant other, parents, kids, pets, hobbies and personal interests.  Usually, the best way to broach this topic is to share information about your own and see what your manager volunteers.  Inquiring about how they manage their own work/life balance is another to stimulate discussion of this topic.  Why talk about this area at all?  If you do it with genuine interest, it will help build your relationship and potentially give you important insights about your manager.  When you show a genuine interest in the personal side of your manager, they are more likely to show that interest in you which can be an important part of building a successful work relationship.

5. Personal strengths, predominant personality characteristics, preferences and leadership style.  These are some of the key things about your manager you want to learn in order to build a highly successful work relationship.  You can glean information about these things from exploring all of the above topics, along with asking your manager to describe for you how they handled a variety of challenging work situations over the past few years.  The most natural ways to lead into this kind of inquiry include (a) asking for more detail about what they did in situations they happen to mention during a conversation, and (b) asking if they ever had a work situation like one you are trying to deal with and how they handled it.

To develop useful insight about your manager in these areas, you will need a practical conceptual framework to guide your thinking and organize what you learn about your manager.  There are three conceptual frameworks I have used over the years that can be very helpful for this purpose.  These frameworks are well known in the business world and include Social Motives, Personality Preferences and Leadership Styles.  I am describing them briefly here and referring you to additional reading to deepen your knowledge.

Social Motives

This framework was introduced and extensively research by the social psychologist David McClelland at Harvard University (1).  It suggests that there are three basic social motives that vary in degree and can predict a lot about a manager’s work behavior.  These motives include power, affiliation and achievement.

Power.  A manager high on power motive will seek to influence others and will be influenced most by other high power individuals along with money.

Affiliation.  A manager high in affiliation motive will seek comfortable, secure, close work relationships and will be influenced the most by such relationships.

Achievement.  A manager high on achievement motive will seek distinguished individual achievement and will be influenced most by considerations of quality, originality and excellent performance.

Gaining insight to your manager’s social motives profile can help you understand (a) what he/she is likely to value in your own performance and (b) how you can have the most positive influence.  How do you determine whether your boss is high, medium or low on these social motives?  The most powerful way is to observe his/her patterns of behavior that may be consistent with one or more of the above descriptions.  Does your boss thrive on interacting with more powerful people, influencing others or enjoying the status of money? (Power Motive)  Does he/she consistently take extra time to engage in friendly conversation and show a lot of loyalty to established relationships? (Affiliation Motive) Is he/she driven to personally be an outstanding performer and take pride in surpassing the results of others? (Achievement Motive) You can also glean a lot of clues from simply asking them what they are passionate about at work or what energizes them the most in what they do.  Social motives tend to be “deep level psychological structures” that are relatively resistant to change and affect a manager’s preferences and leadership style.  Getting an accurate understanding of your manager’s social motive profile can help you understand and better predict a lot of their work behavior over time.

Personality Preferences

This personality preferences framework was introduced by Carl Jung in 1921. (2) The framework was adopted by Katherine Briggs and Isabelle Meyer who developed the Myers Briggs Type Inventory (MBTI) by 1962.  The MBTI has been the most widely used personality profiling tool in the business world and other work settings.  It is used extensively for purposes like professional development and team building.  The MBTI framework uses bi-polar dimensions to indicate an individual’s preferred style in four areas of functioning:  Extroversion vs. Introversion, Sensing vs. Intuition, Thinking vs. Feeling and Judging vs. Perceiving.

Extroversion vs. Introversion.  Extroverts prefer and are energized more by interacting with others, while introverts prefer and are energized more by inner thoughts and time alone.  Extroverts “think out loud” while discussing things with others.  Introverts may consult others, but they prefer quiet time to prepare, contemplate and gather their own thoughts.

Sensing vs. Intuition.  Sensers prefer utilizing information they can gather from the external world through their senses such as sight and hearing.  Sensers tend to focus more on practical, concrete details and matters.  Intuiters prefer utilizing internal information or ideas from their thinking processes.  Intuiters tend to focus more on concepts and possibilities.

Thinking vs. Feeling.  Thinkers prefer using logic, analysis and critical thinking to make decisions.  Feelers prefer to make decisions based on how they and others around them feel emotionally about an issue.

Judging vs. Perceiving.  Judgers prefer to do things in a planned, organized, scheduled manner.  Perceivers prefer to take things as they come and go with the flow, often without a plan or schedule.

An individual’s MBTI “type” or profile is usually determined by taking the MBTI questionnaire (typically over the internet).  But, it can be identified through behavioral observation or self-report, as well.  If you look closely enough, you will be able to see patterns of preferred behavior in your boss that indicate which end of the four MBTI dimensions they tend toward.  It is also amazing how much people usually enjoy talking about their own MBTI profile, often volunteering examples of how it comes out in their daily life.  Just asking your boss what their MBTI profile is will usually do the trick, since a great many of them have “taken the test” at some point in their career.  Validated MBTI profiles can be very predictive about how a person prefers to work and handle relationships in a work setting.  Knowing and accommodating your manager’s MBTI preferences in the work place can help you build a very positive, productive relationship that is strong on communication and collaboration.  This is not a one-way process, however, since sharing your own MBTI preferences and strengths can provide valuable information to your manager about how you can be best utilized and supported as a team member.  There is a lot of good information widely available for learning more about MBTI profiles and how to benefit from this way of understanding people. (2)

Leadership Styles

The leadership styles framework was introduced by Litwin and Stringer at Harvard Business School in 1968 (4) and has since been adopted and adapted widely (5).  This framework consists of six leadership styles which can be demonstrated to varying degrees by a leader.  These include:

Coercive.  The manager tends to be directive, demanding, top-down and often punitive toward their employees.

Authoritative.  The manager tends to give clear overall direction but uses a lot of persuasion and delegation with their employees.  This is the “firm but fair” type.

Affiliative.  The manager tends to promote friendly, comfortable, harmonious relationships with their employees.  The emphasis is on avoiding conflict and maintaining a calm interpersonal environment.

Democratic.  The manager seeks a lot of participation and consensus building among members of their team or organization.  Direction setting is more likely to come from the group than the leader.

Pacesetting.  The manager is highly focused on excellent or highly competitive individual performance, usually starting with their own.  The leader literally “sets the pace” in their own work and expects others to follow.

Coaching.  The manager tends to focus on providing feedback, coaching and developing their employees to leverage their skills and minimize the impact of their weaknesses in the workplace.  They tend to be less concerned about immediate performance or results.

Preferred leadership styles are predictable and, therefore, useful for understanding how your manager is likely to motivate and give direction to you and other employees.  Most managers try to draw from at least two leadership styles and will take different approaches to different people or situations.  However, almost all managers have one style they really prefer and are likely to use much of the time, particularly when stress and pressure are higher.  You can quickly learn your manager’s leadership style through observation or discussion with your co-workers who have been around the manager for a while.  One principle to keep in mind is that fairly recent past behavior is the best predictor of future behavior.  If you can understand the preferred leadership style(s) demonstrated by your manager in the past 1-2 years, you will understand how to predict much of their behavior at work with you.  It is important to learn how to accommodate preferred leadership styles at work and how to constructively handle the problems they all stimulate from time to time.

6. Your manager’s personal view about how to make a strong contribution to the organization.  Of course, most of us are employed because a company (or other organization) is willing to pay for a tangible contribution we can make to the desired results.  Without this need for contribution to results, there would be no jobs.  So, along with really getting to know your new boss as a person, it is also critically important to quickly understand their personal view about what will constitute a strong contribution to the organization through your job performance.  Since I addressed this at some length in a prior blog (Succeeding in Year 1 – Owning Your Performance Plan, December 19, 2011), I won’t cover all the details here.  In principle, however, you need to take early initiative to identify, quantify and gain your manager’s approval for a specific set of performance objectives for your first year on the job.  This means creating a written performance plan with a clear description of measurable results that your manager wants to see from your performance.  It is also very important to have several discussions with your manager, during the year, about how he/she expects you to generate the results in a manner that would be seen as a strong contribution to the organization.  For example, your manager may be particularly interested in approaches like team collaboration, independent performance or getting frequent updates.

C. Build influential relationships with co-workers and other stakeholders

If you can really get to know your manager, as suggested above, you can use the same principles and approaches I’ve recommended to build positive, influential relationships with your co-workers and other important stakeholders at work.  Other stakeholders include customers, suppliers and people you must interact with at work and who may significantly influence what happens to you there.  These relationships are important to your success in your first year and thereafter, for at least two reasons.  First, their opinion of you, their relationship with you and their perception of your performance can significantly influence your manager’s view of your contribution and potential.  Second, but not less important, your ability to make a tangible contribution to the organization’s desired results depends on building a good working relationship and proactively collaborating with these people.  So, draw from the principles and actions I recommended above to build and sustain these relationships!

D. Communicate your contributions to the total business

Building on my point about learning your manager’s view on how to make a strong contribution to the organization through your job performance, I encourage you to further expand your knowledge of how the organization works, what enterprise results are desired by senior management and how your work results make a contribution to the enterprise’s results.  When you talk knowledgeably about the bigger picture of enterprise results (and other business unit results) and how your work contributes to them, you are much more likely to be perceived by your manager and other stakeholders as someone who is very conscious about creating real value from your work and as someone who has a broader view of what the organization needs to operate effectively.  For most managers, cultivating this image as a contributor to the total business / organization (rather than just being a worker) is likely to have a positive impact on your first year performance review and job success beyond that.

While it is important to learn the bigger picture and talk about how your work contributes to it, it is equally important to avoid giving an impression of arrogance or self-importance as you do so.  The implication is that you should typically avoid things like bragging about your contribution to the organization, comparing yourself favorably to others or giving a lot of uninvited advice to others.  The image you want to create is that of an employee who is genuinely concerned and knowledgeable about the goals of the organization and who understands and is committed to contributing real value to those goals through your results and work relationships.

To recap, the key action steps I recommend you take for increasing your chances of getting a good performance review in your first year are:

A. Develop an in-depth, influential work relationship with your manager

• Really get to know your manager – motives, preferences and leadership style

• Adapt your work style to your manager

• Educate your manager about you and your strengths

• Leverage your strengths in this working relationship

B. Utilize your manager’s personal view about how to make a strong contribution to the organization.

• Get written performance objectives and understand how your manager wants you to achieve them

C. Build influential relationships with co-workers and other stakeholders

• Utilize your knowledge of motives, preferences and leadership style to build effective, influential relationships with others

D. Communicate your contributions to the total business

• Understand how your job contributes to the total business

• Cultivate a positive contributor image with all stakeholders

If you are not already knowledgeable about personality characteristics, preferences and leadership style, you will do yourself a big favor by digging into these topics with the books I recommended and other related resources.  Develop your insight into people and learn how to build influential, collaborative, effective work relationships with your manager and others.  This will help you successfully navigate your way through your first year on the job and strengthen some fundamental capabilities needed for longer term career success.  In addition, learn the business, overall objectives and operating processes typical of your organization.  Think in terms of how you can contribute to the desired results of the broader organization and make sure you consistently communicate your contributions in those terms to your manager and others.

May you thrive and far exceed your manager’s performance expectations in your first year!

Dr. Robert Wiley

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References

(1) McClelland, David (January 29, 1988).  Human Motivation. ISBN 0521369517.

(2) Jung, Carl Gustav (August 1, 1971). “Psychological Types”. Collected Works of C.G. Jung, Volume 6. Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-09774.

(3) Myers, Isabel Briggs with Peter B. Myers (1980, 1995). Gifts Differing: Understanding Personality Type. Mountain View, CA: Davies-Black Publishing. ISBN 0-89106-074-X.  Also see Myers, Isabel Briggs; Mary H. McCaulley (1985). Manual: A Guide to the Development and Use of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (2nd ed.). Palo Alto, CA: Consulting Psychologists Press. ISBN 0-89106-027-8.

(4) Litwin, G.H. & Stringer, R.A., 1968. Motivation and organizational climate, Harvard Business School, Division of Research.   Available at:  http://books.google.cl/books?id=FVevAAAAIAAJ.

(5) Also see leadership styles in Goleman, Daniel; Boyatsis, Richard and McKee, Annie.  Primal Leadership.  Harvard Business School Publishing, 2002.

Succeeding in Year 1 – Owning Your Performance Plan

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Your Situation or Challenge:

I started a new job two weeks ago.  This job is kind of a change in career direction for me because I have moved from a creative role to an account management role in advertising.  I think this is the right thing for me since I really like working with people most of the time.  But, I’m concerned about being successful in this new assignment, particularly since my new boss has a reputation for being very demanding.  When she hired me, she told me to take a few weeks to see how things work in the firm and bone-up on the two accounts I have been assigned to.  She said that I should come and talk to her any time if I have questions, but she’s constantly booked with appointments and emergencies.  I’ve talked to several of my co-workers who say that you’ve got to get a good performance review in your first year in this firm or you are history.  They tell me that my boss is tough to work for and can be unpredictable.

Your Question to Dr. Robert Wiley:

How can I make sure I get a good performance review in my first year?

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Congratulations on your new job and change in career direction!  From your comments, it seems like you put a lot of thought into what your key career skills are and what you are most passionate about.  Good work!

Most of us in the working world have been where you are right now with your new job.  It’s exciting and scary at the same time!  You want to do really well, get your career on the right track and make the big risk you’ve taken pay off.  There’s a lot riding on this!  Lots of people around you have advice and “war” stories.  How do you sort through it all and chart a direction that will work for you?

Drivers for First Year Success

In my experience, there are four key drivers of success in your first year:

1. Fully meeting or exceeding the measurable performance objectives of your job

2. Effectively adapting to your manager’s performance expectations

3. Building influential relationships with your manager and others

4. Learning how to contribute to the business and organization

In this blog, I am addressing the first two of these drivers, and here are the key action steps I will cover:

• Make sure you have a good job description

• Get input from co-workers, especially those with similar jobs

• Draft 6-8 key performance objectives and measures/indicators

• Negotiate clear, realistic performance goals

• Manage your performance plan like a project

• Keep your manager abreast of your progress

• Write your first draft performance review

Make sure you have a good job description.  If you missed the opportunity to get a current job description when you were interviewing for your new position, now is the time to make up for that.  Understanding what results you need to produce in your first year must start with a solid grasp of your job role, scope, accountabilities and related measures of performance.  These are usually contained in a standard job description for the position.  Many companies make sure they have these from the beginning of one’s employment, as a guide to their hiring, compensation and performance management processes.  But, some companies may not have them because they are much more informal or emerging as organizations.  Whether your company has provided you with a job description or not, you will be doing yourself a big favor by getting one even if you have to write it yourself.  Once you have it, you need to review it with your new manager, point by point, and make sure you understand his/her specific views and expectations about the job.  If you’ve drafted the description, then ask for your manager’s input for modifying and finalizing it.  If you have been given the description, then your questions should be directed toward understanding what it means in terms of key responsibilities and expected results.

Get input from co-workers, especially those with similar jobs.  Once you have reviewed and finalized your job description with your manager, it is usually a good practice to get further input from your co-workers.  You may have co-workers who do work that is very similar to yours, in which case their experience working with your boss and delivering results in the past can be very helpful.  You will want to ask they about your manager’s preferences about work approach as well as his/her expectations about the specific results you must produce.  If you have co-workers in different functions or job roles, they can help you better understand how your responsibilities need to contribute to a broader team effort.  Often, the greatest value to be gleaned from co-worker discussions like this has to do with “how” things are done with this boss, in this department and in the company overall, rather than “what” you may do functionally.  These discussions can give you a distinctive sense of the organizational culture and “how things really work.”  Usually, this information is just as important as the specifics about your formal job accountabilities.

Draft 6-8 key performance objectives and measures/indicators.  Don’t stop once you have a finalized job description.  While essential, the job description tells you only what your job involves on a regular, overall basis rather than what you must produce in the coming year.  Virtually every successful business organization works with its employees to set annual performance objectives that are tied closely to their job descriptions and fully reflect annual business objectives for the company, business unit, function, etc.  Your new manager may have your annual objectives defined for you when you start your job, but that is not always the case.  Many managers invite their employees to draft their own objectives as a way to ensure personal understanding and ownership.  In any case, your manager should be able to provide you a copy of his/her own annual objectives as a guide for alignment.  Your performance plan draft should include not only concise objectives but also milestones that will show progress during the year as well as measurement targets or indicators that reflect the final results expected.  Your company is likely to have its own preferred format for annual performance objectives that you will want to adapt your draft plan to.

Negotiate clear, realistic performance goals.  A broadly embraced mantra for annual performance goals is that they should be “stretch” goals but also realistic and achievable.  As you draft your performance objectives for the first year and negotiate them with your manager, “realistic and achievable” are particularly important.  Your first year in the new job, especially in a new company, requires a lot of learning in several directions at once.  Most managers understand this and are willing to be somewhat less demanding toward performance results for the first year.  But, as you recommend your draft performance objectives and negotiate them with him/her, take the time to fully understand the details, performance measures and resource requirements (time, skills, knowledge, people, money, equipment, etc.).  Make sure you have the resources you will need to deliver the expected results.  If you are uncertain whether you can, you might consider getting input from others such as co-workers.  If you continue to have misgivings about your ability to deliver the expected results for the first year, ask your manager to help you set realistic performance objectives and measures.

Manage your performance plan like a project.  To lay the foundation for a strong performance review at the end of your first year, you should manage your performance plan like a project.  Good performance management should not be viewed as something your manager or company do to you and your co-workers.  At its best, it starts with each employee drafting or otherwise taking ownership of their performance objectives, key milestones and results measures from the beginning of the performance period (usually a year).  Once your objectives and measures are approved by your manager, taking a project management approach to the performance plan can be extremely beneficial.  For each objective, this means further breaking down the milestones and measures into useful action steps and key activities for each month across the full year.  You will then need to frequently review your action plan steps and key activities, ensuring on-time execution as things move along toward the completion of each goal.  To the extent that your performance objectives involve coordination with co-workers and contributions from them, you should initially review your performance project plan with them.  This will help ensure effective teamwork and create good opportunities for you to understand where they need contributions from you.

Keep your manager abreast of your progress.  While most managers have learned the value of delegating authority and latitude for employees to get their work done, it would be rare for a manager to lack interest in staying abreast of their employees’ performance progress during the year.  Many managers will habitually initiate regular progress review meetings with their employees.  Whether your new manager does this or not, it is a good idea to consider this primarily your responsibility and not wait to be asked.  A relatively easy way to always be prepared for these progress review discussions is to keep an organized progress log for each of your performance objectives each month and throughout the year.  With a little bit of extra effort to summarize the key details from your log, you can present your manager with a concise summary of your performance progress and be ready to discuss any issues.  This will go a long way to impressing your manager that you are staying on top of your performance objectives and getting the right things done.  Monthly and/or quarterly progress discussions will ensure that your manager has no “surprises” about your performance toward the end of the year, which is almost universally a good thing!  If you also extend these regular progress discussions to include co-workers with whom you need to collaborate, you will be maximizing your chances of great success.

Write your first draft performance review.  While annual performance reviews are ultimately the responsibility of managers, virtually all of them are likely to welcome well-organized input from you regarding your performance results for the year.  If you have kept your project log for your performance objectives and kept your manager abreast of your progress with a concise monthly summary, it will be relatively easy for you to prepare a performance review draft for your manager around the end of the year.  To prepare your draft, it is a good idea to request from your manager or an HR professional a copy of the company’s annual performance review format and guide.  With this in hand, you can present your own performance review draft in a way that maximizes its usefulness to your manager and aligns to company policy.  For many companies, the annual goal setting and performance review process is supported by helpful information system tools that make the process easier for everyone.  In any case, make sure you stay ahead of the schedule and demonstrate early initiative with your performance review draft for your manager.  In most cases it will be greatly appreciated!

The above recommendations add up to taking ownership of the plan for your first year’s successful performance – that is, knowing what direction you are going, owning your specific objectives, having a detailed roadmap for achieving your objectives, and following that roadmap using a project management approach.  If you want to ensure your job success in your first year, there is no substitute for this kind of approach.  In today’s competitive world, no employee can afford to approach a new job like the proverbial “deer in the headlights.”  Your new manager, like every other employee, usually has more than enough work to do.  You will make his/her work life easier and greatly increase the probability of your first year success if you show the initiative and follow-through I’ve discussed above.

In my next blog, I will address the third and fourth key drivers I mentioned for success in your first year:

3. Building influential relationships with your manager and others

4. Learning how to contribute to the business and organization

In the meantime, build that performance plan with your manager’s and co-worker’s full knowledge and support!  You will be well on your way to a superior performance review by the end of the year!

Dr. Robert Wiley

Your New Job Offer – Negotiate with Knowledge

Your situation / challenge:

I am very excited because I just received a job offer that I have been pursuing for about 3 months.  It’s amazing the relief you feel when this happens to you after you’ve been without a job for almost 6 months!  The good news is that the new job is about the same level in the organization as the one I had before, and the company is bigger with more financial stability than the one I worked for previously.  The bad news is that the pay offer is about 15% lower than I was making before.  Also, I think the job responsibilities and work load will be somewhat greater.  I don’t mind the additional responsibility or work load, but I would like not to take a pay cut.  The situation makes me very nervous, because I want the job and I’m afraid it might go to someone else if I demand too much.

Your question for Dr. Robert Wiley:

How should I evaluate the offer I’ve received?  In this situation, what could I reasonably expect to negotiate, and how should I go about it?  Should I just take the offer I’ve received and be thankful for it?

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First of all, congratulations on winning your job offer!  You worked hard to land it and showed a great deal of persistence.  I hope you take time to enjoy this success and celebrate with your family and friends.

Second, it is perfectly natural to feel anxiety about negotiating with your employer to improve the terms of your job offer, particularly in today’s environment where good jobs are too scarce.  Given that you have been unemployed for six months, the situation can seem even more risky because you feel urgency about restoring your income and career stability.  All of this can make anyone wonder if they should just take the initial offer and end their trepidation!

My advice is, however, not so fast!  In my experience as a senior HR executive and talent coach, the way a candidate handles the initial negotiation of a new job offer can have lasting impact on their wellbeing and success in the company.  It can either strengthen or weaken not only your income but also the hiring manager’s perception of your value, your self-confidence in the job and your career prospects in the company.  At a minimum, I recommend that you develop a complete, fairly detailed perspective on the total job offer so that you can decide whether or not it is competitive and acceptable.

In most cases, I believe that you, as a candidate, should negotiate for some improvements in the initial offer, provided you have developed a strong foundation of knowledge .  Most hiring managers expect some negotiation from candidates, but they would like it to be realistic and based on solid information.  This is not to say that employers are looking to “give away” things unnecessarily to new employees.  But, if you don’t negotiate anything, they are likely to be left in a sort of vacuum wondering whether they have hired the confident, assertive employee they wanted.

The Negotiation Preparation

To reduce your anxiety, make a sound decision and increase your chances of success in negotiating your job offer, I recommend that you prepare a fairly detailed picture of what you want, why this is reasonable and why it should be desirable to the hiring manager.  Below is a list of things you should consider as important parts of your job compensation and opportunity, many that can be negotiable aspects of the total job offer.  Some of these have financial value, some have career progression value and some have quality of life value.  It is a useful exercise to quantify or translate all of them into an actual or estimated financial value.  I have divided the list into “Direct Compensation” – those rewards with immediate, measurable financial value, and “Indirect Compensation” – those rewards that are often less urgent or tangible in their impact on our income.

Direct Compensation

• Salary or weekly/monthly wages
• Bonus and/or commission opportunity
• Other incentive compensation opportunity
• Employee “welfare” programs
• Vacation allowance
• Sick time and other leave time allowance

Indirect Compensation

• Flexible work arrangements
• Job title
• Learning and development opportunity
• Promotion opportunity
• Travel and “perks”
• Expatriate assignment opportunity

Salary or weekly/monthly wages.  If you want an increased compensation offer, you should gain an accurate understanding of the compensation market for the type, scope and level of job you have been offered.  It is best to seek multiple sources for this information and then draw a reasonable conclusion about what is a competitive pay range for this job.  Useful on-line sources of compensation information include salary.com, salaryexpert.com and payscale.com.  Previous coworkers in similar jobs, previous managers and human resources professionals you know might also provide some of the information and perspective you need.

Bonus and/or commission opportunity.  Don’t look just at the base salary being offered, but also consider the financial value of any annual bonus opportunity.  Salary plus annual bonus opportunity should be added together to come up with a total annual cash compensation value, which is typically benchmarked in competitive compensation surveys.  If the initial salary (and/or total cash compensation) offer is below the median or market midpoint and your skills/experience for the job are strong, you may have a factual, reasonable basis to negotiate a higher initial compensation offer.  This will be particularly the case if there is currently solid or strong demand among employers for your key skills.

Other incentive compensation opportunity.  Look at other incentive compensation being offered, such as company contributions to a profit sharing plan, a 401k retirement plan, or an employee stock purchase plan.

Employee “welfare” programs.  Also consider the financial value of employee “welfare” plans such as company contributions to a retirement plan and healthcare insurance premiums.

Vacation allowance.  Vacation is important to most of us, has definite financial value and can often be negotiated based on your years of experience and prior vacation allowance.

Sick time and other leave time allowance.  Don’t forget to consider the value of sick time and other leave time such as official holidays and personal holidays.  The total vacation and leave allowance tied to your new job offer can amount to several weeks of compensation per year.  You may not be able to negotiate the leave time allowance, due to company policy, but it is important for you to understand its financial value as a key part of your job offer.

Flexible work arrangements.  In today’s hectic and demanding world, flexible work arrangements can be very valuable or essential to managing an acceptable work-life balance for many people.  A flexible work arrangement usually covers when you work, how much you work and where you work.  Due to considerations for commuting, child care, elder care, volunteer work, family life, education, etc., it may be important to negotiate a flexible work arrangement for your job offer.  Do you need to go to work early so you can leave early for childcare or classes?  Do you need to work Saturdays instead of Mondays due to a long-standing volunteer commitment?  Do you need to share a job with another employee or work less than a standard 40 hour week?  If you need a flexible work arrangement, no matter how seemingly minor, give it an estimated financial value and plan to include it in the negotiation of your job offer.

Job title.  What will your job title be?  How important is this to you?  To many job hunters in today’s environment, this may seem like a trivial issue in comparison to simply having a good job and an income.  Many people simply don’t care much about job titles, but many do.  And, there is no right or wrong position on this.  For people who are strongly oriented toward their career progression, having a desirable job title can be a big reward.  One can even make a case that job titles, in some situations, can have real financial value.  Becoming a senior professional, manager or officer can mean a lot from this perspective.  So, look at this question honestly for yourself and decide whether you’ve been offered the right title.  If you want a different title and feel it is justified in light of your experience and the job scope, give it an estimated financial value and add it to your negotiation list!

Learning and development opportunity.  Especially when viewed from a career development perspective, the value of a learning and development opportunity connected to a job can be quite substantial and typically should be given serious consideration as part of a new job offer.  Many companies have formal training and development programs in general business, management and specialized disciplines that can be worth many thousands of dollars per year to an employee.  Perhaps even more important is an opportunity to step into a new job that substantially stretches you beyond your prior experience, as long as it is not too far over your head!  Having to scramble for a couple of years to master a significantly bigger job can accelerate your career and compensation progression.  Much greater financial opportunity for taking such a leap can be around the corner when you’ve demonstrated you can do it.  How much financial value would you put on the learning and development opportunity of your new job offer?  Maybe the payoff won’t come for 2-3 years, but you could prorate the value annually across the next few years starting now.

Promotion opportunity.  A similar line of reasoning can apply to the opportunity for promotion above the new position.  If you are particularly oriented toward career progression and confident in your abilities, you might quickly see how a current job offer, while maybe not entirely ideal, could lead to a timely promotion with greater compensation and benefits.  What would the next step up in pay be?  What other increases in compensation and benefits would be tied to that?  How would you prorate the value of that annually across the next 3 years starting now?

Travel and “perks”.  As we all know, travel related to your job can be either an advantage or a detriment depending on your mindset and circumstances.  Some people love to travel, even on business, and others hate the very idea, preferring the comforts of home whenever possible.  Some people may feel they can’t travel due, for example, to family obligations.  How do you feel about this, particularly regarding the travel that may be needed in the new job you’ve been offered?  Is it exciting and expanding for you?  Or, is it a negative?  Financially, how would you value the the opportunity, or how would debit the obligation?  If you like to travel on business, what might be negotiable about this opportunity?  Types of hotels?  Class of airline service?  Leisure excursions on the side?  If you want to minimize travel that is required, how would you negotiate that, for example, by using more tele/video conferences or longer-term planning and consolidation of trips?

Expatriate assignment opportunity.  If you are particularly adventurous and global in your career outlook, the opportunity for an expatriate job assignment may be very rewarding.  This often means not only living, working and learning outside your native country, but it can involve compensation and living arrangements beyond what is ordinarily available back home.  Two examples include a residential living allowance and/or an allowance for private school education for your children.  Do you want an expatriate assignment, and does this job offer one?  What is the company willing to compensate you for in making this assignment?  Financially, what is the net extra value of the expatriate assignment?  What aspects of the compensation, living and travel arrangement can you negotiate?  Need two trips back home to visit family each year?  How about medical care in the foreign country?  Are those benefits included?  Etc.

Adding It All Up

Below is a table that illustrates how you might analyze the aspects of your job offer I have discussed above.  Certainly not all of these will apply to every new job opportunity, so you will need to determine those that are really relevant to your situation and ignore the others.  Also, I may have missed a few things that you might fill in for yourself.  In any case, I believe it can be very enlightening and empowering to complete this analysis for yourself when you have a new job offer.  It can give you a pretty complete picture of the total value of your job offer, enabling you to reach an informed conclusion about how competitive and satisfactory it is.  It can be excellent preparation for negotiating what you want when you go back to the hiring manager.

Job Offer Elements	Annual $Value	Negotiation    Request	Reasons
Salary/wages	$70,000	$80,000	Offered annual salary 15% below market median.  Level of experience and skills justify at least mid-market pay.
Bonus/commission	$10,000	$12,000	Not a request. Target increases in absolute amount with base salary increase.
Other incentives	$6,000	$6,000	Not a request. Co. matching to employee stock purchase and 401k plan.
Welfare programs	$18,000	$20,000	Not a request. Basic value rises with increased cash compensation.
Vacation	$2,700	$4,000	Had 3 weeks at prior employer, earned through seniority.
Leave time	$3,500	$4,500	No request for increased leave; company policy.
Total Direct	$110,200	$126,500
Flexible work	$0	$5,000	Request Fridays working from home office.  Improved quality of life and saved child care and commuting cost.
Job title	$0	$5,000	Have been a manager 4 years; would like to be at least sr. manager.
Learning opportunity	$3,000	$3,000	Bigger company has good management development program.  Job learning is similar.
Promotion potential	$5,000	$5,000	Not a request. Good promotion potential to Director role in 2 years.
Travel/perks	$3,000	$0	Don’t like traveling a lot on business. More would be required with higher level position.
Expatriate opportunity	$0	$0	Not an expatriate assignment.  Don’t want one now.
Total Indirect	$11,000	$18,000
TOTAL JOB	$121,200	$144,500

While the example shown in the table above is entirely hypothetical, the analysis suggests a few notable observations:

• The total direct compensation package of the initial job offer is worth 157% of the annual base salary.
• The total job value (indirect values estimated) is worth 173% of the annual base salary.
• Negotiating a 14% increase in annual base salary would increase the overall direct compensation package by 15%
• Indirect compensation elements can have substantial value to an employee, and negotiating some additions can be worth a lot.

The Negotiation Meeting

Ok, so I’ve spent quite a bit of time discussing how you might size up the compensation and other benefits of your new job offer.  This is important to just figure out whether the total offer is good for you and acceptable, or not.  Once you see the whole picture, including your estimated total financial value, the first question (as you said) is, “Should I just take the offer I’ve received and be thankful for it?”  Well, you asked the question.  My point is don’t answer it until you’ve done the math.

If your answer is, “No” or “Not yet,” then take your analysis and move on to preparing for the negotiation with your hiring manager.  The first thing to do now is to prioritize your list and determine your top 1-3 objectives.  In your case (and many others) this is likely to include an increase in the base salary or wages.  How are you going to argue for more?  Do you have superior experience or talent for this job?  Are you likely to be more productive, helpful, reliable or insightful than another employee in this job?  Is the labor market in short supply of the special skills or performance characteristics that make you an exceptional candidate for this job?  Is the offered total cash compensation below the competitive median, and therefore, you would be susceptible to being recruited by other companies?  What benefit would there be for the hiring manager to increase your starting compensation?  Is an increase necessary for you to accept the job, be happy with the situation and motivated to perform?

What are your next 2 negotiation priorities?  What is there about your background, situation, talents or potential that gives a good rationale for each of your requests?  If the hiring manager accommodates your requests, how would that benefit him and the company?

As I’ve noted in prior blogs, one thing that will greatly enhance your job negotiation power is the extent of your knowledge about the hiring manager and company.  This is not a prescription for “selling out” by misrepresenting your talents, experience, preferences, personality or values.  In fact, I’ve recommended that you become very clear with yourself regarding these things and stay true to them in your career.  Instead, approaching your job negotiation challenge with deeper knowledge of the hiring manager and company should better enable you to find the best points of alignment and be the most persuasive about getting what you want.  Can you summarize 5 key personality characteristics of the hiring manager, their leadership style, their 5 most important values regarding work and their 5 top priorities for the job you’ve been offered?  Can you summarize the company’s strategy, annual business objectives and 5 dominant culture characteristics?  Can you describe in 5 minutes or less, how your experience, skills and personality have a particularly good fit to what you’ve summarized for the above?  If not, I recommend you do more homework to get better prepared to negotiate your new job offer with the hiring manager.  Your preparation for the negotiation should also include rehearsal / practice with someone willing to help you and give you feedback on your persuasive approach.

When you feel thoroughly prepared, I recommend that you schedule a meeting with the hiring manager to discuss the job offer (if this has not already been scheduled).  Most hiring managers/supervisors are willing to do this since they have a natural interest in coming to agreement with you and ensuring that you are successful in the new job.  Here is an outline for a communication and negotiation process that can be very effective in negotiating with most hiring managers:

• Establish rapport and communicate enthusiasm, focusing on the positives of the job offer.
• Summarize why you feel very positive toward the company, job and hiring manager.
• Summarize the added value you bring to the job – why you are the best choice.  Sell yourself again to the hiring manager, even though you have successfully done so before!
• Positively state your negotiation requests with rationale, factual support, mutual benefits, etc.
• Ask if the hiring manager is willing to support or make a concession to each of your requests.  Don’t react negatively if he/she does not agree.
• Ask for reasons if you don’t get what you request.  Clearly demonstrate you want to understand their perspective.
• Be willing to compromise – give some to get what you want most.  Keep your top 3 negotiation priorities in mind at all times!

In your negotiation, seek what you want and need, but don’t promise something that you can’t deliver.  Look at your requests from your employer’s perspective and articulate how they will benefit both of you.  Make sure you are clear in your own mind what few improvements you must have in the job offer, what points you are willing to compromise on and what points you can do without.

Wrapping It Up

Last, it is important to recognize when to stop negotiating.  This is a judgment call informed by what you know about the hiring manager (and the company) along with the signals that are communicated during your negotiation meeting.  Is this manager a collaborative, flexible individual who highly values comfortable relationships?  If so, you may have more latitude to negotiate aggressively.  Is the manager highly logical, structured and controlling?  Then, you will want to be more conservative in your requests and alert to inflexible boundaries around the initial job offer.  Etc.

Whether you accept the final job offer, or not, it is very important that you express a lot of appreciation to the hiring manager for making the offer and being willing to discuss the terms with you.  This will set the stage for a positive on-boarding process once you start the job.  It will help ensure a sense of respect from the hiring manager and a positive reputation for you if you ultimately decide to reject the offer.  Never burn any bridges as a result of (your) unappreciative behavior during your negotiation of a job offer.  You can never cross back over a burned bridge, and one burned bridge often leads to another!

May you negotiate your job offer with knowledge, confidence and courtesy!

Dr. Robert Wiley

Your Job Interview – Becoming Confident and Effective

Your Situation or Challenge:

I have been looking for a new job for about three months.  I’ve done a lot of work on my resume and I feel it reflects my job skills and experience pretty well.  I’m using Linkedin and doing quite a bit of research on the companies I like.  I have actually gotten a few interviews for jobs I am interested in by networking through some former coworkers and some professional groups I belong to. These seem to have gone ok, but I’m not sure because I have no job offers yet.  I always feel nervous going into interviews because I don’t know what to expect.  It seems like managers have very different approaches to interviewing.  I never really know if I’ve done well or not.

Your Question to Dr. Robert Wiley:

What are the main types of interviews I should expect?  What are the best ways to handle them as a job applicant?

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Overcoming Interview Anxiety

First of all, your experience of feeling nervous about going into job interviews affects almost all of us who have sought new employment.  It is natural to feel some anxiety about interviews because they are important.  They are important to our current well being and to our futures.  We want to do well in our interviews and ultimately receive a desirable job offer.  We know that interviews can make or break a job opportunity for us.  Our anxiety can be further aggravated by negative emotional orientations such as fear of failure, fear of rejection and fear of authority.  It can also be affected by how well prepared we feel for the interview.

If you are feeling particularly anxious about an upcoming interview, I recommend that you take some time to examine your own thoughts and feelings and discuss them with someone you trust.  Facing them directly and having a meaningful dialogue about them can take the edge off and even alleviate your negative feelings altogether.  An approach that can be helpful includes fully describing your feelings and related experiences from the past, along with using logic and data to dispute their current relevance.  It may take you more than one such discussion to develop a more positive outlook and reduce your underlying anxiety, but the results are usually worth the effort.

Whether you have underlying fears to address or not, one of the best solutions to interview anxiety is thorough preparation.  Much like an exam in school, the more you feel prepared, usually the more you feel calm and confident.  For job interviews, your preparation needs to include in-depth investigation in the following areas:

• Knowledge of the job situation, company and hiring manager
• Self knowledge about your relevant experience, skills and characteristics
• Awareness of different interview types and likely questions

Gaining Situation Knowledge

In previous blogs, I recommended that your job search be specific and narrow instead of generic and broad.  In addition to enabling you to write a much more compelling resume and cover letter, gaining in-depth knowledge of the specific job, company and hiring manager will help you feel much more confident about handling an interview when it comes.  This is the kind of specific information you need to talk knowledgeably about the job and be persuasive about why you are the best choice as the employee.  A good example of the right situation knowledge is a current, detailed job description for the open position.  While not sufficient research by itself, you should insist on having such a job description before applying and interviewing for a specific position.  When you do in-depth homework on the job situation prior to an interview, you are in a good position to impress the hiring manager with your seriousness, diligence and intelligence.  Do everything you can to develop this knowledge including internet research (e.g., company websites and Linkedin profiles), talking to other employees of the company and getting information / insight from hiring agents such as recruiters.

Utilizing Self Knowledge

Once you you have gathered as much specific information and insight as you can about the job, company and hiring manager, you should take the time to do a detailed alignment of the key requirements to your specific experience, skills and work characteristics.  To be prepared for this analysis, you should have completed a detailed summary for yourself of the first five of the “Seven Foundation Stones for Enduring Career Passion” I discussed in a prior blog.  Using a list of key situation requirments (job, company and hiring manager), you should rate the degree you think your specific experience, skills and work characteristics match those requirements (use a 1-5 rating scale with 1=low and 5=very high).  For each requirement, you should also write 1-2 sentences that describes how you are a superior match in that area.  Here is a brief sample of this kind of situation / self alignment analysis:

Key Situation Requirement	Self Rating	Description of Superior Job / Person Match
Minimum 5 years chemical engineering work experience	5	I have 7 years total CE experience with 6 years from my two jobs and 1 year equivalent internships during CE B.S. studies.
The company business and job focus are on development and marketing plastics from petro-chemicals.	3	My first CE job out of college was in the development and testing of agricultural chemicals, and my second job was in petro-chemicals for fuel additives and plastics.  I am quite knowledgeable about petro-chemical applications engineering.
The hiring manager is known to have high expectations for work initiative and never being late with results.	5	My strong work motivation and intiative are well documented in my previous company performance reviews.

The interview types that hiring managers use are as varied as their personalities and backgrounds.  While employment interviewing for managers and recruiters has been the subject of vast amounts of training over the past several decades, it is relatively rare to see interviewers systematically use an approach for which they have been trained.  The majority of interviewers default to exploring your chronological job experience with some attention paid to other aspects of work and education.  Interviewers also tend to default to a type of interaction (questions, comments and discussion) that they naturally prefer as a function of their personality types.  One example is the extroverted interviewer who likes to talk and spends most of the “interview” commenting about the job or company (or themselves) and only occasionally asking the candidate a question.  Another example is a detail-oriented, controlling operations manager who will ask the candidate for many specific details in their work experience that might relate to the specific activities of the open position.  They might even follow a checklist of such work activities.Preparing for Different Interview TypesYou should continue this type of job / self alignment analysis until you have covered 10-20 key situation requirements.  Prior to an interview with the hiring manager (or other interview team member), it is a best practice to review the details of your written analysis and, if possible, talk them through with another person who is willing to help you prepare (simulated interviewer).  Doing this will bring your analysis to life and give you excellent preparation for approaching your interview in a knowledgeable, confident, calm and convincing way.

Because personality tends to determine much of one’s preferred interview style, it is a best practice for you to discover this if possible before your interview.  The best way to do so, if possible, is to ask about it with the individual’s co-workers, recruiting agent or themselves (if you have access).  The simplest questions are, “What is this person’s personality or style?” and, “How do they like to conduct an interview?”  If you learn that the hiring manager is an extrovert who likes to talk, you should spend some time developing some questions to ask during the interview about the job, the company and how they like to work.  You will want to encourage this type of interviewer to talk.  They will often judge your job qualifications according to the “quality” of your questions during the interview.  If you learn that the hiring manager is a detail-oriented, controlling operations type, you should spend time rehearsing your description of many specific details of your prior, relevant job activities and results.  They are likely to judge your job qualifications according to how detailed you can be in connecting your past specific job activities and skills to the detailed activity requirements of the open job.

While preparation for personality-driven interview preferences is very important, hiring managers often utilize, to some extent, 1-2 generic types of interview questions (or interview techniques) they have learned.  If you know ahead of time what types of generic interview questions they like, you can be better prepared to respond to them during the interview.  While not exhaustive, below are 5 generic types of inteview questions you may commonly encounter.

Behavioral-Event Questions.  Hiring managers and recruiters have been widely trained to use this interview technique.  The interviewer usually has in mind a specific skill or job experience, and they ask about your specific past job experiences or situations where you may or may not have demonstrated the desired job skills or behaviors.  An example might be a skill labeled “team leadership.”  The interviewer might ask you to identify a past job situation where you were involved in a team effort and to describe specifically how you participated in that situation, what you actually did and said.  Using this technique, they are also likely to ask what specific impact your actions had on the outcome or results of the situation.  Your best preparation for this type of interview question is to be very well grounded in the details of several key situations that occurred in your work during the past 3-5 years.  The job description for the open position can provide useful clues about the kinds of skills on which a hiring manager might focus their behavioral-event interview questions.

Hypothetical Situation Questions.  While less commonly taught in interview training, many hiring managers like to ask questions starting with “What would you do if …”  Usually they will pick a hypothetical situation like one they might see on the job for the open position.  One example might be “What would you do if you had a co-worker who lied to you on more than one occasion?”  Another example might be “What would you do if you had just been promoted to department manager role and were asked for an annual business plan and budget?”  When interviewers use this technique, they usually think that your answers will reflect the quality and clarity of the thinking you will do on the job.  Like the behavioral-event questions, the interviewer is likely to focus hypothetical questions on areas or skills that seem relevant to the open position.  A good job description can help you identify a list of such hypothetical questions.  Better yet, a discussion with an informed recruiter or knowledgeable employee of the company can help you identify the most relevant hypothetical situations.  Your best preparation for these questions is to practice your answers in a simulated interview where you discuss how you would approach key considerations, information gathering and decision making.  Getting feedback from your simulated interviewer is a good way to identify any weaknesses in your logic or hypothetical approach.

Open-Ended Career History Questions.  As I noted above, this appears to be the most common employment interview technique used today.  On the surface, it seems relatively easy to follow this technique, since the interviewer can simply inquire, “Tell me about your career history … starting with your education and taking me through the jobs you’ve had.”  Usually the interviewer expects you to describe your education and the jobs you’ve held in chronological order, from the earliest to the most recent.  The interviewer may say relatively little and allow you to communicate your career history according to your own preference, or they may prompt you to move from job to jog and ask questions about some specific job situations as your description goes along.  In listening to your description of career history, the interviewer ususally has in mind a few skills and job experiences they want to determine in your background.  They usually will not let you know these ahead of time, so you will need to try identifying the most likely areas using the situation research discussed above.  In addition to this research, your best preparation for this interview technique is write out a concise career autobiography that summarizes key job responsibilities, achieved results and illustrative examples.  Practice telling your career autobiography to a simulated interviewer in about 30 minutes can also gain you useful feedback about pace and amount of detail, as well as improve your confidence in the story telling.

Specific Job Experience Questions.  Unlike the career history interview technique, this one tends to ask about specific job experiences that the interviewer believes are most relevant to the responsibilities of the open position.  The interviewer might say, “This product management job requires identifying key product trends and analyzing competitor product strengths vs. weaknesses.  Can you describe your specific job experience in these areas?”  Another example might be, “This job will require a lot of hiring of new employees.  What is your job experience in recruiting and hiring?”  In using this technique, the interviewer typically tries to keep the discussion focused on matching your specific job experiences and skills with those specifically required by the open position.  Your best preparation for this type of interview is to go through the list of specific responsibilities reflected in the job description and write out a concise summary of how your prior specific job experiences match those responsibilities.

Self-Image Questions.  While it is rare to see a hiring manager or recruiter focus an entire interview on the applicant’s self-image, questions about this are quite common even when other interview approaches predominate.  Usually, self-image questions are targeted toward skills or performance characteristics that the interviewer considers important for the open position.  One example for a managerial position might be, “How do you see yourself as a leader?”  An example for a sales position might be, “What makes you successful in selling to original equipment manufacturers?”  An example for almost any position might be, “How would you describe your strengths vs. your weaknesses as an employee?”  Your best preparation for such questions can come from your analysis I recommended in my blog “The Seven Foundation Stones for Career Passion.”  As a key part of this analysis, you should clarify in your own mind what abilities, skills, performance characteristics, aptitudes and values are your greatest career strengths.  Finding the specific alignment of these strengths to the specific situation requirements of the open position for which you are applying puts you in the strongest position to confidently communicate them to the interviewer.  Similar to other interview techniques, practicing your presentation of self-image around these key points with a simulated interviewer can further build your confidence and provide useful feedback about your communication style.

Closing Thoughts

Today there are many blogs, newsletters, articles and books that give advice to job hunters on hundreds of interview questions they might expect and how to handle them.  Much of this advice is sound, but one can soon feel overwhelmed with all the details and the clamor of different voices.  Sorting through all of this, I have concluded that the best preparation which reduces anxiety, builds confidence and increases effectiveness in job interviews is based on the following guidelines and practices:

• Develop in-depth knowledge of the specific job situation and company requirements.
• Complete a detailed analysis of the alignment between your specific job experience, skills and performance characteristics vs. the specific job requirements.  Prepare yourself to clearly and concisely communicate your view of this alignment to the interviewer.
• Gain an understanding of the hiring manager’s personality and interview style preferences.  While staying honest and factual, prepare to adapt your interview responses to their preferred style.
• Develop a practical understanding of the major interview techniques used by hiring managers and recruiters.  Using your self-knowledge and situation knowledge, learn how to adapt your interview responses to these techniques.
• Prepare thoroughly for your job interviews, as suggested above, and practice, practice, practice through simulated interviews.  Ask for feedback and suggestions, and practice again until you feel confident in your approach.  If you still feel excess anxiety, examine and try to dispell any underlying fears about failure, rejection or authority.

Go out there and interview with knowledge and confidence!

Dr. Robert Wiley

Jump Out From Your Resume

Your Situation or Challenge:

I have been working approximately 12 years in product development since I graduated.  I was recently laid off due to a company downsizing that involved moving some functions to other countries.  I was told that my job would probably not be reopened in the future.  I enjoyed my job and did well at this company.  I was promoted twice and thought I had a good future there.  I’ve learned that the world of product development has changed dramatically since I got into it. Because of my employment with one company, I never really had to keep up a resume much.  Now, because many of the jobs in my field are different than they used to be, I’m not really sure how to create an effective resume.  I think I have good skills and experience, but I’m not sure how to sell them to a new employer.

Your Question to Dr. Robert Wiley:

Do you have any advice about creating a good resume with my level of experience?

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While I will focus most of my comments on your question about writing a good resume, I sense that you are also feeling a bit traumatized and confused about the changes you have experienced in your world of work.  You don’t seem “lost” in the sense of not knowing what your vocational interest or passion is, but the broader context of your work and even the scope of available jobs in your field have changed fairly dramatically.  You may need some personal inspiration about now, so I’d like to refer you to a couple of books I like very much that can provide a renewed sense of direction and optimism in your career.  The first one is the now classic story told in Who Moved My Cheese? by Spencer Johnson, 1998.  The second one is a related story (but with a little different perspective) told in I Moved Your Cheese by Deepak Malhotra, 2011.  To me, a couple of the most important ideas are (a) our world is constantly changing, and big changes that affect us personally while often painful at first, can be amazing opportunities to learn and grow competent in new directions, and (b) we need to continually learn and broaden our perspective on our personal world, so we can take charge of how we will survive and prosper with the inevitable changes and trends around us.

Who Moved Your Resume?

Since you started your career 12 years ago, the world of job hunting and resume preparation has changed dramatically.  With the growth of internet resources like Linkedin, Facebook, Monster, personal websites and employer websites, availability of resumes and employment related information has become almost overwhelming.  Added to this the recession and much higher unemployment, employers are often faced with the task of finding “the needle in the haystack” when it comes to reading resumes and selecting a few good candidates to interview.  As a result, you as the job seeker must find very effective ways to “jump out from your resume” to secure the job interview you want.  This means you have to create a compelling reason for a hiring manager to pick up your resume (usually among many available), give it some attention and decide to interview you.  This usually does not happen because you have made available a standard resume that generally lists your job interest, experience and education.

Jump Out From Your Resume

Before getting into my primary recommendations for creating and managing your resume, I must point out that resumes, even the “best,” rarely by themselves get you the job interview you want.  Most hiring managers have a healthy sense of skepticism when it comes to resumes.  They realize that it can be easy to put great sounding stuff on a resume and nicely dress up the package.  A whole industry has sprouted up to help people do this.

In my experience, there are 2 compelling reasons that have a personal connection for the hiring manager to take your resume seriously rather than the resumes of others:

1. Someone with credibility to the hiring manager draws attention to your resume.
2. Your resume and cover letter quickly highlight that you may be a uniquely qualified candidate for his/her specific job opening in this specific company.

As I suggested in my prior blog, “The Face to Face Job Search,” one of the most essential aspects of a job search is building relationships with others who can and will help you get the job interviews you want.  The key point here is to persuade someone who has credibility to the hiring manager (credible agent) to recommend looking at your resume and taking you seriously as a candidate for the job in question.  I previously recommended several types of relationships that can be credible and influential to a hiring manager.  I also suggested a number of ways you can legitimately build relationships with such people and persuade them to help you get the right attention from a hiring manager.  If you neglect this step with credible agents, your resume may get sent out like “a thousand points of light,” but may never be taken seriously by any hiring manager.

My second key recommendation is that you must learn enough about your targeted job opening, hiring manager and company that you can fully tailor your resume and cover letter to the things about the job that are highest priority to the hiring manager.  Yes, this means that you must tailor your resume to the specifics of each job opening you will apply for.  No, it does not mean misrepresenting yourself in any way.  Instead, it means concisely communicating how your experience and skills will deliver the job value to the business with a performance level that will be superior to other candidates.

You may be wondering how you are going to do this.  The answer is that you must do fairly detailed research on your own along with drawing inside information and insights from credible agents.  You must do this until you are confident that you understand how the hiring manager views the job results and performance contributions he/she is looking for in that organization.  In your resume and cover letter, you must put “front and center” a concise description of how your specific experience, skills and performance characteristics will deliver the superior results and unique job contributions the hiring manager is looking for.

For more good techniques and details for effectively tailoring your resume and cover letter in this manner, I refer you to the excellent book Guerrilla Marketing for Job Hunters 3.0 by Jay Conrad Levinson and David Perry, 2011.  The authors provide an extensive discussion of why your resume and cover letter must be tailored to the priorities of each specific hiring manager and company.  They also suggest a number of options and formats for concisely communicating this information.

 Closing Thoughts

You may be realizing by now that the key implications of my recommendations include:

• You are most likely to succeed with a very selective job search focused on a few specific job openings, where you have thoroughly tailored your communication to the hiring manager’s expectations and the company.

• Spend your job search time getting it right in a detailed, in-depth manner for a few job openings that fit your skills and passion.  Fully tailor your resume, cover letter and other communications to the specific, important details of these job openings.  This is fundamentally how you can “jump out from your resume.”

• Don’t waste your time sending out your “standard” resume to dozens or hundreds of employers, in the hope of getting a “hit” somewhere.

These recommendations are supported by many experts in the job hunting field today.  They are all about developing a job search approach from the employer’s perspective that is very specific to the expectations of each hiring manager and needs of each company you target.  When you approach an employer as a customer with specific needs and expectations, in this sense, you are more likely to “sell” yourself as the employee they want to interview and hire.

Dr. Robert Wiley

The Face-to-Face Job Search

Your Situation or Challenge: 

I have been working as a manufacturing cost accountant for my current company about 3 years.  I’ve just been given 2 months notice that my job will be eliminated.  I was hoping to build a career here, but it isn’t working out because the company is having financial difficulties and is closing some manufacturing sites.  A number of people are being laid off including quite a few professional and office workers.  This job resulted from an internship I served between my junior and senior years in college.  I didn’t have to do a lot of interviewing with other companies at the time.  Now, I’m feeling kind of lost and not sure how to conduct a job search.  I have a Facebook page but I’ve used it mostly for personal friend stuff.  I started putting together a Linkedin profile, and that seems pretty straight forward.  Some of my friends have told me to use Linkedin a lot and also look for job opportunities on job sites like Monster.  One of my friends, who’s been unemployed for seven months, told me he has sent out over a thousand copies of his resume over the internet.  I’m confused and feeling kind of down about the situation.

Your Question to Dr. Robert Wiley:

What do you think is the best approach for finding a new career opportunity at a more stable company?

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First of all, you have my empathy for your job loss and the painful feelings related to it.  Your current experience is far too familiar these days as companies have cut cost and laid off many employees during the recession.  While it is a difficult time, one when you must first take care of survival needs, it may also provide you a unique opportunity to learn new skills and put your career on a more solid foundation.

In my response to your question, I am going to emphasize two things that I think are most important:

A.  You are most likely to be successful finding a new career opportunity using a face-to-face relationship strategy.

B.  Your whole job search effort is most likely to be successful if, early on, you will do the “homework” I recommended in my prior blog entitled “Seven Foundation Stones for Enduring Career Passion.”

I urge you to get started on this homework now.  During the next few months, you are likely to have more time and motivation to clarify your career foundation stones.  As the first step in your job search, this will give you a much clearer sense of direction and a stronger sense of confidence in talking to those who can help you find the right job and company.  They are much more likely to be convinced and motivated to help you when you have a clear, well founded sense of career direction and passion.  Also, since you seem particularly concerned about finding a more stable company with a longer-term career opportunity in your area of expertise, I recommend that you spend additional time identifying companies with this kind of work which have a strong financial foundation (i.e., record of growing annual earnings and a healthy balance sheet) and a strategic intent of employing people with your skills in a location you will find acceptable.

The Face-to-Face Job Search Process

A successful job search today is likely to utilize many more resources, tools and relationships than one completed ten years ago.  Before I take up further details on the face-to-face process, I would like to recommend to you one of the best current sources for reviewing and evaluating various options for spending your time in your job search:  What Color Is Your Parachute? 2012 by Richard N. Bolles (1).  After discussing the low success rates of various popular job search options such as looking for employers’ job-postings on the internet and sending your resume to employers, Mr. Bolles recommends a few options with much higher success rates which are fundamentally face-to-face approaches to finding a new job.  My experience with thousands of employees, fellow professionals, family members and friends globally tells me that, once you’ve done your career foundation homework, all other resources and tools you use in your job search should be aimed at maximizing your face-to-face time with people who can help you.  This face-to-face time should primarily be in-person, then to a lesser degree on the phone, on video or interactive texting.

A corollary to my recommendation is that you should spend relatively less time with job search activities you can do via your computer and the internet.  Yes, it is necessary that you have a good resume and utilize some of the internet based resources such as Linkedin, but you will have much higher probability of finding the right job faster if you spend most of your time making face-to-face contact with people, building and leveraging your relationships.  You can fail in your face-to-face job search if you spend too much time on internet sites.

The face-to-face job search process is about building relationships and influencing people to help you.  Face-to-face interaction, with all its opportunities for nonverbal communication and rapport building, is the most powerful way to gain support from others in your job search.  So, what are some of the most productive, beneficial things you can do during your face-to-face contacts to enhance your job search progress?  Some of the details will vary according to each type of relationship and individual, but there are a surprising number of core things you should do across all of these contacts and relationships:

1.  Simply communicate what kind of help you are seeking
2.  Be very appreciative about their time and help
3.  Be honest, friendly and non-defensive
4.  Explore what you have in common and build rapport
5.  Summarize your key accomplishments and strengths in a memorable way
6.  Be clear, succinct and specific about your goals and desired contribution
7.  Seek a specific action commitment to help you

1.  Simply communicate what kind of help you are seeking – tell the person why you want to get together and how much time you need.  The reasons might include seeking a referral to a hiring manager or company, seeking more information about a job or company, learning about the type of work they do, learning more about the local job market, receiving counsel about your career, etc.  Ask for a brief, specific amount of time such as 15-30 minutes.  Also, briefly state your expectations of this person for the conversation:  usually to get from them information, perspective, suggestions, a referral, new ideas, insights, input, counsel, etc.  If they know what specifically you are after, they are more likely to make the time to help you.

2.  Be very appreciative about their time and help – as soon as you request their time, express your thanks to them.  Tell them you know they’re busy and you understand how valuable their time is.  Tell them that your conversation will be most helpful and that you will be most appreciative.

3.  Be honest, friendly and non-defensive – no matter how you are feeling about your job loss, bring a friendly tone and manner to your request and conversation.  Be honest and briefly describe your situation, but don’t rationalize it or blame others.  Avoid getting into any vague, long-winded stories about how you came to fall into your current sorry situation.  Don’t dwell on how or why you lost your job, unless you intend this conversation to be a mental health counseling session with a willing counselor.  If you are having difficulty being friendly and non-defensive, talk the situation through with a friend or family member (or mental health counselor) first, as many times as you need, to dispel your negative mood.

4.  Explore what you have in common and build rapport – this means that the conversation needs to be genuinely two-way where both of you are doing about half the talking.  You need to ask questions about the person’s experience or thoughts, then listen appreciatively to their answers.  Talk and ask about relationships you may have in common, similar interests, comparable work experiences, prior learning experiences, etc.

5.  Summarize your key accomplishments and strengths in a memorable way – be able to express your well-founded career dream in a concise and enthusiastic way.  Make a few points about how your key vocational strengths, work experiences and job accomplishments have contributed to pursuing your career goal.  If this is difficult for you, do your homework again on the “Seven Foundation Stones” I wrote about in my prior blog.

6.  Be clear, succinct and specific about your goals and desired contribution – simply tell them that you are looking for a new job, seeking greater responsibility in your next career position, looking to apply your skills in a different area of work, seeking a company offering a stable, longer-term career opportunity, wanting to explore opportunities with a specific company and/or career area, etc.  Concisely summarize how the contribution you now want to make builds upon what you have learned and accomplished.

7.  Seek a specific action commitment to help you – don’t leave this part vague or out of the conversation altogether.  By the end of your conversation, you may have already received valuable information, perspective or suggestions that will help you in your job search.  You should definitely thank the person for what has been valuable.  However, to maximize the benefit of the conversation to both of you, ask for a further action that you think this person may be willing to do to help you.  In sales, this is known as asking for the order.  Examples include obtaining more information or referring you to other people who may know about a company or job opportunity, arranging an opportunity for you to be interviewed by a hiring manager, or referring you to friends or colleagues who may be helpful in your job search.

Ultimately, you are seeking specific commitments for interviews with hiring managers for a job you want in a company you want to work for.  While only a small percentage of your face-to-face contacts will directly be able to make this commitment, all other action commitments you ask for should aid your journey toward getting this one.  Keep this ultimate goal in mind as you navigate your face-to-face job search process.

Who You Should Talk To Face-to-Face

I again refer you to Mr. Bolles’s excellent discussion of “networking” during a job search process. (1)  As you will see, there are many possibilities for pursuing face-to-face conversations.  My experience tells me that you want to narrow down these possibilities to mostly people who are vocationally relevant.  Talking to a random selection of family and friends may be a good way to practice your communication, but you will soon want to focus most of your time on talking to people who contribute something to your job search progress.  This will require continuously developing and prioritizing a list of promising contacts and relationships.  Here is a partial list of vocationally relevant contact or relationship types you will want to look into:

• Current or recent managers and coworkers
• Former managers and coworkers
• Employees of companies in whom you are interested
• Business leaders and professionals who are well-connected in their cities and communities
• Colleagues and leaders with similar skills you may know or can meet through trade associations or industry groups
• Former classmates and teachers
• Professionals engaged in helping others find jobs (e.g., government and private employment agencies, search firms
• Members of Linkedin, Facebook, etc. who are in an industry, functional group or company in whom you are interested

Closing Thoughts

Today’s environment for job seekers can be scarry, confusing, frustrating and filled with activities that yield slow or unsatisfying progress toward your goal of finding the right job to continue the career you want.  You are much more likely to successfully navigate this environment if you (a) have a clear, well founded sense of career direction and passion (“career foundation stones”), and (b) spend most of your job search time identifying, prioritizing and meeting face-to-face with vocationally relevant contacts and relationships.  In these face-to-face meetings, your objectives should primarily be to build rapport, obtain helpful input and gain an action commitment to assist you in taking another practical step toward your specific job/career goal.  Keep in mind, during these conversations, that your ultimate goal is to gain commitments for interviews with hiring managers for a job you want in a company you want to work for.  Remember to always thank people for the time they’ve taken and any action commitments they’ve made to further help you.  Put aside seemingly related and seductive activities, such as spending a lot of time on the internet, that will not quickly help you have face-to-face interactions with people that build and leverage vocationally relevant relationships and contacts.

Best wishes for happier job hunting!

Dr. Robert Wiley

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Suggested Reading

(1) What Color Is Your Parachute?  A Practical Manual for Job-Hunters and Career-Changers, by Richard N. Bolles, 2011.

Seven Foundation Stones for Enduring Career Passion

Your Situation or Challenge: 

I graduated from a good college four years ago with a major in communications.  I thought for years that I wanted to go into advertising – get involved in writing advertising copy and be immersed in the whole creative process.  During college, I felt I had a passion for an advertising career.  Well, it was a struggle just finding an advertising job after college, but I finally did after sending out hundreds of resumes and interviewing for six months.  At first, I was excited about the job and thought my career prospects were great.  I soon learned that the field was shifting rapidly away from traditional advertising into various forms of internet marketing.  I also found that I was creative but not very artistic.  My firm has put huge pressure on me to keep changing what I’m doing and sell profitable projects to clients.  My job has become mostly sales and account management.  While I’ve worked hard, I’m finding this work frustrating and unsatisfying.  I feel stuck in a career I spent a long time preparing for but has turned out very different than what I imagined.  I’m making pretty good money, but I can’t see things getting much better for me in this kind of work or situation.

Your Question to Dr. Robert Wiley: 

Am I in the wrong career, the wrong job or the wrong company?  How can I find that sense of passion I had four years ago?

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Unfortunately, Passions Can Be Fleeting!

The topic of career passion has been written about in dozens (if not hundreds) of books (1) and spoken about in thousands of speeches.  The idea that we should all find our career passion and follow it to success has almost universally been embraced.  We want to be inspired by the idea that if only we discover that true passion and relentlessly pursue it we will be happy and look back on our careers with deep satisfaction.

I love this idea too, but your situation and questions remind me of the dilemma I have heard from hundreds of graduates and employees in the early to middle stages of their working lives.  Too often earlier career dreams, aspirations and goals have ground to a halt on the rocks of painful discoveries about work and one’s personal characteristics.  Like you, people can feel confused about what the problem really is.  Is it the job?  Is it the wrong company?  Is it the wrong career?  Is there something wrong with me?

More often than not, I have learned that the loss of career passion was caused by overlooking the need to build it on multiple, strong foundation stones.  Those foundation stones must include not only one’s dreams and loves, but also one’s core skills, aptitudes, personality characteristics and activity preferences.  The foundation stones must also include a realistic understanding of how these things will be supported by a specific career, job, manager and company.  When you are missing one of these career foundation stones, disappointment or disillusionment may not be far away.

Laying the Seven Foundation Stones for Enduring Career Passion

Whether you are still in high school or college, or you are uncertain about the right direction several years into your career,  taking the time to firmly lay the following seven foundation stones will enable you to build the sustainable career passion and satisfaction you want through the years:

1. Work activity preferences
2. Aptitudes and skills
3. Core personality characteristics
4. Work/life values
5. Career dreams
6. Company culture
7. Manager personality

1.  Work activity preferences – virtually everyone I’ve met over my career has a unique combination of favored work activities.  Examples include working with numbers, selling products to customers, or doing physically challenging work.  You need a clear understanding of your favored work activities, because those are the ones you are most likely to do and master during your career.  What are your favorite work activities? (2)

2.  Aptitudes and skills – by early adulthood, most people understand that some of their  aptitudes or skills are stronger than others.  Examples include forming interpersonal relationships, thinking with mathematics, or taking concrete actions.  Understanding your unique skills and strengths is important because you are most likely to enjoy and use these during your career.  What are your best skills and strengths? (3)

3.  Core personality characteristics – as we can appreciate from our varied interpersonal experiences, people can differ vastly in the core personality characteristics that determine much of their behavior at work.  Examples include being extroverted vs. introverted, being logical vs. emotional, or being organized vs. leisurely.  Different careers, jobs or companies usually require significant differences in one’s core personality characteristics, for sustainable success and satisfaction.  So, it is essential that you understand how your core personality characteristics fit the career choices you are anticipating or the work situation you are in.  What are your core personality strengths that are not likely to change much? (4)

4.  Work/life values – we learn many of our life and work values from our parents and the social situations we grow up in.  A value, in this sense, reflects a way of doing things along with certain results that we become highly motivated to experience in life and, more narrowly, at work.  Examples include respecting tradition, having close friendships, making money or helping others.  If your career, job and company choices fail to provide a good opportunity to experience your top priority values, you are more likely to lose passion and feel unsatisfied.  What are your top priority values for life and work? (5)

5.  Career dreams – as we know from personal experience, career dreams can start early in life, like a child’s fantasies of becoming a fireman or teacher.  They tend to be a positive set of ideas, images and emotions centered around a certain kind of career or work.  They often remain fairly generalized or vague, but with time, they can become very specific to key work activities, social roles, skill requirements, rewards and results.  Early career examples include becoming an entrepreneur, an artist, a missionary or political leader.  For your career dream to be truly helpful and sustainable, the more specific the details you have to define it, the better.  Accurately aligning these details to the specifics of your other career foundation stones is also critical to building sustainable passion and satisfaction.  What are the details of your career dream?

6.  Company culture – this is like the personality of an organization including its practiced values, business processes, policies, programs and behavior patterns toward employees.  The culture of a big global company such as IBM is likely to have a lot of structure, policies, complexity and hierarchy, as compared to a smaller, entrepreneurial company like Groupon that is likely to be more flexible, informal and simple to navigate.  Company culture is heavily influenced by the practiced values, attitudes and behaviors of the leadership.  Some companies emphasize promoting from within and providing substantial training.  Others think that a lot of talent should be recruited from outside, with little internal training, to stay agile and take advantage of competitive skills.  There can also be different subcultures to an organization that one might see in different functions such as finance (quantitative, structured) or sales (outgoing, achievement oriented).  Looking at it as a foundation stone to support building your career passion, it is very important that you learn the details of a company’s culture, particularly how they align with the details of your other career foundation stones.  Significant misalignments between company culture and your career foundation stones are likely to cause frustration and loss of passion.  How would you describe a company culture that would be good for you? (6)

7.  Manager personality – while there are practical limits to picking one’s manager, this is  an important foundation stone to evaluate as one considers accepting a job or seeking a promotion.  With a clear understanding of your other career foundation stones, it is a good idea to think through the manager personality characteristics you can live with and those you can’t.  Manager personalities vary enormously just like everyone else’s.  A manager may be friendly, collaborative, respectful, supportive, flexible and team oriented, etc., etc.  Or, they may be aloof, autocratic, critical, demanding, structured and self oriented, etc., etc.  Accepting a job with a manager who’s personality is acceptable to yours can go a long toward helping you build and sustain your career passion.  What manager personality characteristics can you not live with? (4)

All this may seem a little complicated if you are looking for a quick relief from an unhappy situation with your job, company or career at the present time.  However, I recommend that you take the time to get it right on your career foundation stones, either at the beginning or in the middle of your career.  Develop detailed answers to the questions I listed above, and look for the alignments or misalignments between your career foundation stones and your current situation.  Decide where you need to correct the misalignments and develop a specific, practical plan to do so.  This will give you the greatest chance possible for experiencing the enduring career passion you want.

Go build your enduring career passion!

Dr. Robert Wiley

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Suggested Additional Readings

The following contain useful and interesting information and guidance on the seven foundation stones of career passion I’ve discussed.  They have quite a bit of overlapping content, so look first for the chapters most relevant to the foundation stones I’ve referenced.

¹What Color Is Your Parachute?  A Practical Manual for Job-Hunters and Career-Changers, by Richard N. Bolles, 2011.  This is a classic book in the field with many prior editions.  Crush It!: Why NOW Is the Time to Cash In on Your Passion, by Gary Vaynerchuk, 2009.  This is a good example of recent books promoting career passion.

²Getting Unstuck: A Guide to Discovering Your Next Career Path, by Timothy Butler, 2009.  See chapter 5 entitled “Our Deepest Interests.”

³StandOut:  The Groundbreaking New Strengths Assessment from the Leader of the Strengths Revolution, by Marcus Buckingham, 2011.  An interesting way of identifying key skill clusters for one’s career, building on Buckingham’s prior work.

⁴Career Match: Connecting Who You Are with What You’ll Love to Do, by Shoya Zichy and Ann Bidou, 2007.  This discusses a personality model widely used in career planning and business.
Also see http://career.missouri.edu/students/majors-careers/skills-interests/career-interest-game for an interesting game-like exercise.

⁵The Pathfinder: How to Choose or Change Your Career for a Lifetime of Satisfaction and Success, by Nicholas Lore, 1998.  A broad, useful resource book for assessing various aspects of career choice.  See chapter 23 on values and rewards.

⁶Communication and Organizational Culture: A Key to Understanding Work Experiences, by Joann Keyton, 2010.  An in-depth analysis of organizational culture with linkages to personal considerations.

Getting That Early Promotion You Want

Your Situation or Challenge:

My supervisor is very supportive about having an annual discussion of my performance goals and progress.  He also expressed a wish to eventually promote me, but he seems interested in discussing this only on an annual basis.  I am looking for ways to broach the subject of possible advancement or getting greater responsibility before a year has passed.  But, I don’t want to seem like I’m interrupting his work, failing to support him or coming across as self-centered.  I would like more challenging work and responsibility.  The situation seems awkward.

Your Question to Dr. Robert Wiley:

What’s the best way to  ask for more challenging work and show interest in advancing, in my situation?

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The Basic Tactics for Getting Promoted

Getting promoted by a specific boss always involves some deeper considerations of personality, relationship building and developing broader organizational credibility.  However, let’s start with the basics which should be almost universal.

Do a great job.  The first principle for accelerating your promotion prospects is to do a great job at your current responsibilities and assignments.  Most managers are reluctant to consider promotions at any time unless performance in the current job is at least solid or superior.  When it becomes clear to your manager and others that you are highly motivated, skilled and quick to accomplish your current responsibilities, thoughts of giving you more challenging responsibilities will usually not be far behind.

At the same time, it is amazing how often a new employee’s view of their own performance can be much more favorable than the view of their manager.  This can occur due to the lack of shared, specific job expectations.  To lay the groundwork for a superior performance review from your manager early on, it is critical that you quickly develop a detailed understanding of what this would look like to your manager during your first few weeks on the job.  Most managers will be receptive to your request to clarify the details of your job responsibilities and define the results they would consider superior for each responsibility area.  Your proactive participation in this discussion and good note taking will usually be important.  Providing a concise written summary of the discussion back to your boss, by area of responsibility, is likely to be viewed by most managers as good initiative on your part.  Let’s call this your template for superior performance.

It is also a good idea, when possible, to get some input from knowledgeable co-workers regarding your template for superior performance.  This would best occur informally by soliciting their comments about how your responsibilities can best be done in the company given how things typically work around there.  In such discussions, you should genuinely share your motivation to do a great job and make the best contribution to the department and company.  Until you really know and can trust a co-worker, however, you are probably better off avoiding making comments that you expect to be on a fast track to promotion.  This can stir up reactions from others that can be counter-productive.

Once you feel you have a good template for superior performance in your current job, then work hard to deliver it with flying colors.  Doing this with a friendly, supportive attitude toward others around you is usually a good idea, rather than tooting your own horn a lot.  Shortly after you accomplish your tasks and delivered quicker and better results than expected, it’s a good practice to keep your boss up to date on what you’ve contributed.  Frequent up-side surprises in your daily or weekly job performance that you communicate to your boss in a friendly, good-humored manner are likely to elicit praise and requests for additional work.  This is what you want if you are ambitious.

Offer to help.  Once you are consistently delivering the goods on your template for superior performance, the next principle you should practice is looking for opportunities to help others with their work – your boss and other employees around you.  These people, like most employees, will often feel pressured and short on resources (e.g., time and skills) to get various aspects of their jobs done well.  If you are observant, you will notice tasks or projects where you could help them get the results they need.  In offering your assistance, try to ensure that your work supports but doesn’t overshadow theirs, and avoid taking on things that you cannot effectively deliver due to your own skill or time limitations.

Advanced Strategies

The basic tactics for getting promoted are usually essential but not always sufficient to get the promotions you want.  It will often be necessary to address considerations of personality, relationship building and developing broader organizational credibility.

Get to know your boss’s personality.  Bosses are people with unique personalities, like the rest of us.  They operate with fairly predictable attitudes, values, preferences, abilities and behavioral traits.  Like all of us, bosses tend to look more favorably on employees who understand these key aspects of their personalities and constructively accommodate them.  This means quickly learning what makes your boss “tick” and working consistently in a way that consciously accommodates their preferences, expectations and attitudes at work, without giving up what is important in your own personality.  It requires short-cutting the typical process of slowly getting to know someone through general interactions and the occasional conflicts that may occur over a period of years in a working relationship.  Instead, initiate opportunities to ask your boss and others regarding his preferences and expectations about doing things at work.

In the situation you presented, it appears that your boss may be a bit formal, structured and possibly introverted.  This may mean that he needs to have meetings with you scheduled in advance, have a written discussion agenda and be given information ahead of time to think about.  He may also prefer 1:1 interactions in his office in contrast to a lot of group interactions.  While such observations need to be validated, they have definite implications for a constructive, effective approach to your boss if they are accurate.  Applied to your desire for greater responsibility and early promotion, these implications may include providing to your boss written updates on your results and contributions, scheduled meetings to discuss increased responsibilities, and a written proposal from you to consider ahead of time.  Approaching these as legitimate preferences with constructive accommodation at work will go a long way to engendering a positive, supportive attitude toward you from your boss.  It almost goes without saying that this attitude is likely to accelerate his consideration toward promoting you early.

Build positive work relationships and broader credibility.  In addition to rapidly building a positive relationship with your boss, based on personality insight, it will be helpful to your promotion prospects if you work to build positive relationships and credibility more broadly in your organization.  Most managers are at least influenced to some degree by the reputation you build around you at work.  You are more likely to develop a positive reputation to the degree that others see you as friendly, collaborative and genuinely contributing to the company.  The key to this involves fairly frequent interactions with others where you show consistent interest in them and their work and where you communicate about your own job contributions with an obvious intent to be helpful (to the company, to your department, to them, etc.).  Even if you tend to be a bit introverted yourself, it is very important to your promotion prospects that you make a consistent effort to build relationships and credibility more broadly beyond your relationship with your boss.  When you realize that most promotions bring with them a broader network of work relationships and possibly a supervisory role, you will understand why this is critical.

So, in summary, here are the principles you need to practice to maximize your prospects for early promotion:

1. Do a great job – understand your boss’s definition of superior performance on your specific responsibilities and deliver results faster and better than he expects.
2. Offer to help – once you are consistently over-delivering on your current responsibilities, offer to help your boss and others to accomplish their work.
3. Get to know your boss’s personality – quickly dig in to understand and constructively accommodate your boss’s work preferences, values and expectations.
4. Build positive work relationships and broader credibility – show a collaborative, contributing interest in others while respectfully communicating your contributions.

Bon voyage to your early promotion!

Dr. Robert Wiley

Is A Bird in the Hand Worth Two in the Bush?

Your Situation or Challenge:

I’m about 6 years into my career after graduating from engineering school. I was laid off as an engineering group manager from my employer about 4 months ago due to cost cuts. I have interviewed with 28 companies. I have an engineer job offer right now, but it is for a position at a lower level and lower pay than I left. I am still interviewing and really interested in another company, but the management job I’d like may not be offered there.

Your Question to Dr. Robert Wiley:

Should I take the sure thing or wait for the job I really want?

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Your situation involves the timeless dilemma of whether “a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.”  It is a difficult situation that faces many people today in our economy, due to the high unemployment rate and uncertainty about job prospects.  Many people are simply looking for a job, any job, and they feel great frustration that not enough jobs are available in our communities and across the country.  In this situation, it may seem pointless for some to spend much time analyzing whether a specific job offer is right for them.  However, the issues involved in your situation are shared by most people who have lost a job, and the decision that is right for one person will not be right for another.  To reach a decision that is right for you, consider answering and rating your responses to the following questions.  Give a personal rating to each question using a 1-10 scale (1=not compelling; 10=very compelling).

1. How badly do I need a job now to pay my bills?
2. While the pay for the job I have been offered is lower, can I get along financially with it and for how long?
3. How do my skills and experience fit with the job I’ve been offered?  Is there at least a 80% fit?  What if I’m overqualified?
4. Is the job offer I have with a good company that provides real career advancement in engineering management?  When could I be promoted with good performance?  How would I rate the desirability of the career cultures and financial viability of the two companies I am considering?
5. Am I comfortable taking a new job shorter-term until I get something better?  Is “job hopping” a real issue?
6. Are there other important issues that have a negative bearing on accepting the job offer such as location, commuting and work/life balance?

1.  How badly do I need a job now to pay my bills?

Question #1 carries the urgency of basic financial survival that is very important to most of us who find ourselves pushed out into the job market.  It is not to be ignored and may be the compelling factor in accepting an imperfect job offer particularly when one’s job search has been lengthy or financial resources are running out.  Few in our country today would blame anyone for accepting such a job when financial survival is at stake.  An individual who accepts a sub-optimal job primarily for financial survival deserves respect from all of us, although few of us would consider it “ideal” from a career management viewpoint.  The keys to this decision for any individual come from developing personal answers to all the above questions.  Rate this question a 1 if you don’t need the job offered to survive financially at the present time; rate it a 10 if you really do.

2.  While the pay for the job I have been offered is lower, can I get along financially with it and for how long?

Question #2 is really an extension of the first question.  While the current job offer may provide lower pay, how much lower is it than the prior job?  Most people can withstand a pay reduction of 10-20% by cutting discretionary living expenses.  But, a reduction greater than 20% usually requires a substantial restructuring in fundamental living costs.  This picture can be modified significantly depending on other available financial resources such as savings, spouse employment, unemployment compensation or other financial assets.  In any case, it is a good idea to develop a sound estimate of how long you will have to endure a significantly lower pay level in the new job.  If it is a substantial period of time, say more than one year, the financial and emotional toll can be great.  It is most important to be brutally frank with yourself about this prospect and take personal cost and cash flow restructuring steps accordingly.  Rate this question 1-5 if the job offered provides less than 80% of your customary pay; rate it 6-10 if it provides 100% or more.

3.  How do my skills and experience fit with the job I’ve been offered?  Is there at least a 80% fit?  What if I’m overqualified?

It is important to point out here that I am a big supporter of choosing jobs and a career path for which you have a personal passion.  Ideally, all of us should pursue a type of work that is intrinsically enjoyable and provides an ongoing sense of personal satisfaction.  As several current observers have said, personal passion for the work generally favors sustainable motivation and effectiveness.  At the same time, it is equally important to be realistic at any point in time about a job’s specific match with the knowledge and skills you currently have.  More often than not, people feel satisfaction from work where they are skilled and feel frustration from work that is mismatched to their specific skills.

A realistic answer to question #3 is critical to making a sound employment decision even when a job offer appears sub-optimal or shorter-term.  When there is a job/person skills mismatch greater than 20%, the results typically include performance anxiety/frustration and significant risk of performance failure.  This outcome has greater probability when you are lacking key job skills than when you are overqualified, but the magnitude of the latter must be considered as well.  To properly evaluate this question, it is important to establish a specific, accurate list of skill requirements for the offered job.  Limit this list to 10 priority skills, to make the task manageable.  This can best be done during the interviewing process, but can be supplemented after interviews by a call to the hiring manager or recruiter.  Showing an interest in the specific details of the required job skills will generally be viewed favorably by employers.  Once you have a detailed list of skill requirements, it is important to come up with a realistic rating of how well you match those requirements.  Some people can do this independently, but it is usually a good idea to get the perspective of others who know your prior work and skills.    For each specific skill, complete a simple rating of 1 to 10 (1=poor match; 5=exact match; 10=quite over-skilled).  With 10 skills, the a target match would be a total of 50 points.  A total score of 40 points is the failure risk threshold.  If your total rating is 65 points or more, then the question of over-qualification comes into play.  Your personal risk for a score over 65 is job boredom.  An employer who sees this degree of over-qualification is likely to have concerns about risk of performance sustainability, organizational disruption or job hopping.  Rate this question a 1-4 if your overall fit rating is less than 40 or more than 65; rate it 5 to 10 if your score is between 40 and 65.

4.  Is the job offer I have with a good company that provides real career advancement in engineering management?  When could I be promoted with good performance?  How would I rate the desirability of the career cultures and financial viability of the two companies I am considering?

Question #4 asks you to look more deeply at the company behind the job you’ve been offered (as well as another job you may think you want more).  This is not necessarily an issue of whether the company has $ multi-billion revenues or has been in business 100 years.  Depending on individual personality, aspirations and market opportunities, an entrepreneurial enterprise can be just as financially viable as a mature corporation.  The key is whether the company has a sound basis for financial viability.  If entrepreneurial, is it in a high growth market niche, and does it have real competitive advantages?  What is its success in capturing market share?  If a mature corporation, how do analysts rate its financial health in terms of profitability and balance sheet?  Is its market niche(s) growing or declining?  What is the company’s actual track record on promoting engineers to management roles?  Is the culture favorable for career progression, for example offering relevant management training and pushing promotion from within?  In the engineering group, what is the average time to supervisor promotion for talented individual engineers?  What % or number of engineers have been promoted to supervisor roles in the past 2 years?  Again, you can legitimately ask questions about these things during your interviews or after while you are evaluating the job offer.  How do the two companies compare, the one that has offered me the sub-optimal job vs. the one where I think there might be a higher job opportunity?  If your rating for the job offered company is at least 90% of that for the other company, that is strongly favorable for taking your “bird in the hand.”  Rate this question a 1-4 if the job offered company lacks financial viability and career progression; rate it 5-10 if these factors are relatively solid or strong vs. the other company.

5.  Am I comfortable taking a new job shorter-term until I get something better?  Is “job hopping” a real issue?

Question #5 brings in issues of personal values as well as employer attitudes.  In many situations, intentionally short-term employment is mutually appropriate, even desirable between an individual and employer, especially when this assumption has been made explicit.  Some people enjoy short-term job assignments, may view them as good learning opportunities and may have other practical reasons for taking them.  Other people want more enduring job assignments and look for companies with a clear opportunity to build a longer-term career.  From the individual’s perspective, there probably isn’t an absolute right or wrong about this.  There can be many legitimate reasons why job assignments turn out to be short-term.  The typical company perspective on this, however, is usually more restrictive.  Some short tenures in one’s job history are usually viewed as ok as long as they are counter-balanced by a clear majority of job tenures that achieve or exceed roughly three years each.  Job and company variety can be viewed by employers as a strength, but only when there is a track record of job stability involving real performance contribution (which usually takes 2-3 years per job).  Rate this question a 1 if your are uncomfortable taking on a short-term job assignment and/or if it would not be viewed favorably by an employer who might see too many short-term jobs on your resume.  Rate it 5-10 to the degree you are comfortable viewing it as potentially a short-term assignment and have good job tenure on your resume to counter-balance it.

6.  Are there other important issues that have a negative bearing on accepting the job offer such as location, commuting and work/life balance?

Question #6 covers “other” considerations that might tilt your decision toward rejecting the offered job.  For example, if accepting the job would require a household move that is expensive or involve a property sale in an uncertain real estate market (not protected by the hiring company), this might weigh heavily against accepting it.  If it requires a long daily commute, this may significantly reduce your job satisfaction and disrupt your work/life balance.  Rate this question a 1 if such considerations seem very substantial; rate it a 5-10 if they seem less significant to unimportant.

Here is a table for bringing together all of your analysis for the offered job:

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Opportunity Analysis	Reflections	Ratings
1.  Need job to pay bills	Have non-retirement savings more than 1 year’s salary.  Receiving 9 months severance.	2
2.  Pay reduction is manageable (less than 20%)	Salary offer is 23% below customary compensation in prior management job.	4
3.  Skills match is good (80%+)	With 3 years professional engineering and 3 years management, I’m way over-qualified.	2
4.  Financially solid company with career progression	Hiring company is in engineering services with heavy reliance on major government projects.	4
5.  Short-term job tenure is acceptable	At first employer 6 years with 3 promotions.  Could easily handle a short-term assignment and play it by ear.	8
6.  Location, commute and work/life balance are ok	Work location is in a nearby town, about 10 miles further than prior work location.	7
Decision to accept job	Total Rating	27

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Question Ratings:  1=not compelling; 10=very compelling

Total Rating:  6 to 29=relatively unfavorable; 30-60 relatively favorable

Using this organized approach to answering key questions, you are indicating that this particular job offer is not compelling.  Particularly notable are your ability to handle the financial situation for several months and your assessment of the employer’s uncertain financial strength and career opportunity.  You are convinced that you have excellent work experience and skills as a manager.  You feel you can hold out for a higher level job in a financially more robust company.

This is a sound but fairly simple approach to making a complex decision despite the financial and emotional pressures of finding the right job.  It allows you to gather needed information, sort through your evaluation of several factors and check your thinking with others who know you well.  It will enable you to keep in mind several of the most critical job decision factors as you navigate your career in the future.  Bon voyage!

Dr. Robert Wiley