Your candidate has resigned. Their employer has made a counter-offer.

More money. A better title. A promotion. A promise that things are going to change.

How this plays out depends a lot on the quality of the recruiter and, to be frank, the integrity of the candidate. But you can influence the outcome more than you think.

Scenario 1: The Disappearing Act.
You get a one-line email, or worse, the candidate goes straight to the client  and you never hear from them again.

Diagnosis: The candidate doesn’t trust you enough to engage and manage this together. Maybe boundaries weren’t set early. Maybe you lost them somewhere in the process. Something along the way broke that trust.

Scenario 2: The Flattered Candidate.
The candidate does communicate but they’re surprised, flattered, wobbling.

Their employer suddenly wants to keep them. Their salary has increased. Their manager is promising progression. Of course they’re reconsidering.

Diagnosis: You didn’t cover the possibility of a counter-offer, or didn’t cover it well enough. It came as a surprise when it shouldn’t have.

Scenario 3: The Money Talk.
The candidate takes the counter-offer. Turns out it was about the money all along.

Diagnosis: Qualification wasn’t tight enough. The red flags were there. They just weren’t drilled into the right questions.

The Counter-offer Is Information

When a candidate accepts a counter-offer, it’s easy to focus on the lost placement.

It’s more useful to look at what the situation is telling you.

You can’t control what an employer puts on the table but you can control how well you’ve prepared the candidate to evaluate it.

And sometimes the counter-offer gives you the clearest feedback you’ll get on your candidate management.

What else have we missed? Share your counteroffer stories. How do you handle them? What valuable lessons can you share?