A product manager is asked to lead a content marketing team. A digital transformation consultant is being recruited to join a hyper-growth “sustainable energy” consultancy. If you’ve ever worked in a fast-growing startup, these situations probably sound familiar.

You see, preplanned career paths are rare within startups and scale-ups (which refers to startups in the process of scaling and expanding). When they need to fill a job, time is of the essence. And many times, founders don’t always know exactly what they need in this job, or how it might evolve in the future.

It might sound like a terrible deal, but these jobs actually have high-growth potential. Sadly, I see too many high-potential professionals use “planned career” heuristics when deciding on these jobs. They ask themselves whether the new role “fits” their preconceived career path rather than taking a more agile “career experience portfolio” approach.

Since these startup and scale-up roles don’t always “fit,” many professionals are losing out high career growth opportunities. That’s why we need a different approach when weighing the options of taking on a new role—an approach to capture the growth potential of roles within scale-ups.  

Here are the things you should consider before you accept a job offer.

Will I “L.O.V.E.” this new role?

Let’s call our product manager from our first example Lakshmi. The pay for the content marketing job is attractive and she would be leading a new team. But she has the ultimate goal of becoming a Chief Product Officer, not a Chief Marketing Officer.

If you find yourself in a similar situation, consider asking yourself the following questions:

• Will I learn something new—in content or process—that aligns with my overall career direction?
• Will the new role open access for me to new clusters of professional connections?
• Will the new role provide strategic or operational value (and visibility)in my organization?
• Will I enjoy crafting the new role?

In short, they should ask themselves the questions “Will I L.O.V.E. this new role?” before they accept the job offer.

Assessing the learning opportunities

Most professionals focus more on the “content” of the job  versus the “process.” Process learning can be just as, or even more, valuable than content learning. You learn a new way of solving a business problem, a new business model, or a new industry. Process learning is about going wider and more strategic versus deeper and more tactical.

Let’s go back to Lakshmi. She had previously worked on highly technical B2B products. This new role would focus on marketing consumer products—a completely different business model and client interface. Realizing this, Lakshmi started to see the role as a way to learn the B2C product market process. While the role isn’t exactly what she wants, it allows her to get closer to the business and the customer.

Learning comes in all shapes and sizes, especially within startups and scale-ups: function, process, industry, business model, customer-base, stakeholder group, geography, and the list goes on. From my own research on new employee onboarding, how much the new employee learns and stays curious (about the role, organizational culture, and relational network) helps them perform well and “take charge”—both keys to scaling their careers.

Consider access to networks and professional connections

The structure of your network connections is key to your career growth—not the number. That is, are you the “center of attention” in a dense network? Or, are you a “bridge” between multiple clusters of professionals? Evidence shows that being a “bridge” is more valuable than being at the epicenter.  It affords you connections with new clusters of highly knowledgeable professionals.

As Lakshmi looked at this new role’s impact on her professional network, she realized that her network of ‘business-focused’ and ‘customer-facing’ experts would expand considerably with this new role. She could see herself becoming an innovative bridge between her new marketing connections and her existing product management connections.  

Determine the strategic or operational value of the role

Another key factor to consider before you accept the job offer is the value of the role. Is it strategic and/or operational?

Lakshmi realized that having a business-focused and consumer-facing role would provide KPI-centered value to (and, visibility within) this young scale-up, and within her career. She also realized that this role would provide critical operational value—because that she would be setting up how this young scale-up engages within content product marketing.

Ask yourself whether you’ll enjoy crafting the new role

Not the least of these questions is: will you actually enjoy the role? Obviously, enjoying your job or role is important for life satisfaction and growth. Ask the following question from the decluttering guru Marie Kondo and Rice University professor Scott Sonenshein—does this (part of the) role “spark joy”? Now to be clear, there will be parts of the role that are less “joy sparking” than others. Can you automate these less desirable tasks, using AI or similar tools?

In short, you can “craft” the role in a way that sparks more joy. Scale-ups and fast-growing startups are perfect places for job crafting. Many times, scale-up leaders only have a prototype conceptualization of your job. As one scale-up executive put it to me, “you really need to ask lots of questions to make sure what you think the role is matches what the scale-up thinks the role is. There is also a lot of room for negotiation.”

You might be asking yourself, do I have to completely love the new role? The answer is—it depends.

If some answers are a clear no, then you know what to do. Just remember that these questions may inspire negotiation and “job crafting,” which in turn allows for the role to create hyper-growth for you, your career, and the organization.