Sunday, August 17, 2008

Evaluating a job

About 15 years ago I came up with 4 criteria to evaluate my current job and have since used them to evaluate jobs that I've applied for. They are:
  1. People - Do I like the people I work with? (Would I voluntarily go out to dinner with them?) Are they clever, creative, inspiring, and supportive? Do they challenge me and help me to progress?
  2. Location - Is this the country, and city that I want to live in? Is my commute enjoyable or can I easily make it enjoyable? Is the office located somewhere I want to work? (e.g. what other business are next door?)
  3. Work - Is this the type of work that I want to be doing? Is the company moving in the direction that the work that I'll be given be the type of work that I want to do?
  4. Remuneration - Is the package good?

I allocate a rating for each one on a scale of 1 to 10 and then add it up. Anything above 30 is a good score.

There are times when you'll sacrifice one of the points for more of another because it brings your overall score up. A case in point:

My wife recently changed jobs so that she now works from home (doing the same job) rather than work in a store. For that she took a pay cut. Although we didn't use these 4 points to explicitly evaluate her new job we would have probably reduced point 4 by 2 points. However, she loves working from home so point 2 has probably gone from a score of 2 to 10 for a net gain of 6 points.

Your job score might change from month to month so evaluate it and write it down and check it every now and then.

2 comments:

Tim B. said...

I love you're scoring system Guy.... I'm going to use it!

Now I just have to go find a job.... hahaha

Guy Ellis said...

Good luck mate!