One day in your career, you’ll be in the seemingly enviable position of having multiple jobs to choose from. While it seems great, it can also create a lot of stress on choosing the right one. Here are a couple of questions I think are useful to ask yourself.
- How much power will you have in the new job? Can you really say no? If you can’t say no to a project or have a say in what’s going to happen…you might be a figurehead hire….someone who looks good, fills the role, but isn’t going to be able to do much.
- What is the journey for the next 2-3 years? Is it evolutionary (slow change over time) or revolutionary (fast with lots of casualties)? Are you a wartime or peace time general?
- Do you trust your boss? Not whether or not your boss is a nice person, but do you fundamentally trust them? It’s a yes or no, split second answer. Listen to your instincts.
- Will you be able to get things done? Sometimes, you can tell the situation is highly political, with lots of people with different agendas. Ask questions in your interview on how disagreements are resolved between people.. e.g “in my old world, there was a lot of infighting between operations and sales. Does that happen here?”
- Pretend you’re in the job. Gut check: are you happy/excited/nervous or are you anxious/”oh S&*# what did I do”? You can have some trepidation….but keep you up at night anxiety isn’t good. It’s not going to get better.