"Should I accept a counter offer from my company after I've already found a new job?"

As the economy begins to recover, top IT employers industry wide are fighting to keep the employees they have from moving into jobs offering higher pay  & often more career opportunity.

Once again, the focus in the job market is moving out of the hands of the employer & back into the hands of the candidate, as trained & experienced IT professionals are becoming harder to find.

The questions job seekers are asking themselves now is:

“Should I stay or should I go?”

TOP 10 Reasons NOT to ACCEPT a counter offer:

1. Statistics show that if you accept or solicit a counteroffer, the probability of you voluntarily leaving, getting fired, or being demoted within one (1) year is extremely high. “69% of employees who accept a counter offer leave their current employer within 6 months of accepting that counter offer” according to recent reports from  Bill Humbert www.recruiterguy.com.
2. Company culture, practices, and policies seldom change. The same circumstances that are causing you to consider a career move will eventually repeat themselves in the future.
3. Consider this: What type of organization do you work for if you have to threaten to resign before they recognize your value or wake-up and see the problems?
4. You have now made your employer aware that you are unhappy. From this day on, your loyalty, fidelity, and motives will always be under suspicion.
5. Where is the money for the counteroffer coming from? Is it merely your next raise early? Is it coming from another department’s budget? All companies have wage and salary guidelines. Deviations from those guidelines can create parity issues amongst other employees and, therefore, animosity.
6. When promotion time comes around, your employer will remember your resignation. Promotion and raises will be harder to come by.
7. All organizations, at some time or another, go through difficult times that require cutbacks or reductions. When that happens, your employer may then “honor” your resignation after-the-fact by laying you off.
8. Once you accept the counteroffer, it is not uncommon for organizations to start networking and diplomatically looking for a person with similar qualifications as yours. This is done to hedge against your possible departure in the future.
9. To some, accepting a counteroffer is an insult to professional pride–a feeling that you were “bought off.”

     10.  Once the word gets out, and it will, the relationship that you now enjoy with your peers, subordinates, and supervisors will be different. You may lose respect from these people.

Some times in life we lose focus of what is really important in life. Luckily, I have an amazing 4 year old niece, D.J. (Delilah Jean) who is constantly reminding me;) Most mornings she comes down to watch me get ready for work, she loves to watch me put on my make up.

“You know what Aunt Kim? You sure are lucky…” D.J. announces.

“Why baby girl?” I ask smiling.

“Because your sister had daughters so you wouldn’t have to put on your make up all by yourself!” she giggles.

Funny but until that moment I didn’t really stop to think how incredibly lucky I really am to have such a wonderful relationship with my sister & that she has delightful daughters that have become like my own. Even a 4 year old could see that LUCK wasn’t about winning something or money at all….but about having amazing people to enrich your life.

As you walk through your day, take a moment to truly appreciate all the things God has provided that have no price but which make you feel like the luckiest person on Earth. I think you will be pleasantly surprised;)

“Some luck lies in not getting what you thought you wanted but getting what you have, which once you have got it you may be smart enough to see is what you would have wanted had you known.” ~Garrison Keillor

One day early last fall, I walked outside, looked up & saw this, “JESUS LOVES YOU…” written across the sky.

I realized then that maybe, God was trying to tell me something. Funny how easy those words are to forget, yet when you need Him…He is always there.

“What we call the beginning is often the end. And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from.” ~T.S. Elliot

“You come to love not by finding the perfect person, but by seeing an imperfect person perfectly. ”
~ Sam Keen

RYAN LAWRENCE TABLER 11/15/1976 – 8/9/2010

Son of my dear friend & sister of my heart, Barbara Stamm.  Words can’t express what you must be feeling or how I wish I could take the pain away, but I hope in these you find some comfort.

The Cord

We are connected,
My child and I, by
An invisible cord
Not seen by the eye.

Author Unknown