Importance of an offer letter

What is an offer letter?

I googled definition of offer letter, what I found was:

“A document or set of documents that contains all information relevant to one’s employment with a company denoting the last communication between recruiter and candidate until the candidate becomes eligible for transfer consideration”

Well technically offer letter is just a piece of paper, with some amusing texts on it with –a very important thing – A company’s name on it. That’s it. But a real value of this piece of paper – offer letter can determined when you talk to an unemployed guy who is looking for job or someone who has just stepped into the enormous world full of cutting edge competition.

For an unemployed guy, his offer letter could be as valued as declaration of independence for any country. The best way, you can swing a mood of fresher /unemployed guy is by talking about his job hunt to him. They so desperately want to see their name on the company’s letterhead with sentence beginning with Congratulations in the first line.

It is very common for unemployed person to give multiple interviews in single day, saying 100s of lies in them, asking their friends to talk to their friend’s friend for a job opening or referrals , cursing the destiny, praying and every other possible thing they can do land their hand on their first offer letter.

I too was no exception, I had same days, same thinking. I did all things to get an offer letter and leave my college.

But on a particular day, I heard a speech and that’s when everything changed for me. Some guy in Pre-Placement talk of his company was doing all usual blah-blah about the company. I was least interested for job in his company but I had to attend for that important piece of paper: offer letter. He said various things about IT field, freelancing and many more but only words of his that got my attention was when he said “Is offer letter so important? ” in the end.

I started listening to him. The next thing he said completely blew my mind; he said “You will lose the value of offer letter as soon as you get it”. I was sitting there thinking and repeating the same words in my mind. I began to think of me as obsessed little child who want some toy very desperately and will do every weird thing to get it. After everything, once I get that toy, it’s just another toy in my collection. That’s the case of offer letter. It only has its value until we don’t have it.

Fast forward to 2 weeks, when I had two offer letters from two different companies and it made me realize how right that person was. They are just a piece of letter in my file or a just another email in my inbox, and I am still looking for a job I’m interested in. All the excitement and a fire to get it just vanished. Of course it feels good to have a job in hand but it’s always a better feeling when you a get job that you are actually interested in.

So in the nutshell, stop running for offer letters and start looking for your interest. Stay away from all the career myths and focus on what would make you happy while you would be working.