You Should Be Thankful You Didn’t Take that Job Offer

In the career management field, we measure our success by how well our clients succeed in the employment marketplace. This means we talk about and celebrate the number of interviews and job offers you, as an executive, receives. There are cases, however, in which we also value not accepting the job offer. Read on to learn more about why not taking the job can be a boon to your job search.

Is it time to walk away from an executive job offer?

When executives are working steadily toward advancing their careers, they often view the job search as a numbers game–the more resumes they send out, the more interviews they theoretically should get, and the more competing offers they should receive. However, this thought process is faulty and doesn’t take into account the executive’s brand or corporate need. Nor does it account for the simple fact that not every job is right for a particular executive, and a particular executive isn’t right for every job.

We find that those executives who don’t know themselves well are willing to run away from what they are doing (or, realistically, their unemployment status) into any role that presents itself that isn’t, well, perfectly awful. As long as it’s reasonably good, the offer seems to be as good as any and certainly better than no offer at all.

However, those executives who take the time to explore their professional needs, wants, and goals have the fortitude and discernment to know when a role is wrong for them. Yes, it’s very hard to walk away from a process during which you’ve pursued a company and the company has pursued you. Being wanted is a heady thing. But when you reject a seemingly well-placed offer, you telegraph that you value your brand. You refuse to compromise on the value you can offer a company. You don’t let yourself be drawn into a role that predicts the wrong future for your career. You don’t eliminate the mental space or time in your calendar that will enable you to seek and achieve the executive role that is appropriate to your needs and aspirations.

In other words, you can be thankful, for once, that you didn’t take the job offer.

Are you not sure whether your offer is right for you? Call Five Strengths to discuss the value of this offer.

Image courtesy of Stock.xchng / gundolf.