Maria sat in the bright sunshine on the patio of her favourite Montreal deli waiting for her friend to join her for lunch. While waiting, she thought about her career options.
Maria had finished her last exam for her honours business degree only five weeks earlier. She was graduating at a time when downturns in the energy and manufacturing sectors impacted both the overall economy and the job market. In addition, parts of the economy had yet to recover from the worldwide financial crisis of 2008 and consumer spending was down. The trickle-down effects impacted hiring of entry-level workers in industries from consumer packaged goods to insurance, banking, natural resource extraction, even the retail sector. Many new business graduates struggled to find work of any kind.
She had originally planned to go into international development after completing her degree. She was especially interested in programs that helped develop entrepreneurship skills in economically disadvantaged areas. She had spent the last six months of her degree sending letters to aid agencies and educational organizations, and discovered it was much more difficult to enter the field than she had imagined. She found herself competing with job candidates who spoke four or five languages, had worked as entrepreneurs themselves, and had extensive volunteer experience in the developing world. She only spoke two languages and had never run a business or travelled abroad.
While pondering that, Maria found out her mother had been diagnosed with ovarian cancer. Treatment would be lengthy and difficult, and Maria wanted to be home in Montreal for the next year or two to help out. She decided to try and find a job that would help her to develop skills that would let her realize her ultimate career goals while also supporting herself and her mother.
After an intensive five-week search (well, more like four weeks—she had been a zombie for a week after finally finishing her last exam), Maria was pleasantly surprised to find that she had gotten three different job offers.
None were exactly what she had envisioned herself doing, but she couldn’t really afford to be picky.
The first job offer was from a call centre that handled customer care for a large cell and Internet service provider. She would answer calls and help resolve customer complaints about service and billing. The job didn’t pay very well, just minimum wage, but she could earn more by selling extra services and upgrades to people calling in. The hours were also flexible, which would allow her to take some free language classes offered at her local recreation centre and go to medical appointments with her mother.
It seemed okay, although the work would be boring and the call centre itself was loud and chaotic. Just the same, she had an felt an unaccountable unease just walking into the place. To add to her discomfort, during the interview process she had not been able to meet the person who would be her supervisor.
The second job offered was selling seafood and frozen beef products door to door. The pay was entirely commission-based, which Maria felt made the job entrepreneurial in nature. She had never been outgoing, and in fact was rather shy sometimes. She wasn’t sure door-to-door sales was really her thing. When she had gone for the job interview, however, she had been happy to see a successful-looking woman interviewing her. This interviewer explained how she herself had started out selling door to door but had been quickly promoted and given an opportunity to develop other business skills. She also mentioned that other sales reps did not always work out, and about 35 percent were let go after their first few months due to non-performance. The woman had pictures on her desk of her travels in Tanzania and Kenya, where she had done volunteer work several summers ago. She even had a Spanish heritage, just like Maria.
Maria thought the woman was amazing and came out of the interview thinking, Well, if she could succeed here surely I can too!
The third offer was for a job as general office assistant in a small, familyrun plumbing business. Her duties would include answering phones, invoicing customers, updating their website, scheduling the plumber’s calls, and maintaining their inventory of parts. It paid $2.50 more per hour than minimum wage, but the hours were strict; she needed to be there from 8:00 to 4:00 every day. It was also made clear to her that overtime was common and she would be expected to work extra hours on short notice without complaint. Maria had found the office atmosphere pleasant, if task-focused, and she liked the idea of doing a number of tasks instead of just one thing all the time, but she also realized that advancement in such a small, family firm was extremely unlikely. She wasn’t sure how her experience would be viewed by aid agencies either. Doing routine office work didn’t seem very entrepreneurial to her, although entrepreneurs did have to know about running a business.
As her friend finally rounded the corner to meet her for lunch, Maria decided to ask her opinion. Which job would best serve her short-term and long-term goals?
Discussion Questions
1. What would be the best way for Maria to go about making this important decision? Please explain your answer.
2. Do you see any evidence of perceptual biases influencing Maria’s thinking about each job opportunity? Put another way, is she being objective when she evaluates each option? If not, which perceptual biases are impacted her thought process?
3. What decision-making errors might Maria be especially prone to under these circumstances? How might she best avoid them?