Got the job? Good. Now do your due diligence; and it includes reading the fine print.

“Marry in haste, repent at leisure.”— Proverb

There is a peculiar moment in every recruitment process when common sense quietly leaves the building. You have spent three weeks trying to convince a company that you are brilliant, and then, suddenly, they agree. They want you.Champagne! Validation! Tell your mother! Except somewhere between the final interview and the offer letter, we often forget something rather important: you were supposed to be interviewing them too. A job offer is not a prize for performing well in an elaborate corporate beauty pageant. It is an invitation to enter a relationship that may consume 40, 50 or occasionally a rather impolite number of hours of your week. Before you say “I do”, it is worth finding out whom exactly you are marrying.

Start with the person you will actually work for. We spend enormous amounts of time researching the company, its strategy, its share price and whether it has beanbags in the innovation hub, when your day-to-day happiness may be determined far more by one human being with access to your calendar. How does your prospective boss behave when someone disagrees with them? What happened to the last person in your role? How long have the people on the team stayed? Who has your boss promoted? Ask to meet a future peer without your prospective manager in the room. People tell you extraordinary things when the person responsible for their bonus has gone to get coffee. “It’s very entrepreneurial here” may mean freedom and trust. It may also mean nobody knows who is responsible for anything and you will spend your first six months looking for a spreadsheet called FINAL_v17_ACTUALFINAL.

Then look at the job itself, because job descriptions are rather like dating profiles: technically accurate, perhaps, but not always the whole story. Ask what you will actually be expected to achieve in the first twelve months, what resources you will control and how success will be measured. If they tell you the role is “highly strategic”, ask what decisions you will personally be able to make. If leadership is part of the attraction, ask how many people you will actually lead. If they promise progression, ask where the previous two people in the role progressed to. Specific questions are wonderfully inconvenient for vague promises. And pay attention when nobody can quite explain why the role is vacant. There is usually a story there. You would quite like to hear it before becoming its sequel.

Money deserves the same scrutiny. The salary is important, obviously, but it is not the entire marriage settlement. Look at bonus, pension, equity, title, flexibility, holiday, reporting line, review timing, scope and what the role makes possible afterwards. A slightly lower salary attached to genuine P&L responsibility, a stronger title or access to an exceptional leader might accelerate your career far more than another £5,000 today. Equally, prestige is not legal tender. A famous logo does not compensate indefinitely for a terrible boss, an impossible commute or a role that takes your career sideways. The question isn't simply, “Is this a good job?” It is, “Is this a good job for the life and career I am trying to build?” Those are not remotely the same question.

And finally, notice how the company behaves while it is courting you. Recruitment is generally the organisation on its best behaviour. If people repeatedly cancel interviews, disappear for three weeks, contradict each other about the role or treat your time as infinitely elastic, don't assume everything will become beautifully organised once you have surrendered your bargaining power and acquired a security pass. Of course no company is perfect. Neither is any candidate. You are not looking for perfection; you are looking for enough evidence to make an intelligent commitment. So when the offer arrives, enjoy being wanted. Negotiate properly. Ask the awkward questions. Speak to people who aren't selling you the job. Then decide. Because leaving a bad job six months later is perfectly survivable. But choosing well in the first place is considerably less exhausting.

ONE THING TO REMEMBER: An offer means they have decided they want you. Now stop auditioning and decide whether you want them.

_________

Further Reading

Before accepting your next role, speak to at least one prospective peer and, where possible, someone who has previously worked in the team. Glassdoor and LinkedIn can provide useful signals, but direct conversations are far more revealing.

For the negotiation itself, Getting to Yes by Roger Fisher, William Ury and Bruce Patton remains a useful foundation for thinking beyond a single number.