I’ve been looking for a new role for awhile now – the job market has been pretty bad and I’ve had a lot of interviews, but nothing has panned out. Until now. Suddenly, I’ve gone from no offers, to two! And they’re both exciting roles that seem like they’d be great. One of them has a slightly higher salary and better benefits. It would be an easy transition as it’s almost exactly what I am doing today. The other role doesn’t pay as well, but I really liked the manager and the team. It’s also a bit intimidating because while a lot of it I have done before, they’re starting up a new division and I’d be helping with that. How do I decide? —– First of all, congratulations! This is a fantastic position to be in, but also an incredibly tough one. Almost everyone I know (including myself) has the same feelings of doubt and uncertainty when faced with having to decide about two roles. It’s normal. I have been in this situation a few times and there’s a few things I always come back to: What are my non-negotiables? Is it salary? Growth? Work/life balance? Maybe you want to grow into a leadership role? If you’re struggling, come back and remember these and evaluate each opportunity to see if they’re a match. Which opportunity will give me experiences or exposure to things that will fill a gap or a weakness I have? If one role feels like the same one that you’ve been doing, and another presents an opportunity to stretch, I would always encourage you to go for the stretch. Getting new experiences isn’t a given with any role, and it will set you up for continued growth and success. Salary isn’t everything. It sounds crazy, but I have taken roles for less money and worked with candidates when they decided to take roles for less money. Why? Sometimes it was a tradeoff, they wanted more work/life balance or less stress. And other times, the role presented a unique opportunity to grow and learn. In many cases, including my own, the cut in pay was temporary and led to far greater increases down the road. Be selfish. It’s your career. While it can be tough to leave a great company and fantastic coworkers, don’t be afraid to be selfish and prioritize yourself. Good luck to you in your decision! Be open. My first manager always encouraged us to interview. He always said he wanted us at the company because we wanted to be there, because we’d seen what was out there and knew that this was the place for us. I’ve always kept an open mind to opportunities, and will usually speak to other companies to learn about the market, and also to see what else is out there. You never know when the perfect role might fall into your lap, or when you might make a connection that introduces you to your next role. Some of the time, I had been in a role, but I was looking for that next step, and was looking out to see if I could find it. I received an offer eventually from a Unicorn company (if you don’t know, that is what they call a privately held start-up with a valuation of more than one billion). It was a fast-growing company. I could see tons of opportunity. And it was exciting but I also thought that it would be pretty chaotic and would likely have poor work-life balance. So I ultimately turned it down. While I wasn’t perfectly happy in my current role and company, I was content enough that I knew I could wait for the right opportunity. A year or two later, another opportunity came along and it checked all the boxes of that one that I had turned down – plus