Never accept a counter-offer

Re:Never accept a counter-offer by lliamander on Monday October 03, 2016 @02:20AM (#12625742)

Thank you for the honest assessment; I had not previously been fully aware of the incentives on recruiters or the source of their statements.

That said, early in my career as an employee, prior to reading any advice by recruiters, I made a decision to not accept counter-offers as a general rule. My main reasons are the ones people usually cite: a) if I am dissatisfied enough with my job that I applied for other jobs, it is almost certainly not (just) about the money, and b) my relationship with both employers becoming strained.

So far it has worked out for me, and I don't plan on changing that, but I'll be sure to keep this in mind in the future.

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Re:Never accept a counter-offer by fecak on Monday October 03, 2016 @08:00AM (#12626726)

I try to provide transparency into the recruiting business as I think it actually helps all parties. I mentioned possibly writing a book about the recruiting industry and got lots of support, so I still might do that. Recruiting as an industry usually benefits from the other parties having a lack of information, and I hope that starts to change.

Most recruiters would rather have you believe the scary counteroffer "stats" that aren't well documented.

A counteroffer can "right a wrong" in some cases, and employees who are not sure how to ask for raises/promotions/changes to their employment situation may find that their resignation facilitates a conversation that maybe could have happened if they'd asked.

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Re:Never accept a counter-offer by lliamander on Monday October 03, 2016 @02:24PM (#12629977)

> Recruiting as an industry usually benefits from the other parties having a lack of information, and I hope that starts to change.

Agreed. I appreciate your work in this regard.

> A counteroffer can "right a wrong" in some cases, and employees who are not sure how to ask for raises/promotions/changes to their employment situation may find that their resignation facilitates a conversation that maybe could have happened if they'd asked.

I was thinking about this very problem after my post, and while I don't have a better solution, I think I have a better understanding to the cause. Sometimes employers take for granted the increasing value provided by the employee (which, along with other factors, may be a sign of bad management) but even when the employee's value contribution is stable, their opportunity cost for keeping their current job goes up.

Either the employer is unaware of that increase in opportunity cost, or they are banking on the employee not being aware / being unwilling to leverage that opportunity cost. It's not enough that the employee be fully aware of their own opportunity costs, their employer has to know that they know (and the employee has to know that their employer knows, and so on. i.e. "common knowledge"). I see your point as being that the only way right now for that opportunity cost to become common knowledge is for an employee to field offers from other companies.

Trusted intermediaries or professional associations could probably help make the costs to all sides more transparent, and maybe they already do, but that's about as far as I know.

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