| Don't let a quick fix or cold, hard cash blur your judgement
By Mark Satterfield
Receiving a counteroffer is flattering and seductive. You are showered with reasons for why you should not leave good old XYZ Corp. The praise, and perhaps additional money, are powerful inducements for you to stay.
However, when all the dust settles, it usually is a terrible mistake to accept.
Counteroffers are inducements from your current employer to get you to stay once you have announced your intentions to accept a new position. Although there may be individuals who have accepted a counteroffer and gone on to a successful career with their current employer, their numbers are few.
For most people, the counteroffer does nothing to address the underlying issues behind the decision to seek new employment. Management recruiters and human resources executives estimate that up to 80 percent of managers accepting counteroffers leave their employer within one year.
It’s a question of loyalty
The reason counteroffers don’t work has to do with that somewhat antiquated notion of company loyalty. Although we can argue in this age of downsizings and restructurings that employee loyalty is a concept of the past, there still is a strong sense of loyalty between a supervisor and his or her employees.
Accepting an offer from another company upsets that bound. It’s not your loyalty to good old XYZ Corp. that is being called into question; rather, it’s your loyalty to the department. Thus the boss’s reaction often is personal and negative.
On the pragmatic level, when you announce your planned departure, business plans are upset, work must be distributed, vacations postponed, and generally life becomes much more difficult for everyone in the department. Therefore, it’s not surprising that counteroffers are made.
Consider the long run
It’s always best to remember what the motivation was behind the counteroffer. Suddenly you’ve moved from a long-term player to a short-term issue that must be dealt with. Guess who won’t be getting a whole lot of new critical assignments in the future? Guess who becomes extremely expendable once the Smith financing is completed?
It’s likely that you’ll enjoy the benefits of the counteroffer for only a few months while the company immediately begins to scout around for your replacement.
Career change advisers and recruiters urge you to consider these universal truths before succumbing to the temptations of a counteroffer:
 If the only way you can get a raise or promotion is to threaten to quit, you’re probably better off somewhere else.
No matter what the company says to you when it is making the counteroffer, your loyalty will always be suspect. You no longer will be viewed as a team player, and you may find yourself dropped from the inner circle of decision-makers.
Counteroffers usually are little more than stalling devices to give your company time to find your replacement.
The original frustrations you had with your employer are not likely to change. Your reasons for leaving still exist. All the counteroffer does is improve some of the superficial circumstances or provide short-term cash compensation.
If you’ve decided to accept a new position and receive a counteroffer, remember the motivation behind the offer. The odds are against you if you accept. Take the counteroffer as a compliment but don’t let it obscure the reasons you decided to conduct a job search in the first place.
Mark Satterfield is director of career services for the Graduate School of Business at Emory University. |
