Every week or so we will publish the next installment of our guide of how to find, apply and secure your dream placement or internship. You can see our whole guide by clicking here.

If you are lucky you will be offered your dream job, and obviously you will snap it up. However if you were anything like me you will have applied to a number of places, mainly based on location (I wanted to work in the City), and each one was not perfect but a good job. So what happens if you get offered this sort of job? Things to consider:

1.  Exploding offers – Some recruiters, especially in finance, give candidates what are called “exploding offers” which expire after a short period of time, anything up to a month, just to make sure recruits accept their offer rather than wait on another offer from a competitor.

2. Black listing yourself – You may just think, why not accept an offer, and if a better offer comes along just bin my old offer and take the new, better one… My advice to you would be DEFINITELY DON’T DO THIS. Firstly it really hacks people off, a company thinks they have an employee so they reject people for that position, and annoying people is not a good idea. As we have found the world of graduate recruitment is very close knit, and many of the recruiters from an industry go to seminars and conferences together, your name will soon spread if you do something like that, especially as graduate recruiters often move between companies, so you never know when you may see someone again. Also, and possibly worse, if your placement officer is anything like the lovely Tricia at Loughborough she will go nuts if she finds you have done it. I think I would rather face a life of unemployment than an ear bashing from Tricia.
3. Should you settle? – You may think, as I thought, when you get offered a good job early, just take it as it saves the stress of continued applications. Well this is obviously up to you, but personally I wish I had pushed myself for a better job, but that is with the benefit of hindsight. But it is a gamble and obviously takes some balls to reject a job offer. However, one thing that is not a gamble if learning from your “mistake” and that is why I was determined to do an internship too, I wanted to see what else was out there.

Whatever you choose, and whatever you do just go with your decision 100%. Even if you pick the wrong option, the beauty of a placement or internship is that you have an end date – you will only have to be in the job for a few months or a year. That is the beauty of work experience, it gives you so much knowledge and experience, yet is only temporary.