When your first good offer comes, you undoubtedly have a number of job possibilities resting at various stages. Immediately start "a sweep" of the best possibilities to try to bring them to the offer stage as soon as possible. How far you go in using your actual offer to force a decision is a matter of judgment. If you're unlikely to accept the actual offer, don't put too much pressure on the other possibilities. It's a different story though if you have an offer you are going to accept unless a better one comes along. In this case, trying to force a better offer is a reasonable risk. This sweep should include contacting your best sources of leads and any key people you haven't been able to reach lately or who have told you to contact them before accepting an offer.
Information needed
You need a great deal of information on a company to make an intelligent decision. Listen carefully in interviews and do some research outside the company. If you must question others, be sensitive and use discretion.
Listed below is a set of items to consider. Not all will be important to you. And you will have information on many of them as a result of your research during your job hunting process. But review those anyway, and from the list select 8 or 10 items that seem most important to you.
- The job's relationship to your career goals.
- The job's particular goals and responsibilities and recent history.
- How the job fits in the total organization who reports to whom, and so on.
- Your superior-what problems might arise in working with him or her?
- Your subordinates - are any problems apparent here?
- Present management's competence and stability?
- Company's record during the past five years and its future prospects.
- Prospects for change in company ownership or control.
- Company atmosphere - will you be effective and comfortable there?
- Financial arrangements - salary, frequency of increase, fringe benefits, and so on - are they attractive?
- Chance for promotion.
- How the job will affect your life-style and your family - especially if a move is involved.
Cross-check the answers to such questions as your duties, your reporting relationships, and so on, with a number of key people in the company. If you get different answers from different people, beware.
After the decision is made
After you have accepted an offer and made arrangements to start, you have several other things to do. Turn down any other offer which you have outstanding. Make sure your decision is final. Err on the side of keeping other offers open until you're absolutely sure everything is right about your first choice.
If you considered other offers carefully and found it difficult to choose one over another, turn them down as delicately as possible. There is the outside chance that you may want to reactivate negotiations with these other companies, perhaps within a few months. In turning offers down, make it clear that you were very favorably impressed by them, that it was a very difficult decision for you, but that you decided on another company.
Once you have accepted your new job, the news may spread rapidly. Make sure you don't tell anyone you've made your final decision until you're ready to have the word get out.
Your final step should be to thank all the key people who helped you in your campaign. You never know when you may need to call on them again.
