Alli Peck answers a viewer question about what to do when they receive a likely job offer from company A but prefer to interview with company B. She outlines two imperfect options (decline A and risk ending up with no offer, or accept A and later quit if B offers), explains the professional and reputational risks of accepting then leaving, and ultimately advises prioritizing your own best interest — take the better offer if certain, but avoid making this a habit and stop interviewing once you've committed.
Chapters
A question I get asked a lot is I'm interviewing for a job and I'm in the final round and I think they're gonna offer me the job. But I just got an invitation to an interview at another company and I would way rather work at company number two. What do I do? This can be a sticky situation because you could turn down job number one and say, no, thank you. I'm interested in working for another company. But thanks for your time. But then what? If you don't get the offer from job number two, then you have zero job offers. Another thing you could do is accept the offer that job number one gives you. Keep interviewing at job number two, and then if job number two offers you the job, you could say to job number one, I'm out, and burn that bridge. Neither one is a great solution, to be honest. And I've never been in this situation, but it sounds tricky and one of my clients are in this situation right now. So here's what I would advise them to do. Even if you're in the final stage of an interview process, they're doing background checks, they're chatting with a hr, they've already sent you the offer. Maybe you've even signed it. You never know what could happen. A company could take it back, keep going with that initial offer. Because you also never know if the second offer is going to come through. If you start working for a company and then you get a job offer from a second company that you would much rather work for, or maybe the pay is higher. I would not recommend trying to negotiate higher pay for yourself at your number one or at the first company. If you are absolutely sure that you want to work for the second company, it's higher pay. They sent you an offer, you've negotiated pay. It's okay to do this maybe once, maybe twice in your career. But if you must burn the bridge with company number one, you have to look out for yourself. Do not be loyal to a company. Y' all know how I feel about that. So take job offer number two. But know this, you will not be able to work for company number one ever again. Probably. They probably don't have something called a blacklist, but they probably have something pretty close to it where they say, look, this person screwed us over. Now we're out a candidate. We just went through the entire round of interview process with them and they screwed us over. So they're not going to work here in the future. Also, you should know that this may tarnish your reputation, especially if you work in a very small industry like I used to people talk, and recruiters know each other, and CEOs talk. You might have this little scar on your reputation now, where you took a job and then you left a couple days or weeks later. You should know that. But again, you have to do what's best for you, so don't make this a habit. And I recommend when you are about to start a job at a company, just stop interviewing elsewhere. Tell people, sorry, I've just taken a job, but thank you so much. I'll keep you in mind for future opportunities. Shove it right back in their face. But try not to keep dating once you've already had the monogamous conversation with your partner. That's a metaphor, but you get what I'm saying. Are any of you in this situation right now? Let me know.
