3 Things I Wish I Knew Before Accepting My First Job

3 Things I Wish I Knew Before Accepting My First Job I received my very first real job offer on a Friday afternoon, from a payphone in a midtown Manhattan subway station, where I welches in town for some job interviews (Yep, a payphone It welches the mid-90s, before cell phones were ubiquitous).HR Wed like to offer you the position of Marketing Assistant.Me GreatHR The salary will be... insert insultingly low number, which welches leise more than Id ever made as a teen or college student.Me GreatHR Wed like you to departure on Monday.Me Um great?Id just landed my dream job in book publishing at one of the worlds top publishing houses in New York City. It felt like a dream. The problem? I was a 22-year-old recent college grad living with my parents in Massachusetts. And I was about to departure a job in Manhattan in just over two days. I had Saturday to pack up my belongings and figure out a temporary place to stay in NYC, where I did not know a single person. That meant Sunday was mo ving day. It was thrilling, but incredibly stressful. It didnt have to be.I didnt realize it at the time, but I made several mistakes on that 2-minute phone call. Heres what I wish I had known ahead of time1. Never accept an offer on the spot.I was so excited to get the offer that I was irrationally afraid of it slipping through my hands. As if taking a few days or even hours to think about it would cause them to change their minds and revoke the offer. In reality, they most certainly would have paid me the courtesy of a little time to think it over, had I simply asked.I could have expressed my excitement and then asked for the weekend to review the offer. This may have been an issue, since they wanted me to start right away, but probably not (Ill get to that in 2). Though it wasnt an option for me back then, anyone receiving a phone offer now should also ask to receive all the details of the offer via email. Theres typically more to negotiate than just salary and start date.Even if its your dream job, even if youre just beginning in an entry level role and feel you have no leverage, take a moment. Your potential employer is going to ask for the conditions that are best for your potential employer. Its your job to consider these and counter with what is reasonable and best for you. Theres almost always wiggle room. An offer is just the beginning of the conversation, and youll rarely find yourself in a more powerful position than you are immediately after the offer has been made.2. You dont have to start immediately.There are very, very few cases in which an employer will need you to start your new role on the next business day, and that would likely only be in a case in which youd explicitly said you could do so. If you say you are available immediately, they may actually want you to start immediately, so dont say it. Even if immediately is true, pick a reasonable date that would work for you and that wont require you to scramble.Remember to have that date i n the back of your mind during your interviews. You dont want to tell them youre available immediately, and then surprise them by asking for an extra month when they offer you the job.In my case, accepting the position meant moving two states away and finding housing in NYC. So even though the HR person likely wanted to fill the spot and move on to the next item on her list, she almost certainly would have recognized the difficulty of my starting on the next business day had I addressed it3. Dont accept the first salary offer, unless youve specifically named your price and theyve met it.I knew that book publishing wasnt known at the time for being a high-paying industry, and I had a vague sense that entry-level publishing salaries were pretty low. But I didnt know what low meant, because I had no basis for comparison. Now, thanks to the internet, social media discussions and sites like Fairygodboss, its much easier to discover whats a reasonable starting salary in your industry.As i t turned out, not only was my entry-level salary almost unlivable on a New York City budget, but it had bigger implications for my earning power over the course of my career. I was promoted regularly, but my raises were always based on what I was making at the time. Because Id started out by accepting such a low salary, it took years to climb out of the low-pay ditch Id unwittingly dropped myself into.Again, coming from a place of fear that Id lose the offer, I immediately accepted what was almost certainly their bottom-rung offer. Of course they wouldnt come right out of the gate with their highest number. It was my job to push back and find the most they were willing to pay for the role. But instead, I let them off the hook and then paid for it throughout my 20s.Looking back, I dont regret accepting the job. There were many times in those early years that I found myself having so much fun, I couldnt believe it was actually work. It was everything Id hoped it would be and then some , and I ended up staying for eight years. I also dont beat myself up over my non-existent negotiation skills as a 22-year-old. It was adventure, and I learned all the good lessons particularly the importance of self-advocacy.