How long do you have to evaluate a job offer?

Published by Nitin Kumar on July 29th, 2011

Many job offers will often come with a lot of requirements and specifications that you will need to be well conversant with before moving on to apply for a job. The time that you take to actually read through all this requirements and understand them will depend on the nature of that particular job as well as the benefits it comes with.

Before we even move to how long it should take to evaluate a job offer, it is first important to note what it entails. Job evaluation is simply weighing the amount of work and commitment needed with the benefits that come with it. In other words you are evaluating the value of your prospective job and whether that value is reflected in the salary. In most cases this may be tricky since the emotion created in the prospect of getting that dream job may blind us from seeing the job for what it really is.

The time taken to evaluate a job will depend but in no instance should it surpass three weeks. In many job postings there is a very limited time frame to hire and so you are supposed to decide the value as quick as you can. However, the process will take some of your time since it will involve some very technical and intellectual considerations.

To start with the first step in you process of evaluation should be the requirement and the commitments that is required at the posting and that which you feel will make you do the job better. The options here should be weighed carefully since the choice on your part is very much limited. This is usually the case, in case your job posting is not in line with what you will normally call fundamental requirements and commitments, the question is most cases is not what the requirement should be but how far you are ready to go to compromise with the employer. This is a process that takes time but is all the same very important.

After valuing your requirement and the commitment it requires then you should move to the benefits the salary included. While many will at times focus on the salary alone, the reality is that this is a very small portion of the reward package. The benefits offered to you should be relevant to the exposure of risk that your job may likely expose you to and in case it involves none of this, the reward scheme should also reflect a kind of benefit on some additions outside your job description that you are likely to be engaged in.

Looking now at the salary, what you go for is not the amount but its value relative to the work you are going to do. Salaries are paid for the job and not the experience or qualifications and it is no surprise to find jobs with high expert experience requirements but pay very little. With all said and done, these are processes that should not take you long than three weeks.