Role Filter: Sort Before You Are Attached

Here is a sentence I hear from almost every leader in a search: I just want a good job. It sounds reasonable. It is also useless, because every role that crosses your desk can sound like a good job for about a day and a half.

What happens next is predictable. A recruiter calls. The title is right, the company is interesting, and the excitement of being wanted starts doing the math for you. The commute you swore you would never do again becomes something you can probably live with. The boss who sounded like a micromanager becomes someone who just cares about details. By the final round, you are not evaluating the role anymore. You are talking yourself into it.

So the tool. The Do, Okay With, Definitely Not Filter is 3 columns, run against one real role.

Not a hypothetical. The posting, the internal move, the offer on the table. Do is what you actually want, the things that make the job worth doing. Okay With is the trade-offs you can tolerate: some travel, a lateral title if the work is right. Definitely Not is the hard stops. Not preferences. Deal-breakers. Every element of the role goes in one column, and none of them gets to sit in 2.

Then the read, and the rules are blunt. One deal-breaker is the whole verdict. A role with a hard stop in it is not a close call. It is a no wearing an interview invitation. A role that sorts almost entirely into the middle column is a slow no, because tolerable is not the same as right. And a role with real reasons to want it, no deal-breakers, and trade-offs you named with open eyes is the one worth real effort. Most roles fail that test early, which is the point.

The one guardrail: sort before you are attached. The failure is running the filter after you have already decided, and quietly moving a deal-breaker into Okay With because you want the yes. So the move this week: write your 3 columns tonight, before the next call, and run the next real role through them the day it shows up.

Stay, speak, or go. Know your Definitely Not before the next offer tries to tell you what it is.

The Right Move. Stay, speak, or go. www.therightaltitudebook.com