Exploding job offers are a bad idea. Candidates who joined companies through exploding job offers exhibited less employment satisfaction and more wondering, “what if I waited a little bit more?”. Take it from someone who turned down two of them in the past five years.
In college, the campus recruiting spokespeople talked how you should never take an offer on the spot. How you should at least have some time to actually think about the offer and consider the merits and negatives to the offer. A career is a huge life decision and it shouldn’t be taken lightly.
Then one of the students immediately raised his hand and asked, “but what if it’s an offer that you want?”. That was a bad question. Even if it’s an offer that you want, it’s still not in your best interest to accept the offer right away. What if you missed something? How can you think of all of the positives and negatives in a single day?
The exploding offers that I received since my college days, I never took. Companies didn’t understand how insulting they are and how bad of a footing the relationship is starting with. One company didn’t even have an exploding offer, the company literally wanted me to say yes or no ON THE SPOT.
I instantly said no and rejected them. They called me back the week after and the week after, but I refused to take their calls. If they’re THAT demanding then, I can only imagine just how much more demanding they would be if I actually took the job. No way would I be able to meet their demands.
What Are Exploding Job Offers?
So first, we have to define what exactly is an exploding job offer? They are job offers that give you a limited amount of time in order to make a decision. When I say limited, some could be as quickly as a day and some could be as quickly as soon as they make an offer.
It is an incredibly rude job offer because they completely ignore the fact that you already have other priorities in place and they want you to drop everything so you can work for them. They want you but they’re not accommdating to you. They want what’s best for themselves.
Then you look at their pay offer and ask yourself if it was a no-brainer deal. As in, the salary and the offer is so good that you would be nuts to turn down. The vast majority of the time, the salary isn’t even commensurate with what they are expecting and demanding of you, anyway.
It’s just them thinking, “ha, I’m the employer, that means I have the power, you better say yes and you better say yes now”. I had thought companies would understand that it’s not in their best, long term interest to offer exploding job offers but companies either understand it and don’t care or they don’t understand that it’s not in their best interest.
Very few long term relationships happened because one side threatened the other and strong armed them into submission. Very few employees are willing to stay at a job long term if they thought they weren’t making the decision for themselves but they were making a decision because the company was forcing them to.
How to Deal With Exploding Job Offers
One way to deal with exploding job offers is to EXPLODE that social share button and post to your favorite social media! Your friends could be going through the same thing and this article could help them out tremendously. If anything, please consider sharing the article for me.
So with that said, let’s go into the specifics of how to deal with them!
1) Do NOT say Yes Right Away
I get it. Maybe you’re miserable at your current job. Maybe the offer is a 20% increase to your current compensation. Whatever the reason is, the number one rule is to NOT say yes right away. Your emotions are going to be high when someone makes you an offer. However, you shouldn’t say yes on the spot.
Exploding job offers make the company win because they got to offer you something on their terms. Not your terms. You want to accept a job either on your terms or somewhere in between your terms and their first terms. I don’t care what you have to do, you have to remember this number one rule.
If they want an answer right away, use their high willingness to hire you for your benefit and against them. Use this opportunity to ask for a very high number. If they say no, then that’s OK. If they say yes, that’s fantastic. They’re the ones who want you right away, and lay out the terms. The rule is to never say yes to the first, on the spot offer.
2) Don’t Ask, Tell Them You Need More Time
The offering company never asked for your permission in making the offer. You shouldn’t need to ask for their permission in asking for more time. Tell them that you really appreciate the offer and can’t wait to consider the offer in terms of the office culture, the work itself, the compensation, and the like.
Tell them that it will take some time to strongly consider the offer and take it seriously because you have a family to think about and/or you have other obligations at work that’s making you distracted from considering the offer in its entirety. Whatever it is for, tell them that you need more time.
Do you really want to work for a company who doesn’t respect that? They took weeks+ to get you that offer and they’re only giving you one day to think it through? That doesn’t sound right to me. Exploding job offers are designed to make the company win, not the employee.
3) Renegotiate Quickly Against Exploding Job Offers
Exploding job offers mean the company is either really desperate to hire you or they think you are such a good candidate that they have to have you right away. You’re in the driver’s seat because it means that the company REALLY wants you. They are VERY interested in making you the offer.
It means whatever renegotiated number they want to give you, you’re more than likely to get. They are HIGHLY motivated in meeting your wants because they want you that badly. Another tactic instead of buying time is to renegotiate and come in at a very high rate against their current offer.
You’re not going to get the perfect words in the ask. However, the rule is to always ask for more money than the money they’re offering you right now. A person who is that highly motivated is more than likely to say yes to get a deal than they are likely to say no to risk losing the deal.
4) Remind Them the Negatives of Exploding Job Offers
Over the long term, employees who joined a company though an exploding job offer do not stick with the company. They are more likely to look for other opportunities in the meantime and relatively soon after joining the company. Employees don’t forgot how the company treated them on the way in.
Employees always remember how the company treated them on the way in and on the way out. Remind the company that it’s not starting the relationship off on the right foot and it is not in their best interest to try to push it further.
If they still insist on you saying yes or no, then you’ll have to decide if joining that kind of culture is acceptable. I personally do not want to join any company who pressures me into joining the company. It leaves me wondering what am I missing or what are they trying to slide by me from considering?
At the very least, they’re trying to keep you from calculating the job worth. Exploding job offers just isn’t the best solution to get a high quality candidate.
5) Don’t Let Panic Consume You
I get it. It’s an offer. Once you get an offer, you get scared that they’re going to yank the offer away from you. However, that doesn’t really happen. No company has ever rescinded my offer because I took too long. One company gave me an entire week to consider the offer.
At the end of the week is when I responded. They didn’t have any follow up emails, questions, or anything of the kind. There’s no need to panic because the company is not going to yank the offer away from you. They chose to hire you, out of anyone else on Earth they could have picked.
Exploding job offers is just a way for them to pressure you into saying yes but they are not going to yank the offer from you if you don’t say yes right away. Otherwise, that’s one of the silliest things that a company can do. Why offer a job just to not take it away two seconds later? It’s not realistic.
6) Be Prepared to Walk Away from Exploding Job Offers
Ever since college, I walked away from every single exploding job offer I’ve gotten. Even if they were higher pay. For one thing, I just know if I join the company, that kind of behavior just won’t change. They’re going to be so demanding of me that I won’t have a life.
Exploding job offers show the hiring manager’s true colors. It shows how they’re going to treat you. They won’t care what you have going on, all they’re going to care about is what they get. Do you really want to work for a company who doesn’t care about you and your needs? Only their needs?
Exploding job offers mean that you have all the leverage in the world against them. In the job hiring process, it’s all about knowing where you stand. During interviews, you don’t have power so you have to answer their questions. During the offer stage, you have the power and it’s time to press it if it’s needed.
My Story with Exploding Job Offers
I’ve had numerous exploding job offers in my life. The first time, I actually took because I was too tired from interviewing at other companies. I just wanted to be done with recruiting already and I was just in college. It turned out to be a pretty good decision because I did very well at the company.
The company increased my pay to ~$86k in six months and broke the six figure mark one year later. The second of the exploding job offers was when they really wanted me. They didn’t tell me they were going to call me, they told me they would get back to me after the weekend, and they didn’t even give me any kind of notice.
However, they called on the day of, which was a Friday, and used the line, “hey, I just got done talking to the hiring committee, if we increase your offer by $10,000, can we get a yes?”. I was insulted. They blindsided me and was pressuring me so hard to take the deal.
I was more than likely going to say yes if they didn’t have more conditions. But they were so worried of me renegotiating back to them that they wanted me to say yes BEFORE seeing the full offer. It was total BS. I told them no right then and there. No hesitation. They were incredibly insulting and rude.
My third of the exploding job offers was when their offer was so ridiculously low, yet they still wanted me to say yes in a single day. Exploding job offers means that they want you a lot, so I thought they would at least offer a pay increase. Nope, they offered a pay decrease and still expected me to say yes quickly. Ridiculous.
Exploding Job Offers Mean They Want You Badly
The one upside with exploding job offers is that the company is highly motivated to hire you. They’re not just exploring potential candidates. It means they want you so badly that they don’t want anyone else from all of the pool of people they met. The company wants you.
You can either be insulted and decline the offer quickly OR you can use that to your advantage and get the most amount of money you’ll ever possibly get. This isn’t a strategy that I considered prior to getting the exploding job offer. However, this is a highly lucrative strategy.
You can put out a number like 33% higher than the salary you’re getting paid now. If they say no, then that’s fine, you already have a job that you can continue working. If they say yes, great! Exploding job offers are rarely in the candidate’s favor but you can use it to your advantage.
The companies I loved working for are companies whose job offers came with a reasonable time frame to accept or reject the offer. However, because I’m not sure how the culture of companies who practice these offers are like, I can’t say from experience. There is a reason why the long term consequences of exploding job offers are bad.
Employees just can’t get over the psychological hurdle of going through them. They feel stiffed. They didn’t join the company because they wanted to, but because the company wanted them to. It’s highly manipulative and it’s not the right start to a meaningful and fruitful relationship.
