Warning Signs That Youre Accepting The Wrong Job (And How Not To)

Written on April 4, 2011 by Christine in Reinventing work, Surviving and thriving at work Its tempting. That call out of the blue seems to promise so much. Just the kind of thing youve been dreaming of. Prestigious company for someone in your profession. Signs that theyre going places and could take you with them. Its like the unexpected date after months of romantic drought. And youre feeling pretty proud of your interview performance and how youve navigated your way through successive stages of the recruitment process. So, when the offer comes, should you accept it? Here are 5 warning signs to wrestle with: 1. Youre feeling flattered. Recruiters can boost your ego. Its part of the recruitment game, after all. If people want you to come join them, theyll often flirt you into accepting. Some degree of flattery is normal. But does the flatterer have the depth to deliver a lasting relationship after the contract has been signed? 2. Youre imagining how jealous your friends will be. Youre buoyed up by the job title, the benefits and the salary level. You think about how your peers will turn green with envy when you tell them what youve just landed. But does the job enable the conditions that make it happy to live in ten or more hours a day? 3. Youre figuring how impressed your family will be. Youre reckoning how delighted your partner, or parents will be when you tell them youve got the job. But, are you doing it for them or you, and does the content of the job have enough to feed your own soul in the long term? 4. Youre investing a lot in the jobs security. Maybe times have been tough in your current job. Or maybe youve had a spell of being out of work. Its so tempting to feel that a job any job will help you feel more settled. But can this one really give you that? 5. Youre discounting things that jarred with you at interview. The boss who was 20 minutes late in interviewing you; the talk of the work hard, play hard culture; the fact that the commute took half an hour longer than youd imagined and that wasnt at rush hour. What do these signs mean for how the job and its people will gel with you long term? The dating analogy is a good one because, as with love relationships, you need to be sure that youre doing as much selecting of your suitors as they of you. Otherwise, youre not setting things up for happiness and success. Here are a couple of things to ensure you play a powerful part of your own decision making process.

Ask yourself what YOU need

Step back from the recruitment flirting thats going on and figure what outcomes you want to deliver from your next job? What does good and healthy need to look like? Maybe its to make a certain amount of money over a particular period of time? Maybe its the opportunity to take your work in a different direction? Maybe its a chance to build on and develop further skills you already have? Is the job thats on the table going to deliver any or all of your success factors? Revisit your values For a job offer to have integrity with who you are, and for you to feel good about it long after the recruitment stage, you need it to resonate with your personal values. So, take a moment and list these out for yourself. What are they? Family? Wealth? Results? Excellence? Health? And how does the job offer on the table allow you to honor these or not? Is there any negotiating you can do to close any values gaps? If youre lucky, sometimes youll do this kind of analysis and find that, after all the job offer is a good fit with you. Maybe its not. In which case the challenge is to understand something of why you were hooked in this instance. And what you can learn from the experience to carry with you positively into the next recruiting scenario. Either way, the best decision about that job offer, will come when you use a smart integration of head and heart. How about you? Can you think of other warning signs? Or other powerful ways to check out that youre not conning yourself into the career equivalent of a bad marriage? SOURCE: A Different Kind of Work http://www.adifferentkindofwork.com/2011/04/04/warning-signs-accepting-wrong-job/

Job Offers: Don't Take That Job

By: Barbara Mende It's a great feeling when you finally get job offers. Wow, you think, you're about to rejoin the real world. After all, if you don't like it, you can always quit. You rush to accept. You should probably not make such a rash decision. If you're on unemployment, you may jeopardize your chance of getting it back after you leave a new job. If you quit or they fire you after three or four months, you'll have to explain why you didn't stay longer, or risk having a gap in your resume that a manager may question. It's better to have a period of understandable unemployment than to have a bad history. If you delete it from your resume, you may be trapped into revealing why it exists. If you leave a job to take this one, even if your current job is less than desirable, you may be giving up your extra vacation time, vesting in the 401(k) and whatever friendships you have. This is a big decision, so take time to think about it. You may have asked all the right questions at your interview, but things that don't seem important when you're desperately trying to get the job may become deal breakers now. Don't accept over the phone. Ask the employer to put the offer in writing and now is the time to go through a thorough job offer negotiation. Ask questions that may have seemed too picky to bring up at the interview. Before this, the employer was in the driver's seat. Now you're the driver. Above all, look out for these warning signs: They Want You Right Away It's not your fault they didn't fill the job until now. Why are they in such a hurry? Was someone fired? Did someone suddenly leave? Is there an enormous backlog of work that you'll have to clean up? If they respect you, they'll respect your wish to take time to decide and to give your present employer adequate notice. Unpleasant Colleagues Maybe you interviewed with five people and loved four of them. Sure, the fifth person could leave, but he or she could also wind up being your boss after the next reorganization. There's a reason why he or she was included in the interview process. In a small company, you may want to meet the sixth and seventh person, too. Oddball Pay Packages Some industries regularly pay employees low base salaries and large bonuses. If yours isn't one of them, be wary of any offer where your base salary is less than the total of what you want. If you've been promised a bonus for completing a project by a certain date, your boss may delay its completion. Think of stock options as free lottery tickets. Try to get lots of them, but don't count them as income. Get what you want in the form you want. Inferior Benefits Don't accept a job until you've read the health plan prospectus thoroughly. If you're uneasy with it, voice your concern. All plans are not created equal. If you think you can get better insurance through COBRA or on your own, ask to be reimbursed for the cost. If you're going from an organization that offered disability insurance or dental insurance to one that doesn't, make sure you can get these benefits on your own and see that their cost is added to your compensation. The same applies to 401(k) plans to which your present employer contributes. You can't expect a company to change its benefits plan for you, but unwillingness to negotiate alternatives should be a red flag.

Vacation and Sick Pay As a new employee, you may be offered less paid time off than you had as a veteran. It's negotiable. If they won't move, maybe you shouldn't either. In particular, don't accept any rule that says you can't take vacation until you've been there six months or more. Tell them if you're planning a vacation in August or if you always ski or visit your parents in February. If they can't accommodate that, maybe they'll treat you badly in other ways. Restrictive Agreements A company that makes you sign a non-competition agreement, in which you promise not to work for a competitor for a year or two after you leave, is a worried company. Don't sign unless you're comfortable doing so. If you do, make sure the agreement doesn't hold if you're laid off. Little Things Do you like the neighborhood? Is the commute easy? Do you like the office you'll be in? These issues may sound trivial now, but on days when you hate the job and wonder why you took it, they'll seem enormous. If you're worrying about the little things, your better judgment is trying to tell you to just say no. Follow Your Gut Take your time because you're at an advantage. The employer can't retract the offer easily, but you can turn it down. It may be the best job on earth on paper, and your friends may tell you that the job is perfect for you, but if you have a sinking feeling about it, don't do it. There's no such thing as an offer you can't refuse. Article provided by Homesteader.

Source: http://www.life123.com/career-money/find-a-job/job-offer/job-offers-dont-takethat-job.shtml

What To Do When You Lose Your Job

By Cathie Gandel and Hilary Sterne

Banks tank, stocks plunge, companies limp, jobs disappearwhether youre the CEO at Circuit City or the salad spinner at Applebees. And experts predict that the waves of unwelcome economic news will keep cresting and crashing all year. Nearly 2.6 million jobs disappeared in 2008, the worst annual drop since World War II. Hourly employees are working (and making) less. The new unemployment rate: a whopping 7.2 percent. Right now, if you count part-time workers and people who have simply given up on finding a job, the number balloons to 13.5 percent of the U.S. population. People who dont have jobs, of course, tend not to have money. People without money buy fewer things. Less spending means more businesses lay off more people and, well, you can see where this is heading. With so many people looking for so few jobs and trying to navigate rules and resources that are constantly changing, you need help. Weve gathered the latest advice from the professionals (human resources experts, career coaches, and headhunters) and visited an endless procession of websites (the topflight as well as the bottom-feeders). We interviewed job seekers across the country and hooked them up with free personalized help from the pros. (And if thats not enough, theres still more help for everyone, job or no job.) The Losing a Job section covers warning signs and ways to rethink your career. The next section, Finding a Job, offers practical tips for every aspect of a job search. Next month, well tell you how to care for your career. Whether youre in a cubicle or a corner officeor, at this point, would settle for eitherthis handbook is definitely help wanted. The Warning Signs of Losing a Job When you hear these phrases around the water cooler, it may be too late. But this is what companies are saying these days instead of firing or layoff:

restructuring plan restructuring program company-wide restructuring plan that includes staffing reductions in all divisions planned reduction head-count reduction reduction in force reducing our current employee total global workforce reduction and alignment repositioning aligning operations and resources worldwide consolidating operations

downsizing rightsizing smartsizing

Also, from the blog of Stanford management professor Robert I. Sutton:

offboarded rebalancing the level of human capital Weve decided to go in another direction

Which Jobs Will Go First? Is your job leaving on a jet plane? Dont know when itll be back again? Well, if its any solace, at least youre not alone. More and more jobs are heading to foreign shores, and over the next six years, outsourcing is expected to expand in numbers and scope, according to a report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and Forrester Research. Which positions are most likely to be outsourced? Technical jobs that depend on low-skill labor, can be broken down into segments, and dont require collaboration, like getting information into and out of databases (think call centers and information technology support). Jobs that require staffers to show up and work alongside others are less susceptible to outsourcing. But, the report warns, jobs requiring more creativity and decision making arent necessarily safe. An online newspaper, Californias Pasadena Now, hires workers in India to cover the local news. No, thats not a misprint. Reporters send their notes and background information to India, where six writers crank out copy. Some companies are even outsourcing areas like drug development and market research. There is a positive side to all the outsourcing, though: These offshore projects will always need on-site managers.

SOURCE: Readers Digest http://www.rd.com/money/what-to-do-when-you-lose-your-job/

5 Signs Not to Take the Job by Danielle Dresden on August 6, 2010 At one of my jobs they couldnt quite make payroll within the first month I was there. Not a good sign, of course, and a little too late as a warning. But there were plenty of other indicators along the way that could have tipped me off to this organizations lack of viability. And if Im honest with myself, I have to admit that I was aware of those alarm bells, but I just wanted that job, and thought I could make it work. Ive since learned thats a little like marrying someone and hoping theyll change. Even in this economy, I think if you get a bad feeling about a job, you shouldnt take it. Youll be better off in the long run or maybe even the short run if its like that job where they couldnt pay me after the first month. Here are some of the warning signs Ive noticed over the years: 1. Too many directors, not enough staff I once worked for an organization that had no staff (I was the only one) and approximately 138, O.K. 17, members on the Board of Directors, most of whom participated in the interview process. To say the organization lacked focus is like saying the Titanic had a rough passage. But even in less extreme examples, watch out for jobs where youll be expected to meet multiple, possibly conflicting needs. 2. During the interview, the interviewer doesnt let you speak. Enough said. 3. You get the distinct impression that someone on the hiring committee doesnt think your potential job should exist. Non-profits are more prone to this sort of folderol than more commercial enterprises, but the underlying issue can be found in both worlds your new job will be built on the fault lines between rival factions in the organization. Thats just not a comfortable place to be and theres no way of knowing whether your side will prevail. You might not even want to be on that side, once you know the score. Unless you thrive on conflict, give these situations a pass. 4. No one has lasted more than 18 months on the job. Remember what I said about thinking you can change someone, or that things will be different this time? You cant and they wont. 5. Someone in the hallway stops you and asks if you can tell shes been crying. Even the most dysfunctional workplaces wont always be such a drama-rama scene, but the vibes will still be palpable. Put your nose to the ground and your ear to the wind, or vice versa, and do what you need to do to get a sense of how people feel about working somewhere before you sign on to do the same. These are just a few of the warning signs Ive noticed. What are some of your career warning light indicators? SOURCE: Work Bloom ( http://workbloom.com/blog/workplace/5-signs-not-to-take-the-job/ )