How to Avoid the Counter Offer

Today I had the pleasure of having someone stop their search with me. Yes, stop their search. The reason it was great is because it helped us avoid a terrible Counteroffer situation (and this recruiter some heartburn!)

The candidate I was representing is a great guy, good skills, good personality, basically a top candidate. He was worried that he had hit a financial ceiling at his job and he felt stuck. So we started looking, even going so far as to have him go out on interviews.

As a matter of loyalty, he decided to go to his current employer and tell them his plans. This is a good source of action if you like your job, but just feel stuck in some aspect. This candidate's issues were financial and long term growth.

So today I got this email (shared here with his permission):

"As a courtesy to my present employer, on Monday I informed them of my intentions of leaving the company.
This created a bit of a panic among the managers and the owner, resulting in several phone calls and discussions that left them all on edge.
Over the past two days me and my coworker have been involved in several meetings regarding the direction of the company and our roles in it.
The end result is that they (the managers/owner) have offered us both generous pay raises as well several other promises.

While as I said initially my decision to leave the company was not a purely a financial issue, everyone does have a price.
And one of the reason I did start looking for another job was due to the fact that I was concerned I was going to hit a salary cap in the near future.
Even though I may be capped now due to this raise, this raise is big enough jump and that it would effectively cover all my raises for the next 10 years.

I thank you for all your efforts at this time I will be staying with my current employer."

I sent him an email praising his actions. This avoided so many strained, tense phone calls. Yay!

So, a happy ending. My candidate got to handle his business in a professional way, with a positive outcome. His employer didn't lose an asset. And I get to focus on other activities.