For graduating seniors on that full-time job hunt, the above is probably a hard question to answer.
Some people have years worth of work experiences or a master’s degree. Still, others have done ground-breaking research or pioneered cool independent projects.
Converting that experience into an entry-level salary and position: how does one even begin to answer that question?
Two months ago, at the start of my job-seeking journey, I certainly wouldn’t have known the answer. Any job would have done the trick, honestly. Then, a few weeks ago, I more or less got hit in the face with career whiplash. Suddenly, I had a bunch of very different answers, and no idea what to do.
Should I take on the job with the most responsibilities? The most interesting work? The best company culture? Just sell myself to the highest bidder, all other considerations be damned?
I can’t tell you the amount of sleep I lost, thinking about those questions and countless others. As I said in a post a few weeks ago, I am terrible at making grown-up decisions for myself. I frantically looped in as many people as I could — family, friends, colleagues — into the options I had, the decision I was about to take. They weighed in as best as they could, but all of them admitted to having no strong preference, leaving the final choice to me.
I grew frustrated, then tired. Why couldn’t someone just point me to the right answer?
But of course, I knew that was a silly thing to expect. After all, it wasn’t a friend or colleague or family member who’d end up actually TAKING the job. I was going to be the one actually working, so, for better or for worse, this was a decision I’d have to make, alone.
In the end, I did indeed make a choice. Here are some of the lessons I learned along the way, in a vaguely-strung series of anecdotes that will hopefully be coherent by the time this is published.
Here’s my first piece of advice: don’t focus on compensation. That sounds silly, and I’m fully aware that if you have student loans and debt, that’s not a factor worth ignoring completely. But the truth is, the world is full of employers willing to offer a full range of salaries. I realized that after staring down at offers that were so fundamentally close in compensation that I had to focus instead on what really mattered — the job itself.
For a while, I ignored that seemingly-obvious fact. I went so far as to run engineering-economics-style calculations on my potential future income, taking into account cost of living and taxes. (Not an entirely unworthy exercise, granted, but it did eventually come to a point of sheer ridiculousness). But the truth is, peace of mind and satisfaction with the actual work you’re doing trumps a few extra thousand dollars any day. That’s just as valid of a reason to decline a job as any other.
And, as a counterpoint to what I just said — don’t underestimate your worth either. Early on in my job search, I nearly signed an offer that would have been far below the market rate for my skills, degree, and experience, simply because I was worried that I wouldn’t find another job that I really liked or cared about. I assumed that I would be forced to settle, and that I should get comfortable with that possibility.
It was only in hindsight that I realized — it’s not audacious to want something amazing, to not want to settle. Truly, it isn’t. Remember that, while you’re on your job hunt journey.
Here’s another thing to remember — the decision to not take a job is not a personal offense, and will not be taken that way by the company that you end up turning down. Still, declining can be tough, especially if you’ve formed a friendly bond with the recruiter or the people you’ve interviewed with.
It can be tougher still if you have an emotional attachment to the company, or what it stands for, but again, remember — corporations don’t have feelings. Your decision to accept or decline does not represent a fundamental tipping point for the company. Recruiters are there to help you, and of course they will push hard for their company and the role it is you’ve been offered, but in the end, the person who will be working the job is you. Not your boss, not the recruiter, you. So you have to make the decision that’s best for you, and do so with grace.
Also — you will be working for the vast majority of your life. Closing one door doesn’t mean that company is suddenly shut off from you forever. If there’s a later opportunity that emerges down the road and that’s simply a better fit, you certainly can take it, and do so without hesitation.
That was perhaps the hardest pill for me to swallow, admittedly. I wanted so badly to not have to turn anyone down, or risk disappointing someone (even though my dad jokingly reminded me that I couldn’t exactly accept every job offer either). In the end, though, I made my formal declines as cleanly as I could, and I’m happy, knowing I did my best to make sure no bridges were burned.
Which brings me to another point: no matter how ‘clean’ you try to be about it, decision-making is inherently messy, and inevitably, you’ll find that you’re hit with more twists and turns than you ever expected. Here was just one of mine: shortly after making a decision to turn down a dream company, a close friend let me know that she had gotten a job offer from them as well, one she intended to take. Believe me — while I was absolutely ecstatic for her, I also went through all five stages of grief again. I spent some time mourning a missed opportunity, both to work for that company and work with someone I consider a very close friend, even though I knew that the job wasn’t quite right for me. And then, I moved on. In a sense, that gave me the closure I needed.
Finally, perhaps the single most important thing I learned: you can make a decision matrix, run the numbers over and over, ad nauseam. But in the end, there might not even be a ‘right’ decision.
As a mentor told me a few years ago, back when I was trying to decide whether or not to come to Stevens — you cannot make the ‘right’ decision. You have to make the decision the right one for you.
And even if you’re wrong — you can always start again. Your life isn’t ending — in fact, it’s just begun.
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