Interviewing with Multiple Companies

If you are actively looking for a new job, it’s likely that you’ll be interviewing with several companies at the same time. You’ll also likely have a preference for some jobs over others. So how should you handle it if talks progress significantly with more than one company? Should you drop discussions with the companies you’re less interested in and focus on the ones that look more attractive?

My advice is to never do this. I can’t count the number of times when it seemed like I had several companies itching to make me offers at the same time, but then none of the leads panned out. It’s not necessarily the candidate’s fault when this happens; most often it occurs because there were other qualified candidates in the running.

Hence if you are deep into the process with multiple companies, even ones you aren’t necessarily crazy about, you need to do everything you can to get the offer(s). Once the offer is in hand you can decide whether it’s something you want to accept. But then at least then the decision is yours, not the company’s.