People often assume our job as talent acquisition leaders is simply helping professionals find new jobs. They picture us matching résumés to open positions, scheduling interviews, and negotiating offer letters.
In reality, we spend a massive chunk of our time helping people answer a much harder question: “Should I even make a move at all?”
Over the years, we’ve each had hundreds of conversations with professionals wrestling with that question. Some were burned out. Some were excited about a new opportunity. Others couldn’t quite explain why they were thinking about leaving. They simply knew something no longer fit.
For this first post in our Career Decisions Series, I wanted to invite someone whose perspective I trust deeply.
I’ve known Molly Kosowski for more than a decade. We worked together in the same recruiting department years ago and have stayed connected ever since. She’s also been a client of mine for several years, which has given me the opportunity to see her from multiple perspectives. Molly has an exceptional ability to look beyond a résumé and understand the person behind it. She consistently helps organizations make thoughtful hiring decisions, and she’s someone I regularly turn to when I want an honest perspective on talent.
One thing we’ve both noticed is that people tend to make career decisions through one of three different lenses.
Some are logical.
Some are emotional.
Some are intuitive.
None of these approaches are inherently right or wrong. Each has strengths. Each has blind spots. Whenever you’re faced with the idea of changing jobs, understanding what’s driving your decision-making process may be one of the most valuable career insights you can get.
The Logical Decision-Maker
We’ve all met them. They have spreadsheets. They compare compensation packages. They evaluate growth trajectories. They think carefully about risk and reward.
For logical decision-makers, a career move is less about feelings and more about facts. They want data and evidence. They love identifying a clear explanation for why one opportunity is objectively better than another.
There is a lot to admire about this approach. Logical decision-makers tend to be disciplined and less reactive. They are often excellent at playing the long game because they aren’t easily distracted by temporary frustrations.
The challenge is that careers rarely come with complete information. At some point, every decision involves uncertainty. I’ve seen talented professionals spend months trying to eliminate every possible risk before making a move. They wait for certainty that never arrives.
I (Molly) have noticed another blind spot with highly logical decision-makers. I’ve seen candidates who rely so heavily on logic that they miss the bigger picture of what it’s actually going to feel like to work somewhere. A higher salary or a sign-on bonus can only compensate so much for working for someone you don’t enjoy. A pro/con list is incredibly helpful, but the people, the leadership, and how you felt throughout the interview process often tell you things that never make it onto the spreadsheet.
The truth is that even the best career decisions involve a degree of faith.
The Emotional Decision-Maker
For others, the financial numbers or new trajectory matter, but they aren’t the deciding factor. They pay attention to how work feels. They care deeply about culture, relationships, trust, and purpose. They know when a workplace energizes them and when it drains them.
These individuals often leave jobs because something has shifted emotionally. Perhaps they no longer feel valued. Maybe they don’t trust leadership. Maybe they’ve lost connection with the mission that once motivated them.
There is wisdom in paying attention to those signals.
Some of the most self-aware professionals I’ve met have a strong emotional intelligence. They understand people. They understand culture. They understand themselves. The risk comes when temporary emotions begin driving permanent decisions.
As Adam Grant wisely observed:
“People leave jobs, chase titles, or avoid hard conversations — all based on how they feel that week. But your career story is built on what you chose when it was uncomfortable. Values-driven decisions compound. Mood-driven ones just repeat.”
I (Molly) also believe it’s important to recognize that emotion is likely always part of the equation in some sense.How someone feels about their current workplace is almost always why they are willing to talk to a recruiter in the first place. Something specific happened that day to make them open to other opportunities.
Emotional decision-making helps us feel like a new job is “meant to be,” or that it is saving us from a negative current situation. These feelings are hard for anyone else to dispute because they belong entirely to you. Sometimes those feelings are spot-on, and the move results in the perfect career step. But at other times, an initial emotional reaction to leave is rushed, causing you to miss the full picture of the company you are jumping into. Emotions are a great justification for a change, but they shouldn’t be the only factor.
The Intuitive Decision-Maker
Then there are the people who make decisions differently. They struggle to explain exactly why an opportunity feels right. They simply know.
As a recruiter, I’ve learned not to dismiss these individuals. In fact, some of the best career decisions I’ve witnessed started with someone saying:
“I can’t fully explain it, but this feels like the right move.”
To outsiders, that can sound impulsive. Often it isn’t. What we call intuition is frequently accumulated experience expressing itself beneath the surface. Years of successes, failures, observations, and lessons create pattern recognition that works faster than conscious analysis.
As Jim Collins highlights in his book What to Make of a Life, these people follow deeper questions. Instead of asking “what am I good at?”, they’ve learned to note what they are drawn to investigate or participate in, as this often reveals their deepest encodings.
This is exactly where the lenses need to balance each other out. As I (Molly) mentioned with logical decision-makers, relying entirely on data can blind you to the reality of the workplace. That is where healthy intuition steps in to save you. Intuition allows you to read between the lines during an interview process and gauge the human element that a spreadsheet ignores.
The strength of intuition is speed and clarity. The danger, of course, is confusing genuine intuition with a reckless impulse. Not every strong feeling is wisdom. Sometimes it is simply frustration, fear, or exit-excitement wearing a different disguise. Healthy intuition always has roots, even if you cannot immediately articulate them in an interview.
The Best Career Decisions Use All Three
Here’s what I’ve learned after hundreds of conversations.
The best career decisions rarely come from a single lens. They involve all three.
Logic helps you evaluate the opportunity objectively. Emotion helps you assess whether the environment aligns with your values. Intuition helps you recognize patterns and possibilities that aren’t obvious on paper.
When all three point in the same direction, people rarely regret the decision. The new job makes sense. The culture feels right. The opportunity aligns with their instincts. That’s a powerful combination.
Self-Awareness Is Your Career GPS
Before asking yourself whether you should take the next job, consider asking different questions:
- How do I naturally make decisions?
- What words/phrases do I use when talking with people about the change?
- What blind spots could you be missing with your primary way of thinking?
The more you understand your own wiring, the easier career decisions become. Because the goal isn’t simply finding the next opportunity. It’s finding the right opportunity for you. And that journey almost always starts with self-awareness.
By Kent Wilson & Molly Kosowski
Molly Kosowski’s Bio:
Molly Kosowski is an accomplished recruiting leader with more than a decade of experience scaling teams, developing talent attraction programs, and building high-impact sourcing strategies across the technology, healthcare, and executive search industries. A graduate of Villanova University, Molly has specialized in navigating fast-growth environments, previously overseeing remote recruitment teams of over 100 people and managing major initiatives responsible for hiring more than 10,000 corporate and hourly professionals per year. Known for her keen sense of people and deep strategic insight, she focuses on assessing candidates far beyond the resume to build resilient, high-performing organizations.