There are four things to consider before accepting a job offer:

1. Is it a good job?

2. Is it something you want to do?

3. Is it a place where you’ll be happy and can make friends?

4. Will it pay you enough to support yourself and your family?

If you’ve answered “yes” to all four questions, take the job.

You can spend your career building a career, or you can spend it fighting to keep your current job. This isn’t just true for science; it’s true for everyone. Your job today may be the same as your job in ten years, but how will you feel about it then?

If you’re lucky enough to have a job you like and that you believe is important, then maybe you want to fight for it. But if you don’t believe that and are worried about losing it anyway, there may be some things you should do before accepting a job offer.

The first is to remember that they may not ask you to do what they asked before. The world changes. They weren’t asking when they hired you. So if they ask you to do something different now, they probably have good reasons. And even if they don’t have good reasons, changing jobs is stressful enough that people tend to act irrationally when offered a new one. If this is happening to them, it’s probably happening even more strongly in someone else nearby who isn’t getting a second chance. You might want to give them one by accepting their offer without hesitation or negotiation

A lot of people are beginning to be skeptical about the job market, and they’re not sure what to do. They ask themselves, “Should I accept this job offer?” And they answer themselves, as they should: “That depends on what is expected of me in this job.”

But many people don’t think about that question. They see an offer for a job, and they say “Yes.” They don’t pause to consider the conditions under which that answer might be the wrong one.

I’m going to tell you some things you can do before accepting any kind of job offer.

You may want a job. You may want to get a job. You may want to be offered a job. But before doing anything, you should think about the four things below.

1. What are they paying me?

This is the most obvious point. If you’re not sure what they pay, ask. If you’re confident you know what they pay, then you can do your own calculation based on your skills and experience and qualifications, and decide whether it’s worth being paid less than they pay other people they feel are of roughly equal value. It is usually a good idea to ask in writing, because it will make them have to answer honestly. If you don’t get an answer that you think is honest, take the risk of asking again until you do get one that is honest. In any case, don’t accept their offer until you’ve thought about this question carefully (and checked with your parents or another adult who knows how much money people of your age and experience make).

2. Will I be allowed to work from home or from a cafe or from my office or from some other place?

You’ll want to know if it’s okay for you to work from home if zero hours’ notice of an urgent need for your skills appears suddenly

The most common mistake people make in the job search is accepting an offer before they’ve carefully considered it. It’s a little like accepting a marriage proposal before you’ve asked the person out on a date.

If you’re offered a job, it’s not always easy to say no. If you do so only because you don’t want to hurt their feelings, you risk that they will be offended and decide not to hire you. If you don’t accept the job because of a concern about the state of the economy or your boss’s personality quirks, then you may miss out on something useful.

But if you reach a careful decision based on careful consideration, you’ll probably be happier in the long run and better at your job.

1. Don’t accept a job that takes you away from the things you care about.

2. Don’t accept a job at another company if the salary is substantially lower than the current salary at your current company.

3. Don’t accept a job offer from a person whose last name you don’t know unless it’s someone like Steve Jobs or Bill Gates, and then suspect that person might be trying to set you up for failure by putting you in a position of having to work for them.

4. Don’t accept a job offer from one of your friends or family members unless they are already doing something that requires specialized skills; people tend to think they know best how their friends or family should spend their time, when they haven’t spent enough time themselves to have an informed opinion.

The most common question I get asked is “Will I get a job if I put up a resume on Careerbuilder.com?” The answer is yes, but it probably won’t be the job you want.

Here’s why:

First, there are not enough jobs to go around. The number of new jobs and the number of job seekers may be roughly equal now, but it’s not going to stay that way forever.

Second, looking for a job and getting the right job are not the same thing. Some candidates will be better at getting jobs than others; because of their temperament or training or experience, some candidates will be better able to convince a company that they are a good candidate for a specific job. Others will not. So to find the best candidate in your field and hire them, you have to hire them by looking very hard — in other words, you have to do your own hiring. If you ask your friends who they think should have gotten their last job, they may have useful advice, but they’ll almost certainly not have honest answers.

Third, there is no point in waiting until you’re ready to start looking for a job; that is like trying to train for your first marathon before you’ve ever done any running. It’s