What do you value: Title, paycheque or corporate culture?
By LEAH EICHLER, Special to The Globe and Mail
Friday, Nov. 02 2012
When a recruiter contacted me some time ago about a role at a prestigious media company, with an impressive job title and above-average paycheque, I felt obligated to explore the opportunity.
The weeks-long process was exhausting, involving multiple interviews, once on a weekend and once on a statutory holiday. On one occasion, I was expected to wait for nearly five hours for a phone interview with a senior executive. The whole experience made me realize just how much I value respect and consideration. By the end, I was asking myself whether the company and I would be a good fit, even if the job were a gem.
As a society, we sometimes extol the virtues of soul-destroying corporate culture. Consider the movie The Devil Wears Prada, in which the glamour of working for Meryl’s Streep’s demanding character appeared to outweigh the suffering under her heartless tendencies. And in the initial pages of Greg Smith ’s Why I left Goldman Sachs, he writes admiringly of the hazing-style meetings that often left interns in tears.
While a flashy job title with a lucrative paycheque can serve as a siren call to many, especially in a challenging economy, there are good reasons to resist temptation and instead examine a company’s corporate culture.
Laura Henderson, co-author of How Women Lead: The 8 Essential Strategies Successful Women Know, suggests that corporate culture should trump title and pay. Read full article>>