How to Vet Your Next Career Opportunity as an Exec

Vetting a new opportunity ensures it’s a place for you to do your best work with great people. Hopefully you’ll spend significant time in your next job, so there are several things you can do to make sure it’s a great fit.

Here is my simple five-step process for vetting your next career opportunity:

1. Do the self-reflection

2. Vet the role

3. Vet the company

4. Vet the people

5. Manage ambiguity

1. Do the self-reflection

Self-reflection enables you to enter your job search with clear priorities, understanding what you want and what you are good at, which ultimately sets you up for success.

Understand why you are leaving

Are you looking for more money, a broader scope, better balance, or a sense of purpose? Are you running towards something new or away from your current situation? Be clear about why you are making a move to avoid the same issues in your next role.

Think through where you want your career to be in 5-10 years

1. Managing Career Path - People often think, “In my next role, I want to do XYZ.” However, it’s important to think not just one role ahead, but two or three roles ahead, and how you’ll get there to ensure you are set up for your long-term goal.

2. Managing Career Arc - Understand where you are in your career. People break down careers into three stages - looking to learn (first third), doing (second third) or giving back (final third). There are no right or wrong answers on what you want, but understand what internally aligns with what you want.

Assess your strengths and weaknesses

Talk to superiors, peers, and subordinates about your strengths and weaknesses. Self-reflection is great, but gathering information from others will help you build a more objective view of your candidacy, and give you an opportunity to address issues that may come up in references.. 

To get a full picture, ask questions around where you excel and also where you are weaker for your specific function, how you work with others, and how you manage others and need to be managed.

There is no singular process that works best for gathering this feedback. Instead, it works best if you just ask people that you trust. You will most likely find that people are honest about giving career-related feedback, especially if you have worked with them closely and built a trusted relationship.

2. Vet the role

You want to know that on day one, you can hit the ground running and execute effectively in that role.

Choose roles that match your strengths

Does the role align with your strengths and weaknesses? What situations are you going to be most successful in? It's okay to take on stretch roles, but be realistic about your capabilities.

Ensure this role aligns with your career path

Think about resume building during the process. People often get caught up in what the role is now vs what it’s going to do for you next. If your goal is to become a CMO, consider taking the VP of Product Marketing role at the high-flying company rather than the VP of Marketing role at a struggling one.

Things to evaluate include:

1. Does the stage of company and product align with my career path?

2. Where does the CEO want to take this company, and does that align with my career path?

3. If I'm not in the top seat, is there room to grow into the top seat? What could this role turn into?

4. What am I going to learn? If I'm reporting into someone, do they have an experience that I don't have that I'm going to gain by working for them?

You’re better off being in the wrong seat on the right train where you’ll need to flex on certain criteria. There is a point when the seat is too wrong though. 

Confirm the expectations are achievable

What does success look like in this role and what are the KPIs?

We see executives fail when there is misalignment on what expectations are going into the role. Before you commit to this marriage, ensure that you’re completely aligned on expectation for your first 30/60/90 days. It is important to put this into writing so that you have a north star metric.