Faststream Recruitment Limited - Career Information - Career Decisions

How to Evaluate a Job Offer

If your employment interview went well, and there’s sincere and mutual interest on both sides, you now need to decide two things: first, whether the new position is right for you; and if so, what sort of offer you’d be willing to accept. To help in the decision-making process, take the following test as a way to compare the two positions.

Position Comparison Guide.

Directions: Compare the new job with what you already have.

Old Job	New Job	Under Consideration
		Position title
		Supervisory responsibility
		Project authority
		Decision-making autonomy
		Freedom to implement ideas
		Ability to affect change
		Promotion potential
		Challenge of tasks
		Ability to meet expectations
		Access to professional development
		Professional growth potential
		Company/industry growth
		Company/industry stability
		Starting salary, benefits, perks
		Future compensation
		Commuting distance
		Travel requirements
		Work environment
		Relationship with co-workers
		Relationship with management
		Comfort with corporate culture
		Other considerations (specify)
		Total score: New job vs. old job

Your Next Job: What Does it Really Pay?

Salary or hourly rate will be a key factor in your decision whether to accept a new position. However, few people take the time to really understand their economic choices, mostly because there are so many hidden factors, such as cost of living and benefits. To help you put your choices into perspective, use the following guide to evaluate your prospective package with what you’re currently earning.

Position Compensation Guide

Directions: Compare the economics of the old and new job.

Old Job	New Job	To Consider
£	£	Basic salary
£	£	Bonus, commissions
£	£	Additional perks
£	£	Profit sharing potential
£	£	Value of stock or equity
£	£	Pension
£	£	Reimbursed expenses
£	£	Cost of living differences
£	£	Moving expenses
£	£	Travel expenses
£	£	Other expenses (specify)
£	£	Difference (+/-)

Regardless of where money ranks on your list of priorities, it’s a good idea to know what you may be getting into when faced with a career decision.


Salary Negotiation Techniques

The best approach to putting the deal together is to decide whether you want the job before an offer is extended. This allows you to clarify whether the job suits your needs. Unless you’re motivated solely by money, it’s doubtful a whether more money will turn a bad job into a good one.

The term “bottom line” refers to the amount of money you feel is absolutely necessary to accept the job offer. If, for example, you really want £35,000 but would think about £33,000 or settle for £32,000, then you haven’t established your bottom line. The bottom line is one pound more than the figure you would positively walk away from. Setting a bottom line clarifies your sense of worth, and helps avoid unpredictable bargaining.

Try to keep away from “negotiating” an offer in the classic sense, where the company makes a proposal, you counter it, they counter your counter, and so on. While this type of back-and-forth format may be customary for negotiating a deal for buying a new house, job offers should be handled in a more straightforward manner.

Determine your bottom line in advance, and wait for the offer. If the company offers you more than your bottom line, great. If they offer you less, then you have the option of turning the offer down or revealing to them your bottom line as a condition of acceptance. At that point, they can raise their offer or walk away. And once the bottom line is known, you can avoid the haggling that so often causes aggravation or disappointment.

By determining your own acceptance conditions in advance, you’ll never be accused of negotiating in bad faith or of being indecisive. Learning to differentiate between financial fact and fantasy will facilitate the job changing process.

If you feel the need to justify your salary request, you can itemise any loss of income that may result from a differential in benefits, geographic location, car expenses, and so forth.

Often, there are considerations aside from money that need to be satisfied before an offer can be accepted. Factors such as the new position title, review periods, work schedule, holiday allowance, and promotion opportunities are important, and should be looked at carefully.

You can use this approach to quantify each consideration or “point” you need to satisfy as a condition for acceptance. Once you and the company settle on each point, you won’t need to go back later to negotiate. Knowing your bottom line puts you in a better position to get what you want, since you’ve established a set of quantifiable conditions needed for acceptance.


The Strategic Case for Changing Jobs

There are many deeply personal reasons to change your employment situation. However, from a purely strategic point of view, there are four good reasons to change jobs within the same (or similar) industry three times during your first ten years of employment:

Reason #1: Changing jobs gives you a broader base of experience: After about three years, you’ve learned most of what you’re going to know about how to do your job. Therefore, over a ten year period, you gain more experience from “three times 90 %” than “one times 100 %.”

Reason #2: A more varied background creates a greater demand for your skills: Depth of experience means you’re more valuable to a larger number of employers. You’re not only familiar with your current company’s product, service, procedures, quality programs, inventory system, etc; you bring with you the expertise you’ve gained from your prior employment with other companies.

Reason #3: A job change results in an accelerated promotion cycle. You jump, for example, from project engineer to senior project engineer; or UK sales manager to sales and marketing director.

Reason #4: More responsibility leads to greater earning power: A promotion is usually accompanied by a salary increase. And since you’re being promoted faster, your salary can grow at a quicker pace.

Many people view a job change as a way of promoting themselves to a better position. And in most cases, this is true. However, you should always be sure your new job offers you the means to satisfy your values. While there’s no denying the strategic virtues of selective job changing for the purpose of career leverage, you want to make sure the path you take will lead you where you really want to go.

For example, there’s no reason to change jobs for more money if it’ll make you unhappy to the point of distraction. In fact, money usually has no influence on a career decision unless it materially affects your lifestyle or self-identity.


Career Strategy: It Pays to Diversify

Many people manage their careers with a narrow mindset. This can mean that people invest their talents, year after year, in a narrow field of expertise.

Until recently, this approach made a lot of sense. Conventional wisdom dictates that if you do one thing really well, you’ll never be out of a job. But times have changed, and whilst it’s still true that a solid career is built on a foundation of position-specific expertise, it’s become increasingly important to maintain a balanced portfolio.

When employers look for talent, they typically settle for people with the proficiency to perform certain tasks. But what they really want—especially in today’s competitive market—is an adaptable candidate, whose broad-based set of skills crosses over into a variety of disciplines.

As organisations flatten, more is expected from each individual contributor. This means that versatility has become a key ingredient in modern-day career progression. 

To round out your CV look for areas of weakness, and try to develop them into strengths. By gaining knowledge in areas that were formerly considered the domain of “somebody else,” you’ll increase your overall market value.