How to Accurately Compare Job Offers

If you are a senior in college or just happen to be looking for a job. Chances are you are going to have much more than one interview. You don't want to stake your future with only one company, so it makes sense to target several of them! If you are competent in your profession, there's a good shot that you will get more than one job offer to choose from. Don't immediately pick the one that offers the most per hour, there are some other more complicated factors that you need to compare.

We can all compare salaries to one another, but this is comparing apples to apples. When we have different job offers, we are comparing apples to oranges to cumquats to grapefruit. We have to do some mathematics in order to compare which job offer is the most lucrative.

Here's how you do it. Grab a sheet of paper, and make a column for each job opportunity that you have. Next write a list of financial incentives that each company is offering. This should include salary, bonuses, insurance, retirement matches, and the like. You have to figure out what each of these items that they are offering is worth out in the open market. If they are willing to provide high quality health insurance for you and your family for nothing, this can easily be a $400 a month benefit that you wouldn't have otherwise gotten. Do this for each company that has offered you a job, and then add up your columns and figure out what the total compensation package is for each of the positions.

This is a good start for comparing jobs, but we certainly cannot end there. We also have to figure in additional expenses that we will have if we take each of the jobs. Some might require you to drive farther than others. Some of them might require you to relocate to the expensive area. You need to come up with a list of additional expenses that will come with each job. Once you subtract the added expenses from the total compensation package, you know how much the offer is really worth.

We're not quite done though. We also have to consider other factors besides compensation and expenses. Do a bit of research on the company's outlook. If the company has had numerous rounds of layoffs and is continually shrinking in profits, they're probably not a good place to work at. If instead you find a slightly lower offer at a growing company, it's usually a much better offer to take that, because there will be more room for advancement, which will lead to additional compensation.