If you’ve been job offered, you know what an exciting time it can be. Another company sees the value in your potential and the services that you offer. It can be a great opportunity that propels your life for success and for you to achieve upward mobility. Here’s how you can approach the offer.
The first job offer I got from college graduation was in banking. It paid $52,500 a year plus a $4,000 signing bonus. Since then, I received a total of eight job offers that I juggled with through negotiating, testing what levers I can pull, and so forth. Turns out, the process is not as simple as “I accept” or “I reject”.
It’s much more nuanced than that. It turns out, job offers are not standardized across companies. EVERY company does it differently in some shape or fashion. One company offers more vacation time, one company offers less 401k matching, and so forth and so forth. The more interesting thing is that I’m still not done learning.
I know future job offers will be more nuanced as well. That was the hardest yet most valuable lesson I learned after going through the job interviewing process 100s of times and getting rejected 100s of times. Each job offer is so unique with different nuances that you have to consider to avoid making the wrong decision.
If you’ve been job offered, now’s the time to carefully consider it. Don’t let exploding offers cloud your judgement. Companies WILL play games in order to pay you the least amount of money as possible. You have to play it smart otherwise companies will pull all the levers in order to take advantage of you.
Take it from someone who’s almost gotten taken advantage of numerous times.
What Does Job Offered Mean?
Job offered means that an employer extended an invitation for you to work in a specific position. Most of the positions are paid but there are some unpaid positions and/or 100% commission based positions. It can be part-time or full-time, depending on the needs of the employer and what you’re looking for.
The most important distinction you should pay attention to is that no two job offers are the same. Not only can the pay be different, the benefits can be different as well. Not only can the benefits differ but the culture, coworkers, boss, and commute can be different. There are all these different aspects that you need to consider.
BEFORE saying yes. Once you say yes, your negotiating power is completely gone. Backtracking will not work unless you actually have another offer in your hand. Unless you have leverage. That’s why it’s more important than ever to calculate job worth BEFORE you say yes.
A verbal job offer is not as strong as a written job offer and some companies will do everything in their power for you to verbally say yes. I’ve had companies only tell me what the salary was and expected me to give them a verbal acceptance. I was young and didn’t really know what to do so I foolishly said yes.
If you’ve been job offered, it’s not all sunshine and rainbows. Companies will do everything in their power to take away the power of choice from you. They will pull all sorts of tricks to pay the least amount of money they can and to make sure you don’t say no when they give you a job offer.
Even if the job offer isn’t good enough for you.
What to do After Getting Job Offered
Now that you’ve been job offered, it’s time to SMACK that social share button and post to your favorite social media! Your friends could be contemplating the exact same thing. Saying yes too quickly is one of the most common mistakes people make after getting job offers.
And this article could absolutely help them avoid that and give the power back to them.
1) Job Offered? Evaluate the Terms
The first thing you need to do if you’ve been job offered is to evaluate the terms of the offer. There are many things that you need to consider to evaluate the job worth. Salary and bonus is just one component. There are other forms of compensation such as 401k, 401k matching, vacation, HSA, insurance, and more.
The job offer should be presented along with the information. If it’s not presented along with the information, make sure to ask for it. I recently received a job offer for more money than I will ever see as a yearly salary for the rest of my life. In this particular case, I knew the job offer was too good for me to consider.
The day that they gave me the offer, I immediately told them that I’m accepting. No playing games. A simple yes. Sometimes, a deal will be too good for you to negotiate. This is a very rare case. The majority of the time, it’s more advantageous to consider the offer carefully before making the next move.
2) Read the Fine Print
One company verbally told me they match “5% of salary” into the 401k contributions. Then it turns out that was capped at $1,500. Interesting. They didn’t tout the maximum contributions, they just touted the matching rate. Had I not read that in the fine print, I would have expected a 5% match. Only to have the rug pulled underneath me.
Verify everything that they told you and then if there’s something amiss, make sure to ask about it. Your career isn’t something to be messed with. You have the right to be picky and choose what you want as the next step of your career. Companies will play all sorts of tricks in order to pay you the least amount of money.
One company failed to mention that their annual reviews do not come with yearly cost of living salary increases. That would have been material information for me to consider going forward. Understand 100% what you’re getting into. Because as soon as you say yes, years of your life could be gone.
3) Make a Counteroffer
99% of the time, you need to make a counter offer if you’ve been job offered. Companies WILL play hardball. One company I was negotiating with refused to give me a $20,000 increase in pay. So then I politely declined them. Then they asked me, “oh, why?”. “Do you have another offer?” and so forth.
That tells me that they could have increased the offer if they wanted to. Yet they chose not to do so because they thought they would get away with it. Find out what your walking away point is. If you’re not willing to walk away, you already lost. Another job offer I had would’ve come with a 30% pay cut.
If I hadn’t walked away, I wouldn’t be where I am today. You don’t have to take every job offer you get. Some job offers just aren’t worth your time. Just cause you’ve been rejected a bunch of times doesn’t mean you’re not a desirable candidate so you should just be grateful for any offer and accept.
It just means that the right fit wasn’t there.
4) If the Job Offer Does Not Work, Decline It
After you make a counteroffer, and they won’t budge, and it doesn’t work for you, then decline it. You have no obligation to join and work for a company that doesn’t value you. Just cause you’ve been job offered doesn’t mean you have to take it. Companies may not like it but that’s too bad. It’s just business.
They would say no to you the second they think you won’t be of help to them. With no remorse or care in the world. You have to do the exact same thing to them. It’s a business relationship. If you’re already at a good spot, then there’s no reason to take another job an extra $5,000 or $10,000. It doesn’t make sense.
Two job offers I received in 2021 would have been a ~3% compensation decrease. That’s AFTER I negotiated, by the way. So I thought to myself, “why in the world would I ever accept these offers?”. I promptly rejected them. Consider jobs carefully and then make a well thought out decision. It’s not as easy to change jobs just like that.
5) Talk to Your Boss About It FIRST
After you’ve been job offered, it’s imperative that you talk to your boss about it first BEFORE you say yes to the new offer. Especially if it’s not a “no brainer” job offer. There’s a good chance that if it’s a 10% raise to your current job, that your boss will pull strings to try and get you to stay.
Your boss could literally say no but you lose nothing because, well, if your boss said no, you would’ve taken the 10% raise anyway. I made a mistake of telling my boss that I’m leaving instead of asking her what she could do for me. There could’ve been a chance that she couldn’t have gotten my a counteroffer.
Giving a counter offer in just four hours is unheard of. Therefore, to avoid any time crunches and/or pressures, talk to your boss about it BEFORE you respond to the new job offer. One of my friends asked his boss, and all his boss said was no. No harm, no foul. But it’s better to find that information before making the next move.
However, please make sure that it’s a job offer you would say yes to if your boss can’t pull strings. Otherwise, you ruin graces with both the new job and the current.
6) Accept the Terms
Now that you’ve done everything that you needed to do after you’ve been job offered, and you want to take it, it’s time to accept the terms of the job offer! It’s an exciting time with a completely new set of outcomes. One thing that is VERY important is that you do NOT bluff to your current boss about the new job opportunity.
If you bring it up and your current boss says, “go ahead”, and it wasn’t a job you wanted to accept anyway, then there’s no way back. Do NOT bluff. There’s only a very small minority of people who can pull off a bluff. If you bring it up and don’t accept the new job, then it created a completely new set of awkward encounters with your boss.
I had two job offers in 2021. I didn’t bring up a single one of them to my boss because I knew that would make them mad instead of them thinking, “we need to treat him better”. Your career isn’t just about what you do say, but it’s also about what you don’t say that could cause a backlash.
7) Risks of Getting a Job Offer
When you get job offered, you may make your current boss angry. The reason why they’re angry is because they don’t want to lose you. However, there’s very few bosses who will hold this over your head. And even if they do, they can’t really do anything about it.
They’ll just come off as a jealous boss who couldn’t retain their star employee. This is one risk. Another risk is you may end up having the rug pulled up underneath you if you choose to negotiate. A company’s sole purpose for existence is to generate profits and paying more money to someone else ruins that goal.
Most of the times, the company will not just pull the offer just because you chose to negotiate. However, the chances of it is always there. Re-opening the discussion instead of taking the deal in front of you has risks. Therefore, it’s the sort of high-risks scenario that you need to know how to manage well to get ahead.
Job Offers are Nothing Personal, It’s Just Business
There will be managers who are absolutely livid that you got a job offer. One of my former intern coworker had their employer yell at him because he’s working for a competitor. These companies are the ones who just doesn’t understand that you don’t keep an employee around with sticks. You keep them around with the carrot.
They should have given him a full time offer, or anything else to retain him. The managers who yell at you are the ones who don’t know how to treat their employees well. Companies wouldn’t hesitate twice to get rid of you if it serves their interests. You shouldn’t hesitate twice to get rid of them.
One interviewer said it perfectly. He told me, “yeah, we had an employee who would constantly say, give me more give me more, because she wanted to be vice president quickly. So then we pushed her aside and told her that her career is a marathon, not a sprint…. Then she became vice president at a competitor”.
If you’ve been job offered, it’s your way of saying, “if you don’t give me what I want, I’ll find someone else who will”. Just as you have to provide results to your company, the company has to provide results to you as well. It’s a two way street that has to be beneficial for both sides. Otherwise, it’s not a good relationship.
Don’t think about the personal relationships you’ve developed over the years. Those relationships mean nothing in the context of leaving a company. Proudly accept the offer and become the best at the new opportunity. It’s time to move on to bigger and better things that are more befitting of your talent.
Job Offered? It’s an Exciting New Adventure
The current job you’ve had has its share of opportunities, adventures, and exciting possibilities. It’s time to move on to a completely different set of possibilities for your life. The one you had was great and the new job you are going to has the potential to be even greater. There’s a reason why you’ve been job offered.
Someone else sees your potential on what you can accomplish for the company. Now’s not the time to shy away from it, it’s time to conquer a new set of challenges that lay ahead. It won’t all be rainbows and unicorns, there will be times when you want to pull out your hair.
Although it can be scary, it’s also the best opportunity for you to grow. We don’t grow in comfortable situations we grow in uncomfortable ones. There’s always a chance that you’ll have made the wrong decision. One of my former bosses said this about a new job offer.
“You may not know if it’s the right or wrong decision, whatever decision you take, take it and make it the right one”. Take a decision and make it right. You’re not going to fail because you’re not going to let yourself fail. Effort is the one thing that you can control. This certainly applies with a new job opportunity.
If you’ve been job offered, it’s an exciting time. It means you won out against other candidates in the hyper competitive space known as globalization. Out of anybody they could have picked, they picked you. Now’s the time to prove to them and they made the right decision in giving you the chance.
Don’t let them down and continue to live your successful life.
What to do After Getting Job Offered
- Job offered? Evaluate the terms
- Read the fine print
- Make a counteroffer
- If the job offer does not work, decline it
- Talk to your boss about it FIRST
- Accept the terms
- Risks of getting a job offer
