This article is the second part of a three part blog series on how to find your next role after your contract ends. Below I have linked the following two posts.

1/3 - 💔😢 How to break up with your job

2/3 - 🤯 Deciding what industry/job to pursue

3/3 - 💸 🙋‍♀️👔 Interview prep like a pro

There are 3 parts to this (for me)

1. Picking a job
2. Dealing with recruiters
3. Negotiating pay

All 3 are tricky and you won't feel good about it at any point until you start your new job. Let’s get straight into it.

1. Picking a job

I could waste your time here, but I won't. If I was in your position, this is the exercise I would do to decide what I want. I'll explain it below.

Pick 3 things you care about the most from this list and write them down. You're only allowed 3!

• Money (Very good income starting out)

• Work-life balance (9-5 within reason, some late evenings but mostly stable through the year)

• Industry (What you're crunching numbers for - lol)

• Growth opportunities with periodic stress (Stress is required for growth, think busy season)

• Progression potential (Is there a ladder for me to climb?)

• Low challenge (no support but boring)

• Location (Do you have a location in mind or are you ready to travel?)

• How cool it looks/company reputation ("Wow that's a class job" - even though you're still entering numbers in excel like everyone else)

• Personal preferences or career (Does this facilitate you playing sport at a high level or travelling etc)

• Job security (Most jobs outside of start-ups will have this)

• Big risk/big payout (Startup)

This is supposed to be hard. Most people I meet think that there are jobs out there that have every bullet point above plus a €10k bonus and share options to make you €1m big ones in three years. It's a false hope that will just make you unhappy. At least by picking 3 you'll have something to evaluate the job from.

Here are my 3 picks from one million years ago:
1. Growth opportunity
2. Personal preferences
3. How cool it looks

I only kind of cared about money, industry etc etc but when push came to shove, I cared about being challenged personally and professionally plus trying something that looked cool. I was willing to take less money to work on something interesting because that was my vibe at the time. Yours may change but it's good to have an outlook of what works for you. So many of my friends were money, work life balance and location. That's perfectly fine. They’re all married now with houses and I’m renting (lol). Knowing which 3 you pick can and will go a long way to helping you decipher what you should be focused on (and more importantly what you won’t regret).

2. Dealing with recruiters

Have you ever been to a farm with 50+ cows in view? Well if you haven’t, the below is what you’d see. I’d ask you to pick the best one in the next 15 seconds. Ready?

Now that you’ve picked, you can empathise with recruiters dealing with ACA coming out of their contracts. There's so many of us you can barely tell us apart and as much as we hate to admit it, we are all so similar on paper.

The recruiter is paid to pretend they can tell us apart and that they've found you the one job you've been looking for. Recruiters get paid 10-20% of your base salary or a minimum fee usually around €10k. You can assume they're getting €10k as a minimum fee to place you.

You need to keep this to the forefront of your mind when you're dealing with them. They may say they care. They may (and are usually) sound. They may say they're genuine. It's just hard to accept when you know the recruiter is being paid so well and that individual is probably getting €500-€1k+ bonus to place you. Do they really care if the job is grand?