Should You Stay or Should You Go? Assessing the Risk of a Job Offer
Posted November 12th, 2012
You are employed now, but you’ve just had a very attractive job offer. You now have a major decision to make: Take it or leave it?
The new job will have duties somewhat – if not substantially – different from your current position. The new company will have a different culture than the one you are in now. You’ll also have to relocate. Do you make the move, or take the safe option and stay put?
This little example shows the two-sided coin of opportunity and risk – you don’t get one without the other. When considering a new job, there is always the risk to your financial security and personal life.
Each of us has our own level of comfort relating to risk. Given the circumstances, sometimes it makes sense to take a risk, sometimes not. When you have to confront a choice and a risk, career consultant Bill Barnett says there are three questions you need to ask yourself.
Will the opportunity force you to make the commitment to succeed? If you take a big gamble, you also may create the kind of mindset you will need to succeed. It will motivate you. If you have set lofty goals for yourself, you may actually be hurting yourself more by playing it safe and not taking the risk, because without the excitement of the gamble you will never get the energy you need to achieve either.
The second question is whether you can accept the risk. In other words, can you deal with failure if things don’t work out? Barnett gives the example of one man who left his job to devote his energies full-time to starting a new kind of food company. He knew he might fail, but he didn’t consider his current job so great that he couldn’t give it up.
But another man, a senior vice president, knew his job would be eliminated in the near future because of cost cutting measures. He also considered making a big move to another career, but in the end, he decided to take a smaller role in his own company. The risk of working with new people, high stress and relocating, he decided, just wasn’t worth it.
The third question is whether or not you have a contingency plan. Again, this is dealing with the possibility of failure. You can’t just let things play out and hope that everything will turn out well. Hope is not a strategy. You need to be constantly assessing the opportunity, your strategy and situation, and considering what you can do if things don’t work out.
Are you looking for new opportunities in San Jose, San Francisco, Oakland or other Bay Area city? Then be sure to send your resume to a recruiter at Bayside Solutions. We can provide you with interviews for temporary as well as direct-hire opportunities at some of the Bay Area’s top companies. We look forward to hearing from you.
