By Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter
You made a decision and now it’s time to communicate it. What is the best way to turn down the offer and appear respectful?
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What is the best way to turn down an offer in a respectful manner?
This was originally asked about sales positions but I think the answer is true in all cases the ideal is to have a conversation with the hiring manager that’s hard to do these days because frankly no one picks up the phone, right? We are all so used to robocalls and hiring managers that use the recruiters trying to persuade them to give them jobs to work on. People don’t take calls. So what can you do to turn down the offer in a respectful way. Now. if you leave voicemail which I think is appropriate, you don’t talk about turning down the offer in voicemail. You talk about “Could you give me a callback? I know I’m free between 1:00 and 1:30 today. I’d like to talk with you. My phone number is . . .” or you send an email asking them to give you a call at those times.
They probably will know once you’re not saying ‘I accept the offer,’ it’s one of two things. Number one is you have additional questions. Number two is you’re turning it down. So that is a signal to them of that. And then, from there, what makes it respectful, which is the key part of the question, because you can just send an email that says ‘I’m turning it down. Go away.’ They get along but you have the wisdom to do it in a respectful way because you never know when you’ll run into this person again. It’s in “Look, this has been a very hard decision for me. I have three offers. They’re all very good offers but I just think one of the other ones serves my career objectives better and, you know, you’ve been terrific. I really enjoyed talking with you and meeting everyone in the organization. I’m accepting another position.”
At this point and the key part is your tone of voice and sounding like you’re agonizing. Sounding and acting as though this is a hard decision for you and they will probably, you know, be understanding or they may say, “So, what could we do to change your mind?” Then it’s up to you. The decision tree for you is to say something along the lines of “Well, if you came up with $15,000 more I would do it,’ which also signals to them that you’ll jump for more money if you join them,
But the real thing for integrity purposes is to say “Look, I’m sure you could offer me more money and that would persuade me but, by the same token, I want to be clear. I gave my word to someone else because I thought, it was a better opportunity for me. So, I don’t think it’s appropriate at this point” Or again, you could give them a price . . . whatever you think is best at that point.”
But the respectful way is to do it by phone, by first sending a text or an email or leaving a message on voicemail asking them to call you back and give them a couple of dates and times that work for you and that’s a signal.
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