Job offers you can refuse

By Graham Trickey, Editor, Prospects.

‘Typical!’ says the job seeker who has been waiting a long time for a job offer, when several come along at once. A simple acceptance decision may suddenly start to look more complicated

If two job offers are on the table, further thinking is obviously necessary, but a single job offer may also require consideration. The selection process is a chance to gain first-hand knowledge of an employer, so after a successful interview, new findings need to be assessed.

As a minimum the successful applicant should consider: is the job all that it appeared to be when advertised, is it better than the applicant’s existing work (if any) and will the salary support life? If two offers must be weighed up, or there are other grounds for uncertainty, questioning will need to go deeper.

Top of the checklist for assessing offers is career development potential, a highly rated issue in graduate surveys. Training possibilities could be a factor as well as the size of the organisation and the demand for staff in the field.

With graduate debt and rising housing costs, salary will be a tie-breaker. Different bonus schemes and other benefits can cloud the picture.

Interesting – or at least tolerable – work is another requirement. Responsibility is important, and is the job more or less what the applicant wants to do? Issues of ethics and values can be relevant here.

Although further down the wish list, friendly rather than difficult managers and colleagues are certainly worth having. The workplace culture and the character of individuals are not easy to pick up from an interview or brief office tour, so further enquiries via networking may be necessary.

In the light of events at Enron and Railtrack, the future of potential employers is worth considering but even business analysts misread the signs. The state of the sector and the size of the company are starting points. Company information is available.

While at the bottom of this brief list and often overlooked completely, reasonable working hours are another key issue. Long hours of compulsory, unpaid overtime are all too common.

Time may be needed to make a decision, perhaps to seek further information or to discuss salaries with alternative employers. In any case final acceptance of an offer should not be given until it has been made in writing accompanied by contract details. It is better to take time to think than to have to retract an acceptance. An employer should allow a decision to be delayed for 24 or 48 hours and sometimes longer by negotiation, which may be necessary if another job offer is expected.

Despite successful applicants’ best efforts to gain information before weighing pros and cons, people still end up in the wrong job. The consolation here is that if someone can succeed in gaining one job offer albeit after a long search, other companies will think they are worth employing as well.

Related topics

Job Offers

How much could I earn?

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