Accepting a job offer with confidence and enthusiasm is the ultimate goal of the job search process. Ideally you will have the opportunity to entertain more than one or two offers simultaneously over a generous time frame. It is also ideal for you to have access to all the particulars that are important to your decision about each offer you receive. These ideal situations are rare. Instead it is typical for this phase of the search to be more complicated and less synchronized. You can sidestep the stress often associated with the decision to accept or decline an offer with a strategy of solid preparation techniques:

• Develop and understand your own baseline criteria.
• Systematically track the critical factors for each offer as you gather them.
• Anticipate that you’ll need more information than the companies will provide in extending their offers.
• Adopt a common sense approach to your communications with the firms that have extended offers to you.

In the early stages of your job search, as you begin to clarify and focus your broader career goals into specific employment targets, you are learning more and more about industry traits, working environments, and specific job duties. Throughout this research you are sizing up prospective opportunities to determine whether you possess the necessary skills and credentials to perform the job and whether the job description satisfies your career goals and interests. This is essential to determining "fit" – that is, are you a good fit for the job, and is it a good fit for you?

The research process, however, is incomplete if it doesn’t also include your examination of the compensation standards and trends for each industry, job level, and work setting you are considering. Most government and public education positions are locked into non-negotiable salary ranges associated with degree level and experience. Otherwise, while it may vary from one geographic region to another, most employers expect you to negotiate the details of the offer. For entry-level positions the range of actual salary negotiation is rarely greater than 10%.

To be absolutely sure it is appropriate for you to inquire about negotiating the salary portion of the offer, you would be wise to consult with your career counsellor. Market conditions can often alter the flexibility employers will exercise with their offers – the shifting corresponds with hiring demand and the availability of candidates. This can even occur within the same recruiting season so it is important for you to stay abreast of the job market even while you are involved in the interview process. Your knowledge and understanding of the market as well as the particulars for your field and industry will be recognized and welcomed by prospective employers. It is not only smart and efficient to conduct this extra level of research while you are examining career options; it is fundamental to your job search strategy.

During this research you should once again be reflecting on the values inventory that leads to your understanding of all that is important to you in a position beyond the work performed.

• How important is salary to you in assessing satisfaction on the job?
• Are you willing to compromise your salary expectations for a job that encourages educational advancement through tuition incentive programs, or for one that offers flexible work schedules or options to telecommute from your home?
• Have you considered the relevance of health and retirement benefits in the context of your baseline criteria for accepting a position?
• What about stock options, vacation time, professional development options, or travel requirements?

While it may feel overwhelming to sort through all of the important aspects of each offer, this process is simplified by analysing a job offer in segments.

• Are the values of the organization aligned with yours?
• Is the organization one of high structure or less?
• If the company is public, has its performance been consistent over time?
• Is the company growing? If so, how has its growth affected its profitability?
• Has the organization experienced periods of regression that resulted in layoffs? If so, what practices and policies guided the adjustments?
• Who are its competitors?
• What is the company’s market share?
• What is the public perception, and your perception, of the organization?
• Does the company have clear career ladders and a record of promoting from within?
• Is senior management representative of long-tenured employees or talent hired from outside the firm?
• Does the company have personal development programs?
• Does the company have a high retention rate with its employees?

• What is the experience of your prospective supervisor?
• To whom does he/she report?
• What type of regular interaction can you expect from your boss?
• What is the prevailing management style of your potential superiors?
• Will you be expected to supervise others? How long have they been in their positions?
• Are the personalities of and overall chemistry among the employees in your immediate work environment appealing to you?
• Do the people in your work group display work ethics and habits that align with yours?

We’ve only touched on the many wide-ranging variables of a job offer, most of which can theoretically be negotiated for a final compensation package. One of your challenges will be to record the specific information you gather for each offer you receive in every category that is important to you.

Clearly, many of the criteria you will include on your critical factors list are subjective and gathered through your first-hand observation during the interviewing process – usually beyond the campus interview. You can also learn about many of these types of criteria through networking with current or former employees of an organization, but as with all of these subjective criteria, you must exercise caution and recognise that everyone has his or her own biases and interpretations of employment environments. All in all, determining the factors you consider most important before interviewing is your first step toward devising an effective tracking and analysis system.

Immediately following each interview, record what you have learned about the particulars of the position. Most job seekers agree that a simple grid is the easiest way to capture this information and compare each firm to the others. List key factors in priority order across all the organizations as you interviewing with them, and then use those notes to populate a matrix like the one below for the offers you actually receive.

Extend the sophistication of this factor analysis by assigning weighted values to your criteria. For example, on a scale of one to ten, if the highest-ranking factor in your decision is job content/responsibilities, you can assign the value of ten (10) or less to each firm’s offer depending on how well it meets your ideal job fit. A flexible work schedule option may be a plus on your list, but not as important to you, so the highest value a company’s offer could receive in this category may only be five (5).

You will know which level of analysis is appropriate for your own decision-making; the important thing is to record and manage the information as you progress through your job search.

The process of determining what is important to your employment decision involves your pro-active approach to finding the answers. You must take charge of this data gathering. A passive expectation that the information will be presented to you as you proceed through interviews will leave you short-handed and ill prepared for making decisions that can alter the course of your professional life.

In addition to the standard fare on compensation packages provided by most company websites and recruiters, a vast number of resources are available in print and on-line that can help you formulate realistic expectations for yourself. It is logical for you to first decide what compensation you really need.

Before engaging in any salary communications with employers you should explore the possibilities and consider a number of scenarios. For this exercise, most job seekers like to start with the highest salary they think they can ask for without turning off prospective employers. In the actual process, this tends to result in candidates feeling that they are compromising more than they wanted to, which can lead to disappointment.

A healthier tactic would be to start your thinking with your bottom line – the lowest you can possibly accept – and work your way upward through the options till you reach a target figure that is reasonable for an employer to consider.

Basic to this exercise is some financial planning and the development of a personal budget. An excellent on-line tool to assist you with this activity is the Post-college Budget Guide developed by Edfund.org. You can calculate prospective budget scenarios and find a comprehensive checklist of expenses you should take into account at www.edwise.org.

Now don’t move too fast! Before you set your sights on that target, you need to take stock in your own value in the marketplace you are entering. It’s time to be as objective as possible in totalling the worth of your credentials, your professional qualities, and your potential to deliver a prompt return on an employer’s investment. While this version of self-assessment is necessary, it cannot be done outside the context of your chosen employment field. So you must also gain an understanding of current compensation benchmarks for your general level of experience, your discipline, and your job and industry choices.

Whether or not you are being paid fairly based on position, location, industry, planning date, experience, or organization size is extremely important. You need to know 1) where the data comes from, 2) how it is analyzed, 3) who uses the data, and 4) whether or not data is even available for the specific position(s) and location(s) you're considering.

Typically your campus career centre will be the best source of collective salary data and compensation trends. Most career centres identify resources that cover pertinent employment categories, levels, and geographic regions for their particular graduates. In fact, your own browsing of job postings on your career centre Website will reveal a great deal of information about the range of current salaries by position type and level. Here are a few references that are widely recognised for their comprehensive salary data:

SalariesReview.com is a salary and wage, benefits and cost-of-living survey Internet site. SalariesReview.com’s surveys are on-line, real time databases quite unlike any traditional surveys you might have used before. Data is gathered from non-copyrighted sources and inputs from on-line Internet participants. Inputted data is tested against a standard error for the population and, if within the acceptable range, it is included. SalariesReview.com offers detailed individual reports for $18.00.

Nearly all of these sources have print and on-line versions of their data, but the Salary Wizard (at http://salary.com) and the Salary Calculator (at http://homefair.com) are two of the most popular American Websites for researching salaries. If your employment decision involves relocating, these and several other Web-based tools can be useful to determining how your salary will translate into another region. You can easily access an array of these sites through most any generic on-line search engine.

Finally, it is important to offer some context for the area in which you are seeking employment. A soft job market weakens negotiation options, particularly at the entry level, as employers are confident they can fill their positions from an abundant applicant pool at prescribed salaries. Conversely, a robust labour market is accompanied by complexities that entry-level job seekers don’t typically deal with. The competition for fresh, new talent, when fierce, brings a multitude of extras to the bargaining table, as firms are eager to make their offers more attractive than their competitors’.

Signing bonuses, stock or equity options, personal computing hardware and wireless phones, company vehicles, and assistance with home mortgages are just some of the items brought to the table for certain entry level candidates in the hottest fields. New Websites and resources emerge on an almost daily basis that assist with this type of recruitment flurry. If you find you are inundated with options that you didn’t prepare for, your best bet is to seek the advice of a campus career counsellor. They can often reveal additional insight and references that will assist you with understanding these types of options.

• Develop and understand your own baseline criteria. Know what you want.
• Systematically track the critical factors for each offer as you gather them. Be organized and thorough.
• Anticipate that you’ll need more information than the companies will provide in extending their offers. Exploit every source of data you can access.
• Adopt a common sense approach to your communications with the firms that have extended offers to you. Be genuine, be positive, be open and flexible.

Across industries, most entry-level professional positions fall within a narrow range of compensation options that can be easily identified through a myriad of resources. As you acquire more employment experience, with each job transition you make, the band of compensation options broadens and diversifies. A strong foundation in recognising and assessing these factors of compensation in your first search for professional employment will provide dividends throughout your career as you face each new employment decision.