A General Framework for Career Decision Making (Part two)
In these uncertain times, many are faced with hard career decisions that can seem overwhelming. This is one framework for making them.
Uncertain times bring clear challenges but also opportunity. This email shares one way to consider which opportunities are best for you.
A Framework for Career Decision Making - What’s yours?
The recent pandemic likely classifies in most of your minds as a “big change in the world”.
It’s important to reassess what you’re working on and think about where it might be 6-18 months from now. One way to do this is by trying to predict behavioral change like we did in a recent newsletter.
With many of you either losing your jobs or having your businesses decimated, the framework below may help you focus on what your comparative advantage is and how to find opportunity. The framework is simply a set of questions I ask myself when making career choices.
After you've made the choice, you can’t run a control group on the option you didn’t choose. The optimal choice is rarely a clear yes or no. As a result the questions below should guide you but shouldn’t lead you to an exact answer.
I am not sharing this from an ivory tower. The shared transportation business that we are building has rather obviously been impacted from the virus. That said, significant opportunity remains. I used the framework below when making the call to join Routable AI. There’s no guarantee that things will work out as I plan but I feel good about the decision regardless.
Most Critical Questions
Does your gut feeling say to make the switch?
What is the long term expected value of the switch? This should include learning, relationships, financial factors and more.
Are you interested in the problems you’ll be solving? Will you love it?
Will you like working with the people involved (…and will they like you!?)?
Gut check questions
Are you comparatively advantaged to add significant and unique incremental value?
Does it make sense given your career story arc so far and what will the impact be if successful / not successful?
Is the opportunity meaningful enough and big enough if you’re successful?
Is the company early, mid, or late stage? Is that stage suited to what you are looking for now?
What are the financial impacts of the decision? How does the team think about rewarding incremental impact? “If it isn’t financially rewarding enough, will it be worth it for the experience” (credit to Adam Schwartz)?
I’m happy to chat to any of you about the nuances if you have questions. How does your decision framework differ?
Much love,
Coxy
Jamescox00@gmail.com | LinkedIn | Twitter | Routable AI