Ducks in a Row: Worthless Offers
by Miki SaxonThat’s right; multiple offers are worthless,.
It only takes one right offer.
Career experts and anybody with more than one job under their belt who can make the mental leap between cause and effect will tell you that culture is the number one reason to join a company, not to mention the number one indicator of how well a person will do.
Perhaps that’s starting to sink in to college dwellers, even those in the rarefied ultra-competitive Ivy atmosphere.
Yalies are a particularly competitive bunch, and nothing delights us more than an acceptance letter (though an open carrel at Bass is a close second). For us, life is a parade of applications, and acceptance is an indicator of self-worth.
During all the years I worked as a recruiter and since in this blog, I’ve spent a lot of effort to help people understand that getting multiple offers should not be their goal, whereas getting the right offer should be.
(In fact, interviewing everywhere just to get offers for the ego-boost can brand you as a shopper; no manager likes wasting time interviewing a candidate whose reputation/history says “shopper” and that reputation got around long before social media existed).
Being in the wrong culture is like being a duck out of water.
Most people aren’t looking for a job they are looking for a home.
They are looking for an environment in which they fit and feel challenged, appreciated and safe.
Isn’t that what you wanted growing up?
Then why is it considered strange that you would crave the same thing in the place in which you spend more than half your waking hours as an adult?
But even when you find the right culture and a job you love it’s worth noting that basing your self-worth on the success of your company is exceedingly dangerous.
Flickr image credit: David Blaikie