Accepting the Offer

Most companies these days will give you a day or two at most to accept an offer, or perhaps the weekend. They generally will not give you much more than that out of fear you may shop the offer around.

So what do you do if you a better offer comes in after you’ve accepted? That decision is up to you. There are no hard and fast rules about reneging on an offer. Obviously it doesn’t look good, and it reflects poorly upon your character. Most likely you can kiss any possible future employment at that company goodbye. You will also embarrass and alienate your recruiter as well, if you worked through one. Only you can determine whether such ostracism is a cost worth bearing.

Contrary to what some people in tin foil hats believe though, there is no industry blacklist that companies share about people who have reneged on offers. Some recruiters might keep track of such things internally, but most companies have better things to do than to maintain such lists. So I wouldn’t worry about word spreading too wide about your ill behavior. Still, the more often you pull such this type of stunt the more people are likely to hear about it. Consider it a cumulative stain on your reputation.

In any event, when push comes to shove I would not recommend reneging on an offer unless there is something clearly superior about another offer. If the two are similar except for a few thousand $$ in pay I’d say it’s not worth it, especially since things will generally even out in the long run. But if you are genuinely excited about the second offer and really dreading reporting to work at the first company, then you may just have to go with your gut.

So here’s another scenario; what if you are in the process of interviewing at another company when an offer comes in? Assume that the offer is okay, but you’re really more interested in the other company that has not yet made a decision. You can try asking the offering company to give you a week or two to decide, but most likely they’ll balk at that idea.

In this case (and I’m ABSOLUTELY NOT ENDORSNIG THIS IDEA) you might accept the offer and ask for a delayed start date. This will give you time to complete the interviewing process with the other company, and if you ABSOLUTELY have to, you can accept the other offer if it comes in and renege on the first offer. However, this would be VERY BAD behavior, and one I would not expect the readers of this blog to engage in – right?