Hey, it's Rachel Cook, your modern mentor. I'm the founder of Lead Above Noise, a firm

specializing in helping organizations drive team engagement in service of delivering stronger results.

You know, one way organizations can get better results, it's making sure they have the right people

in the right roles, which means that each of us needs to be thoughtful about

which roles we take on and whether we should go for that new one. They say things happen in

threes. Frankly, I have no idea who they are, or why three is so mystical. But anecdotally speaking,

this does tend to hold true for me. And just today, I had my third conversation

in a very short window with someone telling me about a job they saw posted and wondering whether

or not they should go for it. Now, if three people in my life right now are struggling with this,

I thought maybe it was a topic worth tackling here. So today, let's talk about some things you

should ask and answer to help you decide whether that new job deserves your candidacy.

First, does it move you on a ladder that you care about? I was chatting with my yoga teacher,

Josh, the other day. He's frankly so zen and limber that I assumed he was born in a warrior two pose.

But it turns out he's only been teaching for about eight years.

He actually had a whole life in corporate before he found his practice.

He had climbed pretty high up a corporate ladder, and not so much on purpose, but because

it was what the world had always told him to do.

And then one day he realized he hated what he was doing, and he just didn't care to climb that ladder any further.

So he paused and reflected and found his way to yoga. Lucky for me. Now that is a pretty

dramatic shift, and a pause and reflect will not always send someone in such a drastically different

direction. But when a new opportunity, whether inside your company or somewhere else entirely,

presents itself to you, you owe it to yourself to begin by asking, am I pursuing this

...