Are You Keeping Your Options Open?
Curt Skene’s In2Win! Career Coaching Supplement.
As you start your search always keep an open mind to the opportunities that are presented to you. While at first glance some opportunities may not sound that appealing, having options is definitely the key to success. This is your future and you want to have choices. When you consider your options look at both the positive and negative aspects of the decision.
While an opportunity may not pay what you believe you’re worth, it may be far better than not being paid at all. Aside from receiving much needed cash in your pocket being employed will open doors and make you more desirable to employers. When you are looking at opportunities there are two ways you can filter them. The first is by “exclusion”, where as soon as you find something wrong you remove the opportunity from your list and it’s never considered again.
The second is by “inclusion”, where every opportunity remains on the list but those that best match your needs and desires move to the top. What’s the key difference? When you filter by exclusion you can quickly eliminate many options thus limiting your choices. One client was amazed to discover he actually had four good options when he started to use the inclusion method.
Also, keep in mind that many companies offer many more options once you get inside the door.
Keep creating options. Even imperfect choices give you more control than depending on a single opportunity.
Why I Wrote This Page
Because closing a door early costs you something you can’t get back: the value of simply having options, even if you never use most of them.
There are two ways to filter opportunities. Exclusion looks for what’s wrong and removes it from the list, fast, but it destroys options permanently. Inclusion keeps everything on the list and lets the best rise to the top, which means you can still change your mind later if your priorities shift, or if you learn something new about an opportunity you almost dismissed.
Options have value even when you never exercise them. An offer you decide not to take is still worth having, because it changes your leverage, your confidence, and your read on the market, none of which you get if you eliminated it in week one.
Action Steps
- For the next month, don’t eliminate any opportunity outright. Rank everything instead, and let the ranking shift as you learn more.
- Before you say no to something, ask what you’d be giving up beyond the role itself, leverage, information, or a future referral inside that company.
- Revisit anything you dismissed early. What looked wrong in week one sometimes looks very different by week six.
In2Win! Afterthought
Curt’s current observations and updated guidance will be added here.
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