Oops! The #1 Costly Mistake People Make When Accepting Job Offers

By Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter

I listened to an interview given by Daniel Kahneman where he spoke about noise in our minds. It helped me think of this topic that I hope helps you head off a disaster in your job search.

Job Fairs: Avoid the Cattle Call

Hi. I’m Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter. People hire me for no BS job search coaching and career advice globally, because I make the process of finding work and succeeding at it much easier.  I was listening to a podcast interview with Daniel Kahneman, a social scientist and economist who was talking about noise, and the kind of noise that causes us to make mistakes.

We like to think of ourselves as being rational people but we really aren’t.  What often happens in a job search is that people get distracted, and they start to forget about why it is they’re looking for a job and what they’re hoping to achieve. Thus, what starts to happen is noise starts to enter in, new inputs start to enter in and that’s not necessarily bad. But what often happens is, these are not particularly important inputs and people get seduced by them, We get to like the person we’ll be working for, we think we’ll get along with them. And we forget the fact that they, like you as a job hunter are on good behavior. You’re not really seeing them as they are. As a result, you’re getting advice from someone who has a vested interest in persuading you to join their firm.

Even if they decide to reject you, they’re still selling you on the opportunity and the potential and what a great environment this is, Have I mentioned, we’re like family around here?  Now they all say this kind of stuff and you lose track of what’s important to you in a job or organization.

Many of you don’t even take the time to identify what’s important to you in the next job or organization. What will you need to see or hear to believe it’s a good choice for you. And the result winds up being you’re kind of drifting in the wind, without a clear anchor or a clear focus on what you should be evaluating for. 

And thus, I always encourage people to take a little bit of time at the beginning of the search to identify those qualities. Don’t wait until you have an offer, although if there’s no alternative, you do it then. Ideally, you’re doing this at the beginning of your search, identifying what it was that didn’t work for you in the last firm, seeing how that could be corrected,  prioritizing the different things that you jot down. Don’t just stop at one or two things.

Put 10 or 20 things down, and then list them in order of importance between one and 2o. 1 being the most important; and 20 being the least important. And remember at the time of your offer, go back to this list. Review the position in the context of the list of things that were important to you in the next job or organization and make sure they cover at least the top five or six points on your list. Others can be bonus prizes. That’s fine. 

But the mistake people make time and time again, is they don’t take the time to do this little bit of work that will help you when you get the offer so you’re not being influenced by personalities or sales pitches, what have you and take something that you really shouldn’t accept.  I hope you found this helpful.

I’m Jeff Altman. Visit my website, JobSearch.community, where I’ve got a bunch of video courses, books, and guides to help you. Plus, you can schedule time for a free discovery call with me at …well actually you can do that at TheBigGameHunter.us and schedule a discovery call with me. But the most important thing is at JobSearch.community, you get access to all my video courses, books and guides and can ask me questions inexpensively. You can get me on two zoom calls a month, a little bit more money. And of course I do individual and group coaching through the site as well. There are lots of tools there that will help you since you don’t have to spend a lot of money because all of these are things I charge for individually and I’ve aggregated them into an inexpensive package.

Hope you have a terrific day and most importantly be great!

How Far Can You Go?