Like most of my blogs, this one is has come about as a result of what’s going on in our office this week.   I’ve just had a very frustrating call from Douglas (name changed for obvious reasons).

Douglas got a really good job offer from us for a Senior PHP Developer position with a great company.  It was a step up in stature, more money and he was excited about the company.   But when he handed his notice in, sure enough he was counter offered by his current company.

The counter offer was:

• £3,000 more money than he was on.
• Promotion to team leader
• Working on a new project – exciting work, full project life cycle – something that would look good on his CV.

And so Douglas called us with the bad news / good news depending on how you look at it and Douglas was going nowhere.

My client was bitterly disappointed.  They’d invested a lot of time and effort into the recruitment process, rejected the other candidates that were in the running, and had begun to plan for Doug’s start.    And then this.   Back to square 1, or beyond square 1 as it’s not really done to go back to the candidates that had been rejected.

So fast forward 2 months, and we’ve refilled the Senior PHP position with a great candidate and finally, albeit a couple of months behind schedule, my client is happy and can move on.

So this morning, we’ve had Douglas on the phone again.    He’s made a dreadful mistake.  The promises made have not be honoured and he is stuck where he was. He did get more money, but that was never his driver – he wanted a new challenge, a chance to flex his technical skills and it just hasn’t happened.   So now it’s Douglas’s turn to feel let down and bitterly disappointed.

“Is there any way you could go back to your client and see if there’s still an opening Colin”?   Well I knew that there wasn’t but asked the question anyway.    But they’d not only filled the position, but felt let down by Douglas and couldn’t get that trust back if they wanted to.  So that door; the very best door that he’d found a few months ago, was firmly closed forever to Douglas.

We love our stats at 100% and so thought I would share some with you.   We have placed thousands of candidates over the 10 years we’ve been going, and goodness knows how may I personally have placed in the 10 years before that.  ( I know, I don’t look old enough!)   And what we’ve found is:

• 70% of candidates that accept counter offers, go on to leave within the next 6 months. The problems or frustrations don’t just miraculously disappear!
• There’s often a trust issue moving forward between the company and employee that wasn’t there before. How can the company really trust that candidate knowing that he’s been out there looking at new jobs.
• As Douglas found, you don’t accept an offer from a company without having first researched, invested a great deal of time on interviews and established that this is the company for you. By accepting a counter offer, you are undermining all that work and your decision making ability, and then closing that door forever.

Now I know what you’re thinking.   The counter offer is the Recruitment Consultant’s enemy, their worst nightmare and so I would say this wouldn’t I.   Well, er yes, that’s true.   But actually, this is your career, and you have to make the choice that’s right for you, and if that’s an alternative offer from a different client, then great, go for it.    But counter offers are different.  The failure rate is so high that from experience, we know that it’s a generally a bad move.  It’s like going back to an ex girlfriend – it might look like a good safe option, but that never works out!

The cost of recruitment and the investment made by companies is significant and that is why they will consider making a counter offer.  It saves them time and money and fixes their immediate problem.  The decision is about them, and not necessarily about you.

Of course, as with everything, there are exceptions to the rule and some counter offers are accepted and work out really well.  The company realise that perhaps they’d undervalued the employee and make an effort to put that right.    But should you really have to put your notice in to be appreciated and valued for the hard work you put in?

But in my experience, better the devil you know, is often the safe, easy option and who ever got where they wanted by taking the safe, easy option?