In the current volatile business climate, it is important to evaluate a prospective employer and the new job from various angles. Remember that it is your future that you are taking a call on. There is no scope of snap decisions in such a scenario and no point jumping from the devil into the deep sea.
Assuming?that the new offer is close to the magical salary number that you want?,?you should use these pointers to evaluate whether you should jump ship or not.
Do a Reality Check.
The questions to be asked would be:
- Does the new job help you build and leverage your strengths, or will it make you work on your weakness? It is difficult to make your weak areas match your strengths. The organization may not give you the time for this, and the rewards may not match the effort required.
- How soon can you start contributing to the new company?s success in your new job?
- What is the leadership / managerial style of the company, and will it sync with your values or preferred style?
- What is the financial position of the company? Is it under heavy debt and interestoutgo? Are there cost cutting measures and layoffs in the offing?
- Does the company have high attrition levels, and does it have a record for letting go of people every few years after extracting everything of value from them?
- Will this job eat up all your family time,thereby putting your post work hour activities at risk?
- Will this job involve a tiring?commute?or travel is more than two weeks a month and it will impact your personal life??
The Second Angle Pertains To Your Own Passion.
Establish:
- Whether the job this company is offering, gives you the adrenaline rush you seek??
- Whether you will be able to do something in this job which you can be proud of in a few years?
- Does this job make your skills sharp and will you be more valuable in the job market in future? – Makes you work on a new tech / new product etc.?
Finally, the larger market perspective should not be ignored.
Questions to ask are:
- Does the proposed job cater largely to domestic demand or is largely dependent on foreign markets.? Roles which cater to external demand can be risky in a downturn. The prospects of getting a good pay raise would be lower in that case.
- Does the job being offered?to?you add directly to the company profit, or will you be in back office support – which may be at the risk of outsourcing?
- Does the company operate in sunrise sectors or in sunset sectors which are witnessing consolidation or over-capacity?
- Does the company have a good record of ethical practices?
- Does it have a top-grade?auditor? You don?t want?skeletons?in cupboard to pop out after you join them.
- Is it recognized as an employer of choice by independent industry associations?
Always remember that your career growth prospects in your present company may be limited, or your salary package may be too small or you may simply have a yen to try your hand at something completely different. Whatever the case, a change of jobs involves a change in companies. Such a move deserves careful and thorough research.
You can obtain a lot of the information you require to make an informed decision about the new job offer from the Internet. Another good source is the company?s financial records, which would be available in the public domain if it is a listed entity. Of course, word-of-mouth information from current and previous employees of the company is worth its weight in gold.
Jappreet Sethi
This blog post has been Digiproved © 2019 HumanResourcesBlog.in © 2011-2014 Jappreet Sethi
I feel the questions put in here are very critical and that a prospective employee must seek answer to each of them from / about his / her target company. However, I feel obtaining answers to these questions is quite a challenge. Yes internet is an option but it does not give a detailed / insightful information on a company’s internal structure / environment. Other difficult aspect of this is when you are networking with an employee of your prospective employees to gain information, asking some of these questions can create a negative impression or put you in a bad light. How do you think an employee address these situations?
Read “prospective employer”
If I communicated I could thank you eoungh for this, I’d be lying.
Your blog gives me a very clear picture of the vibrant job market in India, of which we read quite a lot. I am very impressed with the depth of your writings and am especially fascinated by the granularity of the information you offer to existing and aspiring employees.
A million tnhaks for posting this information.
Great information, thanks. hope you write some more posts soon.
Nice article about evaluating the prospective employer. It is crucially important to evaluate the organization that you going to join. The very first step would be the interview process itself, evaluating the interview procedure you had gone through. It gives a clear idea about the organization and its culture. The interview procedure, number of rounds involved, complexity of the process etc. will help u analyze the type of role the recruiters are looking for. Doing a useful research on the organization is no harm, but when you target the present employees of the company, there is possibility of building a negative impression. And you can always count on internet too.