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I have an offer from a company, which is a good offer. I accepted the offer and resigned from my current company, and am serving the notice period now.

However, I am still giving interviews for other positions, other companies. If I get a better offer, can I accept that, and tell the first company that I do not want to join them?

What effects will this have on my reputation in the recruitment business, and is this process considered ill?

nik
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    possible duplicate of Leaving a job very early to accept another offer – StackExchange What The Heck Jun 30 '14 at 10:16
  • @yochannah : I havent joined this company yet, just accepted the offer. I do no think, this given link is a duplicate – nik Jun 30 '14 at 10:19
  • The answers will probably be pretty helpful anyway. I'd strongly recommend giving them a read through – StackExchange What The Heck Jun 30 '14 at 10:21
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    See also http://workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/11143/taking-a-job-after-already-tentatively-accepting-another-offer?rq=1 – StackExchange What The Heck Jun 30 '14 at 10:24
  • I did this once. I accepted a contracting position, but a week later was offered a full-time position at the company I really was steering for with $10K higher pay. The recruiter tried to talk me out of it and being a big recruiting company said that I would be burning a bridge with his company. Well 3 weeks later, I was getting phone calls from the recruiter's company and 5 years later I still get them from same said company. Now if I were ever to try and apply to the original hiring company then I don't know what they would do. – Dunk Jun 30 '14 at 18:04
  • @Dunk so they blacklisted you is it? – nik Jul 01 '14 at 09:08
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    @niki:Apparently not. I am still getting unsolicited phone calls from the recruiting company. As for the hiring company that I accepted then rescinded, I haven't had a need to reapply with them, so who knows. Anyways, I'm sure they would have done the same thing under the same circumstances so I doubt they are holding anything against me. – Dunk Jul 01 '14 at 15:04

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If you accept and don't follow through your acceptance, you burn your bridge with that prospective employer - There is no other cost to you that I see.

It's really up to them whether they have a "do not hire" list of those who jerked them around and they put you on it, or whether they'll let bygones be bygones within 6 months to a year.

I lean toward them letting bygones be bygones because in business as in politics, holding a grudge forever is silly, unless the offense given was unusually serious and taken personally. If you take the offer and tell them you won't show up, they'll turn around and make the offer to the No. 2 prospect, so it's not as if they have to do their candidate search all over again. On the other hand, if they made the tactical mistake of sending letters of rejection to everyone including the No. 2 prospect immediately after you initially took the offer, they will most likely be seriously unhappy with you.

I'd say, stick with the first offer you accept unless the second offer is unusually good in some way for you and you can legitimately defend taking the second offer and nullifying your acceptance of the first offer - "it would cut my commute time from 3 hours to 1 hour" or "I like your company but the second offer is from Google".

Vietnhi Phuvan
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    haha.."I like your company but the second offer is from Google". that's funny :) – nik Jun 30 '14 at 13:25