Earlier this week, a recruiter told me a story about a job seeker who was already employed but looking to jump elsewhere. She interviewed with a firm that really loved her and they were eager to hire her immediately but in the end she declined their offer saying she talked it over with the firm she was with and decided to stay. Clearly her firm had sweetened the pot to entice her to stick around. The recruiter let the hiring firm know that she decided to stay at her current job and that was that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Many months pass and now the candidate’s firm is bought by another firm. The culture is rapidly changing for the worse, people are getting PIP’d to death and laid off, and the survivors are anxious they’ll be next on the chopping block. So the job seeker reaches out to the recruiter and says she’s once again on the market. The recruiter contacts that other firm and says “Good news! That auditor you liked is looking to make an exit now.” “No thanks,” said the firm. “That bridge has been burned.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As far as the firm was concerned, the job seeker pitted them up against the current firm and leveraged their interest in her to secure a raise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The candidate is still on the market.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I’m positive we’ve written a lot about counteroffers over the years but all I could find in the archive after 20 seconds of Googling was this old Open Items post: Should I stay or should I go now? (Counter-offer)<\/a>. Sadly any comments made on that post were forever lost when we switched away from Disqus for comment management some years ago. Hope that person figured it out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n