My daughter is a senior graduating next May. There is no formal on-campus recruitment process for companies in her industry but a couple who seem to hire a good number of grads from her college have already visited, done second interviews via Skype and even made invitations for site visits. One of her good friends did a site visit last week, was offered a job on Friday and was told to respond by next Tuesday. He accepted the job although he’s not had a chance to apply to the companies he “really wanted.”
Is this a common practice? Seems to me it’s disservice to the student (who possibly forgoes other opportunities) and the employer (who’s locked in someone who may ultimately not be a good fit).
How should a student respond to these early offers? My daughter does a site visit next week with a company that is on her B-list and I’d hate to see her accept it five months before graduation.
Funny, but this is the last problem I ever thought I’d have!
She should check with her career counseling office. Many career counseling offices have guidelines applicable to recruiting employers that require that offers be open for a minimum of something more like 30 days, and specifically prohibit exploding offers. If you look online, the guidelines might be on the career counseling website. If the recruiting in this case was entirely off campus, then the employer may be outside the scope of these guidelines though.
I know that Amazon makes job offers to interns who work over the summer and require them to make a decision within days (even though they have a full senior year to go and most likely have not even applied to another job yet.) I know leaving a summer internship with an offer for the following year when you graduate is nice - I wonder if it means that many student settle for “the bird in the hand” instead of pursuing all their options.
If she doesn’t want the job she shouldn’t take it. That’s the way it works in the working world…you go out, you interview, you get an offer and if you don’t like it you keep looking. It’s not going to be like it was for college students where they applied a bunch of colleges and then got a bunch of offers to compare. She can possible hold them off for a few days maybe even a couple weeks, but there are probably dozens if not more standing in line behind her waiting for an offer. It’s tough, but that is how it works. I doubt the company would make an offer to someone they “didn’t think would be a good fit.” She needs to figure out if she’s a good fit and if the compensation is reasonable for a newly minted college grad.
I share @jrpar 's concern. There are disreputable firms out there who prey on collegians. The career office should be told of this practice and they should be able to vet them. Tell your daughter to tell her friend to get 4-5 people’s contact info who were new college grads and joined the company in the last recruiting season. A reputable company will send that info right away. One that’s not – or treats these newly captured employees poorly, won’t. Then steer clear.
I have had two kids go through this process and both now work for large, national companies. Both companies required my kids to give them an answer within a short period of time - I remember that for my son, it was three weeks. My son did get an extension, but worried at the time that it would be viewed poorly (it worked out okay, and he did take the job). These companies don’t want to be in limbo either - they grab the best kids first, and they know that other companies will want those kids too, so if the kids aren’t going to take the job, they want to offer the job to other candidates or fly more people out to interview or whatever.
Edit: Forgot to say that both kids were offered the jobs in December and January of their senior years.
I don’t think you should get too worked up over the first job out of college. If it’s an attractive offer but not necessarily your first choice company, you can still take the job while planning to move on after a year or two. Don’t be afraid to turn down a bad offer, but don’t be filled with angst over accepting a great offer either.
What I’d really look for is a company in the city you want to live. Graduating seniors should get a relocation package by the hiring company, but relocation packages are much more rare once you’re already in the working world. The company that hired me out of school paid for my move, storage of my stuff for 30 days, and put me up in a hotel for 3 weeks. So just land in the city where your industry is good, then it’ll be easy to switch companies later once you have some solid work experience and references.
I also wouldn’t get hung up on the “name” of a company in general, unless there’s some special reason for a particular industry. There’s probably a hundred places with more upside than somewhere like google or facebook for example.
My daughter has done it twice. She got her first post-college job through on-campus recruiting and had to make a commitment in November.
Five years later, she is now a 2nd-year MBA student, again going through on-campus recruiting. This time, she will have a decision to make by the first week in January.
It’s simply the way it’s done in some industries and at some companies – including some very prestigious ones.
My DD was offered a job last month from a Fortune 20 company. The job starts in June. They gave her 2 weeks to decide and offered a five figure signing bonus. She’s not a rock star student but has excellent experience in her field and is extremely polished.
A lot depends on the contractual arrangement with the employer. DD tells me that some kids accept offers but still interview so I would assume that they aren’t contractually obligated. Early offers are not unusual. Many kids accept post graduation offers from their internships during the summer of their junior year.
The drop-dead offer was a notorious and argued-over practice for clerkships with federal judges a few years ago. It was addressed by a policy directive in theory – cough, cough.
If your student is interested in doing this, it would be a good idea to check the on-campus recruiting policies at the school. There are a lot of rules and regulations in on-campus recruiting – for both employers and students. This may violate them.
My D graduated in 2012 and was faced with the same dilemma. She had an offer in early November and 3 or 4 weeks to respond. At that early time, another few weeks would have not been helpful, as other companies might not have gotten back to her until March. It was a tough economic time for jobs, she took it, and has been very happy there (on the Fortune list of 100 best companies to work for). She did not continue to interview after she accepted the job.
My daughter was asked to decide quickly for the various positions for which she interviewed. They included good, above-board private companies and a very prestigious federal organization. I think she asked one or two of them for extensions, and those were granted.
My S interviewed with Big 4 accounting firms and they had about a 2 week window to accept an offer or not. He was able to get an extension of about 10 days (so he could interview at another company and not jeopardize his offer) by calling one company – he ultimately joined the company that had extended the offer for him.
If it is through your school’s career center then there is usually specific guidelines on how long students should have to make a decision. When D1 was going through job application at her school, firms couldn’t even invite students to go off campus for super day until after a specific day, in order to allow all companies going through the career center to have an opportunity to interview applicants on campus. There was one bulge bracket IB that invited a group students to NYC for their super day (wine and dine them), D1 was one of those students, students and the firm were notified that they were in violation with the terms of agreement. The agreement went both ways. The students were also not allowed to back out of acceptance either.
OP - have your kid check with the school’s career center to see what’s are the guidelines.
Welcome to job hunting. My current employer gives about 3-4 days for a decision and that’s even for mid career people. The thought process for us is that this is that the offer is kind of the last question in the interview process. Can you make a decision? Yes or no.
In this case, since you are no longer in the world of early acceptance, which I despise, the job should be accepted. And keep looking. Can always call back and decline.