How to reject your offer?

This blog posting is all about how you have to reject your offer letter in an acceptable manner.

Let us assume that you’ve got an excellent offer in terms of various aspects and the salary increase is almost 50% from your current salary. I am sure you must be very excited and what do you think are the various options you could be looking after getting such an offer?

a) Complete your notice period and join your next employer

b) Show up your offer to the current employer and negotiate for better salary, may be more than 50%.

c) Start attending interviews in various other companies, show your new offer (50% increase) and try to get an offer that could be much better than 50% salary increase.

Of course, one more that can possible happen, when you resign your current job is, your current employer may try retain you by giving you a counter offer.

I know that these options may sounds little crazy but the fact is not many really look at option-a.

So what else do they do?  

Yes. Many look at option –c or in sometimes, option –b. 

Offer rejection ratio:

It refers to the percentage of selected candidates dropping out and not joining as expected. While this cannot be zero in any recruitment drive in any industry, it’s certainly at a higher level especially in IT/ITes industries, may be to the extent of 25% to 30%. May be comparatively less in manufacturing industries. Candidates dropping out in the last minute or not showing up on the expected date of joining has become very common. This is even after continuous follow ups and firm commitment from the candidate to join.

In one of the HR forms, a sr. leader for a leading recruitment organization was sharing his recruitment experience that a V P candidate who was supposed to join on a particular date did not show up. He just sent a text (SMS) stating that he got better offer and he was not joining and switched off his mobile.  I am sure this really sounds crazy. However, if you’ve handled recruitment, you can certainly relate to this story. 

How it affects the Business:

Let us assume that you spend two months to select a candidate and wait for another 3 months for him to complete his notice period before joining. When the candidate does not show up or drops out in the last minute, you’ve already 5 months and you have to start the  process once again which means a waiting period of another 5 months. This is certainly going to affect the Business of any organization.

Legal aspects: I’ve read recently that a company Mumbai has introduced a penalty clause to the extent of 5% for not showing up after accepting the offer. So you need to think twice before accepting the offer.  This practice does sound uncommon India but I think many could follow the suit.

So how to reject your offer:

# Don’t accept an offer just to reject it later. ie, don’t get an offer to get counter offer from your current employer or don’t hunt for another offer during your notice period.

# If your current employer is negotiating to retain you, be transparent about it with your prospective employer.

# And finanlly, even if you have to reject an offer for any reasons beyond your control, do it ASAP, not in the last minute, so your prospective employer would not get to waste 2-3 months to begin the sourcing right from the beginning.

And finally, when Flipkart or any corporate differs the date of joining, a big hue and cry is made which is justifiable.  But when candidates don’t show up on the joining date, it goes unnoticed.  As an employee, we should also reciprocate what we expect from our employer. Unless we do that, we don’t have any right to talk about the employers.

Have you ever rejected any offer that you’ve got ? Do share your experience. 

diD yOU enJOY ReADinG ThIS ArTIcLE? 

                                  If yES, 

yOU maY sHAre it wiTH Your FriENds tOO