Whats a reasonable amount of time to respond to a job offer?
After a disappointing pay rise and bonus following an absolutely amazing performance in my job over the last 18 months I decided to test the market after being approached by a recruiter. I'm already on good money, this was better.
The new job is very appealing, the salary is markedly improved and there would be plenty of scope for development and to further my career. Its a bigger company, with familiar challenges but also the opportunity to develop my skill set away from the niche I'm in currently.
Having said that, I'm extremely happy here. My salary has increased 50% in the last two years, I'm getting great exposure across the business, the directors know me, I'm working on landing an project that would be absolutely critical to the future of the business and there is stuff coming on the horizon that would be extremely interesting to work on and would look great on a CV. Really I want the business to give me a reason to stay - back fill some of the more BAU aspects of my role and gain me the exposure I want, which they've already indicated an interest in doing.
At present I have a verbally accepted the offer with the new company, subject to a conversation with the Group FD should their be a counter-offer. The problem is the Group FD is not one to be railroaded, and he'll do this at his own pace, which means its likely to drag on for potentially a couple of weeks. Keeping the new company waiting that length of time seems completely unreasonable to me, how long can I realistically drag this out until they get the hump and tell me to bugger off?