Four things you need to know before accepting a job offer

The most intimidating phase of the job process is done and over with, and you now have the prized job offer. Our natural instinct would be to jump at the opportunity but instead - pause.

There are four essential points that need to be expounded as they mark the roadmap to a potentially fulfilling career.

1. Negotiate.

If this is the only thing you take away from this article, remember to always negotiate. Once receiving your offer, the golden sentence to ask is “is this offer up for negotiation?” More often than not, it is.

According to a survey by Fidelity Investments, a U.S. multinational financial services corporation, 87% of professionals aged 25 to 35 had fruitful offer negotiations.

There is a common misconception that this form of negotiation is only limited to salaries. However, a candidate can also negotiate better paid time off, tuition reimbursement and even better job titles.

2. Set your career priorities

Typically it is important that you get something more and better than what you were doing in the previous job, but for someone else it may entail breaking in a new country’s market as an immigrant.

Priorities differ on an individual-basis so it is important to chalk out your desired career trajectory (at least over the next five years) to see if the potential job ticks all the requirements, and if not, it sheds light on a possible area for negotiation.

And since more often than not, a job offer does not characterize an ideal situation, prioritizing your career goals comes in handy. The least you can find out is how many years you want to be spending at a job.

3. Monetary Considerations

The most basic level of evaluation is the salary breakdown. This includes researching the going rate for similar jobs, industries and also evaluating salary offers based on the current cost of living in the job location.     Unfortunately, many do not advance from this step and this leads to a partial view of the offer.

The next step below can sometimes comprise 20-40 per cent of the total compensation package.

But in navigating the job offer, always do remember to be polite because HR professionals happen to network and the last thing you want is a negative reputation on the grapevine

The second level of considerations is translating the benefits package into a monetary value.

This includes but is not limited to, medical insurance, performance-related pay and incentives (stock options, bonuses etc), retirement benefits, leaves, tuition reimbursement, and life insurance.

The final level includes what some may call fringe benefits - they do not necessarily have a monetary value but pertain to the use or provision of some form of resources (physical, time, health, social). Resources like time if hybrid work is offered - which happens to be one of the top considerations in 2024. Other such benefits include wellness programs, mental health coverage, access to social clubs.

4. The intangibles

These are probably the most over-looked features of an organization but also the ones that can impact your employee experience in the greatest possible sense.

What is your boss like? What is the company culture like? Is there a semblance of work-life balance? What is the typical amount of time a person stays in the role before a promotion?

What are the resources of training and development?

News websites and others like Glassdoor, LinkedIn help to attain information about your future team and company events. But also, the reverse process of looking up your colleagues on social media gives you an idea of whether your team has members who have social propensity.

When it comes to negotiating a job offer, if you do not ask — you will not receive. And the worst case scenario is that the answer is a no which really does not result in any damage for you.

But in navigating the job offer, always do remember to be polite because HR professionals happen to network and the last thing you want is a negative reputation on the grapevine.

The article does not necessarily reflect the opinion of Business Recorder or its owners