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Phase Six: Evaluate and Accept Your Offer
At last, you are nearing the culmination of your job search journey. You have surmounted many challenges, learned much about yourself and the job market, and marketed yourself successfully to prospective employers. At last, you have received one or more offers. So you must decide if you would like to accept one. The fruit of your efforts, the attainment of a post-graduate career, seems near.
This is a decision that will influence many aspects of your life for years to come. It is not, therefore, a judgment that should be made hastily. Your work is not completed quite yet. Before accepting an offer, the wise job seeker researches and evaluates a number of important factors.
Salary, and the rest of the compensation package, will of course be one of the important factors you will want to consider. Salary consistently ranks between the sixth and tenth most important factors in most populations surveyed. Salary is only one of a number of consequential factors; you must determine what factors are important to you based on your own value structure.
In this phase, we will address the salary issue from two points of view: evaluating and negotiating. To evaluate and negotiate a job offer, you will need both information and skills.
Information is gathered through research. The wise job seeker will accumulate information about typical salaries and salary ranges in the functional area, industry, and/or company; about cost-of-living in various locations; about how closely the offers match your goals, interests, and values; about benefits, bonuses, commissions, and perks.
To negotiate, you will need excellent communication skills. The better you are at communicating your value, achievements, and qualifications, the greater will be the status, position, money, and extras with which you may be rewarded.
To assist you in the evaluating, researching and negotiating phase of your job search process, we have assembled the following resources:
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