Salary is important but it's rarely the reason people stay or leave long term.
At Parity Consulting, we see talented professionals change roles for a pay rise, only to be searching again within a year.
Salary matters. It pays the bills and reflects your market value. But it's only one part of what makes a role worthwhile and often not the part that determines whether you'll still be happy six months in.
At Parity Consulting, we have countless conversations with professionals who accepted roles based primarily on compensation, only to find themselves back in the market within a year. The pattern is consistent: the money was right, but everything else was wrong.
To properly assess a role, you need to look at the full picture. Here's the framework we use with candidates to evaluate opportunities holistically.
Start with the work itself
What will you actually spend most of your time doing? Not the aspirational job title, not the polished job ad — the day-to-day reality.
In our experience, this is where the biggest gaps appear between expectation and experience.
Ask what success looks like in the first 6–12 months and how performance is measured. If the hiring manager can't articulate this clearly, that's a red flag. Vague expectations create frustration on both sides.
Look closely at leadership
Your manager will have a bigger impact on your experience than the company brand, the office location, or even your salary.
We've seen brilliant people leave great companies because of poor leadership, and average companies retain top talent because of exceptional managers.
Ask about their management style, expectations, and how they support career development. Request examples of how they've helped team members grow.
Good leadership compounds your capability over time; poor leadership drains it.
Assess growth and progression
Is there a clear path forward, or is progression vague and undefined?
At Parity, we encourage candidates to probe beyond surface-level promises. Growth doesn't always mean promotion, it can mean exposure to senior stakeholders, stretch projects, or deliberate skill development. The key is whether learning is intentional or accidental.
Ask: "Can you give me an example of someone who's progressed in this team?" The specificity of the answer tells you everything.
Understand the pace and pressure
Every role has stress, but not every environment manages it well.
The difference between sustainable high performance and chronic burnout often comes down to how pressure is distributed and supported.
Ask about workload expectations, team resourcing, and how peaks are handled. Listen for whether they talk about support systems or just "resilience."
Sustainable pressure builds capability; constant pressure with inadequate support leads to burnout and exit.
Consider flexibility and boundaries
Flexibility isn't just about working from home. It's about trust, autonomy, and how work fits into your life.
Through our work with professionals at all levels, we've learned that true flexibility is cultural, not policy-based.
Pay attention to how leaders talk about work-life balance during the interview process — it's often very telling. Do they mention boundaries, or do they glorify late nights? Do they trust outcomes, or do they monitor hours?
Evaluate culture and values alignment
This is harder to quantify but equally important. Does the way this organisation operates align with how you want to work? Culture isn't ping pong tables and free coffee, it's how decisions get made, how conflict is handled, and whether people feel psychologically safe to speak up.
Ask questions like: "Can you tell me about a time the team disagreed on something important? How was it resolved?" The answers reveal whether the culture is genuinely collaborative or just performatively so.
The reality check
A higher salary can mask misalignment for a while, but rarely forever.
We've seen it time and again: professionals who prioritised the pay packet end up searching again within 12–18 months because the role didn't deliver on the things that actually create job satisfaction.
The best roles tend to feel fair, challenging, and supportive — not just well paid.
When these elements align with strong compensation, that's when you've found something worth staying for.
The bottom line
At Parity Consulting, we don't just help people find jobs — we help them find the right jobs. That means looking beyond the salary line and assessing whether a role will genuinely serve your career, your growth, and your wellbeing. Talk to our team today.
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Why partner with Parity?
We believe exceptional organisations are built on exceptional people. As an Executive Search, Permanent & Contractor recruitment agency specialising in senior and leadership roles in Product, Digital, Marketing, Transformation and Data across financial services and technology industries, we focus on unearthing talent who add to culture and performance while driving real business growth.
We connect these exceptional candidates with business leaders who need people to not just meet expectations, but exceed them - think of us as expert truffle hunters, uncovering the people who will truly make an impact in your organisation.