Resources > Manu’s Blog > Career Decision Matrix: Evaluating Your Job Offer and Current Role Effectively
Career Decision Matrix: Evaluating Your Job Offer and Current Role Effectively
Founder & CEO – Rolling Arrays
One wrong career move has the potential to rewind our career by a few years.
If you are a star performer in a company, that does not mean you will be a star performer in the next company. Similarly if you are not performing in a company, that does not mean you can’t perform in the new company.
All of us can perform and will eventually perform, the harder thing is to find the right role and the right company.
What is important is to find, why are you performing or why are you not performing. And that answer if you can find by being true to yourself, you will eventually grow professionally.
So how can you do that ?
Performance comes from the following 4 factors :
- The intersection of your core skill and the skill required in the role which is assigned to you : It is critical that you are self aware of your strengths and weaknesses and keep assessing yourself as you progress in your professional career. Only then you will be able to map the right role for you and perform.
- The chemistry between you and your manager : Your manager plays a key role in getting the best out of you. If you have figured out (1), then in most cases, you will have a good chemistry with your manager. If you don’t have a good chemistry with your manager, you need to be honest in figuring out the root cause i.e. whether the issue is with you or your manager.
- Equilibrium of Company’s work atmosphere and your personality : The compounding feeling of at-ease or not while at work. You should give yourself a good 6 months in the company to get the right gauge of this feeling as otherwise it may give a false positive as our mind is too judgemental when we are exposed to a new environment.
- Incumbency Factor : This is either positive or negative. After staying with an organization for a substantial time (minimum 3 years or more) – your peers, customers, vendors, partners, bosses, and everyone you interact with professionally will view you based on the interactions you have had with them. If you are performing well, this factor is positively proportional with your tenure in the current company and vice versa.
(This factor is easy to assess for your current role but hard to assess for your new offer. If it is positive in your current role, you must note that this is going to be reset to 0 as you will have to build it all over again in your new company. I will attempt to write a separate article in the coming months to explain the pros and cons of the Incumbency Factor in more detail.)
These 4 elements will be different in each company. You have to find what is working for you out of the 4 and what is not and why. Once that is answered, you will know whether to look out for a new role in a new company or concentrate on growing in your current company.
To make an informed decision, you can perhaps do the following simple exercise :
Draw 4 boxes for each factor and give a rating for each factor on a scale of 0-5. You can do this exercise for your current role and the new offer or any future offer you may get. This will help you to give an easy factual view to make an effective decision.
If most of the factors are not working for you in your current company, it is a less risky option to switch but with this exercise, you will be able to visualise your performance in the new job and not end up in a difficult spot of non-performance in more than 1 company.
Similarly if you are performing, the option to change when the opportunity arises is much riskier but you can assess these 4 parameters and make an informed choice to increase your chances of performance in your next Job.
Even if you are not looking for a change, if you do this exercise genuinely, there are chances you can double down on parameters that are working for you and accelerate your growth and performance in your current company.
About Manu Khetan
Manu, Founder and CEO of Rolling Arrays, a global HR technology leader, brings two decades of expertise to redefine HR practices. Passionate about pioneering HR automation and nurturing talent, Manu advocates for a customer-first and employee-first approach, prioritizing value creation. Beyond the boardroom, he is a dedicated family man, a skilled pianist, and an advocate for empowering the next generation of entrepreneurs. Join Manu on the transformative journey where HR emerges as a dynamic force for positive change in the business world.
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