How to Resign and Deal with Any Counter Offers

When you look at career advice, professionals and industry leaders often talk a lot about how to perfect your resume, ace your interview, etc. but forget to impart their wisdom and knowledge on how to handle your resignation and tackle any counter-offers you may receive. Thankfully, the team at Agile Recruit is perfectly positioned to impart some advice on both of these topics as expert recruiters.

How to Hand In You Resignation 

Once you have gone through the time-consuming process of searching for a new role, interviewing for it and finally accepting an offer, the hard part is over. Well, mostly. You’ll still have to negotiate the tricky task of handing in your CV – something which is never easy no matter how long you have been in your current position, and what your professional relationship is like with your manager.

In some cases, this may be straightforward enough, but in most cases, you should expect your employer to do everything they can to keep you – especially if you have been with the company for an extended period, are in a senior position, or have a particularly specialised role.

Companies will often do everything in their power to keep employees for several reasons. First of all, a high turnover rate reflects poorly upon the company itself. It can be quite costly once you start adding up the financial impact of having to recruit, hire, and eventually train a new member of staff. Then there is the issue of how an employee leaving will affect other members of the team. Not only can it lower morale, but it shows that you can find a better position out there, which could easily prompt others to start looking for a new role too.

All of these factors make keeping an employee a priority for most employers, even after you have handed in your resignation letter, but how can you expect your current employer to tempt you to stay?

As shocking as it may sound, rather than tempting you with a better pay packet, your employer could refuse to accept your resignation. Although they can’t legally do so, it doesn’t stop companies from occasionally trying this tactic, so make sure that you know what your rights are.

Then there are the many tactics that a company can use to persuade to stay from offering you a pay rise to tempting you with the promise of a promotion.

Dealing with Counter Offers

Understandably, it’s easy to become tempted by counter offers and lose sight of why you were looking to leave your current role, to begin with. No matter how appealing a counter offer may seem, you need to be honest with yourself and consider whether they address the reasons why you were looking for a new job, to begin with. If it is as simple as you looking for a pay rise and how now been offered one, then great! However, if the incentive is only a short-term solution to a more significant problem, then you need to weigh up your decision to stay or to follow through with your resignation.