To Leave or Not To Leave: Should you switch jobs now?

So this is bonus season again and despite how much you DON’T want to hear discussions about it, people talk about what they are getting, people express feelings of dissatisfaction or content, and people start thinking about other options.

Especially for young professionals who just entered the workplace in the past one or two years, this is a crucial question you might want to ask yourself: should I stay? Or should I go for another firm?

 

Wait ~~~7 Key Reasons to hold off jumping to somewhere else!

 

1. You have been there for no more than 6 months

You typically need 6-8 months to get used to a new job anyway. It is hardly a smart decision to leave already before you give yourself enough time to get comfortable with the day-to-day work.

 

Are you satisfied with your job and what are you looking for?

Apparently I was randomly selected from my college to participate in the 2010 National Survey of Recent College Graduates conducted by the National Science Foundation (NSF), and in the email it specifies that they cannot substitute another person for me given the process. I was also told that this important national study is the only source of data on the post graduation plans and experiences of recent graduates with bachelor’s or master’s degrees in natural sciences, social sciences, engineering, and health fields.

All sounds very interesting. But I want to direct your attention to one of the questions they asked me during the survey:

How much are you satisfied with your current job in the following respective aspects? And also, with a scale of 1-5, how would you rate the importance of each aspect to you?

In case you are one of those debating over several options, I want to list the 9 aspects below and my personal takeaways for each aspect, and to give you an idea of what questions you should ask yourself and your potential future colleagues, before making a decision on joining the firm/or switching to something else.

• Salary
  • An entry level base of 65,000 vs. 70,000 may not be a big difference, but a base of 45,000 vs. 70,000 would much likely raise a bigger question mark.
  • How much is the rough increase every year?
  • What is the industry-level pay for this type of position? Is the pay scale above or below average? How about bonus level?

Top 10 Tips on Getting an Internship & Job

Firstly some updates from me: I know I have been writing about job hunting/networking a lot these days, but coming up next~~~ a post on writing new year objectives for young professionals, and then another post on some exciting advancement in my own career and how I managed to get there!

Also if you like what you see, you might want to consider “subscribing” to my blog via RSS or email, see top right on this web page! And help me to share or tweet the posts you enjoyed reading!

 

Now back to job-hunting~~~

It’s about the time of the year that college students start to get super worried about their “future”, and I feel obliged to write another article on job hunting. A few ladies recently reached out to me for more advice on getting an internship or full-time job (thanks again for complimenting on my blog btw, I am glad if my posts did help you in any way). And before you reach out directly to me again, READ THIS POST!

Please go directly to No.3 on the list if you are in a hurry.

 

Why Did You Leave Your Previous Job?

So today I am trying to help you answer this frequently asked question during interviews: Why did you leave your previous job?

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Be prepared, you will be asked

It is almost funny how many people (even senior executives) will freak out by this question. One thing you should keep in mind, though, is that you are lucky to be in transition nowadays. Given what has happened with the economy in the past 2 years, it is NORMAL to have to quit your previous position, willingly or unwillingly. It is also NORMAL when an interviewer asks this question because he/she wants to understand your background and previous circumstances better, NOT to sabotage your interview, so please do not freak out.

Make sure you practice your answers as much as you can, in front of the mirror, with your peers, on the telephone, while you’re showering…until you are perfectly comfortable and not defensive at all when addressing this issue.

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Answers to Avoid

Client Communication: Defend Passionately

Defend performance and retain revenue is probably a buy-side problem emerged during the most recent financial crisis. Sell-side has only more explanations to do, but most of their job is done when capital is raised, stock sold, and the merger happened. But as a fiduciary asset manager, you have to engage another step where you have to deal with clients who are unhappy with the performance of their portfolios. 

A Wall Street trader once told me, the investment management industry is the most ridiculous industry of all. Who in the world would give you the money to manage and pay you for doing that, no matter you win or lose? And the next issue raised amid the financial crisis when everything went to shit is the debate on the whole “compared with the benchmark vs. absolute return” idea. If benchmark went down 20%, and you went down 15%, on a relative basis you’re still outperforming but essentially you are losing money for the client. 

But what will piss off a client even more is when they have several external managers, and one of them simply falls behind the other managers, regardless of the market direction. Every client-facing person in the asset management industry would have faced situations where you have to defend your portfolios as well as your firm’s reputation in the past two years. So how exactly do you do that? 

Explain what happened and what went wrong