Making a rubric to assess potential job opportunities

And here’s a peek into what my rubric looks like

While on my gap year, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about what I’d like out of my next career move. I’ve slowly built out a rubric of different criteria to prioritize. I feel uniquely fortunate in that I can be really thoughtful and deliberate in assessing potential job opportunities without any specific deadlines or urgency to start the next role right away. Because I have this flexibility, having the rubric matters more than ever as it will help me avoid pursuing opportunities that really aren’t aligned with what I want – particularly as I know it can be all too easy and tempting to pursue opportunities just because they sound cool. (I haven’t officially started my job hunt just yet – stay tuned!) 

The last time I was at a career crossroads was back in 2021 when I was considering the opportunity at TestBox. I made a similar rubric, though the exercise involved more backsolving than starting with a blank slate. The rubric was focused on comparing the two forks in the road: staying the course at Bain or joining TestBox.

I pulled up that rubric to give myself some inspiration and will say that for the most part, the structure of the rubric is quite similar. The specific criteria and rankings have changed a bit, as expected.

Everyone’s rubrics will be very different, and so I’m sharing the overall structure of mine and the sorts of factors that I’m considering without specifics:

With this template, you can reorder the rows based on if each factor is a must-have and how heavily weighted it is. Your must-haves should carry significant weight, so make sure that the Must-have and Weighting columns are consistent with one another. For each extra opportunity you’re considering, you can add extra columns to the right and fill in the cells based on your best judgment of the role and company. There may be other criteria that I haven’t captured as well, and those can be easily added as extra rows. Just make sure the weighting sums to 100%.

Finally, this is as much a reminder for myself as it is advice for others:

Making and filling in your rubric might turn out to be no more than a thought exercise.

With my last experience, the TestBox opportunity and staying the course turned out to be equally scored. Making and filling in the rubric ended up being more of an exercise to help me figure out what I wanted. It’s just like the life hack for the indecisive, where you flip a coin when you’re stuck between two options and you use the outcome of the coin flip to gain clarity on your own feelings more so than to decide. If you flipped heads and your heart sinks just a little, because it points to option B, then you gain clarity that you really wanted option A all along.

All this said, don’t forget – the rubric also won’t serve you well if you forget the following:

1. Be extra clear with yourself on the non-negotiable factors. This will take discipline, patience and a certain degree of flexibility on timing (when possible, given life circumstances) if opportunities that fit the bill don’t show up right away.

2. Do not retroactively change the rubric to fit an opportunity without a very compelling reason. Adjusting the rubric will happen, inevitably, but make sure that any additional factors that are added are things that truly matter to you. 

Tl;dr

When considering different job opportunities, making a rubric can be extremely helpful. Above, I share my template. However, remember that making the rubric isn’t enough although it’s a very powerful thought exercise. You also need to stick to the rubric and be patient when opportunities don’t score highly enough to be considered. When, inevitably, the rubric needs to be adjusted, make sure you’re remaining honest with yourself.