Why Working in Zone 1 Is So Inspiring

Rather than asking about compensation, I ask job-seekers to first think about the best job they’ve ever held. I then ask if their high degree of job satisfaction was due to the money they were making or something about the work they were doing. Whatever it is, this is your Zone 1. This is what you should be looking for when considering your next job.

Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day
Fritter and waste the hours in an off-hand way
Kicking around on a piece of ground in your home town
Waiting for someone or something to show you the way
“ Time” – Pink Floyd

In The Essential Guide for Hiring & Getting Hired a case is made that interviewers frequently use the wrong criteria to select job applicants. The consequence is subpar performance, dissatisfaction, and unnecessary turnover. As well as providing advice to hiring managers, the book provides a series of countermeasures for job-seekers who want to be evaluated correctly. To make the best hiring decision, both the hiring manager and the applicant need to define the real work that needs to get done. The hiring manager then needs to select people based on their competency and motivation to do this work.

Job-seekers need to evaluate opportunities the same way. Unfortunately, too many job-seekers overvalue what they get on Day 1 (a salary, location, and title), not the work they’ll be doing, if the work is innately satisfying, or if it makes long-term career sense. Finding Zone 1 work is the key to personal satisfaction and career growth, so it's worth the extra effort to seek it out.

A few weeks ago I wrote a post describing this idea, Define the Job, Before Defining the Person – A Common Sense Idea for Hiring. It got the attention of Fox News. The Fox interviewer was initially aghast I could be so out of step with the CW, but in the end, she reluctantly acquiesced. But this is only the beginning of the story.

In a post last week, Should You Quit Your Day Job?, I introduced the concept of career zones. Four were described, each representing different degrees of job satisfaction as a function of growth, impact and learning. The overall concept is summarized in the graphic. The flattening of the curve denotes slowing growth along with declining job satisfaction. For those in Zones 3 and 4 there could be more risk associated with clinging to these jobs for the sake of security, rather than changing jobs for the opportunity to grow and learn.

While there was plenty of agreement with the concept, a number of the comments focused on how to determine if a new job really was a Zone 1 opportunity, or just more of the same. For this point, I’ll let you in on a little secret: LinkedIn has a companion blog for recruiters only (or for those who know the secret password). A few weeks ago, I wrote a post on this no-longer-secret site, Use The 30% Solution to Turn Jobs Into Careers. The essence of the post was advice for recruiters on how to present jobs along three dimensions – stretch, growth and compensation – and assign some percent increase to each one. Recruiters then needed to position the job as a worthy career move as long as the total increase was at least 30%. For a job to be a true Zone 1 opportunity, the bulk of the 30% needs to be in stretch and growth, not compensation. Here are some tips on how job-seekers can reverse engineer the concept to find their own "Zone 1 30% solution" when evaluating new opportunities:

1. Job stretch. This represents the actual job itself as defined by a performance-based job description in comparison to what the applicant is currently doing. Shoot for at least 10-15% stretch in terms of a bigger team, more responsibility, more exposure, doing work that is more satisfying, and/or being given a chance to make a bigger impact.
2. Job growth. This is the difference in growth rates between a job-seeker’s current situation and the new opportunity. For this factor, look at how fast the company is changing, the promotional opportunities available for those meeting their performance objectives, and overall industry trends. For someone in Zone 3 or 4 with a current personal growth rate of zero or less, it doesn't take much to get a 10-15% increase on this factor. Even those in Zone 2 should evaluate opportunities the same way, since there is a risk in not growing as rapidly as one’s peers.
3. Compensation, long- and short-term. Too many candidates are fixated on what the compensation increase will be when evaluating new opportunities. This is the reason many wind up in Zone 3 or 4 jobs to begin with. Consider that a modest short-term increase coupled with significant stretch and growth could result in a significant long-term compensation boost.

Looking at the career planning process graphically this way suggests using a Zone 1 mindset when evaluating opportunities or considering changing jobs. While there is risk in changing and upsetting the status quo, there is often more risk staying put.

“Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement. Nothing can be done without hope and confidence.”

- Helen Keller (see more Zone 1 inspirational ideas on Wisdom at Work)

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Lou Adler (@LouA) is the CEO of The Adler Group, a consulting firm helping companies implement Performance-based Hiring. His latest book, The Essential Guide for Hiring & Getting Hired (Workbench, 2013), covers the performance-based process described in this article in more depth. For more hiring advice join Lou's LinkedIn group and follow his Wisdom About Work series on Facebook.

Photo: Library of Congress / digital version by Science Faction / Getty Images