Finding Your Perfect Job
Using KT Decision Analysis to Think About Fit in a Software Role
I recently switched jobs after spending eight years at Box. As I looked for a new position, I spent a lot of time thinking about fit and how to make sure that I found a job that I would love. I talk more about what you can ask to help get a good sense for a company in this other post, but how do you decide what you want? How do you make sure that you make an unbiased choice based on the best fit and not just who is the best at selling?
When thinking through how to decide if an opportunity offered the things I cared about, a friend shared with me how she was applying the KT process to job hunting. She actually evaluates every opportunity as it comes to her and if it seems interesting, she’ll compare it to her current job using that process. She almost always decides to stay where she is but it’s a good way for her to make sure that she isn’t staying purely because it’s the easy thing to do. I didn’t follow the process fully, but it did help me think through what mattered most to me.
What Is KT Decision Analysis?
The KT (short for Kepner Tregoe) process is a problem analysis method that separates the problem from the solution. There are four major steps:
- Situational Analysis — Evaluate the situation and environment that may have lead to the problem.
- Problem Analysis — A clear definition of the problem is settled on and root cause is determined.
- Decision Analysis — Options are explored and a solution is settled on.
- Potential Problem Analysis — Deeper analysis of the agreed upon solution to eliminate further risk.
The main goal is to turn thinking into a process and to try to eliminate biases and distractions in order to come up with the best possible solution. It is used in a large variety of contexts for many different types of problems.
For the purposes of job searching, I focused primarily on the decision analysis portion of the process. For this portion, there are a few commonly used steps:
- First identify must-haves, like to haves and constraints.
- Assign an importance score to each of the must-have and like to haves items.
- Next, brainstorm possible solutions.
- Rate each solution in each area identified in both the like to have and must have sections.
- Multiply the scores in 2 and 4 and add together the scores for each solution to see which one comes out on top.
This should surface the solution that does the best in the areas that you care the most about, but may also surface a solution that maybe isn’t the best in one high importance area but does really well everywhere else. Either way, it can help ensure that actual important areas are taken into account.
Applying the KT Process to Job Searching
First, define what is important to you and how important each thing is relative to each other. Sure, commute and people are both important, but which one do you care more about? What are the non-negotiable things and what are you more flexible about? Do you have any absolute bars for anything (e.g., I’m unwilling to commute more than 45 minutes)? While thinking this through, assign each item a score of 1–10 where 10 is the most important. Note that this process will be most helpful if you have a spread of scores and don’t say that everything is a seven importance.
Next, once you have some job options, make sure they don’t break any of your non-negotiable things. For example, if a job has a 2 hour commute and you don’t want to commute more than 45 minutes, it’s not really worth considering. From this filtered list, rate each option (1–10) on each of the categories you previously defined. Does this particular company have amazing people (10)? Pretty good people (7)? It’s important to try to be as objective as possible when assigning scores. Once you’ve determined the company’s ratings, multiply your original importance score with that rating to get the final score. For example, if people are 8 important to me and company X is really great and got a 9 score in this area, the overall score would be 72. When you’re finished, add up all the scores and compare. The results may surprise you.
How I Used the KT Process
My friend does the full exercise every time, but I got a bit lazy. I did define my priorities and assigned scores to each of those, but I didn’t actually assign specific scores for companies. That said, I found it really helpful to have thought about my priorities ahead of time. When talking to a company that’s trying to sell me, it can be really easy to suddenly think that I really care about free lunch or whatever else they may happen to talk about. It can be easy to find myself really wanting to work at the company that is the best at selling or with whoever I’ve talked to most recently. I found that it can be easy to start comparing salaries even though as long as I’m being paid fairly, I care much more about my quality of life than the exact amount I’m actually earning. Just because a company has sold me most recently, that doesn’t mean that will be the best fit. Trying to forget the shiny things and focus on the things that really matter can be tricky, so it’s worth trying to consciously do so. While I didn’t specifically assign scores, I did go back and look through my list of priorities while trying to make my decision.
The other reason I found it really helpful to think about what was important to me up front was that it allowed me to make sure to ask questions about those topics. For example, since I knew I cared a lot about diversity and culture, I made sure to ask every company I talked to some pretty pointed questions about this topic. This not only ensured that I had reasonable things to say when my interviewers asked me if I had anything I wanted to ask them at the end of the interviews, but it also allowed me to make sure I found out about the things I really cared about. It also allowed me to have a fairly consistent set of things I asked each company about, allowing me to compare them on more standardized things.
Determining Categories
So what categories should you use? My friend’s must-haves included people, learning/growing, passion, work/life balance and compensation. Meanwhile, mine included some of the same things but also included my ability to keep running every day (which was tied to commute and a few other things) and my ability to have a big impact. A few others might include the location, the industry, the benefits, amount of vacation time, the ability to work remotely, communication style or really anything else you find important to you. At the end of the day, this is about finding a job that will fit best with what you want, so there is no right or wrong answer here.
Happy job hunting!
