In this article I wrote for Freshgigs.ca, I discuss five things you should consider before accepting a job offer. This is presuming that everything else about the job is acceptable to you: your new title, job responsibilities, salary & benefits, commute time to office, etc.

These five items are sometimes overlooked when you’re anxious to leave your old position and excited to start with your new company. It’s like being enamored by a new love and wanting to jump in bed!

In this article, I argue that it’s worthwhile to take a few sobering moments to consider 0verlooked aspects about your new job. For example, in item 3, I ask you to consider: “What are your job deliverables, and what resources do you have to complete your job?”  You should have a pretty good idea of what you need to deliver, as part of your job. Is it reaching quarterly sales quotas?  Writing monthly or weekly reports? Training new staff on a half-yearly basis? Whatever it is, you should also have some clear notion of whether you will have the resources (e.g. staff support) to complete the job. I have seen new employees join a company only to find out they are completely swamped within the first few weeks of starting. How happy will you be working evenings and weekends on a protracted basis? It doesn’t help anyone to have a new employee burn out and quit so early into her new position – the new employee will have to look for another job, and the employer will have to start looking for another person to fill the post.

Granted, it’s difficult to know whether you have the resources to complete your job deliverables even before you start. But by asking some carefully-worded questions during your interview, and really listening to what your future boss tells you, you should get some sense of whether this is a role that you can reasonably perform, or whether you are walking into a landmine.

For more things you should consider before accepting that job offer, read on!