Self | Career

Torn Between Job Offers and Too Many Rounds of Interviews

Why a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.

An unexpected phone call came in. It was Richard, the contract manager for my software employer. “Hello my friend, unfortunately it’s not good news. A few years ago, the client let go a swathe of contractors all at once, and they are doing the same thing again. It’s just a fear response to the current economy situation. We would keep you benched for sure if it was just you, but right now there are way too many to keep everyone afloat. I’m terribly sorry about this. I’m certain I can have something ready for you by the end of the month.”

Richard was a younger executive, the owner of a software firm that he had inherited and built up into a real powerhouse in the point of sale world. I liked him immediately as he was friendly and put people at ease. He was my kind of leader, leading from the front lines at focus rooms and volunteer events, instead of from atop a skyscraper in an austere board room. He was a true advocate for the people in his organization, continuing to message me long after I had been hired just to check in.

He made good on his promise and set me up with a few interviews, but I was still feeling uneasy. My contract had suddenly ended at the two-year mark, not an uncommon occurrence in the late January time frame. Though it wasn’t entirely a surprise, I was very disappointed. It had been the best job I ever had. I was a project manager and senior developer, and had worked hard to get there. I was highly respected by the team, as well as management. I was drawing heavily upon a decade of point of sale experience to direct research, analysis, and development for a team of six people in a fun tech modernization project.

I tidied up my resume and CV and began applying for development positions. Things went well and with several options opening up, I was hopeful to land a job quickly.

An attractive lady recruiter sent me surprise LinkedIn message about a teaching position. She was very friendly and complimentary of my skills and experience, admitting that I probably didn’t get many job postings in that field. She was right, I hadn’t considered it, but the job description caught my interest immediately. I applied and soon after, the recruiter told me the team was “very excited” to meet me. The excitement at that point was contagious but I tried not to get my hopes up too much.

It was a remote job with a well established, though smaller, online school. It paid in the upper range of what I wanted. I also liked the company’s core ideas and mission statement and felt I could get behind them.

The first round was a short phone interview where I answered some standard technical and behavioral questions. One particular question I remember she asked was, “How would you explain software development to a student with zero programming experience? Show me some of that speaking experience your resume mentions.”

I explained, “In the same way that classes represent real world objects, like a bank class can represent a real bank account, programming itself is an abstraction of computing work, a way to represent tasks that we need the computer to do. Representation is the essence of programming. That is why we use programming languages at all, instead of turning on and off switches on a mainframe as the first programmers did.”

She was exuberant with my answer and said that no one had ever explained it that way before. She emphasized again how much she liked my answer, ensuring me that I would likely pass the next phase of the interview.

The second interview was a short but difficult skills assessment to ensure a teacher-level caliber of knowledge. I passed this and then moved on to some video questions. I had to record myself answering questions as if explaining concepts to students. Finally there was a mock code review where I had to find oddities in some code and leave comments indicating what needed changed, fixed, or considered. I wasn’t told how many there were. I found six or seven and submitted my work.

At this point things ground to a halt. These first steps had taken a couple of weeks. I emailed them back, thanking them for the interview and inquiring about next steps. They took their time in replying. I also messaged the recruiter on LinkedIn and she apologized for the delay and assured me she would get someone’s attention. After another week, I got an email explaining that there was some kind of convention going on that was taking up their time, which is why they weren’t responding. I thought that was an odd excuse but kept up my end of the conversation politely and expectantly.

After another week, I finally got an email from the hiring manager saying that they would schedule the third interview round which was a teaching demo session, where I would deliver a short lecture to some students and other teachers. There was still no offer, and they hadn’t said much else.

While all this was going on, along came the crucial moment: a software contracting company extended me an offer after hardly a 30-minute interview. I thought I wouldn’t hear back from them, as it hadn’t gone as well as I would have liked. The interviewers were both goofy oddballs and at the same time, very stern. In other words, I could tell they had a good time internally, but when it came to the interview questions, they took it very seriously and deeply pondered my answers with unreadable poker faces. This job was a senior level position, so due diligence and using time well in the interview was a good sign rather than a long, silent post-interview deliberation. The offer came in barely two hours later.

On one hand, I had an exciting potential job where the interview process kept dragging on and on, and on the other, an offer on the table for a role better matching my experience. The contract manager stated the offer was urgent, and they had a long list of other candidates, recommending that I accept sooner rather than later.

My stomach twisted into a knot. I had to choose whether to risk missing the train for the promise of a later one that might never come. To add to the tension, I received a call from another recruiter for the teaching position (the lady I’d spoken with before was on leave).

“Are you still interested? What is your thought process right now?” I told him about the offer on the table and explained I didn’t have any more time to delay. I had to either accept the offer or continue jumping through hoops in the hope of an offer that still hadn’t materialized.

“Are you sure you don’t want to schedule the next interview just to see how it goes?”

“No, I’m out of time. I don’t want to risk losing this offer.”

I decided there was no point in another interview. If they wanted to put me through all that before even being hired, it didn’t signal good things for what they would expect of their teachers. Everything else looked very promising, but it was a tough spot to be in.

I made the hard call and accepted the job offer.

As if on cue, right after I accepted, my very first interview (for a different software development firm) came through with an apparent offer. My previous contract manager literally begged me to consider it. It had been at least two months with no word about it, and that job required skills in a different tech stack I was unfamiliar with and not very excited about.

“I already accepted another job offer. I’m sorry but I can’t work with information I don’t have.” He was disappointed, but I didn’t see why I should feel badly about it. It was yet another example of stringing someone along for far too long without any communication.

Hiring for even a very exciting job can still fail if the interview process is unnecessarily lengthy. Three rounds of interviews was already pushing it, but for a teaching position it sort of made sense. I just ran out of time and had to make a decision. I believe I made the smart decision. The job I took turned out to be very challenging right from the start, and I felt slow and ineffective compared to my previous senior level position. It took me almost a year to reach high level performance, if not mastery.

I understand that some people might have accepted the job offer and then tried the interview anyway, and if that job worked out, they would have backed out of the first offer, assuming the contract had not been inked yet. I prefer to make a decision and stick with it rather than waffle between two options. The new job was tough, but I wanted to see it through and give it a good effort. I also highly value loyalty. I won’t abandon a person or company on a whim, or just because a slightly better option exists.