Career counseling #9: Greg`s offers

Another crossroad in the life of a graduate or that of an unemployed person is receiving the offer. You smile, scream and say that you`re saved.

But what happens when you receive two (or more) offers? In Greg`s case, the problem was that he had to choose between a well-paid, but meaningless, hateful job and a job that he would love, but with far less money. After months of receiving unemployment aid and barely able to surface, he had a very tough choice ahead.

Greg thought about it, weighing advantages and disadvantages, creating SWOTs and everything that a person who has a choice in front of it will do.

Two months have passed and he decided. He’ll take the well-paid job for a couple of years and, after that, he will do what he loves to do. It was a compromise he was willing to make. Calling up the company, he was told that the offer was no longer valid and that they tried to reach him for a final decision a month before.

Greg got scared and he immediately called the other company. It was the same thing: the offer was withdrawn and the job given to someone else.

He felt his blood rushing to his head and the room began to swerve. Greg has been so close to getting a job and paying the bills without checking his wallet for each cent that he was now disappointed, stressed out, depressed. For weeks he couldn’t do anything. He didn`t apply to jobs or even check his emails. Several other interview opportunities were missed because of this depression.

After a while Greg got back on track. He started writing CVs, even harder than before. He was looking left and right looking for jobs, taking every opportunity that he got to apply for one. He even sent an email to the CEOs of the top ten companies in his field of expertise, after Googling their addresses and rationalizing the way they would look like, starting from the format that the company used. He didn’t get an answer to any of those emails, but he was glad that he did it.

From Greg`s experience, I learned one thing. If you have the offer in your hand, don’t over rationalize. Take it and think about it later. There is always time. You have to start from somewhere to build your career.

When an offer is received, don`t do SWOTs or ask friends what you should do. The decision is yours, all yours and doing anything that would take that responsibility away from you is completely WRONG.