3 Times It's Okay To Change Your Mind About A Job Offer
(Or Your Whole Career)
Think of it as renegotiating, not as
going back on your word, and you'll make the right choice every time.
Here's
a dirty little career secret you won't hear often: It's always okay to change
your mind. Let that "always" sink in—this way you'll remember it the
next time you find yourself in a tricky situation where backing out may feel
like burning a bridge, damaging your credibility, or worse. Chances are that in
the long run, changing your mind amounts to none of those
things—just as long as you go about it the right way.
It’s decision time, and you’re anxious.
You're afraid you’ll make the wrong choice. Or worried that once you commit, it’s
important to stick it out no matter what, lest you risk looking fickle or like
you're not a team player. In some cases, career coaches will even tell you that
follow-through is important for demonstrating commitment and integrity in the
future—that you need to have a proven track record of making up your mind and
seeing things through once you have.
What’s really important is the experience.
Well,
in my experience, what’s really important is the experience. First—yes—commit,
and then adjust to what you’ve committed to, even if that ultimately
means changing your mind. It’s your life and career after all. If you've
made a wrong move, add it to your list of worthwhile experiences and move on.
Trust me: This problem arises at every stage
of people's careers, and as a coach I've seen them all. When you’re right out
of college, it’s natural to feel like you have limited choices and even less
leverage. The feeling that you need to take––and stick with––an immediate
opportunity can be difficult to counter. That was my own experience, after all.
Later, once you’ve built up a career, you might get excited about a new
opportunity but not see it for what it is, then feel afraid to admit that
you've made a mistake.
No matter what, it's always fine to reverse
course, even if you wind up letting some people down. There are ways to contain
the damage and save face, but the main thing is to get straight on your own
priorities, then move forward accordingly. It isn't easy. It's still something
I have to remind myself nearly every day after all these years.
The way you go about changing your mind in
even the toughest professional situations is always basically the same:
1. List all your options—even the least appealing ones and the ones
that seem like distant possibilities.
2. Talk it out, preferably with a colleague you trust or a coach who
can offer some battle-tested perspective.
3. Communicate the change of mind you've had as politely and
definitively as possible, then just enjoy the ride that follows, including the
bumps.
Cindy, a coaching client of mine (she's one
of three whose experiences I'll recount in this story; I’ve changed their names
and some details for privacy), was in design school and had previously been a
model. When she got an internship offer for an apparel design role, it
initially seemed like a perfect fit.
In the interview, the firm’s owner breezed
through her portfolio and offered her the position on the spot. Cindy stammered
a yes as he promised to share more details by email. Cindy pretty much did fist
pumps all the way home.
List all your options—even the least
appealing ones and the ones that seem like distant possibilities.
Now,
you might think that was a rookie move, and maybe it was, but in the heat of
the moment, decisions like these are easy to make and happen
more often than you'd think. Needless to say, when she
received them from the hiring manager, those promised details were devilish,
particularly the part that read ". . . and the internship pays [insert
insultingly low hourly wage here]."
"That’s half what my classmates
make!" thought Cindy. She tried to negotiate, but the owner wouldn’t
budge. Cindy now had a choice. She could:
·
Decline.
·
Swallow her pride, cut her
personal budget, and take the internship, hoping it would be worthwhile
experience anyway.
·
Take the internship and look
for something better—fast.
Ultimately, Cindy declined. It was a tough
decision, nearly a heartbreak, not to mention awkward to roll back her
acceptance. But she ultimately learned to slow down in interviews and get all
the information before making a decision. That experience was lastingly
valuable, but despite the unpleasantness of the whole mishap, Cindy did one
thing perfectly right: She approached the change of heart as a
renegotiation—which, after all, it was.
Robert sold everything he owned and hit
Silicon Valley armed with a decade’s experience in corporate research. The
stable paycheck had been great, but he was ready to take his chances on a
startup. He was hoping for a jackpot.
At
first, Robert's interviews went well, especially with a founder who described
her vision in world-changing, passionate terms. Sure, she had far to go, but
she was thinking big, and that resonated with Robert. He accepted an offer and
quickly dived into the work. Okay, so it wasn’t the research he'd longed for, but
working for a startup meant wearing many hats, right? And grunt
work. Lots of it, it turned out.
It was a nightmare. Robert's personal pep
talks worked for about six months, and then he gave up. Whether he’d been lied
to or he just wasn’t ready for the grind wasn’t the point—it just wasn’t
working out. This wasn't what he'd moved to Silicon Valley for. The only thing
was that he didn’t have a backup plan. He faced a choice:
·
Stick it out and pray for
improvement.
·
Use his tiny new network to
find a better gig—maybe—in one of the most competitive job markets back home.
·
Bail and go home.
Those were his options, which Robert wisely
enumerated and shared with friends and family. Ultimately, he chose to stick it
out for a year all told—an eternity in startup land. Then he headed home and
launched a startup incubator in his hometown. It wasn't so much that Robert had
to renegotiate with the founder whose team he'd joined; it was actually a bit
tougher. He needed to renegotiate with himself: what his career goals actually
amounted to and the best ways to achieve them.
With
five years of work experience under her belt, Sara was ready for a change. So
she polished her resume and discreetly began to interview. Soon she had two offers: one
with a small firm doing pro bono and community work, and the second with a
global giant—let's call it Ginormous, Inc. She loved the small firm, but
Ginormous offered twice as much, plus a fat signing bonus that would land in
her checking account right away. Sara couldn’t resist, took the big offer, set
a start date, and promptly spent the bonus.
You can renegotiate anything at any time—you
just have to approach it that way.
But days went by and Sara kept remembering
the smaller firm. Its work was meaningful; it touched her heart. She’d met with
the founders, not some guy in HR. Every day she became more convinced she’d be
happier there, even if she'd have to accept being a little (okay, a lot)
poorer. But how could she tell Ginormous so soon after accepting? And what
about that bonus?
Here's how Sara's options stacked up, and
there weren't many of them:
·
Keep her Ginormous commitment
and try to forget about the offer she'd passed up.
·
Ditch her big new corporate
employer, probably by disappointing some people, join the small firm, and
figure out how to pay back the bonus.
Ultimately, Sara followed her passion. She
told the small firm she was still very interested in the role, as long as it
was still open (it was) and explained her predicament. Together they negotiated
a salary that included the bonus amount. She declined the Ginormous offer that
she'd previously accepted, and quickly paid them back.
As all
three of these experiences show, you always have options even when it may seem
like you don't. You can renegotiate anything at any time—you just have to
approach it that way. Yes, there will be consequences. But
you’ll find that time after time, colleagues and employers have all worked
through similar dilemmas. Some people will be disappointed and may even think
less of you than they did before, but that's not a contingency you can always
control; more than that, it's no reason to continue down a career path that
doesn't suit you.
Life often turns out differently than we
envision. It's the experiences along the way that are the important part. Those
experiences shape your character no matter which way you slice it. Never
hesitate to sit back down at the table, no matter how long it's been since you
shook hands and pushed your chairs away.
TED
LEONHARDT
https://www.fastcompany.com/3067550/3-times-its-okay-to-change-your-mind-about-a-job-offer-or-your-whole-career
No comments:
Post a Comment