Don't let decision-making paralyze job search

Remember Jack Benny? He was the stand-up comedian who made his living pretending to be a miser.

His most famous gag was the one where a robber sticks a gun in his face and growls: “Your money or your life!” Benny’s response? A classic decision-making pose with one arm folded across his chest, the other hand resting on his cheek while he tells the impatient gunman, “I’m thinking it over!”

Job seekers and career changers may not have the drama depicted in Benny’s routine, but many have the same paralysis when it comes to decision-making. Even when the choices seem very clear, people can torture themselves with what-if scenarios: What if I take a job that doesn’t work out? What if a better option comes up? What if the market changes and I have to get retrained all over again?

I’ve had a lot of time to think about why normally competent decision-makers get ensnared in career processes. It’s not that they can’t make choices, but rather, that many of their usual processes are not helpful. Car buyers have Consumer Reports, with its side-by-side comparisons of key features; career “buyers” get an onslaught of advice and books with contradictory messages.

It doesn’t help that career choices seem so darned important. Really, you’d think people were trying to decide between the red wire and the blue one on a bomb strapped to a loved one’s back. Somehow we get it in our heads that there is only one correct answer, and that everything depends on getting it right. If we blow a career decision, it’s game over. Boom.

In my counseling work, I’ve found three factors that impact how easy or difficult a career decision will be: the structure of the decision itself, the emotional state of the person making the decision, and that person’s natural decision-making style.

By structure, I mean the number of choices as compared to criteria.

Having too many choices and no criteria will make your head spin: You have no way to sort career choices if you have no established baselines, including wage, length of commute and job duties. On the other hand, having lots of criteria but few choices also will impede a decision. This happens most often when people create their career wish lists without gathering enough research to determine which careers fit the criteria -- or when they load on so many conditions that very few jobs would measure up.

Emotional barriers to decision-making are an entirely different kettle of fish. Not really committed to finding work? Terrified of landing in a bad job? Worried about being rejected? There are probably dozens of partially submerged issues lurking in every job seeker’s psyche, threatening to run the whole process aground.

The trick is to know when you’re holding yourself back rather than asking reasonable questions that will help you make a decision. One way to know? When no decision is forthcoming, either you’re stuck, or you’ve got a bad set of questions.

Regardless of the structure of a decision or one’s emotional state, most of us have a decision-making style developed over the course of a lifetime. The problem is, every decision-making style has weaknesses, and those tend to get exaggerated when it comes to careers. Quick decision-makers can find they didn’t ask enough questions, slow decision-makers can lose opportunities, and non-decision-makers can get flattened by not acting at all.

If you are in the midst of a thorny career decision, the following analogy may or may not help. But I’ll share it anyway, as it has served me many times in my own life.