One best times to reflect on what is really important to you in terms of your career and life is when you are deciding whether or not to accept an offer. Even if you are simply entertaining the thought of moving on, consider that this is a time to do big-picture thinking. You might consider factors such as compensation, location, balance in life, peer relationship development, and whether or not you can leverage a larger role later on, inside or outside the company.
These factors are not all equal. Aging parents, children in school, and other life circumstances can mean that you need to balance your work life with personal commitments. Compensation is always a good driver, but sometimes not the overriding factor.
Whatever your considerations, however, you should go beyond drawing the proverbial line down the middle of the paper and listing the pros and cons of a role. Weight each factor because, frankly, some things are worth more than others.
Step 1
List what is important to you on the left. Assign a weight on a 10-point scale, where 10 is very important to you and 1 is of little importance. Add up the weights for a total possible score.
Step 2
Rank the components of the offer (or current situation) relative to the weights. For example, if you weight “compensation” as an 8 and the offer you receive meets those needs, rank the offer an 8. If you weight “no travel” as a 7 and the offer requires you to travel more than you want, you can rank the offer for that category a 5, and so on. Add up those scores.
Step 3
Divide the offer score by the total possible score, for a percentage. If the role ranks 80 percent or better, you may consider that a good offer … or you may not. Perhaps you were looking for 90-95 percent. It’s up to you.
Sometimes circumstances dictate that we have to change our situation; sometimes our situation meets our needs. Whatever the case, this is a good way to quantify and/or reevaluate every few years in terms of what is important to you and to use that as a base line for considering career changes.
