Wednesday, September 5, 2007

When Career Choices are Many

Many would have come across a situation where you are doing well (in many ways, except remuneration may be!) in your current job and there you go you are offered another opportunity. What if the other opportunity was in a completely different field than what you are doing now? Situation makes even worse if the new opportunity gives much quicker career growth prospects! What would you do?

Well, it's lot easier said than done. How do you sum up your situation? I suppose each situation is unique and there are many facets that needs to be looked at. Let me summarise few as it crossed my mind.

Any new opportunity should be looked primarily in three angles.

Firstly, How does it impact your career progression? What opportunities does it bring to the table? While the new opportunity may not necessarily be in the same area that you are working currently, it must be realised that particular experience you are expected to gain could be valuable in the bigger picture. This is more suitable for those with generalist ambitions(People who would want to run companies). There are many who aspire to go up in a particular field and they should at all cost must avoid shifting fields even for greener pastures. However if you aspire to run companies like me, it's best that you gain overall exposure in areas such a sales and marketing, HR, operations etc.

Secondly you need to look at how it impacts you personal life. You might come across the best of career breaks sometimes which comes in the collision path with you personal interests or life style. Some would require you to change your way of doing to a greater extent. Well for some it works. They adapt themselves successfully to the work requirements while other find greater stress levels in their new found work. Thus far I've picked what was appropriate to my lifestyle all the time.

Thirdly, one needs to look at how it impacts your family life. Most people tend to miss this point. There are instances where I myself tend to do a reality check on this subject. Well you might have the best of career, best on personal interest but it might be conflicting with your family priorities in terms of wife and kids. I'm quite happy that I made the right choice in this regard on several occasions. On two occasions I was offered a job which required regular overseas travel which would have had a impact on my relationship with my wife and children at critical stage in their development. Salary mind you was triple than the little what I am even getting now. I decided not to take any of the options. Don't regret the decision I made.

I think should one carefully weighs pros and cons on all three aspects one might ended up with a decision one would rarely regret

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

This is great info to know.