A decision between two good options is hard because the options differ in ways that cannot be added up. Ten thousand more in salary does not cancel a worse manager, and a better title does not cancel a longer commute. A weighted checklist cannot make the choice for you. What it does is make your own priorities visible, so the final call is yours and not a mood from Tuesday. This post shows how to build one in about 40 minutes.
Step one: pick what matters, before you look at the offers
Write your criteria first. If you write them after reading the offers, they bend toward whatever is on the page. Choose six to eight from a list like this and delete what does not apply:
- Pay: base salary, bonus, equity, and any benefits you will use
- Work itself: does the daily job interest you?
- Manager and team: the people you will work with most
- Growth: what you will learn and what the next role could be
- Stability: the employer’s finances and how long the role is likely to last
- Schedule and flexibility: hours, remote days, time off
- Commute or location
- Mission or product: whether you care about what the company does
Keep the list short. With 15 criteria, every option wins on some and the total says nothing.
Step two: give each a weight
Use three levels: 3 for what you would be unhappy to lose, 2 for what matters, 1 for what is nice. Resist the urge to use ten levels. The difference between a 7 and an 8 is invented, and that false precision is what makes spreadsheets of this kind misleading.
A good test: if a criterion is a 3, can you name something that would make you walk away if it were bad? If not, it is a 2.
Step three: score each option from 1 to 5
For every criterion, score each option with 1 for poor, 3 for fine and 5 for excellent. Score from facts where you have them and mark your guesses. Here is a made-up example with two sample offers, A and B, and five criteria:
| Criterion | Weight | Offer A | Offer B |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pay (total, as offered) | 2 | 4 | 3 |
| The work | 3 | 3 | 5 |
| Manager and team | 3 | 4 | 3 (guess) |
| Growth | 2 | 3 | 4 |
| Schedule and flexibility | 1 | 5 | 2 |
Multiply and add. Offer A: 8 + 9 + 12 + 6 + 5 = 40. Offer B: 6 + 15 + 9 + 8 + 2 = 40. The maximum is 5 times the sum of weights, or 55, so a gap of 5.5 would be 10 percent. These two are exactly tied, which tells you something useful: the choice does not turn on anything you listed, so it turns on what you have not found out yet. Look at the guess in the table. That is the next thing to investigate.
Step four: read the gap, not the winner
- A gap larger than about 10 percent of the maximum suggests a real preference. Check it against your gut. If the sheet says A and you feel dread, one of your weights is wrong. Find out which.
- A gap smaller than that is a tie, for practical purposes. Break it with questions, not with arithmetic.
- A single criterion you scored 1 with a weight of 3 is a veto, whatever the total says.
Do the exercise with one change as a sensitivity check: bump each weight up or down by one and see if the result flips. If it flips on one change, the decision is a close one, and you should treat it that way.
Questions that fill the gaps
The scores where you marked a guess are your question list. Ask the people who can answer them, and ask in the offer stage, when employers expect it.
For the manager:
- How do you give feedback, and how often?
- What did the last person in this role move on to?
For the team:
- Can I speak to someone on the team who is not part of the hiring panel?
- How many people have left in the past year?
For the work:
- What would I have done by the end of the first 90 days?
- What is the biggest problem the team has right now?
For pay and terms:
- What is the full compensation, including bonus, equity and its vesting?
- When is the first review, and what does it depend on?
- Is the offer open to discussion?
An employer who answers these plainly is giving you data about how it will treat you later.
Staying versus leaving
When one option is your current job, add two things.
First, score the current job as it is today, with its real faults, and not as it was when you joined. People often compare a new job’s best case with their current job’s worst week.
Second, ask what could change if you stayed. Some problems can be fixed by a conversation: a raise, a transfer, a different project. If you have not asked, staying is not yet a fair comparison. Raise it before you decide, and be ready for the answer to be no. A counteroffer from your own employer fixes pay and leaves the other reasons you were looking untouched, so check whether pay was the reason.
Also include a simple comparison of costs: notice period, unvested equity or a bonus you would lose, and the time to reach full effectiveness in a new role. These belong in the decision. They are not a reason to stay by themselves.
Do not decide by yourself in the last hour
Use a written deadline. Employers usually allow a few working days for an offer, and asking for a few more is normal when you have a second option. Spend the time on three things: a conversation with someone you trust, one more question to each employer, and a night’s sleep after you fill in the sheet.
Where Zorlya fits
If the offer came through a job you tracked in Zorlya, the application page keeps the notes and the timeline from the first message, which helps when you compare what you were told at different stages. The salary tool can give a benchmark range for a role and location, one Zorlya already holds or, on Plus and Pro, one researched with AI. It is one input for the pay row, not the whole of it. The match score is a measure of fit between your resume and a posting, not a judgement on whether to accept an offer, and it plays no part in this decision.
The sheet is a way to be honest with yourself. When the totals tie, trust the questions you still have.