Should I accept a counter offer from my current employer?

Recently, I had to give some advice on a counter offer to a very senior candidate who was at the end of an extremely robust recruitment process that had lasted four months. Let’s call him ‘Bob’ for the purpose of this story.

Bob had spent several very successful years in a role that he found fulfilling and engaging. He was rewarded with an excellent package, surrounded by a fantastic team and he was promoted several times in a relatively short period of time.

Everything seemed to be going perfectly for a while and Bob felt very happy.

Then as time went on, things changed. Bob no longer felt fulfilled. He was becoming increasingly disengaged in his current role. The reasons for this were mainly that the culture of the organisation had shifted significantly in what Bob thought was the wrong direction.

He felt that some of the expectations being heaped on him by his superiors were causing him some anxiety, and that anxiety was being felt at home during his family time.

Bob no longer felt happy.

So, Bob did what any normal person would do in that situation. He started to look for another job. That’s when we met.

Bob successfully progressed through five stages of interviews over a four-month period in which he was interviewed by six different people. He impressed the interviewers during the process with presentations and successfully overcame a psychometric evaluation that lasted two hours online. Check out my post on how to prepare for an interview here.

At the end of the recruitment process, Bob was the preferred candidate and he received an offer that met his expectations. Bob accepted the offer and Bob was happy again.

When Bob handed in his notice to his current employer, he was met with silence, blank faces and disbelief. Clearly, they hadn’t seen it coming. Later that day, Bob was called into a room with his boss, his boss’s boss and his boss’s boss’s boss. They explained that they didn’t want to lose him. They were prepared to offer him a bigger role within the company with a bigger team and a higher salary. Now Bob felt special, yet confused. Bob wrestled with the dilemma over and over for the rest of the day.

After much deliberation, Bob thanked the prospective employer for their time and their interest but turned their offer down. Bob accepted his current employer’s counter offer instead.

What happened next, drawn out over the course of three or four weeks, I have seen happen over and over again in my career:

Bob was still unhappy
Bob’s current employer had already started to look for his replacement
Bob’s integrity was badly affected
Bob left his job

So remember that when considering a counter offer from your current employer:

• The initial reasons that made you start to look around for a new job will remain after the initial excitement of the counter offer subsides.
• Once you reveal that you are prepared to leave your employer, you are no longer trustworthy. You are the person who was about to leave them high and dry and they will be making plans in case you do that to them again, even if you accept the counter offer.
• Your current employer will know that you have relinquished an offer elsewhere and broken a promise by accepting the counter offer. Your prospective employer will also be left dejected.
• You will still leave. Once you make the decision to look for a new job, you have already started a chain of events that will result in you leaving your current role, sooner or later.

Thankfully for Bob, he was still able to take up the offer with the prospective employer. Which was very lucky given that he had turned them down four weeks earlier.

Feeling confused about your career? We’ve got everything you need to know about progression, new jobs and happiness in your career right here.

Coins photo by Michael Longmire on Unsplash