Why Today's College Students Need Not Fear Exploding Offers
A job offer which is extended by an employer, accepted by a candidate, and then rescinded by the employer is often referred to as an exploding offer. Here today yet gone tomorrow.
There were a lot of exploding offers in the recession earlier this decade. College students who turned down great offers during the fall recruiting season in favor of even better offers were understandably devastated when spring rolled around and they received word that their employer had deferred their start date by months or sometimes even rescinded their job offer. Career service office professionals were livid and many banned the offending employers from conducting on-campus recruiting for a year or more. The lack of talent entering the management ranks of the employers seriously impaired and sometimes even crippled the employers five years later when the classes of 2001-03 would have been entering the ranks of middle and upper management.
The recession of 2001-03 was worse than the recession of 2008 and employers are looking backwards in order to better understand what to do as they move forwards. Although many and perhaps most employers have scaled back their college hiring plans for this spring, there's little talk of exploding offers. More employers realize that recessions are tactical problems and college recruiting is strategic. You don't solve tactical problems by grossly altering and certainly not abandoning your strategic vision. You may tweak the strategy here and nip it a bit there in order to survive the tough times, but organizations which confuse tactics with strategy are organizations which tend not to survive let alone thrive.
There have been exploding offers this year and there will be more. But I'm willing to wager that there will be far, far fewer than there were early this decade. And for that I'm thankful that most employers which are engaged in college hiring understand that if you forget your history then you're doomed to repeat it.
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