How to Deal with the Dreaded Counteroffer

One of the things that has affected me most over the past few months in what has now become a candidate centric market has become the counter offer. When I was first starting out as a recruiter, the issue of the counter offer was basically irrelevant. With an economy that was still quite unsure of itself the job market was very similar. Candidates for the most part were pretty much taking the first position they were offered. Over the past few years as the economy has improved and the unemployment rate has dropped this has changed drastically. Companies have begun offering employees better wages, benefits, and perks before letting their employee walk out of the door. This in turn has forced an adjustment to be made on the recruitment end. With this being said there are a few things we can do as recruiters to prepare for this:

Manage expectations: Managing expectations with a candidate over salary options will allow you and the candidate to have a clear understanding of the compensation being offered for the position.

Understanding priorities: Making sure you have a clear understanding of the things most important to a candidate. While salary is always important, there are always other important factors to various candidates. When presented with a counter offer the recruiter should always know what was most important to that candidate in the first place.

Understanding why candidate is leaving/ Counter Stats: The immediate excitement of the raise/ increased perks will be hard to deny. Making sure the candidate remembers that while they received a raise, that may soon fade and the previous problems will still be there. This will allow you to then present the statistic from the National Employment Association that says that 80% of people who accept counteroffers either leave or are let go within six months.

So overall the best plan in order to prepare as a recruiter for a counter offer is constant communication. Fully understanding your candidate throughout the process will allow you to be prepared when presented with their counter offer.

By Peter Pabon | People Science Sr. Talent Advisor

From our inception in 1997, companies have relied on People Science to “break the code” of their toughest and most complicated recruiting efforts. Acknowledging the importance of taking a fresh approach when in a War for Talent, we challenge ourselves to create processes, methodology and “out of the box” recruiting ideas to bring resolution to our clients’ critical staffing goals. As a result we have completed many RPO projects in our tenure and consider ourselves pioneers in the field of Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO). People Science provides End to End, Augmentation and Project RPO Services.

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