What Actually Matters When Choosing Your Next Employer
What are you looking for when you're scrolling job ads? A good position, a promotion, a new career, better pay? There's a lot of variables that impact your decision to apply for certain roles or avoid them altogether, but choosing the right role and employer is an important one.
Get it right and you can guarantee life will be that little bit easier and you don't have the money blues each week. Get it wrong and those monday blues are going to be monday, tuesday, wednesday, thursday and friday blues.
Because for the most part it's not the job description that'll dictate your experience with a new employer, the reality sits in the details that aren't always obvious.
Here are a few tips on how to choose your next employer and what really matters in your job search.
Table of Contents
Salary and Pay Structure
Pay matters, of course it does. But so does how it works in practice.
Base salary, overtime expectations, bonuses that only look good on paper, targets that shift every few months. These are the things that impact your week, not the headline number.
If you can't get a straight answer on how pay progression works, how raises happen or what people in similar roles are actually earning year after year, assume it's as straightforward as advertised.
Working Hours and Expectations
“Flexible working” means nothing on its own.
Ask what time people really log off, ask whether emails are expected to be answered in the evening or how often workloads spill outside contracted hours. Because if everyone jokes about being permanently busy, that's not humour, that's the culture. Workload will shape your life far more than any perk will.
Management and Communication
Your manager will define your experience more than the company does. Pay attention to how they answer questions, are they clear or vague? Do they own their problems or do they deflect them? And do they talk about their team with respect or frustration.
Poor communication doesn't improve once you start, it usually gets worse.
Career Progression
“Room for growth” is a common line rolled by employers but for some that's it. They tell you can progress but there's nothing concrete you can put down to prove people actually progress in their roles or that it's anything more than hypothetical. Ask them how long progression takes and do they have any training provided to you.
While some companies such as Royal Ambulance are built around training and career progression, others promise you the world yet pin you down in one place because that's all they need from you.
External Reputation and Employee Experience
Job ads only ever show one side of the company — the one employers want you to see. But there's so much more you can uncover from finding others' points of view.
Check around sites like Glassdoor to find employees' reviews and feedback, look for reviews from clients or people who have experience with the company. If you can, check in industry or local circles about professional and personal reputation, including those higher up. Dig deeper than what the company wants you to know to get a better idea of what you can expect if you get hired. This will tell you what working for the company will really be like.
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