Factors to consider when accepting a job offer

The day I graduated college, I was faced with a decision to choose between two good job offers. Each of the jobs had its pros and its cons, but it seemed like they were perfectly balanced - making my decision nearly impossible. My decision would also sway depending on my mood, the people I was talking to at the time, or the books or articles I was reading. Although having to decide between two job offers is a good problem to have, the decision nonetheless required me to take a systematic approach.

I finally sat down with a piece of paper and pen and decided to write down all the factors that I was considering in the decision. I then went down my list of factors and assigned a priority to each, on a scale of 1-5, 5 being the most important and 1 being the least important. A week later I revisited my priorities and made any necessary changes to the priorities after talking to people, reading articles, etc. I then assigned a score on a scale of 1-5, 5 being the best and 1 being the worst, to how well each of the jobs met those factors. I multiplied the priority by the score, added up the list, and found that the highest-scoring job was the right choice.

While reviewing my list below, notice that I did not include salary as one of the factors. Money can blind you while making the correct career decision. To me, money is too volatile and uncertain to be considered a good factor. Once you totaled your score and know who the clear winner is, you can then examine the cost/ benefit to making your choice. People tend to heavily way salary when starting their first job, because it seems so appealing and exciting to them. So my suggestion is to exclude starting salary from your factors and focus on everything else. And remember, these are the the factors that I considered important.  You should modify the factors to accurately reflect what's important to you.

	Priority	Score A	Priority * Score A
Towards your career goals	5	4	20
Fitting in with the culture company	4	4	16
Benefits/ Options/ Bonuses	3	4	12
Cost of living in area	3	2	6
Commuting distances and difficulty	4	5	20
Promotion factors and room for growth	5	5	25
Getting along with coworkers	3	4	12
Your job interesting	5	3	15
Job security	3	3	9
Job location	1	3	3
Job Travel	1	5	5
Job stress & responsibility	2	4	8
Learning opportunities	2	4	8
Educational benefits	3	2	6
TOTAL			165

Additional Resources:
Download Scoring.xls

Another List of Factors

Comments

[Bilal]

A very very useful post, however incomplete. The following information complements this post very well:
http://www.cvtips.com/job_interview_job_offer_accept.html