One of the challenges of changing jobs in a tough market like this is the feeling of desperation that can come over you. You might jump on any offer for fear that it's the only one you're going to get.
I'd rather not see you do that but only YOU can make that choice in the moment. I can tell you though that if you've got alarm bells going off telling you not to take the job you should listen to them. If you feel you've GOT to take the job offered, start your job but keep searching. Just be extra careful and quiet about it.
Here are some things to look for to judge the culture of the company and help you figure out if you're going to be happy there or not.
1. What's the application experience like? How are you treated as an applicant? Does the company take steps to acknowledge they've received your resume? Is their website full of useful information and easy to navigate or is it just full of fluff and useless, over-used statements like "our people are important to us." Yawn. When you're contacted by someone are you treated with courtesy and friendliness? Do you get a rejection letter when you're not selected? Everything you experience is communicating a message about the prospective company and if they mistreat you before you even START working there what will life be like once you're an insider?
2. The interview experience. Interviews are inherently stressful. Do the various people you meet with make some attempt to make you comfortable? I once interviewed with a hospital administrator on what was the hottest day of the year. She sat in front of me with a big glass of ice water. She never offered me anything. Did she have to? No. But it would have conveyed she was a nice person. The interview went downhill from there. Do you interview with peers and colleagues from related departments? That tells you that teamwork is probably valued pretty highly. Everything in the interview process is sending my messages too. What are they telling you?
3. What information do they share freely? You're going to every interview with questions and information you want to find out. Ask some tough questions and see what information you get. I interviewed with the CEO of a large casino hotel who was going on and on about how this place would have a tremendous focus on its employees. I asked him to give me a couple of examples of how he was already putting a focus on employees and what did he mean by focus. He certainly didn't like the questions.
4. What do you see when you're there? Do you see people who look happy to be there or are they miserable? Are the offices sterile or has some attempt been made by the employees to personalize their space? Are clients or customers on property? Do they look happy? Is the property clean, well kept, and modern? If it's dumpy what does that tell you about the cheapskates who run the joint? Check out the restrooms even if you don't need to use them.
5. What do you hear when you're there? Do you hear people laughing? Is there a lot of conversation among the cubes? Do you hear anything that tells you people are angry or tense? What about the customers or clients that are there?
6. What questions are you asked? All of the questions are sending you messages about what's important to the interviewer and to the company. A friend of mine was being interviewed for a VP of HR job. She was working at a place where yelling was commonplace and she wanted to escape. The CEO asked her if she was aggressive. Now she could have just said yes (which wasn't true) or she could have said no. What she said was that she aggressively solved problems but she did that in an assertive, respectful manner because she valued the opinions of others (which was very true). She got the job and discovered her new employer didn't let people yell in meetings. Another client told me he kept being asked questions about business development. That was a bigger issue than the headhunter had said it was.
Only you can decide if you've got no other option but to take an offer from a company that's not your first choice. Keep your resume up-to-date and continue your search if you do that. Life's too short and work is too important to our overall satisfaction to stay for long at a place that stinks.
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