Kevin Sailor
President and CEO
Counteroffers can pick up in August. Bonus season is behind us, and the people who decided in the spring to make a move are making it now.
So this month we’re getting into what happens when you resign and your employer comes back with more money. Hint: We’ve seen the same outcome over and over.
There’s a lesson in here for hiring managers too, if you keep losing finalists at the last minute.
- Kevin
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In this issue:
💡 Expert Insights: What happens after you take the counteroffer
🙋🏼♂️ Ask a Recruiter: Why are we losing candidates to counteroffers?
⭐ Associate Spotlight: Denise Decker
💡 Expert Insights
What happens after you take the counteroffer
FRI Executive Recruitment Team
You give notice. Your manager asks for a day. The next morning there's more money on the table, and sometimes a title with it.
Most of the people we've watched take that deal have a story about what came next.
Ask before you interview
Before we put a candidate into a process, we ask what's wrong with the current job. If a manager could fix it — workload, title, reporting line — we tell them to go ask for that fix first. Ask for the money too.
If the answer is yes, you've saved yourself 60 to 90 days of interviewing you didn't want to do.
If the answer is no, you've learned something for free, and you've used up the counteroffer. A company that moves only when it's about to lose you has told you what you're worth to it.
“Is money going to fix the underlying reason you wanted to leave? That reason's still there. Money doesn't fix that.”
Three outcomes we've watched
The branch manager. He took a counter that, in his words, knocked his socks off. Over the next year his responsibilities tripled. Evenings, weekends, it didn't matter. He took a pay cut at another firm to get his life back. If a company pays you more, it will expect more.
The underwriter. She resigned, and her employer came at her three times in two weeks. She held. On her last day they pulled her into a conference room at 8 a.m., and by noon she'd accepted. She got the promotion. Two years later, she was downsized.
The senior wealth candidate. A large employer had her doing one thing well and kept her there. When she resigned, they countered with promises about her path. We checked in 90 days later. None of it had happened.
It does work once in a while. One candidate resigned and had the CEO on the phone the next morning, moving up a promotion that was already planned. He's still there and he's happy. That's the rare exception.
The raise also puts you above your peers, and everyone in the office knows you were on your way out. When the next restructuring comes, you're the most expensive person on the team and the one whose loyalty already got tested.
If you're the one making the offer
One HR leader told us that landing 60% of the candidates she made offers to was a good month. People were coming to her for an offer letter to take back to their current employer. If they didn’t get the counter, she hired them.
Two things were going wrong. Both were fixable.
She wasn't asking about counteroffers. We ask on the first call and again at every stage: If an offer came, what would you do? What would your current employer have to do to keep you? "I'd have to think about it" is not a yes, and week one is when you want to hear it.
Her offer letters also went out with no deadline, which gives a candidate time to shop them.
Losing finalists at the last minute usually starts much earlier in the process.
Working a search that keeps falling apart at the offer stage? Reach out to the FRI team — that conversation starts long before the offer letter.
🙋🏼♂️ Ask a Recruiter
Q: We keep losing finalists to counteroffers at the last minute. What are we doing wrong?
Our take:
Almost always, that conversation started too late.
We raise it on the first call with a candidate and come back to it at every stage: Has anything changed? What would your current employer have to do to keep you? A candidate who hasn't answered that before an offer is drafted will answer it in their manager's office, with a number in front of them.
Ask your recruiter at every stage what the candidate has said about staying. If nobody can tell you, that's the gap.
➡️ Have a question for our team? Send it our way.
📌 New Career Opportunities
We’re currently recruiting for a wide variety of roles in fiduciary services, including:
Senior Wealth Advisor (Hybrid)
Chief Trust Officer
Loss Control Consultant
…many, many more
The full list of career opportunities, including locations and next steps, is exclusively available to Connective Services subscribers.
💡 Associate Spotlight
Get to know our team: Q&A with Denise Decker
What I tell every candidate to ask
“Ask the hiring manager what a successful hire in this role looks like. What are your expectations at 30 days, 60 days, six months, even a year? Tell me what that looks like. Then you know their expectations going in, and you can make sure to meet or exceed them.”
🔗 Connect With Your Recruiter
Greg McDowell
Executive Search Team Lead
[email protected]
LinkedIn
Denise Decker
Executive Search Team Lead
[email protected]
LinkedIn
Daniel Jimenez
Executive Recruiter
[email protected]
LinkedIn
Cody Newton
Executive Recruiter
[email protected]
LinkedIn
👋🏼 About Connective Services
Connective Services is a newsletter brought to you by Financial Recruiters International and Alexander Raymond. Both firms are full-cycle recruiting companies connecting fiduciary services organizations with highly skilled candidates. Financial Recruiters International serves the financial sector while Alexander Raymond specializes in insurance and contract staffing.
