Because of today’s highly competitive job market and strong economy, conditions are excellent for career leverage. However, the same factors make it quite likely that you WILL receive a counter offer when you accept a more lucrative and challenging position elsewhere and tender your resignation.

In limited cases the counter offer can be acceptable for a short term solution to frustrations in your current role, but in spite of many surface benefits, is accepting or even considering a counter offer in your short OR long term interests?

Multiple studies of professionals who accept counter offers would indicate NO.

Conducting a confidential career search while still productively employed is a time filled with promise, excitement, drama, emotions and expectations. These emotions are heightened when you are extended an offer with another firm. Clearly, it’s difficult to make a logic-based decision when so many emotions are flying. After acceptance of the offer, it’s time to give notice at your current company. You’re not out of the emotional woods, however. If you’ve been successful in the company for any length of time, you’ve developed internal relationships and friendships. In fact, you may have a close relationship with your direct manager. The feelings of camaraderie will cause pangs of regret and loss, making you doubt your decision. The heartfelt congratulations upon receipt of your resignation letter will give way to ill will and frustration from co-workers and management during your two week notice, furthering doubt in your decision to leave.

Following are the perils of considering or accepting a counter offer from your current employer:

1. Beware the "What timing! Just when we were about to . . . . (promote you, give you a salary increase, bonus, etc.) What kind of company makes you resign to be rewarded for your successful performance? Follow the money--is it possible that all they’re doing is advancing you the raise you would have gotten at your next review (or should have gotten based on your last review?) and will stagnate there until they’ve transferred your knowledge base to your eventual replacement?

2. Beware the Guilt Trip: "That’s regrettable, with the (sales conference, trade show, month end, quarter end . . . .) right ahead of us. . ." Recognize that there’s never a convenient time for a company to lose a valued employee. Your Manager has one motive in this maneuver--damage control and maintaining the status quo.

3. Be aware that nothing really changed. In spite of a possible raise, promotion, pat-on-the-back, all of your original reasons for leaving your current employer HAVE NOT CHANGED. The employment graveyard is littered with the bones of those who have horror stories about accepting a (seemingly) lucrative counter offer only to be replaced by their assistant or a new hire after their knowledge (mindshare) had been transferred.

4. Recognize your changed status. You’ve announced your intent to move on. You’re not the Golden Boy/Girl anymore. You may even be looked on as a traitor by your co-workers or Manager. This fundamental shift in your relationship will stay with you throughout your tenure at the company, should you accept a counter offer. In all likelihood, your Manager is probably grooming or recruiting a replacement for you from the day of your resignation. Certainly, you’ll be passed over for future promotions, training, new equipment, resources. You’ve been ‘benched’, sidelined. You’re not in the loop anymore. The challenging assignments, accounts, clients will always be given to a more ‘loyal employee’.

5. Sit in your Manager’s shoes. If roles were reversed, what would you do if you were receiving a valued employee’s resignation? Why, you’d first try to discourage the move--to maintain the status quo. You’d probably play to their emotions, lavish praise, lament the company’s loss, play the guilt card. You’d talk about an opportunity to counter offer. Why? To buy time. This is what a Manager’s job is. He/she’s simply doing his/her job. Next, you’d start planning your employee’s replacement. Whether that’s to have you train your assistant or to call a search firm, he/she’s got to get a backup plan in place.

6. Don’t buck the odds. Recent surveys reflect that 83% of professionals who accept a counter offer either leave voluntarily or are let go of their respective companies within six months of the counter offer. Reason? The place hasn’t changed, none of the factors motivating your search have changed except, perhaps your compensation or your title. These seldom do change, except for the worse. If you did your due diligence before accepting a new challenge with a different company, what possibly could have turned the tables enough to make the old company fit better than the new one?

7. Beware of the counter offer that’s ‘Too Good To Be True’. In every case IT IS. The worst part is, some companies will actually promise the sun, moon and stars to clear the other offer from the table and renege on THEIR promises.

Case Study. Four years ago we obtained an offer and acceptance for a strong Industrial Sales Manager who wanted to relocate from the East Coast back to California to be near the wife’s family. A Fortune 50 Company hired him as a Regional Manager. Upon tendering his resignation, his then current employer came back with ‘a counter offer he couldn’t refuse’. He’d be transferred and relocated to S. California, open a West Coast Office and pioneer a new business unit for a $25,000 increase in base compensation. My guy called me to indicate there was no way he could turn down the counter offer. "What’s the downside?" he asked. "They’re even picking up the costs of selling my house!"

Six months later, after being terminated by his company, he sat out the tail end of the recession unemployed, with a higher house payment in a higher cost of living area, having assisted his former company in opening up a successful business unit that could thrive easily without such a high paid Manager. One of the people he’d hired took his place for over $20,000 less per year in base compensation. Now, he called me back to see if my client OR any others would hire him at the income level he’d achieved with his ‘counter offer’ strategy. Hm-m-m . . ., an over-compensated, unemployed Industrial Sales Manager in a recession is not a very recruitable candidate. And why would I work hard to place him with another of MY valued clients? A guy who’d already proven he’d renege on a commitment? No, he’d burned both a bridge with me and with my client. He’d exhibited two fatal flaws: Mercenary tendencies and lack of commitment to a signed agreement. He’d proven he couldn’t be trusted.

Moral of the story: Don’t buck the odds. Counter offers don’t work!

The company philosophy behind making a counter offer is simple: Since you’ve indicated you’re leaving the company anyway, they’ll assist you in that process, but by making you a counter offer, they can achieve it on their terms and on their timetable. It’ll be time for you to leave at the point where you’re expendable. Don’t be fooled by the fanfare or let yourself be bought back for a couple of dollars. Career leverage doesn’t occur by staying on the treadmill. Honor your commitment to yourself and to your new company and enjoy the journey!

Editor’s note: Thanks to Marlene McIntyre, McIntyre Management Resources, for contributions to this White Paper.