Hi Nie!

The moment when you get a job offer is often sort of a weird moment. First, you feel relieved or even excited that you finally got through the grueling interview process and earned the offer you were going for.

But then, there's a second wave of emotions as you realize it's not quite over yet. You start wondering if there's room to negotiate, how much room there might be, how to even do that process, and lots of other things.

If that's not enough, the offer occasionally comes with a deadline: "We need you to confirm acceptance by such and such date..."

What do you do when you get a job offer with an expiration date? And what if that date is only a day or two away?

A reader wrote in to ask about "exploding offers" (job offers that will expire soon) and how to deal with them.

So, what should you do when a company lights a fuse on your job offer?

Exploding offers

I don’t have material that explicitly covers these. This is part of my style - I cover as many things implicitly as possible and try to cover edge cases with my standard strategies.

For example: My book and courses are about negotiation, but you won’t find the word “anchor” anywhere in them even though “anchoring” is a core negotiation concept. You also won’t find “BATNA” or "meet in the middle" explicitly mentioned. But all of those concepts are very much a part of my overall strategy.

Implicitly covered in my strategy (by design)

Exploding offers are also accounted for, just not explicitly. The first thing I recommend after you receive any offer is to ask for time to consider it. It’s first thing I coach my clients to do. You need time to think, talk it over, etc. This is really important.

Here's a short script you can use to do this:

"Thanks for the offer—I really appreciate it! If you don't mind, I would like to take a day or two to consider everything before I respond. Also, would you mind emailing me a summary of the numbers we discussed? I don't need anything formal—bullet points is fine—and I just want to make sure I heard everything correctly."

From there, I prefer to move the negotiation forward and this is easier with my strategy because I don’t suggest explicitly sharing the details of competing offers among firms. I do think it’s a good idea to disclose competing offers in general, but not the details of those offers.

This way, folks can get to the thing that matters - What’s the best possible offer I can get at this firm? - as quickly as possible.

Part of responding to an exploding offer is asking for time. There's also counter offering and discussing the final details. All of these things take time and they almost always reset the shot clock at every step.

All that to say: I don’t explicitly discuss exploding offers, but they are addressed implicitly in my strategy, which is to get to the final and best offer for each opportunity as quickly as possible, syncing up your other negotiations along the way if you're talking to multiple firms.

One last thing on this: One reason I like to just negotiate the comp package up front is that it leaves out the “timeline” aspect of the negotiation, which the company may use as leverage. I prefer to say, “Ok, here’s the best and final comp package I can negotiate - thanks for working with me. Now, I need some time to think this over and talk about it with my family before I make my final decision about which opportunity is best for me. Is that ok?”

Once they’ve gone through the entire negotiation with you, they’re very likely to basically give you whatever you need in terms of time.

Keep this handy for the next time you get a job offer with an expiration date - it could be a lifeline in a pressure-filled situation!

All the best

Josh