Have a Job Offer? Choosing the Right Job in Today’s Economy

Posted on 05. May, 2009 by MJay in Jobs

Today we’ve got a great guest post from a good friend of mine. MT grew up in Southern Georgia, and after graduating from the University of Georgia with a Finance degree in 2007, he started his career with a Fortune 500 company in Virginia. Knowing first-hand what it is like to start a new career in a distant city, he gives us a unique perspective on looking at the totality of a job offer. Visit his website, Fast PC, for tips and advice on how to build your own computer.

job-offer Got a job offer? You might be struggling right now, deciding whether to accept an offer in a less-than-ideal job situation and location. While it’s true that unemployment is continuing to soar to 25 year highs, don’t necessarily jump on the first train headed out of your college town.

After graduating in May 2007 with dreams of a banking job dancing in my head, I realized that the positions I was interested in were going to be tough to find. As summer slowly moved along, I was beginning to sweat finding a job that would let me leave my parents’ house and began to worry about being stuck in my small backwater town.

I applied to several positions outside of banking on a whim and ended up accepting my first hard offer. This required me to move out of state, several hundred miles away to a much smaller city versus where I wanted to end up, Atlanta.

After going through this whole ordeal myself, I think you should consider the following before accepting a job far away from your roots:

Your New Company

-Find a young office.
The company I was hired into did not have very many young people working there; the average age there was about mid forties, married, families… Definitely weren’t many people to grab a beer with and get a good introduction to the city.

Unless you are happily married or seriously locked down, your work life starts to become a big part of your regular life. If you feel your office won’t have the energy you need and your potential colleagues won’t understand any of your humor or pop culture references, most likely you will end up tired and unsatisfied with your work life.

-Where will the job lead you?
Very few people end up in their ideal first job. Many first jobs are grunt work: boring duties, long hours, monotonous tasks. In the corporate world, years of service regularly trumps actual knowledge or performance. A 3.9 GPA, honor society membership, fraternity association and charity work got you in the door; now you need to work at establishing your career.

The question which you need to ask yourself, and still is relevant in this economy, is where do you want to be in your career 5 years from now? When you accept your job offer, do you know what the next step is? Do you know what the 5th step is? Is this remotely close to the industry you really want to work in?

Another way to look at it is look up at your potential boss and your boss’s boss. Are those the kind of jobs you want to be holding?

The old adage about working up from the mailroom probably deserves more weight now than ever. Working in a job “beneath you” at a world class company in the sector/industry you want to end up in is a better alternative than taking any job out there. While a lot of CEOs do have MBAs from amazing schools, there is still a lot of weight placed in working your way from the bottom up, knowing the ins and outs of your business completely.

Your New Home

-How close is it to your old college?
Generally, most of your friends will take their first job out of school in the nearest major metropolitan area to campus. A lot of your friends will still be (relatively) close to school, even if they have moved away from campus. Most likely, you will still have some friends that are still in school too. For me, going back for college football games was a big deal; most of my vacation days and miles on my car were used to head back for game days.

Just because you have graduated does not mean you immediately lose all your ties to your university of the past 4 (or 5) years. Distance definitely makes it tougher to maintain those strong friendships you developed in school.

-How big is your new city?
This cannot be overemphasized. I ended up in southern Virginia in a fair-sized city; however, everything regionally went on in D.C., a sizable distance and rush hour drive away.

Unless you have lots of connections to your new (small) town or are close to your former college haunts, you will be stuck in an area where relatively few young professionals end up and where counting logging trucks is the local form of a crazy night out.

Your Future

-Now What?
If you are already past the previous questions, the next question is logical, how do you change things?

After a little soul searching, I realized I had to make a change. I didn’t see my job putting me on my desired career path, I wasn’t working in remotely the field I wanted to be in, and I missed being away from the important people in my life.

Considering most people work into their early 60s, it is never too late to change your career path. I personally did not want to look back and realize that I never took the chance to establish myself for the job I truly wanted.

After graduation, a lot of emphasis is placed on your course of study, GPA, etc. when companies are looking at job applicants. From that point forward, all everyone looks at is pertinent years of experience and actual work performance; an outside firm has less interest in taking a shot on a candidate full of ‘potential’ than your current employer.

If your job is not giving you the skills you need and the industry is not the place where your future career choices lay, jump ship. Make the tough decisions now to set yourself on your desired career path instead of being stuck in a situation where you are not laying the foundation to succeed in your later career.

The biggest decisions are definitely not the easiest, but living with regret and not making a decision, I’ve heard, is even tougher. Put yourself on a path to success. Take charge of your career early and set yourself up for a great future!