Submitted by Drusty87 on
in
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I have been verbally offered a position with a company last Thursday and was told I would be getting the written offer letter by last Friday. I had not received it until Wednesday morning (I was also supposed to make the decision by Wednesday morning) and it contained two errors. It is currently Wednesday afternoon and I still have not received the revised version.
The reason I am even writing this topic is because I am going on a 2-week vacation starting next Monday. I have told the company who has offered me a position that I may need 2 weeks after I come back from vacation to stay at my current employment. I know that I should tell my current company as soon as it is finalized, but I am trying to avoid telling them at the absolute last second since I know it will come as a surprise. I have made this clear to the internal recruiter who told me I would have the letter last week.
I am getting upset because I don't want to leave on bad terms (I have only been at this company for 5 months and the company offering me a position was one that I was interviewing with before accepting my current position and they asked me to come back to interview for a different position). I wanted to tell them that I was leaving early this week, but the recruiter is making that impossible, how do I express my feelings to the recruiter. I feel as though she is making me burn bridges by only giving me 1 or 2 days before I leave for my 2 week long vacation to tell my current employers. It needs to be a priority and it doesn't seem like it is. I know she is busy, but given my situation and her promises, I should have received an offer letter days ago. Please help, I need to email her today to get it???
You only control your own decisions
You can't make the recruiter move any quicker than they would otherwise. You've made it clear the constraints you're working with; if they decide not to work in with those, so be it. The recruiter is by no means *making* you burn bridges; if you decide to do that, you have to own that decision.
There's a third option here that you haven't mentioned considering: cancel the vacation. Yes, it's a hard choice, but if success were all easy choices everyone would be successful. Alternately, you may need to push back the start date on your offer to ensure you leave your current company professionally. If your new job doesn't want you to respect your current employer, it says something uncomplimentary about their own standards of acceptable behaviour.
Best of luck; it's not an easy position to be in, but I'm confident you'll make an effective and professional choice.
My experience has been that
My experience has been that it takes longer to receive an offer letter takes than most people realize. The HR person responsible for the letters is usually on vacation, or some emergency came up and the only person who can approve a new hire is unavailable, or the hiring manager suddenly realizes that there is a new policy/hoop to jump through before an offer letter can be sent. There is always something.
This leaves you caught between the excitement of a new job and the anxiety of waiting for the letter, all while not being able to say anything to your colleagues and friends. The best thing you can do is focus on your current job and do good work while you are still there. You can also quietly/discretely start preparing documentation of where you are with your projects, organizing files and anything else that you will need to hand over to someone else.
I've had some down to the wire offer letters (ie: job starts on Monday, final letter arrives on Friday and I'm moving to the new city on Saturday) and it worked out. The letter will come. It will all work out.
You may want to ask the recruiter if your start date can be X weeks from receipt of the letter. For the organizations that are willing to do this, it gives them a little breathing room to work through all of their processes.
Yep, it looks to me like you
Yep, it looks to me like you have to renegotiate the start date with the new company so you can stay longer at the old one and/or change/cancel the holiday.
Thank You
It all did work out (although, I still wish it had a bit sooner) and I let my company know ASAP even though it was awkward timing being 2 days before a 2-week vacation. I have about a week left at my old company, a 4 day break and then I'm off to the new company with I am very excited about. Thanks, again!