The Google Resume (20 page)
Authors: Gayle Laakmann McDowell
Tags: #Business & Economics, #Careers, #Job Hunting, #General
Declining an Offer (and Building a Connection)
Turning down an offer does not mean severing contact; it should be viewed more as “taking a rain check.” Think of it this way: you liked the company enough to go through the full recruiting process, and they liked you enough to give you an offer. This is a connection you definitely want to maintain.
You should turn down the offer in whatever medium you’ve been using for communication and with whomever you’ve been corresponding the most. That is, if the recruiter has been calling you regularly, you should decline the offer over the phone with him. Alternatively, if you’ve been e-mailing your manager the most, you should decline the offer first to the manager over e-mail. You should follow up these correspondences with short e-mails or phone calls to whoever else you’ve talked with frequently.
In your e-mail or phone call, use these tips to avoid burning bridges and to strengthen your relationship:
- Be polite and professional.
No matter how tense the prior negotiations have gotten, you should always address your recruiter in a nice and respectful way. Some people may be particularly upset about your declining the offer, after spending so much time and money on you, but don’t let this bother you. Be open and understanding, but stand firm in your decision. - Provide a non-negative and non-negotiable reason.
Saying that the company is “too bureaucratic” is insulting, but saying that you would “prefer a smaller company at this point in time” is not. You should make sure that these reasons are not things the company could provide (such as a different location, if the company has only one location) or be prepared to reopen negotiations if they do. When declining over the phone, you should be prepared to say what offer you have accepted and why. - Ask to stay in touch—and mean it.
Close your e-mail to the recruiter or manager with a note expressing a desire to stay in touch. You can follow up a day or two later with a LinkedIn connection. If you have friends or colleagues who might be interested in the position, ask the recruiter if they’d appreciate some referrals from strong candidates that you know. You’ll probably be doing your friend, and the recruiter, a favor. And it’s a great way to stay in everyone’s good graces!
Your Questions Answered
Au Revoir, Vacation Days
Dear Gayle,
I’ve been planning a three-week trip to Europe for over a year—dates set, flights booked,
etc.
The issue is that I’m now applying for a new job and, if I get it, I’ll be expected to start about six weeks before my trip. I obviously won’t have built up enough vacation time by then to take this trip. How do I handle this?
~T. K.
Dear T. K.,
The appropriate time to inform the company of your preplanned vacation is when you get the offer—not before, not after.
If you mention it before, you run the risk of the company’s using this as an easy way to ding you in favor of another candidate.
If you mention this after you accept the offer, then you run the risk of the company’s balking at your request and either refusing the vacation time or at the very least being nasty to you from day one.
Situations like this come up more than one might expect, and they’re usually easily accommodated. Just before you accept, send your primary contact an e-mail explaining the situation as follows:
I’m really excited about joining your company.
Before I accept the offer, I do need to inform you of one potential complication. I’ve had a three-week trip to Europe (from DATE to DATE) planned for over a year. I recognize that this trip is at an inconvenient time—just six weeks after my proposed start date—but, unfortunately, the dates aren’t flexible.
Is there some way to accommodate this? I’d be happy to do whatever you think is best—take unpaid time off, go “negative” on vacation days,
etc.
Thank you!
Most likely, the company will just have you go “negative” and you’ll have to be very conservative with vacation days to earn them back. Once you work things out with your primary contact and sign your offer letter, you should inform anyone else who needs to know. It would be an ugly surprise to your manager to discover this trip in your first few days.
In the event that the company refuses to accommodate your vacation time, you may be able to appeal to your secondary contact (if any).
~Gayle
Representative Representatives
Dear Gayle,
People always say that “you’re interviewing the company just as much as they’re interviewing you,” and that’s where my question comes in.
I finished a full round of on-site interviews and enjoyed the experience as much as one could. The potential future coworkers seemed nice enough, smart enough,
etc.
It was the HR people I didn’t like.
My first phone screen was with a woman from HR whom I just didn’t mesh with. She was basically reading off a script and seemed to barely register a lot of my responses. When she responded with anything other than an “OK,” it was to argue with my answer. I guess I did well enough though, to keep going.
When I came on-site, I met with a different person from HR—this time a man—and I again felt it was a somewhat hostile interaction. There was none of that friendliness that I’m used to seeing from recruiters. He talked with me for all of about five minutes when I came, and then made me sit in a chair outside his office for over 30 minutes until my first interviewer came to get me. When I asked him where I could get a drink of water, he actually seemed annoyed that I would disturb his precious time.
But it’s a good job, and I liked my actual coworkers enough. Should I let this bother me?
~E. B.
Dear E. B.,
I’d definitely look into the situation more. You have raised some valid red flags, but there are a few explanations.
1.
You got unlucky.
Maybe there are only two bad recruiters in the entire group of 30+ recruiters, and you happened to get them.
2.
It’s symptomatic of a bad culture.
You didn’t say that you
loved
the people—just that they seemed fine. Maybe things really are bad under the hood.
3.
The recruiters are too busy.
The actions of both of your recruiters could be explained by a very understaffed HR department.
- Reading off a script ⇒ tired.
- Not responding ⇒ preoccupied.
- Arguing = well, some arguing is OK.
- Making you wait for 30 minutes ⇒ busy.
It could really be any of these, which means that you need to do some investigating.
Try to get to know your future team a bit better—join them for lunch or chat with them on the phone. Make sure to talk to multiple team members, as liking just one is far from representative. If you develop a particularly strong rapport with one, you could even delicately broach the subject. (“I’ve really enjoyed getting to know everyone here. I was a bit worried, to be honest, because of some things that happened during the recruiting process, but I’ve had such positive interactions since then.”) If they bite, then you could explain the situation. Stick to the facts and avoid blaming anyone.
Alternatively (or additionally), you could find some other sources. Check with your friends to see if anyone has a contact at the company. Or, if it’s a big enough company, you might be able to find some information about the culture online. Remember, though, there’s a vocal minority and it’s usually negative. Take things with a grain of salt.
~Gayle
Big or Little
Dear Gayle,
I need some career advice. I’m graduating from college, and I’m trying to decide between two offers. One is from my friend’s start-up—I’d be employee number four—and the other is from Amazon. I keep going back and forth. What should I do?
~L. R.
Dear L.R.,
Here is my humble advice: spend one year at Amazon, and then go to your friend’s start-up—unless, of course, you think the start-up opportunity is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
Let me explain.
Start-up opportunities will come by all the time. Trust me. Even if you have no interest in ever working at a start-up, you’ll still have people banging on your door asking you to join them. You aren’t giving up your chance to go to a start-up, you’re just delaying it.
When you turn down Amazon’s offer, you’re giving up a lot. You’re giving up the “you’re good” nod people will give when they see your résumé. You’re giving up the opportunity to learn how “real” software development (with code reviews, style guidelines, and all that) works. And you’re giving up the chance to get a “freebie” pass to quit a job after a short amount of time. No one will think it’s funny that a college hire quit his Big Company job to go to Little Company after just a year. Joining Big Company for just a year a bit later in your career will look a bit odd.
So, unless your friend’s start-up is the next Facebook, you should go to Amazon. All you need is a year, and then you can freely leave.
~Gayle
On the Job
If it feels like the interview cycle never stops, that’s because it doesn’t. You need to start thinking about your next career jump on your first day at the current job. What will you do? When will you switch positions? Will you stay at your company or go to a new one?
Most new employees are extremely focused on creating great work, but that’s only half the battle. To get promoted or get a nice, fat raise, you do (hopefully) need to execute on your responsibilities very well. But you also must build strong relationships, understand your weaknesses, and position yourself to make important accomplishments for the company.
Additionally, you need to know where you want to go to next. What’s the point in slaving to become the best darn software engineer you can be if you want to become a program manager?
Your Career Path
The first year that Christine joined Amazon, she was thrilled. Great team. Great pay. And a company that most people would kill to work for. The second year was the same, as was the third and fourth year. She loved it there. Why would she leave? The dramatic rise of the stock price didn’t hurt either.
By year five, she was finally ready for a change and started shopping her résumé around. She realized then what far too many people do: she didn’t really need those extra few years at Amazon. She could have just left after two years and been in almost the same position. Oops.
It’s easy to get sucked into a big company and let the years fly by blissfully unaware. This is why it’s important to map out your career early and to check in on it often.
Define Your Career Path
Having a written career path will ensure that you understand, up front, how long you intend to be at a company and what you believe you’ll get out of it. Your plans may change, of course, either because you can actually move faster than you had originally thought or because your goals changed. In that case, simply redefine your career path.
Your career path will force you to rethink that extra year: are you really going to get something new out of the job? It will also highlight what background you need to make the next jump.
Your plan should stretch at least 7 to 10 years in the future.
Depending on your manager and your field, you could consider sharing your desired path with your supervisors (or at least a tweaked one expressing interest in moving up at the company). Your supervisors will be in an excellent position to help you acquire the desired experience.
Make Your Successes Known
No one likes a person who gloats about everything they’ve done, but at the same time, you won’t advance if people don’t know about your successes. Here are a few tactics to publicize your accomplishments without turning off your teammates:
- Send your manager regular updates.
Keith from Google e-mails his manager an update before their regular one-on-one meetings. “I describe what I’ve accomplished in the past week and what problems I experienced doing so. This not only helps to make our meetings more efficient, but it also helps to create a record each week of what I’ve accomplished. This comes in handy during review time,” Keith says. - Set team goals (and update them).
Encourage your team to set weekly goals, and send a weekly e-mail with the team’s progress. This will allow you to highlight your progress, in addition to that of the rest of your team. - Applaud your teammates.
Doing well does not mean your teammates have to do poorly. In fact, if you go out of your way to publicly praise your teammates, they are less likely to feel competitive or angry when you mention yours.
The common theme is to have a
reason
to mention your progress. No one likes someone who shows off for no reason, and getting too close to this will inflame the competitive spirit of your teammates.
Managing the Review Process
Many people have a love/hate relationship with the semiannual reviews. We understand that companies have to do them, and we may even look forward to them, as they’re our chance to get promoted. But, still, we get slapped with so-called constructive criticism, and we have to write extensive comments about everything we’ve done over the past six months to a year.
Additionally, reviews are inevitably biased toward your most recent work since that’s freshest in people’s minds. To make the most of the review process, try the following tips.
1. Track Your Accomplishments as You Go
If you’ve decided to e-mail your manager with your weekly progress, then great! You may not even need to do this at all. Otherwise, it may help to have an easily accessible file where you list your biggest accomplishments.
When one task is more or less wrapped up, write up your review-ready blurb right then and there. You’ll be able to remember all the details, hardest parts, and lessons learned much better than you will after several months have passed.
If you’ve been storing this file on your work computer and you leave the company, consider taking this file with you. You’ll want it for your résumé or for your interview preparation.
2. Quantify the Results
Much like on your résumé, you will also want to quantify your accomplishments for your review. The earlier you collect this information, the better. Imagine how much better a statement like “implemented performance improvements, resulting in a 17 percent reduction in costs” sounds than a vague statement like “implemented performance improvements.” If you can’t quantify the result, then you should at least record any impact or comments people had.
3. Ask Early for Feedback—and Get It in Writing
After I was blindsided by a midsummer internship review at Microsoft, my HR representative encouraged me to ask for more feedback, and to do so more regularly. That was the last thing I wanted to do, but I did as she’d advised. In fact, I asked my mentor every two weeks for feedback.
Good news—I was doing great! I had corrected the one “issue” from my midsummer review (not submitting my code often enough), and I was clearly on track to get an offer at the end of the summer.
My final review started off just as I had expected. My mentor, with whom I worked the most closely, discussed all the great work I did, and had little to no negative comments. I was thrilled. Then came my manager’s section: I would not be getting an offer for three reasons. First, I had missed key deadlines. Second, my code had “several significant bugs.” Third, I was not sufficiently boastful about my work.
I was stunned. This directly contradicted my mentor’s continuous feedback and review comments, as well as my office mate’s comments.
Thanks to my HR manager’s earlier advice, I had the data to fight this. I appealed to a higher authority—the hiring manager—and told him what had happened. I had no interest in rejoining the team after this experience, but company policies dictate that if “your” team doesn’t give you an offer, you can’t reinterview for a year.
I’ll never know what my manager’s issue with me exactly was (though I have my theories), but he quickly backed down. It turned out he’d be happy to see me back at the company—just not on his team. Hmm. Well, that was just fine with me.
The constant feedback from my mentor saved me. I knew exactly how I was performing at all times. Had I not known that, I might have acquiesced to the unreasonable feedback.
Constant feedback will also enable you to correct issues early on, before they come up in your performance evaluation. And they’re likely to be more reliable, as other evaluations will apply more weight to recent events.
Play a Bit of Politics: Build Strong Relationships
We may hate the office politics, but what can you do? They’re a fact of life. In order to get ahead, people need to like you, or, depending on the position, at least respect you. This is especially true if you hope to be promoted to a team lead or manager position.
Being well liked doesn’t mean you need to be Mr. or Ms. Popular. You don’t have to slick your hair back into a pretty blond ponytail and wear a short cheerleader’s skirt (in fact, please don’t).
Being well liked just means being a great team player. Make an effort to do the following:
- Help others.
Chip in to help the new guy, or discreetly help a struggling coworker. It’ll earn the respect and appreciation of others. - Be supportive and positive.
Good moods are infectious. Keeping a smile on your face and being positive about changes in the team or company will make people want to be around you. Plus, no one will really want to bad-mouth the guy who’s nice to everyone. - Give credit.
When a coworker does something impressive, be the one to shoot out an e-mail to the team congratulating her. Or if people praise you for something where the applause really should be shared, make a point of acknowledging your partner’s help. You may be downgrading your own work to a small degree, but such kindness will easily be repaid. - Appeal to egos.
Everyone wants to feel important and valued; give your coworkers what they want here. Show them that you want to learn from them and that you think they’re smart and insightful (even when you’re not so sure). - Shut up and listen.
Sometimes, we disagree with our coworkers so strongly that we want to scream. In these cases, the best thing you can do is to just listen. This will show them that you understand their perspective and that you value it. They’ll likely return the favor by listening to you.
Those with strong relationships are not only perceived better, but they also tend to be more effective performers because they know how to get team support.