THE COUNTER OFFER

You have received an offer for a position that you feel will give you the opportunities that you can't get in your current position. After thinking it over, you decide to accept the offer and join your new company. After submitting notice to your current company, they decide to make you a counter offer. Many times, a company will make you the counter offer, which sounds like a great and sincere way for them to reward you while showing you how much you are wanted. Research has shown that over 80% of counter offers don't work for any long-term period.


Companies try to keep their staff as long as they can, and when a desirable employee turns in his/her notice, many times a well-intentioned supervisor will try to talk that employee out of it with a financial incentive to stay. BUT before you accept that counter offer, consider the following reasons why that last-minute decision could be one of the last decisions you make with that company:

  1. Your employer will no longer consider you part of the “inner circle” of his/her trusted confidants. If you have been flirting with other companies, then the trust is always weakened. Every visit to the dentist will be viewed with suspicion.
  2. Your manager's effectiveness is judged by how well they keep their staff happy and by how long they stay.
  3. It's easier to keep you with a counter offer than replace you. The cost of recruiting and replacing a qualified candidate can be significant.
  4. If you have to turn in your notice to a company just to get a raise or promotion, then is that the type of company that you really want to work for? The promotion/raise your employer is giving you is not based on merit, if that were the case, you would have already received it! Why should a company keep someone who didn't deserve a raise/promotion and instead received it in reaction to a fear of departure. When the crisis is over, so will be the incentive to keep you.
  5. They won't respect you. They know that they are the ones who really call the shots in your career, not you. Well-managed companies rarely make counter offers to their staff, they wish them well!
  6. The healthy companies will tell you, “Thank you for your service, and we hope that you have become a better person by working here. Consider us if you ever want to come back.”
  7. Minimize the potential career damage and your anxiety in this transition by having confidence to stick to your decisions.