Considering a career move? Take these actions to make sure the decision you make results in success for you.

My biggest pieces of advice are:

(1) Give yourself options, i.e., it’s okay to turn down offers but you can’t accept or reject them if you don’t have them in the first place. You can’t close doors that are not open for you, so get those doors open!

(2) If you end up with multiple options, pick the one where you think you’ll learn the most and have opportunities for growth in different ways.

(3) Identify your priorities and pick based on those priorities (e.g., location based on family) because no opportunity is perfect. There is no requirement for how you set your priorities, but they should be your priorities, not someone else’s. For example, maybe your priority is to be in a sunny location or to be close to your parents or to make your partner’s decision the first choice in location. All of these are totally fine! Recognize what your priorities are, and also recognize that your priorities are important because they are yours, and not someone else’s.

(4) Regardless of what you pick, always be learning. After that, it doesn’t really matter, because if you end up somewhere you don’t like, there will still be ways in which you learn (i.e., you learn what you don’t like), and there will always be other opportunities down the road if you can go into an interview with great examples of how you have learned and grown.  

From an employer’s point of view, they want to see that you can fill the role they need filled, so a lot of times it is more about your ability to grow into the role, especially at early stages of a career, rather than having all of the skills already. Even in later career stages, higher level positions require growth and learning, so this is critical for those in leadership and management. Also, increasingly, employers are looking for emotional intelligence skills, so being able to answer questions about how you collaborate, how you work in teams, how you are able to handle conflict, etc. can be really important. Get Google or ChatGPT to put together a list of interview questions for you, and be prepared with concrete examples of what you would say.

Finally, practice being grateful and appreciative for where you end up. This is an important piece of any career move.  People can get fixated on a certain job or certain location, and then they end up unhappy because their expectations and requirements were beyond what is reasonable and possible. Don’t fall into this trap, and keep this in mind as you move through your options. There are great opportunities in most places, if you can see them and then take advantage of them.  It’s often what you do with a position that makes it, rather than getting the position itself. Any job is what you make of it, in any situation.