There is some really bad advice in here.<p>When declining an offer, there is almost <i>never</i> anything to be gained from explaining your rationale. Be gracious (i.e. thank the person who delivered the offer to you), indicate that you have decided to pursue another opportunity and move on.<p>If you feel the need to explain your decision, it can and likely will be misconstrued. "I have decided to accept a competing offer that I feel best fits my current professional and personal goals" may be read as "I don't believe your organization can support my professional and personal goals." If you write "I do not believe that I am a good cultural fit for the organization", somebody is likely to interpret that as "Your culture sucks."<p>Additionally, it rarely makes sense to notify everybody involved in the interviewing process of your decision not to accept an offer. After your initial interviews, assuming you are still considering the opportunity, you should send a thank you note to the people you met with, as appropriate. Unless you had a relationship with one of these individuals before your interviews, further communication regarding your decision to decline an offer is probably not going to be to your benefit, particularly if you have the hubris to invite the other party "to let you know if you can ever do anything to help them reach their goals." <i>Really?</i><p>Finally, consider that your dealings with others in the context of a job search will probably be more enjoyable and well-received if you don't pretend that you have a "personal brand" instead of a <i>reputation</i>.
Wow... It's reading articles like this that makes me very pleased that I decided to decline an offer to move to the USA a couple of years back.<p>"Personal brand"? Thank you letters to recruiters? "Thank you for your guidance and support"...<p>I can't be the only British person to read this article and feel a little bit sickened by the cloying falseness of the language used here, it's one of the main reasons why I no longer consider job offers from big US companies - I like to work with people who tell me what they think, not what they think I want to hear.<p>Apologies for this sounding like an anti-American rant, I don't mean it in that way, but there is something very wrong with the false-friendly, euphemistic speech used by a lot of people and organisations over that side of the pond. I think a lot of it is really just "please-don't-sue-me" speech.
I hate to comment only on details and not on the actual content itself, but the aggressive use of bold text led me to read only the bold text. I didn't even bother to give the full text a chance. I saw typography that seemed geared toward the skimmer, so I skimmed. I'm not sure if that's the desired result, but that's the result it had on me.
If VC's don't give founders a "no" (in case the situation changes, the startup takes off) then why would you as an employee?<p>Say you have 30 offers on the table. What's to be had by saying "no" to 29 of them instead of just "yes" to 1 and not replying to the rest?<p>If that 1 drops out you now have 29 pending job offers.<p>If you "declined" the rest, you now have what pending?
This all looks like great advice, I'd just add that a phone call should be encouraged whenever you feel you have a suitable relationship with the recruiter to call him/her directly. Especially if you're rejecting a company that you could see yourself working for/with at a later date. A phone call is much more personal, and has the added benefit of being more "final". While an email-reply chain can drag on for days or weeks, a phone call can normally settle most issues in one shot. Some people find a phone call more unnerving but I actually prefer it to agonizing over email wording, sending a long email, and waiting for the asynchronous reply that may never come.<p>Note that I have very little experience in the job market, this is more just a social recommendation and reflects some feedback I got from recruiters and friends who have been in this situation.
I think you should also try to cover how to respond when the reason for declining an offer is low compensation.<p>Also, there seems to be some character encoding issues in the text.
"You should decline the offer as soon as you have accepted another offer or made a definitive decision not to accept."<p>"In rare cases, your final decision (either verbal or written) may trigger a decision to negotiate with you. In case you are given the opportunity to obtain what you want from the offer, you should be prepared to conduct the negotiation."<p>I understand that this is rare, but I wonder if you've really thought the scenario through. You've already accepted job offer A, but now you're negotiating job offer B? How would you explain your behavior to the first company if you end up taking the second offer?
It's funny because if the company didn't want you they they would simply not reply, yet you are expected to show a much greater level of care when dealing with them.