B E W A R E   O F   T H E   C O U N T E R O F F E R

Quitting a job is never easy. Career changes are tough enough and the anxieties of leaving your comfort zone (job, friends, environment) for an unknown opportunity can easily confuse anyone's judgment. What should one do when your current employer makes it tougher by asking you to stay?

A counteroffer is an inducement from your current employer to get you to stay after you have announced your intentions to resign and accept another position elsewhere. In recent years, counteroffers have practically become the norm.

Considering a counteroffer? Remain focused on your primary objectives. Why were you looking for another job to begin with? If someone is happy with their current situation (job, employer and/or salary), they are usually not out there "looking". So many times, a counteroffer that promises more money never really remedies the TRUE reasons for wanting to move on in the first place. Apart from a temporary solution to the initial problem, nothing will change the situation and when the dust settles, you can easily find yourself back in the same old rut.

Counteroffers are flattering and make an employee question their initial decision to leave. But often times, they are just stall tactics used by senior management. High turnover, the realization to senior management that your immediate boss may not be the super manager that he/she thinks they are, and chaos that a departing individual can cause in a department are all reasons to stall and wait to find someone when senior management is better prepared to replace you….on their own time.

Below is a list of the top Ten Reasons for Rejecting A Counteroffer. Read it with earnest. Feel free to print it out and keep it with you when you do give your resignation, so it will be easier to say "No" to the bribe of your self worth.

 

Top Ten Reasons for Rejecting A Counteroffer

1. What type of company do you want to work for if you have to threaten to resign before they give you what you are worth?

2. Where is the money for the counteroffer coming from? Are they offering your next raise or promotion early? All corporations have strict wage and salary guidelines which must be followed. Are future opportunities limited now? Will you have to threaten to leave again for another raise or promotion?

3. Your employer will immediately start looking for your replacement. Well managed companies rarely make counteroffers since they view their employment policies as fair and equitable.

4. You have demonstrated your unhappiness to your employer. You will now be viewed as having committed blackmail in order to get a raise. From this day on, your loyalty will always be in question.

5. When promotion time comes around, your employer will remember who was loyal and who was not.

6. When times get tough, your employer will begin cutbacks with you.

7. The same circumstances that now are causing you to consider a change will repeat themselves in the future. If you accept a counteroffer, the underlying reasons for a career change will still be evident and will resurface.

8. Statistics show that if you accept a counteroffer, the probabilities of voluntarily leaving in six months or being let go within one year are extremely high.

9. Accepting a counteroffer is an insult to your intelligence and a blow to your personal pride knowing that you were bought.

10. Once the "word" gets out, the relationship you now enjoy with your colleagues will never be the same. You will lose the confidentially and trust of your peer group.

If you do consider being "bought back", obtain the details of the offer in writing, as well as a one year "No Cut" contract from your employer. If they refuse - as two thirds of employers who offer counteroffers do - your decision to leave should still be apparent. It is always in your best interest to go with your initial reaction and "gut feeling". It is much better to leave and then come back if you really want to be "bought back". You won't be labeled as one who cannot make a decision and then can't stick to it. Look at your current job and the new position as if you were unemployed. Make your decision based on which holds the real potential. It is probably the new opportunity or you would not have considered and accepted it in the first place.