Holding more than one job offer?

 18 Minute Networking - City Year Boston 2016

At the Careers Service we know getting a job can prove tough and we offer help in all kinds of ways.

We would always encourage applying  for more than one job at a time, to increase your chances , but at the same time to also keep it to a manageable number.  Some students though can be in the fortunate position of being offered than one job at the same time and we sometimes get asked advice on the protocol of managing more than one job offer.

So how do you handle it?

Firstly congratulate yourself – you must have impressed through the recruitment stage so that is good news. You know how to apply and be successful.

But it still leaves you with a fairly quick and potentially difficult decision to make.

So try and think back to how you have made  a difficult decision in the past.

How did you manage this? Did you find it easier talking it through with someone and coming to a decision that way? Perhaps you thought it through by yourself and maybe wrote  a list of pros and cons?  Maybe it was a combination of both. Are there any other decision making strategies you deployed?

Try and think through all the factors for each job, pay, terms and  conditions, location, costs of accommodation and travel, training , prospects etc.  Hard to always work out but is one job offer likely to give you greater responsibility earlier on? Is the pay likely to improve quicker at one rather than another?  Can you compare them? What do they offer and what is more important to you? Scoring factors may allow you to compare them more easily.

If you can’t decide or you are still in the process of going for the job you really want  than rather than avoid it, go back to the employers and be honest with them about your dilemma.

It is risky and they may still insist on you keeping to their deadline.  But they may be more lenient. You would of course also reveal being not 100% sure. But they themselves may have been in the position at some point.

Also as said take heart in the knowledge that you got a job in the first place so know how to do this. And they may see you as a even better candidate if they know someone else is also  interested in employing you.

There are Career Development Advisers available who can discuss this situation with you and will offer advice … but won’t make the decision for you.

www.brighton.ac.uk/careers

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careersemployabilityemploymentjobs

Pamela Coppola • 08/03/2016


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