First Offer: Take It or Keep Waiting

    Anyone who has searched for a job fresh out of college knows how difficult it is to get that first job. And if you're very lucky, eventually there's a job offer on the table. Should you grasp it, or wait for something better to come along the way?

    It depends on whether you are a "maximizer" or a "satisficer". Simply put, satisficers are more likely to cut their job search short and take the first job offer. Maximizers are more likely to continue searching until a better job offer comes along. Which type of approach yields the better payoff? A maximizer. Specifically, quoting the results of a study of the job search of 548 members of a school, the maximizers put themselves through more difficulties in the job hunt. They applied to twenty jobs, on average, while satisficers applied to only ten, and they were significantly more likely to make use of outside sources of information and support. But it turned out to be worth it: the job offers they got were significantly better, in terms of salary, than what the satisficers got.

    Satisficers were offered jobs with an average starting salary of $37, 085; the average starting salary offered to maximizers was $44, 515, more than 20 percent higher. The trouble is, however, that higher pay doesn't make maximizers a happier group than satisficers. In fact, maximizers were significantly more likely than satisficers to be unhappy with the offers they accepted.

    Evidently, being a maximizer can help you earn more income, but that income doesn't buy more happiness, as the maximizer's likely to worry about the prospect of a better job offer out there he or she missed. Maximizers may have objectively superior outcomes, but they're so busy obsessing about all the things that they could have had, so they tend to be less happy with the outcomes they do get.