Fire Your Boss (18 page)

While he was able to navigate successfully the changes made by the incoming university president, Fred didn’t let that temporary respite deter his job fishing. One afternoon after a round of golf Fred struck up a conversation with a guest of one of the fellows in his regular foursome. It turned out that, like Fred, the guest was a Cincinnati native. They had gone to neighboring high schools, though a few years apart. They also shared painful memories of being Bengals and Reds fans.

About six weeks later they met at the club again. It turned out that the fellow had been in town for a job interview before and had just taken a job as general manager of a large printing firm headquartered nearby. He told Fred he had been brought in by the printing firm’s parent company to update and upgrade the operation. Fred spoke to him about his experiences integrating new technology into the university’s publications program. They had a follow-up meeting for lunch. A month later Fred was offered the job of assistant general manager of the firm, in charge of modernizing the prepress arm of the business.

I know it’s ironic that while on the one hand I preach separating your work and personal life by looking to one for money and the other for satisfaction, on the other hand I advocate using your social life to generate job leads. It’s also ironic that I’ve found my clients get far more job leads by
not
making that the priority in their social life than if it’s obvious they’re using a social setting to find a job. It has taken me a long time to accept these kinds of inconsistencies in the way the work world appears to function.

I take comfort in Ralph Waldo Emerson’s aphorism that a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds. I know what I’m suggesting can seem ironic and counterintuitive. But what matters is that it works.

One element of my approach that
isn’t
counterintuitive is that if you’re looking at work as a way to generate money, you’ve got to make money a priority. Putting money first is the subject of the next chapter.

THE FIRST SURPRISE
for Will Sykes was that his job fishing actually worked. He found himself weighing two job offers simultaneously. A lieutenant in the police force of a small city in the New York suburbs, Will was offered a job as director of security at a television studio as well as a job as assistant director of security at an aviation industry facility. Will’s second surprise was that, after weighing the two jobs, he chose the one at the industrial facility. The studio job offered more amenities, more of a challenge, a better title, chances for advancement, and a great deal of status. But the industrial job was closer to his home and paid a bit more. And when weighing job offers today, Will realized he had to focus on financial issues.

Look for emotional, psychological, and spiritual fulfillment in your personal life, and you won’t need to choose jobs that offer psychic rewards at the expense of material rewards.

Work to live rather than live to work, and you won’t need to choose jobs that make your working hours more comfortable. Instead, you can focus on factors that give you more time at home.

Accept that your route to advancement is through changing jobs rather than climbing a ladder, and you’ll see chances for personal development are more valuable than chances to move up in the company.

Follow the fire-your-boss philosophy and your priorities will shift dramatically.

Fabulous amenities and a supportive culture won’t be as important as more paid personal and vacation days.

A great work environment won’t carry the same weight as being closer to your home.

And an impressive title and lots of status simply won’t compare to a better salary.

Today, when it comes to analyzing which job offer to accept and which to reject, you need to remember the sixth element in my work philosophy: it’s the money that matters.

That’s what I had to explain to Debbie O’Leary when she came into my office for the first time. If you recall from chapter 1, Debbie was a program director at a midwestern rock radio station. She moved to New York City in order to be with her new husband, Bruce, a well-known deejay at one of the city’s premier rock stations. Debbie had never had any problem with paying her dues and working her way up the ladder during her twenty years in radio. But she had always worked at rock stations and had always had her own show. It was love of rock music that had drawn her to radio in the first place, and it was the thrill of being on the air that kept her in the business through the many lean times. And moving back to New York, where she had been raised, led to another of those lean times. It took more than eighteen months for Debbie to find any potential jobs; then, as fate would have it, she received two offers: one as a part-time weekend replacement deejay at one of the city’s rock stations, and the other as a jazz programmer at a satellite radio network. Her reflexive reaction was to take the job at the rock station, but Bruce urged her to come see me before making her decision.

Whenever most people are faced with having to choose between two alternate courses or paths, they make a list of the characteristics of each option. Let’s say you’re trying to decide where to go for dinner. One choice is the local diner, the other is a French restaurant. If you’re like most of us, you mentally go through a checklist of the factors that enter into your decision making. The French restaurant has a more pleasant environment and the food is more substantial, albeit specialized. The diner is less expensive, closer to your home, and offers more choices.

The same holds true for choosing between job offers. The first step in the process is to make a list of the characteristics of each job, based on a set of factors. Over years of consulting and helping people weigh job offers, I’ve found there are twenty main factors people consider. Here they are in alphabetical order:

I’ve always found that writing things down helps focus decision making. Nowhere is that more true than in weighing competing job offers. Take out that pad you used for all your early exercises and during your job fishing. Turn to a fresh page and divide it into columns that represent one more than the number of job offers you’re weighing. In other words, if you have two offers to choose between, divide the page into three columns; if you have three offers, divide the page into four columns.

Label the first column Factors. Label the remaining columns with a word or phrase that describes each job offer. For example, if you’ve received two offers and one is an offer from a telecommunications company and the other is from a medical-research firm you might label the second column Telecom and the third Medical.

COMPARING JOB OFFERS

Go back to the first column, and move down the page writing a word or phrase that corresponds to each of the twenty factors, each on its own line. Skip one or two spaces between each item. If you need to jump to a second page, just replicate the columns and their headings on the new page.

(While I’d prefer you invest a bit in the process and create your own chart, in the interests of convenience I’ve also provided a blank form on page 152 that you could also use for this purpose. But I’d suggest that, rather than filling in this form in the book, you photocopy it and work on the photocopy instead. After all, you’re going to have so many offers coming in now that you’ve started job fishing that you won’t want to use up the chart on your first pair of offers.)

Now, fill in details about each factor for each offer. For instance, if the Telecom job offer includes a company gym, write “gym” on the amenities line in the Telecom column. If the Medical job offer includes free use of a company cafeteria, write “meals” on the amenities line in the Medical column. Go down the list, providing as much information as you can about each offer.

After you’ve filled in all the blanks, consider each line individually. Which of the two job offers seems to provide the better deal in each factor? Does the Telecom job offer two weeks’ paid vacation, while the Medical job offer provides three? Advantage Medical. Is the Telecom job located thirty minutes from your home while the Medical job is located sixty minutes away? Advantage Telecom. Place a large check mark on each line in the column of the job that provides the better deal.

After sitting with me for a about an hour, Debbie agreed not to react reflexively and instead compare the two job offers she’d received. If you recall, one was for a part-time deejay position at a rock station, and the other was for a jazz programming position at a satellite radio network. Using a legal pad, she drew up the chart I recommended in order to break each offer down into the twenty factors I’d outlined. (See the box on page 155: Debbie O’Leary’s Offer Comparison Chart.)

Amenities
. The deejay position at the radio station offered no amenities. The satellite radio station gave employees a discounted rate at a health club located near its offices. Advantage: Satellite.

Auto
. Neither job offered a company car, but the radio station would pay car expenses if Debbie had to travel to a remote location for a broadcast. Advantage: Radio.

Challenging
. Because Debbie had been a rock deejay for her entire working life, the radio job offered no challenges for her. The satellite radio job presented a challenge because it meant Debbie would need to come up with playlists in a new genre and format. Advantage: Satellite.