Below is a selective extracted version from the original podcast, my interview by A Mindful Career by Daniel.
Daniel: hello, everyone welcome to the new episode of a mindful career. Today I have a new guest yolanda, We have known each other for years, so i would leave yolanda to introduce herself and also share her current practice as a career coach.
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Daniel: As well as clients you are helping with. What are the kind of working experiences they have are they mostly young kids or they have more experiences in their career
Yolanda: so I’ve coached also people after 20 years of working in general management roles, trying to move into a different career path. Or after the COVID started, actually there were also people who are trying to get back into the workforce.
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Daniel: Today we will talk a little bit different from what we used to do. We help people find jobs all the time. Today we talk about “Why you shouldn’t join a company”, “Why you shouldn’t accept the offer“.
I want to start with a question to Yolanda:
After all the hardship of reaching out people on LinkedIn, and going through the interviews, going through the assessment centers, then finally people get offered, under what kind of situations, you think people shouldn’t accept the offer?
Yolanda: yeah I think that’s a very interesting question and it kind of is controversial right? At this time people are like “I just want a job” but that rhetoric kind of changes once they get the job and once they’re into it.
I had exactly that same case from one of the clients who was basically just wanting a job so desperately. And then yesterday she was saying, you know what, I just realized I need to prioritize my health and my family. This job is way more demanding than what I can handle.
So I think it all goes back to what we really need as a person. We don’t just need money – I mean it’s very very important but on the other hand there are a few other things that we need to balance on the plate. So it goes back to we need to be very clearly aware of what we need before we make that kind of decision in that moment.
Daniel: Right so i think yeah I feel desperation it’s not a good thing. In general, in life desperation is not a good thing in any kind of context. Um i realize under the current situations people when they receive a job offer, they feel “okay, it’s already very challenging right now… so why don’t I just go into this and see how it goes?”
I feel a lot of people may have this kind of mentality. But without a very clear self-awareness, and also what you want to achieve at this job, I think you are also wasting your time right now. Also some other priorities may be overlooked.
So how then? People will naturally ask,
“How do I set my priorities?”
“How do I do the kind of self realizations?”
Do you have any ideas? Especially when you know an offer comes in front of you,
What are the kind of deciding factors people should take into consideration?
Yolanda: I think just now we discussed one scenario, where we do not have a job. There are also cases where we actually have a job. And obviously there’s a bit of a difference, because of the opportunity costs in both scenarios are different.
But in either case I think we are too programmed today: that we want everything, like we want health, we want money, career progression and everything. But the thing is whenever a job offer comes, it may not fulfill everything. (But it may look like it has everything.)
When it comes to knowing more about the company, we have very limited resources. And when it comes to knowing about ourselves, we then have this huge amount of expectation.
So what we do is that, we really need to come back to ourselves and say,
if these factors are conflicting, and I can only choose one, then what would I choose?
When it comes to verifying the opportunity with that company, then there needs to be more of investigation work, less of a guesswork. So if you think there’s a culture or management style concern, then you need to check with more people from that company or the industry, and also go through more interviews or sort of informal conversations with the hiring manager, to find out before you actually speculate.
Daniel: I think key message here really is, when you get an offer there’s still a lot of things you need to do right, it’s not like “I’m just gonna take it”, even though they may give a very short time frame for you to decide, whether you’re going to take the offer. But there’s still a lot of things you can do within that period of time. As Yolanda mentioned, talking to people in the industry, from the companies, will add some insights for you to make that kind of decisions.
I only worked for two companies in the past, and this is my only my second job. I also have seen people who have done a lot of jobs in their career. I heard people sometimes told me you should always look for opportunities. Do you think this is a fair statement?
Yolanda: Hm… it depends… I know you hear such statements a lot right… I think the thing is being open to opportunities, generally means that there usually will be energy involved. So for me myself my principle is I’ll keep my options open, but when there are times where I’ll reject actually – when headhunters or recruiters approach me and I know it’s completely impossible.
But there are at times where I may say, well, I want to hear about it. But if i’m still genuinely not going to explore I would tell the person no thanks.
So the thing is we are allowing new ideas to come into our world. It’s not necessarily just opportunity. It means that it gives us more information about how the market is moving and how the market is valuing our newly gained career capital in the current job. And with that information, we actually have new insight about how we can pivot within our current role or in our next career move. So this is a very good input, that’s how I take it.
(Also see How to work with headhunters for career advancement)
Daniel: yeah I totally agree with you. I think it’s with this added information, there are a lot of assessments you can do for your current job, so if you’re thinking about career progressions you probably want to know, what’s in the market, what’s available in the market. That’s really critical.
I’m not talking only about the remunerations and the progressions but also what are the opportunity, what other types of companies are recruiting right now. So let’s say if it’s a data scientist, data analyst role, and there are so many companies in so many different industries are recruiting in that area.
If you’re you’re doing data analytics in manufacturing companies you can definitely gain some insights from talking to recruiters, or opportunities maybe in other industries. I definitely agree there are added values.
But do you think there’ll be a distraction? Especially i think for very insecure managers, i mean if they have a team of aspiring professionals that they also want to retain, what kind of messages you feel the managers should send to to their younger colleagues?
Yolanda: yeah okay i think that’s very interesting question, Daniel. What happens is managers need to know they have zero control or influence, on whether or not the team members look out.
The team members will look out if they feel they are not being treated fairly which is usually the number one reason for looking out. Or they are just genuinely opportunistic and they just want to know what’s out there. Or there are many reasons you know for career progression that cannot be fulfilled in a current company.
But what a manager can send out is, he needs to be more understanding towards that, the team members’ personal development.
Some of the most respected entrepreneurs or the people i know, they take a very very open attitude, saying i don’t mind losing you, if you are able to secure a place where offers you way better career growth and opportunity. And that i would be proud of you because that shows my organization has built the kind of career capital and value into your career path, that they want you.
But at the same time, it is a challenge that’s posted to me and my company to continuously create the kind of opportunity, that will allow you to grow further and hopefully retain you for some more years.
Daniel: yeah yeah yeah spot on! I feel there are two sides of the coin coin. A lot of entrepreneurs are very open about the colleagues leaving. As a manager yes there are no controls so you probably need to think about the internal opportunities you’re gonna create for your colleagues. How they’re gonna leverage on those opportunities and grow and they have to see the opportunities within the organizations.
Probably you know they will be able to stay at least they have seen some of the opportunities. You probably need to let them know, if there is really no such opportunities from a manager point of view, you should let other people leave right. Nothing personal, that’s how that’s how i look at it.
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Daniel: Have you met anyone who has taken a long term view in decision about job offers?
Yolanda: Yeah, it’s not easy right? People tend to have a tunnel vision and focus on their current job (if any) and the job offer only. What I will recommend is to take one step back, and look at “what exactly do I want”, what is my ideal career if none of these offers exist.
Forget the particular jobs, where am I right now, where am I heading towards. If I didn’t have any of these offers, what would be my ideal job, and what characteristics do those jobs have?
Once we are clear about that, we can anchor ourselves around that, and when opportunities come, we will be so firm and anchored towards our next move, and make the decision in a firm and bold way.
Besides staying anchored, of course we also have to pivot, towards where we can find a job or a better job. We can usher all of our resources by recognizing our career capital.
