Decision-Making Process Paper - Essay Example

People during their lifetime make many decisions on an everyday basis. A decision I made that impacted my life a lot involved a change of job scenery. During that time I was working at a company that paid decent wages, but there was no chance of job growth or the ability to obtain a promotion in the medium term. I had to make a decision of what I wanted to do with my life in terms of employment. I took some steps in my reasoning prior to making a full commitment to leave my job. The first step was to analyze the earnings of my current job compared to the jobs I could apply too.

I also analyzed my job satisfaction and how that could improve at a different employer. “Job satisfaction considers real life strategies to help restore meaning to your work” (Clinic, 2012). I made an assessment of how many jobs were available in the marketplace and what were my chances of landing one of these jobs based on my credentials. In the end I decided to leave the job because I was not happy there. The decision I made to change jobs took some of the steps that the textbook recommends as a decision making model.

The six steps of decision making are: 1 Identify and diagnose the problem 2.Generate alternative solutions 3. Evaluate alternatives 4. Making the choice 5. Implement the decision 6. Evaluate the decision My decision to consider changing jobs started by making an analysis of the job I was working at. This implies that during that decision I complied with the first step of the decision making model taught by the textbook. During my decision making I did not generate an official list of alternative solutions.

My solutions were limited to staying or leaving. I did not make a deep analysis of my alternatives. In a way I was impulsive and I made the decision that felt right at the moment. The decision making model depicted in the textbook could have been very valuable for me when I made the decision. I did not identify the problem adequately. Identifying a problem is the critical first step in the problem solving process (Monash, 2012). Based on my emotions I choose to leave a job that was paying me a very good hourly rate.

I could have chosen to stay longer in order to accumulate capital by saving a portion of my earnings. I was getting paid over 20% more than the job offers available in the marketplace for similar type work. A second decision I could have made at the time was to leave work in order to start my own business. A third option could have been to find a job that paid a higher salary prior to quitting the job. An alternative solution was to communicate with the supervisor the things that made me unhappy at the workplace.

Some of the things I did not like included the lack of training and development, poor use of internal recruitment, and poor communication between the managers and the employees. The six-step decision making process would have been very beneficial. I made a choice without properly identifying my choices. The decision I implemented did not consider what was in my best financial interest in the short term. I do not regret the decision now looking at the situation on hindsight. After I left that job I stopped working for a few months.

I liked my free time at home doing the things that I enjoy such as watching professional sports, going to the theater, and attending music and art festivals. Quitting that job help me once again enjoy my life. In terms of work I got back on the path and began to look for jobs after taking a three month vacation without pay. I found a job two weeks after beginning my job search. In this job marketplace I consider myself a very luck person to have landed a job so quickly. The unemployment rate in the United States as of January 2012 is 8.

3% (Bls, 2012). Decision making has become a very important ability that college students must master in order to have success in school as well as in the workplace. References Bls.gov (2012). Unemployment Rate. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Retrieved February 13, 2012 from http://www.bls.gov/ Clinic, M. (2012). Job Satisfaction: How to Make it More Rewarding. Retrieved February 13, 2012 from http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/job-satisfaction/WL00051 Monash.edu (2012). Identifying Problems. Monash University.

Retrieved February 13, 2012 from http://www.monash.edu.au/lls/llonline/writing/business-economics/management/2.1.xml