Mystery Job: Is it a dream? Or a dud?

September 1, 2011 6:03 PM

How can I tell if I will actually like a job? How do I get better at picking jobs that are right for me?

TLDR; I feel myself wanting to take a job because I want to be wanted, not because it makes sense. Why's that? How can I stop doing that? Is this how everyone feels about their career?

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I am a mid-level professional in a semi-niche field. I am paid very well, have an OK educational background (undergrad and grad in the same field) and a solid, but not remarkable resume.

I am in a company that is going through some chaotic times, I started there just a few months ago and my role is pretty unstable. Given the situation with executive tumult when I took the role, this shouldn't have been a surprise, but I took it anyway.

My last job before this one was heavy stress and, while it was fun and challenging, I knew it was a little screwed up and a lot stressful before I even took it. I basically took my current job to flee that one.

I am reluctant to leave this job before a year because:
- I have another "career mulligan" on my resume, a job I left in less than a year due to a combination of terrible management and an awesome offer elsewhere
- I got a signing bonus that I would have to pay back if I left

With jobs (and strangely people), I always start out giving the benefit of the doubt, expecting the best of them. I focus on the good things and downplay the bad things -- until, of course, I'm in that job.

Today, I got a call from a former boss and he's created a role with me in mind.

On the pros:
- He's a good manager
- It would be an elevation in title, pay and responsibility from my current job
- The industry is in a good karma, growth field
- It's about the same commute as my current job, based on Google Maps estimates
- A friend and former coworker is considering a parallel job and we'd basically be team mates again
- I find my skills and my desire to care at all atrophying in my current job
- I feel WANTED!

But...
- The commute is over a really, really bad route (coughBAYBRIDGESF2EASTBAYcough) and the office isn't near public transport
- I've heard from someone else that the hiring manager (former boss) is disappointed in the amount of power he has and the amount of change he can make
- The role is very broad, the team is very small and the company is facing competition for the first time in their history, meaning that my stress level is very likely to go up
- I am not passionate about their products/services and that is important to me (there are plenty of people who are deeply passionate around what this company makes).

And yet, wow, I feel myself doing a positive spin on the job and mentally walking through the steps to getting it and taking it. The logical part of my brain is screaming "NO! NO!" but the other side is writing a note on LinkedIn trying to arrange a coffee meeting ASAP with the hiring manager.

Questions:
- Do you go through this with jobs? Is this normal?
- What questions do you ask in interviews that you find to be good indicators of whether or not a job is a good fit?
- When your logic side and your emotional side don't agree, how do you act?
- When your parachute is like a drunk chameleon, how do you know what's the right career move anyway?

posted by anonymous to work & money (4 answers total)

Here are a bunch of questions that can help you evaluate your fit against a position:

- is it important or not for you to have one on one relationships with people at work (colleagues or clients)?

- need to be part of a team, or more of an individualist?

- do you like having structured procedures laid out to follow, or prefer it more laissez-faire?

- like to be told what to do / tell others what to do, or something less top-down?

- want performance or commission based pay & bonuses, or a regular weekly salary?

- nonstop fast pace, or longer-term activities?

- to what extent do you want to set your own goals?

- how much emotional involvement do you crave?

- stable environment or rapidly shifting?

- how much personal control over your own work, schedules etc do you want?

- Is it a job where you "just do it" or would you prefer to have to mull over how to get things done? (acting v thinking)
posted by UbuRoivas at 6:33 PM on September 1, 2011 [2 favorites]

Yes I went through that with jobs because I could never last at jobs beyond a year.Why? Because it was something that another person envisioned for me. Left it, but I’ve absolutely been there so here are some of my suggestions and it made the last fulltime job tolerable and event fun (for me).

I mentioned this in another askme before, but I have a set of identical questions and I make a point of asking the same question to people at different levels (HR, potential manager, potential coworker – make sure to ask to talk to one even if such a person is not on your list to interview at the company). Anyways, ask the same question and listen how each person responds. Notice discrepancies? i.e. one of my favorites is: Do you promote from within? Bosses will say yes, HR will say yes, but a colleague may look sad, look down, and let something slip. It sounds horrible but the goal is to find out who tells you the truth during the interview and how much of the truth. If all the answers match, wow. If they don’t , then you can identify key problems.

Also, in your own head, rather than latching on to “Yeah! A job! Someone wants me”—ask yourself what you want out of the next year and job.Are there any skills that you want? Projects? Do you want to learn something? Identify those things and put it on a list. Or create a list of where you want to go in terms of a job a few years from now, identify the needed skills, and put them on the list.

Now if any of the skills mesh with your workplace, ask about opportunities to do so during the interview. They can turn into projects later on if they remember you babbling on about X during the interview So it doesn’t matter if you are not passionate about what they make for the next year or so – you will be passionate about other things that you can learn and do and work on yourself as the final product for the next job.Even the product they are working on can be interesting because you can look at those things as a tool kit for what you want to learn and do next.

Tl;dr Don’t wait to get employed somewhere and then have someone behind a desk tell you what your “goals” are supposed to be. You identify the skills before you even get there. You find a way to get them at that job and you start creating the career you want. You can tell them when you are employed there what you like and do not like doing.

Also, I am sure that you realize this, but having a supervisor that you get along with and a coworker that you like (your description sounds like you will have those things) are major plusses. Good luck.
posted by Wolfster at 7:43 PM on September 1, 2011 [1 favorite]

Is there any possibility of a work schedule where you aren't stuck driving on the bridge during rush hour? Early start, late start, telecommute, 4 10-hour days, that sort of thing?
posted by parrot_person at 12:39 AM on September 2, 2011

Seconding parrot_person on the commute - I did SF to East Bay for a contracting gig a while back, and going off hours it was actually really pleasant. Also, I'm not certain, but I think SF to East Bay is actually better than East Bay to SF (although morning seems better than evening, since all the SF-to-Peninsula traffic affects the East Bay-to-SF traffic).

Can you talk to your former boss about the timing? If he's created the role with you in mind, he'd probably really like you, and only you, to fill the job. Is there any chance he can hold it open until your signing bonus period is up, or sweeten the deal by covering the amount you would have to pay back?

To answer your specific questions:

- Do you go through this with jobs? Is this normal?

Personally, I actually do the opposite - I tend to over-focus on the downsides when I'm considering a job. After I've taken it, I usually find a lot of things about it that I like.

I'm sure both tendencies are perfectly normal.

- What questions do you ask in interviews that you find to be good indicators of whether or not a job is a good fit?

Particularly since you don't NEED this job (you already have a job that, while less than ideal, is not horrible), you can float all kinds of ideas about your preferences and see what kind of response you get, not just from your boss but from others on the team. "Given the commute, I was wondering about coming in 4 10-hour days a week. How would that work for everybody?" "It seems like circumstances are creating increased stress here at Company B. How is the team handling that, and how are each of you individually dealing with it?"

- When your logic side and your emotional side don't agree, how do you act?

I think both sides are really important, so I try to consider both as much as possible. I think imagination can be helpful here. Sit down someplace quiet, maybe with a pen and paper, and do your best to really imagine the best possible week at Company B. Be as vivid and specific as you can (given your limited knowledge). Then try again, imaging the worst possible week at Company B. Then compare those images to the good weeks and bad weeks you've had at Company A. Given that no place is perfect, which one seems (a) better and (b) less bad?

- When your parachute is like a drunk chameleon, how do you know what's the right career move anyway?

I guess I don't always think there's a "right" career move. Different choices are just different. All options have good sides and bad sides, and no job is ever perfect. It sounds like there are some significant upsides to this new offer. There are two questions, which only you can answer:

* will the downsides outweigh the upsides over at Company B?
* if so, will the job overall be WORSE than how things are at Company A?

And, of course, you can't fully answer them until you've been there for a while; you can only make educated guesses.

It's possible that you could make a serious effort to focus on the good sides of a job, and try to fix any problems that you have the power to fix, while learning to let go of some of your distress over the problems you can't fix. That can make any job less stressful, whether you stay at Company A or try things at Company B.

As far as being concerned about having another short-term job on your resume: if future interviewers ask why your tenure at your current job was so short, I think anyone would be impressed by an answer like "a former boss created a role with me in mind, and I was excited about the opportunity to work with him again."

Finally - sometimes job decisions feel like they're decisions you're making about THE REST OF YOUR LIFE. Seriously, you're very likely to have several more jobs over your working lifetime. If you take this new job and it turns out to make you miserable, you can always look elsewhere. It's not a life sentence.
posted by kristi at 11:31 AM on September 3, 2011