Great Career Success Debate: Why you should take a job that pays LESS..

Question: How should I evaluate a full-time job offer? 

Pat’s Take: This is a fantastic question – as the answer is not as simple as you might think. I think there are a number of factors you need to consider when you evaluate full-time job offers. While I am a capitalist at heart, there’s much more to this than offering your services to the highest bidder. Here are my top five considerations for you.

1. Employer brand. I am a huge believer in personal brand, and your first employer out of college is a critical part of your long term personal brand. You’ll build much more credibility being able to tell someone you work for Google, PricewaterhouseCoopers or Target, than Bill and Mary’s Warehousing Services. A great employer brand matters. A key piece of this, by the way, is working to understand who hires people out of that company – where do people typically go when they leave that organization and would you find that to be appealing?
2. Career pathing. Do you see an appealing career path stemming from the specific role you will be taking? Do you like where you’ll likely be in three years? Five years? 10 years? If you like a company but determine that you don’t love the specific role you’ve been hired into, does there appear to be potential to move within the organization – or will you have to leave the company if you want to pivot to a different role?
3. Compensation plan and potential. What is your total compensation opportunity? What type of progression can you expect in the future? This is an awkward question – and you should not ask it until AFTER you have a job offer, but it’s a fair question. If, for instance, you can choose public accounting or corporate accounting, it is reasonable to attempt to understand both your future potential roles, but also the compensation tied to those roles.
4. Learning environment. While your college has, in theory, prepared you for your career, you should learn even more in your first few years in your role. Will the skills you’ll learn transfer to other roles or are they highly specific? Are superiors incented to develop new hires under them or simply for their business results? Is it a “cut throat” environment, or do people seem genuinely interested in helping new hires become experts? Finally, if you want to continue your formal education, will your organization support you in any way to help you do so?
5. Every company has a different culture. Sometimes, even a division within a company has its own culture. Is it upbeat? High stress? Are people given authority early in their job tenure or micro-managed? Is it formal or casual? Asking multiple people why the company is a great fit for them and what they like best and least about the culture can help you gain perspective here.

Pat’s Bottom Line: You’re making a big decision in choosing your first employer. Once you have offers in hand, you have the ability to (respectfully) ask probing questions to get answers to questions that can impact your decision. You will likely not get answers to all of them from one person in one sitting, so you’ll want to talk to both HR people as well as others you have met during the recruitment process. Asking questions about the “softer” issues like learning environment and culture of a range of people in multiple roles within the organization will also add valuable perspective to your process.