| Obviously, most companies are looking for IT talent. Whether you're a beginner or a CIO wannabe, you'll have lots of options. But which one is the right one? The paycheck isn't everything … anyone who's worked for the boss from hell can tell you that. How do you find openings which will be right for you? The best way is to decide what you want in a job.
Besides a salary, that is. Like additional responsibility, learning opportunities, colleagues (with the hope that they might become friends), shared challenges? Or would you rather have time for outside interests, a regular tasklist, solitary work, a stable environment? This isn't a trick question - there's no one right answer. What is it that you like? What would make you happy?
If you've never really thought hard about it before, now's the time. Let's make a list:
- Compensation
- Working conditions
- Opportunity
- Responsibility
These aren't the only factors, but they're the biggest ones.
$$$$$$
Let's deal with the money part first. JobCircle has information (more coming soon) about average compensation for some of the most prevalent job categories. IT World publishes figures describing the range of salaries for different positions and levels of authority. Depending on your skills level, education, experience, and certifications, you can start to estimate your worth.
Don't be dazzled by the upper levels of a salary range. Remember that a median salary level has half of the salaries above and half below. The size of the company you work for, its location and its experience with IT will also affect your pay rate. There are lots of stories about huge annual increases or staggering signing bonuses. How many of them can you actually verify? Be realistic.
Do your homework and come up with a range of local compensation being offered for the kind of job you're seeking. The Sunday classified section of the largest local newspaper is great for this kind of information. Big employers will spend major dollars on display ads touting their benefit packages, cool perks, and lots of other tempting goodies. Sounds great, doesn't it?
Working Conditions
Every organization has its own personality, its own culture. Not every place will be right for you. I'm a chaos junkie. Happiest when everything is crazy. More effective when I have to shoehorn three unplanned tasks into an overbooked afternoon. But my bud Dave would immediately have a meltdown. He's Mr. Organized-Everything-All-the-Time. Even his emergencies seem to be scheduled. We both flourish in our respective environments and neither of us could tolerate the other's. Luckily, the variations are limitless.
Is flextime your thing? Or do you like the routine of in at 8, out at 4:30? Can you travel? All week, most weeks? Can you pick up and leave tomorrow? Go to Florida? France? Live there for a month? How about a year or two?
Can you work on the same project for that long? Or how about working on five separate projects simultaneously? Are you good at juggling competing priorities, or do you need a single focus to work effectively? Corner office or cubicle? Or is your laptop and PDA enough? You decide.
Opportunity:
Opportunity may be the reason you've begun to look around. The ability to move up, or change direction is probably the most cited factor when people are asked why they change jobs.
In any profession, you have to pay some dues. The question is: "How do you know when you've finished paying?" (Quick reality check: you never really finish paying.) Just because you're tired of being the junior help desk tech or think you're CIO material after two years of senior project management doesn't mean that you're ready for prime time.
Ask yourself some questions:
- Have I learned everything I think I can from this position?
- Am I doing the same things again and again? Am I comfortable with this?
- What are my short-term/intermediate-term/long-term career goals? Am I going in the right direction? At an appropriate rate of speed?
- Does my current employer have other positions to which I could aspire? Is there a career path here? Or do I have to go elsewhere?
Don't rush through this like a pop quiz. Take some time and think about your initial responses. Talk about your professional objectives with friends or colleagues outside the office. Depending upon the size and sophistication of your employer, there may be someone in the Human Resources department who can help you to identify other opportunities in your present company.
Or, depending upon your relationship with your manager, you may be able to have this discussion with him/her. You don't always have to change companies to change jobs. But proceed with caution here - once you open up the topic, the possibility of your leaving will always be in the back of your manager's mind. And this can have consequences.
Responsibility:
The flip side of opportunity is responsibility. No risk, no reward. Whether it's wearing a beeper to be on-call over a weekend or moving into management, the rationale for a higher-level position is accountability. This can be for a machine, a project, a department, a division, a company, etc. Rising through the ranks is invariably accompanied by increased responsibility; there are very, very few positions where an individual is compensated for knowledge and expertise alone.
Most often, responsibility means supervision of other people or administration of a part of the business. The Project Manager gets the work done on time and on budget. He works with the business sponsor. The CIO achieves objectives, cuts costs, increases efficiencies. She doesn't code or fix boxes. These folks make decisions and take the consequences … personally. Are you ready? Think about it.
Time to Choose:
Make a three-column list with the following headings:
Absolutely Must Have
This Would Be Great
FantasyLand
Now sort through your thoughts and list them appropriately. What you'll have is your baseline, a set of weighted bonus factors and something to aspire to as you move up in your career.
Absolutely Must Haves are key - the basis for beginning to consider a job opening. If you find yourself trading them away because something else about the job seems so alluring, stop for a minute to reevaluate. Either what you're giving up should have been a This Would be So Great'" in the first place, or you're being seduced. Remember that the seduced are often later the abandoned. Imagine being in the traded-off situation six months from now and ask yourself again what's really important.
Keep this list as a work in progress. Things will come onto the inventory and leave it as well. As you move through your career and your life, your priorities will change and this is to be expected. If you make this list at 25 and then keep it around and look at it again when you're 30, 40, and so on, you'll continue to learn about yourself.
More:
It's almost 1999, and you know what that means. No, not 365 days until Y2K. Time for New Year's! Next month's topic: No Whining and Other Resolutions. Email me at jamie@jobcircle.com with your questions and comments. Happy Holidays to all.
Enjoy this article? Read more of JobCircle.com's Career Coach articles.
Jamie Fabian spent more than 15 years as a human resources executive before changing careers to become a senior project manager for a growing IT consulting company. Now in management consulting for a large Pharma company, Jamie would like to be seen as a hybrid of Tom Peters, Tom Jackson, and Tom Wolfe, but spends too much time working, driving carpool and watching mindless TV to write more than this column. You can contact Jamie with questions and comments at jamie@jobcircle.com.
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