Out of The Frying Pan.....How to Choose Your Next Job

Malky Mackay and owner of Cardiff City, Vincent Tan

There has been lots of speculation about who will take over as manager at Cardiff City since Malky Mackay was sacked a couple of days ago.  I wouldn't usually use football as a reference point when thinking about career choices but sometimes wisdom comes from surprising sources.  When questioned about whether Ole Gunnar Solskjaer would take the job, one pundit remarked that he'd been advised to "Think about which chairman you want to join rather than which club."

On a similar note, Matt Frost, a 30 year old from Cornwall, found that "If you have the same interests as your colleagues, it makes a big difference."  Matt spent 2013 trying a different job each week for 52 weeks (see www.oneweekjob.com,) and he noticed that, even though some of the jobs were similar, the people you had around you made the biggest difference to whether or not you enjoyed it.

Does this mean that we should only look for jobs where we like the people we work for or with?  Not necessarily but we often overlook the people factor when we consider changing what we do.  It is tempting to only look at quantitative factors such as salary, bonus, title (status), team size etc. as they are easy to compare even though it is usually the people around us that have the biggest impact on our fulfillment.

Fluffy stuff?

Even if you don't think of yourself as a "people person", having the right people around you is still important. This is not about finding people you'd want to socialize with, it is about the role of others in your success.

What do you love most about the work that you do? Who would you want around you so that you could focus on that, rather than be distracted by what you don't enjoy? 

Consider your greatest strengths.  What kind of leader would recognise these strengths and value them in their organisation?

Making decisions

Deciding to leave can be easy.  Deciding where to go can be more difficult. By aligning your decision-making criteria to your values you can compare things that really matter to you and your happiness.

Here's a starting point:

• List what you want more of and want less of in your next job. Consider which of these are because of or impacted by the people around you. 
• Consider what you would do if money/time was not a concern. Does this include others in some way? If so, who and why?
• Think about who inspires you and why.
• Write down the people who have made the biggest impact on your career and what that impact was.

To talk more about making a change in your career, get in touch: steph@stephaniesmithcoaching.co.uk