You have finally landed a job offer letter after having interviews with numerous companies. Everything feels great and you are ecstatic. Why would you not be? After all, the tiresome process of applying for jobs and running around for interviews is behind you. Congratulations! This calls for a celebration!
Given how difficult landing a decent job is in this job market, it is natural for you to be happy. After all, the hard days of showing up for back to back interviews are over. However, don’t give in to the temptation of accepting the job offer right away. Just like you marketed your skills to the employer during the interview, it is their turn now to sell their offer to you. This means now is the time when you can ask all those questions that you couldn’t ask at the time of the interview because you wanted to avoid coming across as greedy or pushy. To make things easy for you, we have compiled a list of top seven questions you must ask your hiring manager before signing the dotted line on the offer letter.
Q1. What would your title be?
If often happens that the offer letter states a job title different from what you have applied for. It can be good or it can also be bad for you. It can be good in cases where you are offered a position higher in the department that you had actually interviewed for. To state a bad example, let’s say that you got the job in a department for which you didn’t apply for and has no prior experience about the nature of work. Whatever the case may be, it is important that you discuss your job title before accepting the offer letter.
Q2. Who would you be reporting to?
Chances are that your immediate reporting manager may have been one of the interviewers, but the reporting structures aren’t always clear – make sure you know how you fit in within the company’s structure.
Q3. What would be included in your day to day work responsibilities?
Job descriptions don’t always give away much. Yes, you must have discussed this at the time of the interview, but then you discussed the same in a lot of other interviews as well. Now we are not questioning your memory, but it is still better to be doubly sure about your work responsibilities before accepting the job offer.
Q4. What would be the work hours, shift timings and off days?
You need this information for a number of reasons. Companies follow different shift timings depending upon the number of hours they require the employees to work each day. Your daily work hours also determine the number of days off you will get in a week. You need this information to check whether or not you can manage the shift assigned to you keeping in mind the daily commute from your home.
Q5. What parameters will you be judged on at the time of appraisals?
While you may be clear about what your day to day work responsibilities would be, it is important to be equally clear about the ultimate goal towards which you would be working each day. You need to know what is expected out of you and how you would be judged at the time of performance evaluations.
Q6. Would you be required to travel?
Some profiles require employees to travel. If your new job falls under this category, be sure about the frequency of these travels, the amount provided by the company to sponsor them as well as the reimbursement policies in detail before taking the final call.
Q7. Is there a scope for further growth in the department that you will be joining?
Most probably you will get a vague answer to this question. But there is no harm in asking. Asking such a question will give your hiring manager an impression that you are ambitious and there is no employer who doesn’t want to add an ambitious resource to the team.
When you have checked out each of these questions on your list, you will find yourself thoroughly aware about the deal being offered to you and the decision to whether or not you should accept the offer will become easy.
About Megha Raizada –
Megha Raizada is a professional writer working with the premium job portal Naukrigulf.com. She has a keen interest in the global job market, but also loves to keep a track of everything interesting happening around the globe. You can reach her at Twitter and Google+.
