An article by Natashia Larkin for recruiter CV-Library’s website, titled '
How to ensure your employees aren’t making a career move they’ll regret', refers to research the firm carried out about moving jobs. It finds that 44.5% of 1,600 respondents have made a career move they later regretted. It’s unsurprising, given the powerful push and pull factors that can lead people to believe the grass will be greener at another firm. But by giving careful consideration to your reasons for making a career move, you can avoid making the wrong decision.
For the love of moneyIn a blog post published in June 2018 titled ‘
Should you take the job just because it pays more money?’ by Nick Deligiannis, managing director of recruitment firm Hays (Australia and New Zealand), he cautions against jumping ship purely because a new employer is offering more money. “Take a step back and review the opportunities to progress your skills and your career, both at your current organisation and at this potential new employer. While this new move may offer more money right now, this is counter-intuitive if you are still going to be doing the same job, earning the same salary, with the exact same set of skills, a few years down the line,” he says.
No satisfaction If it’s frustration or boredom in your current role that is making you look elsewhere, consider whether there are changes you could make that would increase your job satisfaction. This is described in an article for the
Harvard Business Review as ‘job crafting’.
Job crafting, as first cited by professors Amy Wrzesniewski and Jane Dutton in a paper for
The Academy of Management Review (April 2001), titled ‘Crafting a job: Revisioning employees as active crafters of their work’, is an organisational tool that helps turn the job you already have, into the job you want.
By visualising the job you want and mapping the elements that are attractive about it, you can then begin to redesign the job you already have to try and fulfil these desired requirements.
But if staying put isn’t an option and you have a number of offers on the table, and a decision to make before handing in your notice, what factors should you look for in your new employer?
Culture clubA blog by Nina McQueen for LinkedIn, titled ‘
Workplace culture trends: The key to hiring (and keeping) top talent in 2018’, includes the results of a survey conducted by Censuswide on behalf of LinkedIn in 2018, of 3,010 full-time workers. The results show 70% professionals would not work at a leading company if it meant they had to tolerate bad workplace culture. Also, 47% said work place benefits such as having time off during the holidays is important to them.
Making sure that the place you’re potentially moving to aligns with your culture is essential. Ask in your interview about the culture in the office – see how they describe the team and atmosphere. If being sociable at work is something you want, try and find out if the company hosts work drinks or events. However, it can go deeper than that. Ask how the business defines success – is it purely numbers, is it staff happiness, is it a mixture of both?
It’s somewhat inevitable that at a certain stage in your career, a move to a new employer will be the right thing to do. But by choosing wisely when to move on, and where, you can ensure that the long-term impact on your career is positive. And hopefully, there will be no regrets.