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Winning Move: Enjoy the Moment
to accrue while others become effective immediately. These benefits include health and dental insurance coverage, life insurance, vacation, 401-K matching and vesting, and the most important benefit of all—the paycheck. In one situation, Leslie, an environmental project manager, received an offer in mid-December and was encouraged by the author to start work before the end of December rather than wait until January 2. Although the temptation was great to take time off during the holiday season, she started the new job on December 30. Leslie was well rewarded one year later when annual bonuses were calculated. She received several thousand dollars more for starting in December because a later start would have excluded January from the bonus calculation. Another example of a start-as-early-as-possible approach benefited a business development manager nine years later! Mike received an offer from a Fortune 500 company on Tuesday, March 15. He immediately took steps to close the deal and determined that Monday, March 21 was the earliest possible start date. His friends urged him to take two weeks off to enjoy himself and to start on April 1, but he resisted and started on the earlier date. He enjoyed a wonderful career until January of his eighth year when the company announced it was merging with another company and offering a “package” to employees who satisfied a minimum criteria of age and years of service. Mike met the age criteria and he needed to reach nine years of company service before March 31. Fortunately, his start date of March 21 nine years earlier allowed him to satisfy the years of service requirement by ten days. He would not have been eligible for this opportunity if he started on April 1.
Due Diligence The end game is in sight. You have a written offer and you are happy about the terms, your responsibilities, the company, and the employees. This is the time to determine the answer to, “Do I want to work for this company?” It is now safe to ask the sensitive and difficult questions that might have eliminated you from consideration ear-