New research out this week  has suggested that Accountancy firms are spending significant amounts of money to hang on to their staff in the form of counter-offers. As a recruiter who specialises in this sector I have on occasion borne the brunt of the counter-offer and so you would expect me not to be a fan of the practice. However, apart from depriving the poor recruitment consultant of his or her fee, I also think that the counter-offer can be detrimental to both the employer and employee.

An employer who makes a counter-offer in order to retain a member of staff has to weigh up the negative aspects of this practice. As the research has shown, the immediate effect is increased overheads due to the increase in salary offered, however, there are additional negative effects. Employers often have to stray outside established salary bands in order to retain a certain employee which will store up trouble for the employer once that employee’s colleagues find out about his or her pay rise (it is my experience that despite confidentiality clauses people will always talk about salary levels). It is also worth bearing in mind from an employer’s perspective that the person who you have made a counter-offer to wanted to leave! Very often it is not for financial reasons that people move jobs and so offering more money to a person is really papering over the cracks and the reasons for that employee wanting to leave still remain. The question that needs to be answered then is whether it is worthwhile paying more money to someone who is not happy in your company and has demonstrated this by accepting another job? Or, do you accept that that person wants to leave, let them go and recruit someone who wants to work for you? Overall it may be cheaper and more beneficial to accept the loss of someone who doesn’t want to work for you and replace them with a motivated employee who does and who will probably be more productive.

From an employee or candidate’s perspective, the counter-offer situation is similarly beset with pitfalls. My main point on this side of the fence is very similar to the one made above. As a candidate who has accepted an offer from another firm you obviously wanted to leave!  The question you have to ask yourself is, are you going to be any happier or more fulfilled in your current role with a few extra quid in your bank account when the real reasons for you wanting to leave most probably still remain? Obviously if the reason you were looking in the first place was purely financial then your likelihood of accepting a counter-offer has increased, however, I still think it is worth asking the question why you weren’t being paid at this new level previously? And why has it taken your resignation to get your employer to pay what you think you are worth especially when another employer has recognised that worth?  However, perhaps the most important factor for the employee to consider is that once you have handed your notice in to an employer you have broken a bond that will be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to repair. To the employer you will always be the person who wanted to leave and this may have negative repercussions on your career progression within that organisation if you decide to stay.  As an employee who has looked to leave an organisation and accepted an offer from elsewhere, it is my opinion that it is a dangerous course of action to accept a counter-offer especially if all that is being offered is a financial incentive which in the end will probably not deal with the underlying reasons you wanted to leave in the first place.

Obviously, as with most things, we are not dealing with absolutes and I’m sure that there are plenty of instances where a counter-offer has been accepted and both parties have benefited from this but it is my experience of over ten years in recruitment that most candidates who have accepted a counter-offer are back on the phone within twelve months looking for another move. It is my suggestion then that before making or accepting a counter-offer both parties should seriously consider the positive and negative effects this may have and should look beyond short term gains.

This is just my opinion based on my experiences with the counter-offer and I’d be very interested to hear about other peoples experiences from both the employer and employee perspectives. Get in touch.

A quote from a Daily Mail reader concerning Recruitment Consultants was brought to my attention last week – it was not complimentary. The fellow suggested “so called recruitment consultants are now a significant hindrance to both employer, prospective employee and the economy in general. Scavenging sales reps with no talent or intelligence who are no more than slave traders.”

Now whilst this gentleman obviously had a bad experience with the recruitment industry and a large axe to grind, I am concerned about how the recruitment industry and Recruitment Consultants are viewed in general. During the course of the average day I speak to many people, both clients and candidates, some of whom tell me about their experiences of bad practice at the hands of recruiters. These bad experiences include candidates being brow beaten into accepting jobs that they do not want and are harmful to their careers, candidates whose CVs are sent out without their consent (and sometimes to their exsting employers!), clients who are deluged with unsuitable CVs despite giving specific parameters and clients interviewing candidates who have not gone through the proper pre-selection process and are wholly unsuitable for that particular vacancy. These things can all combine to give Recruiters a bad name and I’m interested in how people think this image can be changed.

I have some thoughts of my own on this. Firstly, Recruiters should be encouraged to support the Recruitment and Employment Confederation’s (REC) drive to raise standards which hopefully will eventually lead to Chartered status for the organisation and its members. Secondly, Recruiters should be trained properly and put through professional qualifications where they will learn how to manage the recruitment process, deal with legal issues, interview candidates properly and even write decent adverts! Thirdly, candidates and clients alike should not accept bad practice from a Recruitment Consultant or Agency. If you are a candidate whose CV has been sent out for vacancies you have not been consulted about then do not deal with that agency again and tell your friends, colleagues and peer group not to deal with them either. If you are a client who has not been listened to and are victim of the ‘bums on seats’ approach to recruitment, do not use that agency again!

I firmly believe that Recruitment Consultants play a valuable role as facilitators in this economy and on the whole do a great deal of good for both clients and candidates, but we are being let down by a minority of “scavenging sales reps”. Together with our clients and candidates we need to do something about this image.

Let me hear about your experiences and how you think our industry can improve its practices and image.

It seems that the employment market is currently in a state of flux and although the signs are encouraging, as a professional recruiter, I am still unsure what the future holds for recruitment in the short-term.

As if to underline the confusion two seemingly contradictory reports were published today, one from the Institute of Public Policy Research stating that the long-term unemployed figure has doubled in the last two years to 797,000  whilst another set of figures published in September by the Reed Job index  tells us that employer demand for new workers rose to its highest level in six months during September. It seems to me that this pattern of one piece of bad news for the recruitment sector followed by a piece of good news is repeating itself with regularity.

I would be interested to hear what fellow recruiters, employers and candidates think of the current market. My experience in the Public Practice Accountancy sector is one of a fairly low, but slowly improving demand for new recruits especially amongst the Big Four Accountancy practices and larger firms, mostly in the areas of tax and audit. This increase in demand may be seasonal as September to December is traditionally a busy time for Public Practice recruitment, but this year it has certainly got off to a slower start than in previous years. What is your experience?