<p>I would like to get a prospective from a seasoned engineering professional that has been on both sides of the hiring process..</p>
<p>if an intern accepted an offer 3 weeks ago and withdraws from it now saying that they simply received another opportunity that is too good to pass up...</p>
<p>what are your actions/response/judgement to this kind of situation....does this happen a lot too??</p>
<p>Well I’m not seasoned lol, but I’ll give you my opinion.</p>
<p>If you have another offer that you’d rather take, take it. Think long and hard about this company, would they lay you off if it were in their best interest?</p>
<p>The person would be persona non grata at the company.</p>
<p>The company offered you a position and held onto a few other candidates in case you turned them down. Then you accepted so they let the other candidates go. They may or may not have another shot at getting those candidates back. Your word should be good - if it isn’t, hopefully (for your sake) it doesn’t get around.</p>
<p>It you’re trying to maintain your integrity, then you stay with this company.</p>
<p>If you want to take the better offer, then take it, though there’s always the potential for this to come back and haunt you later on. Do you want to risk your reputation for something that can potentially only be 3 months of employment? Is this a small industry where many people know each other?</p>
<p>Look at your question from another perspective. Say the company that offered you the internship contacted you 3 weeks later and said the offer was being withdrawn because they found someone they liked better. How would you like that? And consider the fact that the person(s) in that company that selected you now have egg on their face(s). Also, not only you but anybody applying from your school in the future will be viewed with a jaundiced eye. And if your school had anything to do with arranging the internship, you would be in deep s**t with them too, and deservedly so.</p>
<p>What PurdueFrank describes is exactly correct. If there was an economic change since they originally offered you the job, the company very likely would retract the job offer they extended you. And I have known companies that laid off the interns in the middle of summer because of por economic conditions. (That’s really bad to lay someone off 45 days before they are finished anyway).</p>
<p>Employers should expect that this will happen to a certain percentage of interns. You essentially need a job in the summer and only have three months to work and are solicting a number of different opportunities. There are a lot of reasons why a person might do one job over another.</p>
<p>However, if you do retract your offer, you can plan on not getting an offer from them in the future as either an intern or a full time employee. It should be a company that you’re not interested in working for in the future.</p>
<p>(I once agreed to work at a company for the summer and then changed my mind when a better opportunity came along. I never asked the first company for a job again.)</p>
<p>I was offered a job in Austin in May of 1986, a few months before I was to finish my master’s degree. Then oil prices fell from $27/barrel to $13/barrel, and the company had to rescind the offer. Bummed me out, but I knew they couldn’t do anything about it. After we moved to Maine and the economy improved, the company tried to convince me to move back to work for them and I said, no, thanks.</p>
<p>BCEagle, Toblin, Ken285, </p>
<p>I can appreciate what you are saying…I would like to add some details and then see if it changes your advice any. </p>
<p>The difference between these two companies is very large…the one I accepted pays low, is completely unrelated to what I want to do (machine design), and is not really an engineering position; I’ll be the ‘cad monkey’ for them in the drafting dept. </p>
<p>This new opportunity is a small consulting firm that does exactly what I want to do (thermal fluid sciences), energy efficiency for alternative and traditional energy production processes…the position will entail real engineering duties</p>
<p>Taking these details into account, does your advice change at all?</p>
<p>Note: if you are or have been a hiring manager or something please note this…it is important for me to get the perspective from the other side the situation in terms of actions/response/judgement</p>
<p>In my opinion, being a CAD monkey for the summer can be a good thing. It gives you on-the-job experience in CAD and a lot of employers want somebody who can drive CAD. (Yes, all of your classmates can operate a CAD program. A lot of adults can’t and it is still seen a special skill that not all engineers have.) I actually got into my current position because I have skill at using CAD.</p>
<p>Beyond the program, you’ll learn a lot about drafting which is very good knowledge to have and something that a lot of engineers can’t do.</p>
<p>You’ve also described it as a manufacturing / machine design company which is what a lot of engineers work in (including those at my company.) </p>
<p>I’m biased because I worked at two different small companies and had a bad experience. Found they were run by people with limited honesty and weren’t upfront with me about things. Found what they told me about the company and what I found out were two completely different things. Your experience may be different.</p>
<p>I’ve been a hiring manager before and have done a lot of candidate interviewing. I’ve also seen people essentially blacklisted in the industry (there are three main companies that do what we did back then) for playing games (trying to recruit before the last day, playing salaries off from one company to another, etc.).</p>
<p>I’ve been in the situation where I took another job and then the current company offered me more than the new company or offered to pay high rates for consulting work. I always took the new job and only did the consulting with written permission from the new employer. It’s your decision and I don’t know what the business is like in your area.</p>
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<p>Blacklisting is illegal and employers that engage in that tactit can be sued for defamation.</p>
<p>I’m not saying it doesn’t happen, but I’d sure advise against the practice if I were the company’s attorney.</p>
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<p>In a small community where the hiring managers know their counterparts at other companies, people talk.</p>
<p>And people sue.</p>
<p>Just like companies can’t collude on prices even though they might know each other, companies risk lawsuits by talking about specific employees to other employers. It happens but I would advise against it.</p>
<p>Do what you think is best for you. Companies always look out for their best interests, why should you do any different?</p>
<p>I think you’re entitled to ask the company their thoughts on the matter. Just be honest with them. Tell them you’ve been offered something else and would rather do that, but that since you’ve already accepted their offer that you will honor the arrangement if it’s too late for them to find someone else.</p>
<p>The worst case scenario is that they insist you should work for them, and that’s not so bad, right? You wouldn’t have accepted if you didn’t want to do it. Odds are they’ll tell you that it’s fine and you can pursue your interests without even the possibility of developing a reputation in the community as fickle.</p>
<p>I’d be wary of relying on defamation laws to protect your reputation. As long as they’re telling the truth - which they can prove, of course - facts can have a funny way of reaching their destination. Also, as far as I know, blacklisting refers specifically to deliberate attempts to prevent employment, and deliberation may be difficult to prove. It’s all very tricky and the best way to maintain integrity isn’t by relying on laws which give people the benefit of the doubt, but by trying to make decisions which you can live with.</p>
<p>If you thought it was alright, would you be asking us?</p>
<p>Ive seen companies retract intern offers and co-op offers. Although they cited economic reasons, would the company honestly have gone under because they kept a couple interns on the payroll? No. If you read the bottom of your letter of intent theres a 99% chance it says the offer can be revoked at anytime, with or without reason by either party. This is business, its cutthroat, and most companies wont flinch at the chance to save a penny or make a dollar even if it means saving a penny because your retirement is terminated after 30 years of service, or the penny made comes from a life insurance policy they took out on, you. Sure, youre not going to get another offer from that company but in my opinion and experience Id say the likelihood that it will ever come back to haunt you at another company is slim to none.</p>
<p>My cynical thoughts:
This is a game, and a cruel one at that. You can either learn how to play or live in denial hoping it doesnt happen to you. Corporations serve their purpose but if I were you Id avoid believing they have your best interest in mind. Use them wisely and plan your life accordingly, same goes for the government.</p>
<p>I don’t think that the argument that they could do it to you, ergo, you can do it to them is a valid one. The fact of the matter is that they haven’t done anything to you yet, except offer you a position. Clearly you liked something about them, and they’re people like you.</p>
<p>Integrity isn’t about doing the expedient thing, at least, that’s not how I’m approaching it. You can realize that the world is a sad and shabby place and still try to do the right thing… maybe that’s its own reward.</p>
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<p>No they aren’t. They are a business that makes business decisions. </p>
<p>I’m not saying that a person should renege out of a decision like this (and advised the OP not do in a pm) but I don’t think anybody should get caught up pretending that the business has feelings. The people that work there do but the business does not.</p>
<p>Here’s a couple examples of being unfair to a company:
<p>Here’s a couple ways of a company being unfair to you:
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<p>Thats a personal choice, not a matter of validity. </p>
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<p>Thats a large assumption and far from a fact. While I dont want to get into much larger issues than the one at hand, nearly every large company in the country has impacted you either directly or indirectly through their actions. </p>
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<p>Once again, the right thing here is an opinion.</p>
<p>“No they aren’t.”
<p>“They are a business that makes business decisions.”
<p>“that the business has feelings”
<p>I think the real lesson here is that you should be careful when you accept a position somewhere. None of us can know what the effects of our decisions will be. There’s some judgment involved, and sometimes you might make mistakes. That being said, I’ll repeat what I have already said here… if the OP really thought it was alright, would he be here asking us? In general, I would advise anybody to err on the side of caution. That is, if you care about being an ethical person.</p>
<p>Sure, companies may fire you and lead you on. You might quit all of a sudden for a better job or lead them on in interviews yourself. People you pass on the street might kill you… but at the end of the day, does that give you the right to mace him? </p>
<p>I still don’t see what objection there is to being honest about it with the employer. Are there any thoughts on this possibility?</p>