I am a recruiter. What I tell candidates is that the way you accept an offer sets the tone of your employment. There are many factors in if an acceptance should be given right away; mostly to do with how quickly the offer has been fired at you, does it meet everything you asked for, etc. - If the interview process was more than a week long, you really should have your decision made, barring a closely competing offer. Your spouse should already have been consulted and all your due diligence should have been done. Waiting to "decide" until you have the offer in hand shows weak decision making abilities and distrust of the potential employer.
- If the offer was made at the first interview and you have not had a chance to check out the company, generally 2 to 4 days creates no waves. - If you have competing situations, disclose them early, do not hide them till the offer stage (looks really cheesy) and use your recruiter as a sounding board. Of course they will be biased, but their feedback will gel your decision either way. I have had candidates say they needed time to decide on an offer because they were not through interviewing with a company they were also interested with. This has rarely been a problem. Accommodations are easy when offering company and recruiter are treated with respect. When candidates hide another interview situation until the offer comes it's a different story. When a company and/or recruiter feels they have been played there is much less accommodation and as a recruiter I will look to ways to save my business relationship with my client. Please understand this. The client relationship is with the recruiter and the offering company until you become an employee. Any recruiter that tells you that their primary relationship is with you is either bullshitting you, themselves or both of you. Lars _____________________________ Larson J. Rider PrideStaff (408) 661-7260 cell - cell www.pridestaff.com -----Original Message----- From: Terrence Brannon [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, June 03, 2006 4:16 PM To: L-Perl-Jobs-Discuss Subject: deliberating over all job offers versus accepting the first one Acceptable interval between getting a job offer and deciding on it ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ---------------- The time delay between getting an offer and accepting it can send signals to the employer who made the offer. I think it looks best to the recruiter and the company if you accept immediately - it communicates that you have no reservations about the job being a perfect fit for you and you are eager to start... but I could be wrong. What is an acceptable amount of time to delay a response to a job offer? Some people accept the job, then claim they have to work 2 more weeks and then keep interviewing and then withdraw their acceptance. I think this is dishonest. So I think the essential question is once you have one decent offer (in terms of work requirements and pay), how much longer should you interview and continue to accept offers? A possible sticking point is if you get two great offers from companies A and B and accept company A, a lot of times company B will never talk to you again, which means it may have been wise to only submit resumes in sequence and do one interview and if it seems OK, then go with it for the time being. Taking an offer as soon as it is made --------------------------------------------------- I'm sure all of you have been in a situation where a recruiter has reviewed your resume but prior to submitting to the employers asks "if they make an offer, will you accept?" and tries to get you to say yes to this question. Some people will say yes and then just ditch the recruiter if they find a more desireable job. I personally would like to be upfront and say: "well, actually I am interviewing the employer as much as he is interviewing me. Just because he makes an offer, I cannot promise that I will accept." After I say this, they usually say something about how important this client is, or how the last person they submitted opted not to take it and try to make you feel like it is up to you to save the Eastern seaboard from falling into the ocean. How do you handle situations like this? Conclusion ---------------- I don't understand what recruiters are saying to employers. Why is it such a heartbreak when a recruiter submits a resume, the employer gets excited and makes an offer, but then the candidate refuses the offer because he felt it was not a good fit? Why do recruiters try to paint a picture that a candidate is bound to want to take an offer when all he knows about the employers is some general info in a job spec and perhaps a trip through the company website? It doesn't seem fair to obligate a candidate to accepting a position before he has deliberated on the interview and perhaps a few more. I think it would be unreasonable to spend a month after an offer deliberating. I think 7 days is the absolute most time one should wait before accepting an offer and I think that immediate acceptance or any acceptance without sleeping on it at least one night is nothing but a mistake.
