The 10-Point Check Before Signing an Offer
The quiet red flags that turn a bigger title into a shorter career.
Inside this issue:
- What actually pushes 40 to 60% of new executives out inside 18 months (the damage starts before they sign).
- The Friday deadline on your offer is negotiable about 80% of the time, and how to use the days you take back.
- The 10-dimension scorecard for a live offer, and the quiet red flag that ends senior jobs by month 18.
40 to 60% of executives fail within 18 months in a new role.
Most of them had the track record. The role still ended early. Pushed out, sidelined, or gone by their own choice before month 18.
I place senior executives for a living. I watch this from the front row.
You think the hard part of a career move is landing the offer.
Wrong.
The hard part is the 48 hours after it lands, when you sit at the kitchen table and decide whether to sign.
I lead the global life sciences practice at a top 10 retained firm. I run searches every week, and I sit with executives while they weigh the offer in front of them.
The pattern repeats. Strong operator. Weak way of deciding.
Why strong executives still decide badly
An executive career decision is hard for a simple reason. You are comparing things that do not compare, and a clock is ticking while you do it.
Equity against cash. Scope against title. A bigger salary against a worse boss. There is no shared unit, so the brain reaches for the one number it can read.
Compensation.
The comp number swallows everything
A 20% raise into a dead-end role is a trap, and it is the most common one I see.
The base goes up. The optionality goes down. Two years later the title is bigger and the runway is shorter, and the next search is harder than the last.
The deadline is mostly invented
“They need an answer by Friday.”
Counter-offer and acceptance deadlines are negotiable about 80% of the time. The urgency is a tool the other side uses, and it works because you let it set the speed of your thinking.
Ask for the weekend. Almost nobody pulls an offer because you took 3 more days to be sure.
The person across the table wants a yes
I am a headhunter. When I run a search, I am paid to get the candidate to yes.
The recruiter behind your offer has the same job. So when the gentle nudges to sign by Friday start arriving, read them as part of the sale and price them in.
You weigh the reversible and the permanent the same
Some moves you can walk back. Some you cannot.
A one-way door costs about 10x more than a reversible move when it goes wrong, and most executives score both as if they carried equal risk. They do not.
You decide alone
The logic never gets pressure-tested by anyone who can see the full picture.
Your partner sees the family cost. A peer sees the politics. A mentor sees the 5-year arc. Decide inside your own head and you keep every blind spot you walked in with.
The fix: put the offer through a scorecard before you sign it.
Score the offer across 10 dimensions
Build your criteria before you look hard at the specific offer. Write them after, and you bend them toward the answer you already want.
Here are the 10 I use with executives. Score each one, mark it green, yellow, or red, and write the single action that would move a yellow to green.
1. Compensation
2. Career growth
3. Role scope
4. Company stability
5. Culture
6. Manager quality
7. Work-life balance
8. Career alignment
9. Location
10. Learning potential
Red on compensation is loud. You feel it in your gut the day the offer lands. Red on manager quality or company stability is quiet, and the quiet ones are what end jobs by month 18.
Score for the executive you will be in 2030
Rate each dimension 1 to 10 for what will matter in 2030. The version of you in 2030 is the one who has to live inside this choice.
Short-term weighting is how a sharp executive lands a bigger title and a smaller future.
Put “stay” on the scorecard
Score your current role the same way, as a live option sitting next to the offer.
If staying wins, the offer was never the move, and you were reacting to the pull of being wanted. If the offer wins clean, you sign with a decision you can defend to your partner and your board.
Run the pre-mortem
Before you sign, jump 12 months ahead and assume the role went badly. Write down 5 or 6 specific ways it failed.
Next to each, write the one thing you can check now to cut the odds. The failures you can name in advance are the ones you negotiate against before you sign.
Run 3 stress tests
Sensitivity: shift your heaviest weight by 2 points. If the winner flips, your answer is fragile and you are not finished.
Regret: ask which option would sting most if you watched a peer take it in 5 years. The gut answer here often argues with the scorecard, and that argument is the real conversation.
Reversibility: a one-way door needs a higher bar than a move with a 12-month exit ramp.
Then one rule that catches everything else. If your top two options land within 10% of each other, you have missed something. The answer is often a hybrid: take the role and negotiate a 12-month review clause, or hold the seat and add the advisory board role.
Roll the 10 dimensions into a single Fit Score, 1 to 10, with a verdict and the 3 things to do this week before you sign. The whole decision on one page, before the deadline owns you.
The one rule you cannot follow alone is the last one. Do not decide inside your own head.
That is what the 1-Month Career Transition Program is for.
I become the second set of eyes on your offer: we build the scorecard, run the stress tests, and find the red you have been talking yourself past.
Before you sign
The offer is a 10-year decision wearing a 2-week deadline.
Score it across 10 dimensions, 1 to 10, for the executive you want to be in 2030. Score staying the same way. Make the offer earn the decision on the scorecard.
Your action step
This week, before you reply to any live offer, score it across the 10 dimensions, 1 to 10, for where you want to be in 2030. Score your current role beside it.
The test: if the offer does not beat staying by more than 10%, you have your answer, and it is not the offer.
Your next executive role is a 10-year decision dressed up as a Friday deadline. Make sure you score it before you sign it.
Till next time,
Kristof
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