I recently received a job offer for the same salary as I am currently making. Should I still take it?
I have been applying for jobs and interviewing since last summer (2021). I have received a couple of offers here and there, but the offers generally have been low or at the same salary as my current job. I rejected most of them because the offers were low, and also the benefits were not better.
Tips: Besides the salary, the benefits package is the most important determinant of a job offer!
I am not in the STEM field, or business field, so I am not very competitive in today’s market. However, I still want to explore my options and see what opportunities are out there. And even if the salary offers are not that high, I want to see if I can find a company with better benefits.
I have worked at my current job for 1 year and 7 months, but I have not received any bonus, pay raise, or promotion. I only had 1 performance review period last Spring (2021), but it was not much of a review but more of a generic/pre-written statement about a junior employee, and I was asked to sign the PDF and send it back to the manager. (Red flag !!!)
I asked the manager at the time if we could chat about my performance review, but he simply did not respond. For the next couple months, I asked about having a chat about the company’s raise and promotion policies, but I was also ignored. One time, I simply asked if the manager could provide me with a PDF of the company’s policies, and I was once again ignored.
My company’s health insurance cost is also quite high. I pay around $200 per month for my health insurance, while the BF pays around $30 per month.
Additionally, my current job is on a hybrid work model, and it is uncertain about the future as it is determined to return to office full time, given the right conditions.
I am also not a big fan of the industry I work in as it does not give me much transferable skills, so I am looking for a way out while I am still young. This is also one of the reasons why I have rejected previous job offers, as they were from the same industry.
The new job offer is in a slightly different industry. It has a better management structure and will give me more relevant and transferable skills, so later down the road, it’d be easier to interview and apply to different positions.
The HR also mentioned yearly raises and bonuses structure, which would be based on a performance review. That is at least more promising than my current position.
I do not know if the new role will be better than my current job, but there is a silver lining: the annual raise, more transferable skills, hope for cheaper health insurance, and also 100% remote.
So despite the new offer being the same salary and the benefits are only slightly better, I think I should take this leap of hope for something new 🙂