Month: October 2022

This blog is a direct transcription of our Youtube video: 4 Questions To Ask Yourself If You’re Thinking About Changing Jobs

Found yourself wondering whether you should take advantage of the current job boom? Scrolling on seeking but not quite clicking the Apply Now button? Stay tuned to hear four questions you should ask yourself whether to stay or where to go.

Hi my name is Kate and I’m a senior consultant here at INJECT and our sister company beyond HR. I work with a number of small to medium businesses to help them hire the right person, and that includes a lot of graduates, probably like you. I’ve been a graduate myself a little while ago now, so I understand the kind of things you’ll be thinking about when looking to make sure the role you’re in is the right one for you and whether you should think about moving on from that role.

How do you know whether it’s time to move on from your first or second graduate job?

At uni and even through high school, we’re sold this story that that first job out of our studies is going to be an amazing, exciting adventure with all these exciting training and development opportunities. But what we’re not told is that there actually are a lot of challenges involved with learning new things. Learning a lot of new things all at once is really hard and there are no criteria to follow anymore as there were at uni. So today we’re going to go through the four questions that you should ask yourself before thinking about moving on from your next job.

1. Are you learning, and who are you learning from?

You’re in the formative years of your career. The people that you learn from now are probably going to shape how you think and feel and do things in a professional environment later on. So for example, don’t just ask your mates what they’re feeling and thinking because chances are they’re probably thinking the same thing as you. this is really hard and is this actually right and are we in the right environment? What you should be doing is looking for a mentor or someone small senior in your life with more work experience and asking them what their advice would be and what they did in your situation. 

2. Is there a clear structure to your career and specific performance metrics for you to follow?

Secondly, are you clear on your performance metrics and what is expected of you on the job? First things first, what I would do in this situation is go to your manager and ask them for a copy of your position description. If there are any KPIs then come back and answer this question. You wanna be clear on where you’re going and what you’re doing to get there.

3. Are your personal values aligned with the company values and does the culture reflect them?

Next, does the company you work for have a strongly defined set of values? and do people actually follow those values in that company? A lot of companies have values, but most of it is just buzzwords. Now what you want to be looking for are actions, and decisions that people make that are reflective of the values of the company. Do you feel like those people in that company, you can respect they’re transparent about where they’re going and what they’re doing and are you receiving feedback based on those values as well?

4. Are you being paid fairly?

Finally, the big question is, are you being paid fairly? Now, this topic could be a whole video in itself and is the topic of many conversations. One thing that I recommend you keep in mind as a graduate and when you’re thinking about pay is that promotions and pay rises should not be a priority for you at this moment. What you want to be focusing on is, is this role provides me with a clear framework and the right training and development opportunities, to be able to progress in my career long term. I’ve seen so many graduates, and high potential graduates as well miss out on some fantastic career opportunities because their parents or this mate at uni told them that they need to negotiate as high as possible or ask for way above market rates just because that’s what they’ve been told to do by someone who doesn’t really understand how this works.

Final thoughts

Now as you might have guessed, the grass is usually greener where you water it. You’re only 6, 12 months into a career that could last you 40 to 50 years. At the moment, you want to be able to look back on this time and go yep I made decisions for a role that whilst challenging and unfamiliar, I got through it, I learned new skills, and I developed myself and my personal effectiveness and I didn’t just take that job because it offered an extra five thousand dollars or because it had a ping pong table. You want to say, Hey I made the right decision and I’m really happy with where my career has taken me because I was true to my values and my career reflects that.

This blog is a direct transcription of our Youtube video: How to Withdraw From a Job Application

Many graduates and people early in their career don’t realize that there’s a right way and a wrong way to pull out of a job hiring process.  So we’re going to talk about why that’s important. I’m going to tell you about three key mistakes that people make and, importantly, what you should do differently.

Why is it important to pull out of the job hiring process in the right way?

No matter what field you’re in, you’re building a reputation from that very first application as a graduate, and you want to leave the right impression throughout your career. Being a high performer is about doing things that others are not willing to do, and it’s about doing what’s hard to stand out from the back. This video series is about teaching those things and today’s topic is about how to do so when pulling out of an application.

So here are the three common mistakes that graduates and people early in their career make when pulling out of a job.

1. They ghost the employer.

The first is that they ghost the hiring manager or the recruiter. This is where basically you go and hide under a rock somewhere, you ignore the calls, you ignore the messages, and say hey I don’t exist anymore. This is something that does not command respect and you’ve essentially burned that bridge, for life.

2. Using the reason: “My personal circumstances have changed”.

Okay, now the second mistake you may not be aware of because you don’t see the other side of how many people actually do this and what happens is that they send an email through, saying my personal circumstances have changed or have been a family emergency. Now the thing about it is, the amount of time that people actually do that where their personal circumstances have changed just at the point when they’re about to get a job offer, the probability of that being actually true is low. Now the other thing in terms of a family emergency, when there’s a family emergency usually doesn’t preclude you from going ahead with a job. It might interrupt the process, you might not be able to attend an interview or something like that, but it doesn’t mean you’re going to pull out of the job. So whoever’s receiving this message on the other end does hot believe you, and again it’s not good for your reputation. Another aspect to this is you’re emailing through your reason for pulling out. Again, most people email because they don’t have that conversation. If you call up and give a real reason, then it might be believed.

What should you do instead?

Well, the first thing is you should not email or text that you’re pulling out of the position. You should call that person and talk to them whether it’s a recruiter or the hiring manager, or have a conversation. Now some recruiters may try to convince you to take the job, some may not depending on the type of business that they are and even maybe some hiring managers will. But ultimately they’re going to respect you for being honest about it and having a conversation. Much better than just sending an email and running away.

Now the other thing is, if you have built a good rapport with that person, you may be able to give them some of the specifics as to why you’re pulling out, even if it’s sensitive. So if it were an interview with a manager and you didn’t quite feel comfortable or didn’t think they valued people or something like that, that person who’s not that manager if you explain to them, they may put you forward for another job where it’s not that manager. Similarly, if you didn’t like the job itself like you thought it was this but it ends up being quite something different. If you explain what you’re actually looking for versus what the job seems to be, again, if the job that you’re actually after comes up, that might be around the corner and they might put you forward for that. But you didn’t explain that if you didn’t manage that relationship, then that’s not going to happen.

3. Stating starting salary as the reason for not taking the job.

Now in terms of the third mistake, The issue with this is twofold, and the mistake is that you’re saying that the salary is not right. This is something that as you get more experience in your career, maybe something you negotiate on, and becomes more relevant the more senior you get. When you’re a graduate, if you’re taking one job opportunity because it’s paying five thousand dollars more or ten thousand dollars more than this other opportunity, that’s your only reason you could be costing yourself five hundred thousand dollars in career earnings. You might wonder, how does that happen? In opportunity A., which is paying slightly less, you’re working for a manager for a company who’s going to develop the right skills and reputation for your career, an opportunity that’s not happening. But you’re getting a little bit more short-term money. So the problem with this is A, you’ve shown your cards as somebody who is perhaps not considering their career and B, you’re actually going to shoot yourself in the foot potentially if that first opportunity was the right one to develop your skills.