Chloe SpillaneYour personal career strategist - start here ↓

INTERVIEW TECHNIQUE #careercoach #interviewtips #interviewquestions #interviews #interviewprep

22 Mar 2026 · 2 min

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1:36

Chloe Spillane walks through how to tell an employer you're interviewing elsewhere when they make an offer. Ask for a one-week decision timeline and say, "What can you do to secure me?" If they expedite or negotiate, they want you badly. If they're indifferent, you know where you stand.

Chapters

This is what happens when you tell the interviewer that you're interviewing elsewhere to leverage your position to get yourself a better offer. Firstly, if the interviewer hasn't asked you already if you're interviewing elsewhere, they're not doing their job properly. They say, "We'd love to offer you the position." You say, "Amazing. I'm so excited about the potential of joining this organization and where this will take my career. Thank you so much. Just to be completely transparent with you, I do have another position that I am interviewing for at the moment. I'm highly interested in this position, 'But just so I can make sure that I'm making the right decision for me and my career, as well as making sure I'm the right fit for your organisation, I'd like to finish the interview process for this other role before I make a decision on this offer. I'm happy to give you a timeline on when I accept this offer. How does a week sound?' The interviewer also, if they're doing their job properly, would say, 'Yes, absolutely. Happy to give you a week to make a decision and assess your options. We're very keen to have you on our team. Is there anything we can do to get you over the line?' That's when you use it to your advantage. Thing is here, you do need to be respectful of the interview process and the timelines, and you can voice that. That's when you give them the clear timeline of 1 week to interview elsewhere and come back to them with a decision on the day that you said you would. What this also does for you, it gives you a very clear understanding as to how keen they are for you to have this position. If they turn around and say, oh, that's all right, we have other people we can give this role to, they didn't really want you that bad. If they say to you, "What can we do to get you over the line?" That's a clear identifier that they really want you in their team. You have to keep your options open as a candidate because in this job market, nothing is secure. Not until you sign that dotted line or even when you take that first step into the office.