You’re feeling stagnant in your career, so you apply for an interesting new job. Several screening calls and interviews later, you have an offer letter in your hand. You hand in your resignation letter, and your manager asks to see you. Rather than conduct an exit interview, they come back with a counteroffer with terms that are much better than those offered by your new job.
You’re not sure what to do. It seems like every HR consultant and career coach advises against accepting a counteroffer. According to research by job-search firm LiveCareer, 57% of employees who accept a counteroffer end up leaving within 24 months. You’re wary of burning bridges with the new company, but you also really like the terms that your manager is proposing.
Should you accept the counteroffer, or should you tell your manager thanks, but no thanks? According to Linda Lautenberg and Judy Schoenberg—cofounders of EvolveMe, a career-coaching business for women in midlife or mid-career—you should consider the following factors before making a decision:
1. Understand where your company is coming from
There are a number of reasons why a company provides a counteroffer. “If somebody they really values notifies them and they were kind of blindsided by it, it might just be a genuine attempt to retain people and improve the situation,” says Lautenberg. Alternatively, she adds, if they’re seeing a rival company poach several of their employees, “they might be trying to stave that off.”
Other possible reasons include a company’s reputation and its position as an employer in the job market. Retention trends, for example, can drive the company to make a counteroffer, according to Schoenberg. Say there has been a mass exodus, and perhaps the people who stayed have been there for years. The company might prefer to put out a counteroffer than have to spend a great deal of money and time to hire and retrain, Schoenberg explains.
2. Reflect on your career aspirations and reasons for leaving
The next thing to consider is why you wanted to leave your job in the first place. Are you leaving because of compensation? Culture? Wanting to do something new? Do you have concerns about your company that you’ve tried to bring up but were never addressed?
“I think taking a counteroffer can really work if there’s openness and transparency about your own career goals—why you would stay, and why it would work for you,” says Schoenberg. If the counteroffer provides better compensation, benefits, and a better career-development opportunity, staying put could be worthwhile. Additionally, if you have close relationships to the people you work with and you like the direction leadership is taking in the company, staying put can be a good decision.
Lautenberg says that it’s important to identify whether the counteroffer remedies (or could remedy) your initial reasons for leaving. For example, a toxic workplace is “something that isn’t easily fixed,” she says, “but if it’s something that’s incredibly specific that is easily addressed by the employer, then [staying] is easier to consider.” Factors about the new job that are more complicated also should be considered, she says. “If the new offer sounds great but requires uprooting your whole family, and the counteroffer would allow you to have all of the above,” that could be a good reason to accept the counter and stay put.
3. Assess what will be appropriate for your career and life stage
It’s also worth identifying where you are in your life and career so that you can really assess whether the counteroffer, or the new job, will better serve you at this moment. Schoenberg suggests taking inventory of your career goals and asking yourself: “What are my values right now? How does it play into the rest of my life? What are the skills I want to leverage in my role? How do I want to grow?”
Having clarity on these concepts allows you to be less biased when making a pros-and-cons list, says Schoenberg. She recalls a time when she was given a counteroffer after having been at a company for 15 years, and still decided to leave. “I had gotten to the point in my leadership where I was at the top of where I wanted to be,” she says. “I wanted to do something more entrepreneurial; and even if I could have done something entrepreneurial within the organization, that wouldn’t have satisfied my need to grow and develop [on] my own terms.”
On the other hand, if you’re at a stage in your life where you’re not in the position to take risks, it might be better to stay put . . . provided you can see a secure future in your company. Say you get a shiny new job offer from a startup, says Lautenberg, but if you currently don’t have the risk tolerance to make that jump, it might be wise to take the counteroffer.
4. Consider the market and your company’s position in it
At a time when the labor market is constantly in flux, you might want to assess your company’s position in the market before accepting its counteroffer. In particular, Lautenberg cautions against accepting a counteroffer from a company known for periodic layoffs.
“If your company is one of those, and you survive them so far,” Launterberg says she would be concerned about sending the signal that you’re leaving, but then accepting the counteroffer and staying. In that scenario, she explains, you very well might be at the top of the list the next time there’s a layoff “because there’s some trust that has been broken or they know you were willing to leave before.”
5. Be honest and upfront with both companies
Bottom line: Contrary to the statistics about counteroffers, both Schoenberg and Lautenberg agree that accepting a counteroffer isn’t always a bad career move. It obviously depends on your particular circumstances, says Schoenberg.
But whatever decision you make, be sure to be honest and upfront, she continues, so that you don’t burn any bridges further down the road. If you decide to accept the counteroffer, let the other company know as soon as possible. Lautenberg recommends reaching out to every person you interviewed or interacted with. Express gratitude for their time and their offer. Also, make it very clear that your decision is final so that it doesn’t seem like you’re trying to negotiate a better offer. That could “really leave them with a bad taste,” she warns.
Schoenberg recommends keeping the conversation at a high level. Be clear in your reasons for accepting the counteroffer, but remember, “you don’t owe them every little in and out of why you’re making this decision.” Sometimes, people want to overexplain, she says, but going down that road is rarely productive.
Ultimately, it comes down to being a decent human being. “From the time you interview with somebody to the time you get an offer could be months,” Lautenberg says. Companies understand that during a lengthy hiring process, personal and professional circumstances can change. “If it was [because of] something like that, I would [hope] the new company will be understanding [about] why you would end up staying.”
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