Is getting a lawyer to look over your job offer a good idea? Certainly as the job offer gets longer and more detailed, getting an experienced employment lawyer can be a good idea so that you’re not signing anything you might regret.

Unless you’re a lawyer yourself, sometimes it can be difficult to figure out some of the wording of work contracts especially when they include a no-compete clause and other legalese that you might not be sure about.

I’ve seen job offers that consist of 2 pages and I’ve also helped people work through and accept job offers that are often 10 pages or more when you add in the various attachments and inclusions.

In that regard, getting an employment lawyer to look over your job offer before signing it can be a good idea to ensure that you properly understand everything you’re signing, get the things you don’t quite understand clarified and are made aware of certain things that you might want to ask your future employer about before autographing it and sending it back to them.

It’s often hard to sign a job offer and think about all the possible outcomes that might not occur until you’ve left that job! You’re just about to join the company, and aren’t worried about what happens when you leave!

To give you an idea why this isn’t a good strategy, I’m reminded of a situation with a guy I knew when I was helping him look for a new job. He held a good job in a management position and left the company to join another firm that could reasonably be considered a competitor. His former employer found out that he’d joined a competitor and threatened to take him to court for violating his work contract with them which specified that he wasn’t allowed to work for a competitor for a period of time.

He ended up quitting the job a few months after he’d started, to avoid the lawsuit and the grief that it was going to also give his new employer who clearly weren’t at fault in any way. That’s why he had started working with me…to find a new job to replace the one he’d just been forced to quit.

Having multiple job offers to choose from is one of the best situations you can be in during your career. Mind you these days, just getting one job offer is probably something most people searching for a job would be happy with.

Sometimes, things work out where you have several job options to choose from and it can actually become quite difficult to figure out which job offer is best for you. I’ve seen plenty of cases where a person can’t find a new job, gets frustrated and having been looking for a job for a period of time, suddenly find themselves working through two or more job opportunities that end up resulting in them receiving more than one job offer.

These days, companies can take a lot longer to make a decision and can drag out the hiring process to the point where the start align and two or more companies make you a job offer around the same time.

If you have multiple job offers to choose from, here are some suggestions to figure out which one is best:

1. Get all job offers in writing. A job offer isn’t a job offer until you have a hard copy in your hands. You need everything that was promised in writing and shouldn’t accept verbal promises made by someone who might not be in the position (or even with the company) to live up to the promise in the future.

2. Look beyond the money when making your decision. If the job offers you are considering are different in terms of the compensation, remember to consider all aspects of the two job offers. Picking the highest paying position isn’t always best in the long term. Sometimes, other perks (ie. more vacation, better bonus, shorter commute, stock options, benefits) can more than make up for another company offering a higher salary.

3. Compare the pros and cons of each offer and each job opportunity. Sometimes it might be difficult to compare two job offers exactly since some components might not appear on each offer but do your best to remember which job will fulfill most if not all of your requirements.

4. Don’t string along the companies whose offers you are considering. In most cases you’ll be given a period of time to accept a job offer and while you want to take the necessary time to consider the offer, don’t wait so long that one of the companies pulls their offer, assuming you aren’t interested. I’ve seen this happen.

5. Be careful about playing one company against. With multiple job offers, the first thought might be to see if one company will increase their offer if you tell them that you are considering another offer and sometimes, this can result in you getting an improved offer from one or more companies. Or it could result in an offer being pulled away from you by a company who isn’t happy that you are trying to use them this way. Use discretion and common sense.

6. Make it official before resigning. Don’t reject any job offers until you have returned a signed copy of the job offer you are accepting and have confirmation from your new employer that they have received the signed offer in their hands. Job offers get rescinded…I know a woman who verbally committed to a job, told her current employer she was resigning only to have her new employer change their mind and rescind the job offer before she’d returned the signed copy.

One of the hardest things to do during a job search can be when you’re walking out of an interview and are trying to figure out if it went well. Often – most of the time in my experience – hiring managers don’t really give you any indication of how well you did so it’s usually hard to figure out.

In rare instances while working as a recruiter, I can recall times when a hiring manager called me following an interview with one of my candidates where the hiring manager all but said “I’m going to hire this person” but by the way they spoke about the person, I knew that’s exactly what was going to happen. Sometimes, you just click with a hiring manager and it becomes obvious to both parties that you want the job and they want to hire you.

I recall one case where the hiring manager called me right after the interview with my candidate to tell me that they’d made a job offer to the person right on the spot.

Most of the time though, it’s hard to figure things out and you have to wait until you either get the thumbs up or down from the hiring authority that you’re dealing with.

While it’s difficult to look for signs that 100% guarantee you are either getting the job or not, there are some things to look for that can help to give you an idea if you should keep moving ahead with your job search or if you might be receiving an offer soon:

Look for “buy signs” from the interviewer: Look for signs from the hiring authority or whoever is interviewing you that indicate interest in you. They are typically in the form of questions that help the interviewer gauge your interest in the job. Buy signs include asking you your salary requirements, the date you can start the job, what other companies you’re interviewing with, if you’re currently considering any other job offers and asking you for references. Strong buy signs could include showing you around the office or where you’d be sitting or when the interviewer unexpectedly brings in other people to interview you which might indicate they want a second opinion or that they want to save the time of having you come back for a second interview if they want to speed things up.

Consider the length of the interview: Certainly, if you’re in and out of an interview in less than 30 minutes, this often isn’t a good sign. Other times, it might not necessarily mean anything but more often than not, when I know a candidate is in for an interview at say 9:00am and my phone rings at 9:30am and the candidate’s name is showing up on the caller ID and they tell me they just finished the interview, I generally assume the interview didn’t go well and usually it didn’t. Conversely I’ve had candidates interview for upwards of 1.5 hours and then get invited back for a second interview of a similar length and then they don’t get the job either so sometimes it’s hard to tell.

Pay attention to how the interview ends: Do you leave the interview and suddenly realize there was no discussion as to what happens next or when you’ll hear from the hiring manager regarding your candidacy? This is often not a good sign but then again, I’ve attended interviews where there was no discussion of when I’ll get a response and then a week later, I got a job offer. If the hiring manager expects to have an answer in say 2 days and one week later you still haven’t heard anything typically something has happened behind the scenes. Perhaps they’re still interviewing other people, maybe they’ve found another person they like more and are trying to wrap things up with them, maybe an internal candidate arose that they are planning to hire.

Again, none of the things mentioned above guarantee anything but they can certainly help to indicate but they might help to give you hints as to which way the hiring manager is thinking with regards to whether or not they should hire you.

I specifically didn’t mention any signs that people often look for from hiring managers that they believe indicate something one way or the other. Having a hiring manager smile at you as you’re leaving the interview or feeling that you made a “connection” with the interviewer doesn’t really mean much to me because often it might be a case of the interviewer simply being polite or where you simply misinterpreted the signals being offered.

One of the areas that people often ask about when they get a job offer is the probation period and what it means to them.

Companies can differ in terms of what the probationary period means and your local labor laws might have some input too but typically a 3-month probation period is fairly common.

This normally means that for the first 3 months on the job you’re essentially being observed and monitored by the company to ensure you’re the person they really want for the job. It often means that they can dismiss you without cause during this period and they may not have to give you notice (ie. 2 weeks) to terminate you. It’s typically the time when you don’t yet qualify for perks like company health insurance, too.

If your new job has a probation period, you might enquire to see if it can be waived but typically companies use the probationary period just to make sure they’re making the right hiring decision.

In my time as a recruiter, I’ve had a few cases where a person didn’t quite turn out and were dismissed within the 3 month probation period. This does happen from time to time unfortunately. Sometimes, things just don’t work out as planned and the first few months on the job is often when it becomes clear to the employer that they hired the wrong person.

When working with a recruiter, the recruitment firm typically offers the hiring company a guarantee period and it’s usually 3 months in length and maybe even longer ie. 6 months. This means that if you get hired by the company through a recruiter but you get terminated or quit within the guarantee period, the recruitment firm will replace you and find someone else to take the job at no extra charge to the client. In some cases, recruiters offer cash back which means that in the event you’re terminated within the probation period, the recruiter gives the money back that the company paid them to help get you hired.

Clearly, it’s not in the best interest of the recruiter to have to refill a job following a candidate getting terminated or quitting within the probation period – this is known in the recruitment industry as a fall off – so your recruiter will probably be touching base during this guarantee period to ensure you’re happy and aren’t planning on quitting (or getting fired!).

Waiting for a job offer – or waiting for an employer to give you some sort of response and feedback following a job interview – can be one of the most frustrating parts of the job search process.

In today’s economy, many companies might be thinking twice or three times before hiring a new staff member. It that regard, it might help to explain why you aren’t getting a quick response following an interview or why you’re waiting around for days or weeks for a job offer that you believed was coming your way.

Mind you, the hiring manager might just be lazy, incompetent or both. That happens too. Sometimes you’re dealing with someone who isn’t really that motivated and will get around to it when they get around it to.

Recruiters like to say that “time kills deals.” In other words, the longer it takes to get a job offer in the hands of a job candidate, the less likely that the “deal” – the job offer gets extended by the employer and accepted by the job searcher – will get closed.

Job searchers can lose interest in the job, they can find another job in the meantime, they can change their mind, lots of things can happen.

I can recall numerous times where a hiring authority tells me that a job candidate I’m working with has done well in an interview and they feel good about the person’s chances to get hired.

A few days pass by and nothing happens so when I call the manager for an update, I’m told there isn’t one.

A few more days pass by and nothing has happened. I follow up again and am again told that there is no update.

A few more days pass by and at this point, I’m fairly certain that no job offer is coming but I call the manager anyways to get some specifics.

Meanwhile, the job searcher thinks they’re getting a job offer because the hiring manager basically told them as much in the last interview so they’re excited and they’re calling me every day for an update.

When all is said and done, the person doesn’t get a job offer and typically they’ve soured on the company for screwing them around and maybe even on me because they think I had something to do with it even when I didn’t.

I faced this same issue early in my career when I was waiting for an interview with a company that I was told (I was working with a recruiter on this job) they wanted to interview me. In fact the recruiter told me I’d hear directly from the hiring manager on a specific day so I literally waited by the phone on the day for the call.

It never came. I never got a call that day and I was pretty upset because I figured they were no longer interested.

I called the recruiter several times for updates but he didn’t have any.
The recruiter told me not to worry, that the call would come.

Two more days passed by and by now, I figured the job must have been filled and they just never bothered to tell me. Instead, I get a call from the recruiter telling me he had spoken with the hiring manager and had scheduled the interview. So I was relieved, but I was still a bit angry that two days had passed by and no one had told me anything.

Fast forward to after the interview had taken place, I again was told that good news was coming from the company, that they wanted to hire me. Again, I was given a specific time frame when I’d get a call from the hiring manager with the specifics and again the call never came on time.

Another 2 days passed by and I was again following up with the recruiter to get an update but again he didn’t have one.

Finally, I got a call from not the hiring manager but one of his staff who had interviewed me and she told me they were hiring me.

Once I started with the company and I learned more about my manager, I realized why he had been so late with the interview and job offer and why he’d missed both deadlines, that he had in fact set himself.

He wasn’t a timely person.

He was late for meetings, was always rushing around trying to be on time, and this is simply who he was. He was not a person who was very good at being on time and to be honest, he didn’t seem to care much or notice. Others in our group often joked and complained about how unreliable he was in terms of timeliness. I recall group meetings when he’d show up 20 minutes late quite regularly.

Had I known about his lack of time management skills ahead of time, I probably wouldn’t have worried so much when he never contacted me at the previously mentioned times.

But I didn’t know. And chances are you don’t know much about the hiring manager(s) you’re dealing with when you’re waiting for them to do something ie. interview you, check your references, offer you the job, etc.

What can you do about it?

I was able to follow up with the recruiter I was working with since he was working between me and the hiring manager. I could call the recruiter for updates. If you’re working with a recruiter, I would listen to their instructions and follow up with them for updates regarding a job you’re applying for.

But should you call a hiring manager directly for an update on your candidacy if you’re dealing directly with them and not a recruiter? If they’ve given you a time frame for a response and the time frame has passed and you have no response, it’s certainly reasonable that you might call them or email them for an update. I wouldn’t contact them the moment the deadline has passed but you might try to contact them the next day for an update if you still haven’t heard.

In some cases, you might have a situation where you are waiting for Company A to respond, and then get a job offer from Company B. In this case, you think about contacting Company A and asking them for an answer in case there is a chance that you end up with two job offers and get to choose between the two (wouldn’t that be great!?)

In this instance, I’d certainly contact Company A and let them know I need an answer but only if I really do have a job offer from Company B in hand. Some people think they can bluff and get Company A to speed up their decision by pretending they have another job offer from someone else but this is not a very good idea. If Company A calls your bluff, you’ve got nothing.

Sometimes, you’re on the hiring manager’s time frame – as I was with the example I gave above – and you need to figure out if you want to wait around for their response or not. When you have other job options from other employers, things might be a bit different since you’ve got some leverage.

Even then, sometimes you’re still on the company’s time frame.

How to accept a job offer tends to be defined by the company hiring you but it’s still a question that people have as they’re about to change jobs.

A few weeks ago we spoke about how to accept a job offer but we mostly discussed issues related to things you should think about when accepting a job offer.

But what about figuring out exactly how to accept a job offer?

In other words what is the exact process to accept the job?

Typically, the company does have some sort of a process that they have probably mentioned to you regarding what you officially need to do to accept the offer and make it final.

Here are the steps that typically happen as a job offer is being readied for you:

1. Presumably, successful reference checks that the employer is happy with – along with any background test, drug testing or other tests – have been completed. Typically, job offers aren’t tendered until references have been successfully completed.

2. Normally, a verbal acceptance or perhaps an email stating that you accept the company’s offer comes next. Some companies ask that you verbally agree to the job offer before they put it in writing so that they don’t waste the time of typing something up and then have you reject it. In this instance, you’d agree to the basic parts of the offer that are important – salary, vacation, job title, etc – and then the offer is put into writing.

3. You’re going to have something in writing to sign – the job offer, perhaps a non-compete clause or other paperwork – which will undoubtedly be part of the process.

4. You return the necessary paperwork to your new employer on or before the date they specify to the person specified. These days this is often in the form of a fax, email and/or sending the original documents in person or by mail/courier. I always like to follow up to ensure they received the paperwork and that all i’s are dotted and t’s crossed before the final step…

5. You hand in your resignation to your current employer. As mentioned, you shouldn’t resign until you have returned the job offer to your new employer and they have confirmed that they have it.

I’ve seen cases where people – I have no idea why they do this – resign before they have completed the process with their new employer. I’ve heard of people telling their current manager that they have a new job as they’re waiting for the job offer from the new employer! Why someone would do this, I have no idea.

A new job isn’t a new job until you have it in writing and have returned the job offer to your new employer and have confirmed that they have it.

Sometimes, people get antsy when getting a new job and want to tell their current employer as soon as possible perhaps because they feel a sense of loyalty and want to give them enough time to find a replacement.

Sometimes people agree to start a new job but can’t give their current employer the proper notice time so perhaps they decide to announce their resignation before getting the offer in order to give the proper notice period or to come as close as possible.

Again, unless you have the job offer in writing, what’s the point in resigning? I know of one case where a woman I knew had resigned from her current employer after getting a verbal job offer but the job offer was pulled (the hiring company changed their mind and decided not to hire her) so she ended up becoming unemployed.

If giving proper notice is going to be a problem when accepting a new job, you might have to do some negotiating. Typically 2-3 weeks notice is standard but your specific instance might be different. Some people have notice periods of 4 weeks or longer so if your new employer wants you to start in say 2 weeks, you’re going to have to do some talking with either your current employer (to get a shorter notice period), your new employer (to get a later start date) or both.

The last thing you want to do is burn bridges and quit your current employer without giving them the proper notice period against their wishes. I recall doing a reference check for one woman who had quit her old employer without giving the proper notice period and when I called her former manager to do a reference on her, the only thing he wanted to talk about was how she quit suddenly and “left me in the lurch” to use his words. Needless to say, it wasn’t a very good reference.

There are many reasons why you didn’t get the job you interviewed for. Often, you never actually find out what the real reason is.

Working with a recruiter can often help you get the real story about why you didn’t get a job you interviewed for. Typically, the recruiter will get some feedback from the hiring authority as to why they chose to hire someone else and hopefully you’ll get access to this feedback and figure out how to use it to your advantage.

Many times though, you might not get any feedback from your recruiter either because they didn’t really get any from the company or worse, because whatever you did “wrong” in the interview was so bad, they didn’t want to tell you!

In that regard, there are many common reasons people lose out on jobs. Relative to you, perhaps the company hired someone who:

• Communicated better
• Performed better in the interview(s)
• Had a more suitable personality
• Had better references
• Had less gaps in their resume
• Worked for better companies
• Had more hands-on experience
• Went to a better school
• Had a more suitable degree(s)
• Was more confident
• Wasn’t arrogant
• Were better suited to the company’s culture
• Dressed more appropriately

than you did.

That’s a laundry list right there but it’s a list of reasons that various hiring managers have told me were reasons they chose one candidate over another. In some cases you might be under qualified for a job while in other cases you were over qualified! Sometimes it’s hard to tell.

With regards to the last point about dressing more appropriately, I don’t mean that the person got the job because they wore a nicer business suit than you but rather that they just “looked” like the person the company was searching for. Perhaps they projected the image that the company was looking for better than you did.

Sometimes people lose out on jobs because they live too far away from the company. When people are desperate for a job, they’ll say anything. Like when they live 1 hour away from the company but tell the interviewer they have no problem driving 1 hour in each direction each day when the hiring manager also has another candidate for the job who lives down the street and can walk to work.

All things being equal, who do think is more likely to make it to work during a snow storm in the middle of winter? The person who has a 1 hour drive or the person who can walk to work?

Hiring managers do take this stuff into consideration.

And why wouldn’t they?

They probably got burned by someone who they hired who quit three months later after they couldn’t take the 1 hour daily commute anymore. I’ve seen this happen.

And if you’d have to relocate from another city/state/province/country for the job, unless you have a specific skill or experience that other candidates don’t have, you’ll most likely be at a disadvantage when compared to candidates who live locally even if you don’t ask for relocation money. Again, the hiring manager may already have been burned by someone who took a job saying they had no problem relocating only to change their mind when they couldn’t convince their spouse to make the move. I’ve seen that happen too.

Other than the reasons mentioned above, there are other reasons you may have lost out on a job:

1. They hired someone who worked for a specific company (ie. competitor) that the hiring manager really valued.

2. They hired someone who was referred to the company by another employee. Maybe they hired someone internally.

3. The person they hired wanted less money than you and these days, that might be a consideration that the hiring company can’t overlook.

4. If you applied for the job through a recruiter, maybe they hired someone who didn’t come through a recruiter. In other words, if the company had hired you, they’d have had to pay the recruitment firm. By hiring the other person who didn’t apply through a recruiter, they didn’t have to pay a recruiter. Don’t think this isn’t sometimes a consideration. I’ve seen it happen.

5. They hired someone they were told to hire. Maybe someone above the hiring manager overruled the hiring manager and told them to hire someone else.

At the end of the day, any feedback you can regarding why you didn’t get the job can only help you, assuming of course that you actually use the information as a learning point. Sometimes you get feedback that you can use, sometimes you get nothing and you’re left to wonder what went wrong.

Getting a counter offer from your current employer is something you might face during your career. This is when you resign from your current employer to take a job elsewhere but before you can leave, they offer you a better deal to stay ie. more money, better job, office with a window view.

Many people probably think that accepting a counter offer is a good thing especially if they didn’t really want to leave their current employer in the first place.

And why not?

If you’re getting more money, or a better job or an office with a window view or all of the above, how can that not be good?

I’ve seen stats that are typically mentioned by recruiters that show that within 6 months of accepting a counter offer to stay with their current employer, most (perhaps up to 80%) of people are looking for another job again.

Typically, people look for a job for a reason. Sometimes it might be for the reasons just mentioned:

• They wanted more money (why didn’t they just ask their current employer for a raise?)
• They desired a better job within the company (did they apply for any that they were qualified for?)
• They wished they had an office with a window view (OK, I was being sarcastic. I hope someone wouldn’t switch jobs just for a window view. I have however seen people want to switch jobs for reasons that seemed pretty trivial to me).

Typically, after you accept a counter offer, whatever it was that caused you to look for a new job in the first place, rears its ugly head again in the future.

Maybe you weren’t getting along with your manager or a colleague, you couldn’t do the commute anymore, you were bored of the job, etc. Many of these reasons tend not to just disappear on their own.

It’s just that when you accept a counter offer, you probably get a warm fuzzy feeling that your current employer really, really likes you and wants you to stay. In reality, they probably just figure it’s easier to throw a bit of money your way to keep you until they can properly search for someone to replace you.

Afterall, by resigning to take another job elsewhere, you’ve admitted that you preferred to work somewhere else and not for them any longer.

If your counter offer includes more money, it’s probably the raise you were going to get at your next review so you probably won’t be getting a further raise next time your review comes. You already received it, just a bit early.

Once you’ve accepted a job elsewhere and resigned, more often than not it’s in your best interest to stick with it and take the new job. If you suddenly accept the counter offer and stay with your current employer, what was the point in looking for, interviewing for, and accepting a new job with another company in the first place?

It seems like a lot of work to get a raise when you could have just asked for one.

Plus, if you accept a new job with ABC Company and then tell them you’ve decided to take a counter offer and stay with your current employer, I wouldn’t expect to be considered for a job with ABC Company in the near future. They tend to remember people that spurn them and waste their time. Which you just did by accepting their offer and then turning it down.

And if you worked with a recruiter for this job, I’d expect that they won’t be helping you out again, not if they’re good recruiters anyways. Everyone in their office is already talking about how you made them look bad in front of their client and if they’re smart, they’d be hesitant to put you in front of any of their clients and possibly experience the same thing.

Why might you choose to decline a job offer?

Going all the way through a job interview process, presumably having your references checked, receiving and considering a job offer only to turn it down is certainly a lot of work to go through to end up in the same position that you were before you started interviewing.

Mind you, you might have a good reason(s) for declining a job offer:

• Maybe the job offer itself wasn’t good enough ie. not enough money, vacation time
• You didn’t like the job itself or the job title/function offered
• Perhaps something just didn’t seem right about the company or the person you’d be working for.
• Maybe something changed in your personal life or in your current job during the interview process that made the new job unattractive.

Those are some common reasons that I’ve experienced during my time as a recruiter. Fortunately I haven’t had too many job offers turned down but the one reason that always surprises and bothers me is the one where a person chooses to decline a job offer because their spouse or significant other didn’t want them to take the job.

Typically, I’ll ask the person up front to confirm that their spouse knows they are looking at the job opportunity and even though they will confirm that their spouse knows, I’ve seen cases where the job gets turned down because the candidate suddenly decides that they and their spouse don’t think they should change jobs at this time.

Which basically means I never should have helped this person to start with since they clearly weren’t serious about looking for a new job.

You might decline a job offer for reasons that seem legitimate to you but when you turn a job offer down, you need to be aware that you have typically burned your bridges with both the company you turned down plus the recruiter you worked with, assuming the job was through a recruiter.

I recall one instance when a new client I was working with made a job offer to an unemployed candidate who was being represented by one of my colleagues. We were pretty excited because we had quickly found this guy for the job where other recruitment firms had failed and hadn’t been able to find someone suitable. The job candidate was interested in this fulltime job even though he had typically worked on (more lucrative) contract roles in the immediate past. Contract jobs weren’t readily available so he was looking for a fulltime role.

Or so he led me, my colleague and the hiring manager at the company who offered him the job to believe.

He went through the interview process, we did his reference checks, he got the fulltime job offer as we’d hoped.

And he turned the job offer down, suggesting he suddenly believed he could get a contract job in the near future instead.

Six months later, he was still unemployed, still looking for a job.

The client I had been working with whose job offer he turned down never dealt with me again and the hiring manager wouldn’t return my calls. I’d let her down and she let me know this.

In this instance, the guy who turned down the job offer ending up costing all of us, most notably himself. The reason he turned down the job seemed to make sense to him, but in the end it cost him and we all had to live with his decision. There was little chance he was going to get another opportunity with this company for the foreseeable future as he’d already burned that bridge. My colleague and I weren’t interested to help him any longer, either.

Before you decline a job offer, be sure you are ready to live with the consequences of doing so.

Also, think twice about accepting a counter offer from your current employer. We’ll talk about that tomorrow.

Accepting a job offer is obviously the eventual goal of a job search. Once you’ve got the job offer in your hand and have the specifics of the new job worked out and in writing, you can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel.

Interestingly, the first few weeks in a new job is when people tend to start thinking that they may have made a mistake leaving their previous employer.

Some people might start having trepidation about leaving their current employer before they’ve even left!

This is especially true if you were with your current employer for a significant period of time or are particularly close with your manager and co-workers. Sometimes, when it comes time to resign, it can be difficult and you wonder if it would just be easier to stay with your current employer.

Changing jobs is most likely something you’re going to do several or more times during your career. The days of a job for life tend to nothing more than a distant memory now. My dad worked for one company during my lifetime for over 30 years before retiring. I can’t imagine too many people doing that these days unless they were self-employed.

The best thing to do when you’ve got a job offer in hand and start thinking about whether or not it’s the right decision is to think about why you started interviewing for a new job in the first place. Perhaps there is something “wrong” with your current employer, maybe you’ve hit a ceiling and can’t progress any further, maybe it’s a money issue, maybe it’s the commute, maybe it’s a combination of things.

Chances are there is some reason(s) for wanting to switch jobs. There must be something that your new job and company offers otherwise presumably you wouldn’t have accepted the offer!

Once you’ve handed in your letter of resignation, you’ve pretty much cut the ties and have made it official. Chances are when you do this, you’ll start to realize that you really are leaving the company and are moving on. The next step is to confirm that you actually know all the specifics concerning your new job and more specifically, your first day on the day.

In fact, you want to ensure that you already know the answers to the following sorts of questions before you’ve resigned from your current employer:

• What is your start date?
• Who should you ask for when you arrive (Should you ask for your manager? An HR rep?)
• What time should you arrive on the first day? (People often forget this one! On your first day, perhaps they want you to arrive for a training or orientation session that is at a different time from your normal start time.)
• Where should you sit or report to? (Maybe your manager isn’t going to be in the office when you arrive so you’re probably going to want to know where you’ll be sitting or working beforehand.)
• Knowing what work you’ll be doing for the first few weeks on the job.

Having an idea as to what you’ll be doing the first few weeks on the job is an important one and is handy to know because it can help to alleviate the issue I mentioned above where people start to question their decision to take a new job after they’ve been working at the new job for a few weeks.

If you know in advance that the first few weeks on the job will see you getting to know the company, your colleagues and other members of the firm and that you won’t be expected to do anything overly strenuous, you’ll be prepared for it.

Conversely, if you’re going to be thrown in right away and will immediately be working long hours and contributing in an important way, you’ll be prepared for that too.

Either way, it’s just nice to know in advance. It just helps to prepare you for what you’re going to experience in a brand new environment amongst people you don’t yet know and who don’t yet know you. The last thing you want in a new job is a surprise.

Of course, not every job offer gets accepted. Tomorrow, we’ll talk about declining a job offer.