Counter Offers: The Stress of Trying to Leave a Company

Counter Offers: The Stress of Trying to Leave a Company

There is some interesting history on this article.  The first day that I posted it, I copied it from a database template, and pasted the article into this website.  The content of that template somehow brought down the entire the website.  I could still see the back-end of the website but site visitors could only see a blank page.

When I published the article from the template, the article went out in feeds on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Feedburner, The title was “People are stranger than horses.”

I restored the website, rewrote the article in a text file, and published then it.  However, with an article titled “People are stranger than horses” already published, my rewrite seemed to need a new title that reflected the earlier article.

I was really having a challenge with this article.  I was experiencing a bit of stress in getting a very simple article published.

The relationship between the title and counter offers is that people may exhibit very strange behavior under the stress of making a job change, just as my website surprised me in crashing the way it did and was causing me a bit of stress.

People who accept counter-offers often find tried that they have gone running back to the problems they had been trying to leave behind.  Having made two job changes myself, I have experienced firsthand the pressure that a job change can cause.

IF PEOPLE ARE STRANGER THAN HORSES
What brought up the subject of people and horses and now computers pertains to experiences I have had as recruiter.  I have read that three of the most stressful things in life are the birth of your children, buying a house, and making a career move.  I can think of other things perhaps equally stressful, and births, marriages, and career moves for some people are not stressful at all.  They are part of the miracles of living.

In a letter of congratulations that I send to applicants who have recently signed a letter for an offer of employment, I tell them that the purpose of my letter is to help them prepare emotionally as well as understand what to expect in terms of a counter-offer.

A company prefers to lose people based on the company’s timing.  This concept is easy enough to understand if you follow sports.  Some of the more mediocre players are very valuable in the middle of the season.  They are trained and they know the playbook.  When the season ends, the mediocre players with no contracts for future work see their value drop to zero.

A counter-offer is simply a negotiation process.  The employer tries to convince an employee to stay with anything from an increase in pay or responsibility or convenience or nothing but praise.  The employee can engage in the negotiation or just sit there and listen with a deaf ear.

One of the toughest people I have ever known served as an Army ranger in Vietnam.  He and I worked at the same company for over three years.  He was a father of four and felt that he needed to make more money.  He sought and landed a job that gave him a pay increase.

When he resigned, he went through a counter-offer process with some people who were skillful sales people and could be skillfully intimidating.  The former ranger felt that the people who were making the counter-offer had betrayed him earlier in his career at the same company.  He sat with the people making the counter-offer for over an hour.  He politely listened to what the management team had to say and asked questions for more details.  He dragged out the process like a prizefighter drawing out a fight just to punish another boxer.  Finally, one of the managers making the counter-offer said, “So you have decided to stay with our company?”

This Army ranger stood up and said, “Yes, I have, but I need to make more money for the sake of my family.  He took out a pen, pulled a piece of paper from across the desk of the manager directly in front of him, and wrote down a number.  Then he turned the paper for the manager to see and pushed it back across the desk.  The number was twice his current salary.  He looked at each of the two people he viewed as Judases and then said, “Call me when you can move my salary to match that number.”  He then walked out.  No one called him.

As it turns out, this post has taken a different direction from the one that brought down my website.  I was certainly not going to copy and paste it from the same deadly document I have used before.  Since I noticed that the post was already out there on the Internet before I had finished it, I felt compelled to complete rewriting the post tonight.

However, tonight I could not focus on the strangeness of horses and computers relative to people.  This post discusses different life experiences from those in the deadly post.  Yet I plan to tell those other stories, soon I hope.  The experiences in that story were experiences that today are valuable to me.  On this night, I am just wondering about that Army ranger, who must be nearing retirement now.  I liked the guy.  He was a friend, but other people were put off by the guy, and put off when I tell how he handled that counter-offer.  They see him as arrogant.  I don’t know.  Maybe he was arrogant.  To me, he was a war survivor, a tough person in business, a friend, and a person who was not bewildered in the flow of life changes.

Are you a card collector?

The first time I heard the expression “be a card collector,” I was not certain what the person meant. Collecting cards to follow sports figures or to trade in games had always been my idea of card collecting.

What I learned from a master at networking was that collecting business cards was part of the process of building a database and from there a professional network.  I also learned from this person that asking for a business card was a way of showing an interest in another person and their business. It was a way of saying that the time you spent with them was worth your time.

I was at the Food Marketing Institute trade show a few years back. The line of people waiting for cabs could be 100 yards long.  Just catching a cab could take an hour.

A woman I had met at the show asked if she could join me in line and share a cab.  She and I were going the same direction.

I was standing in line alone between two groups.  I was happy to have the company.

She was a former Procter & Gamble division manager who was at the show networking in an effort to get a new job.  She was going the same direction as I was and asked if she could hop in line and split the fare.

She explained during the ride that she had made a huge mistake over her career.  She had not built a network.  For over a decade, she had believed that she would never work for another company and that building relationships outside of Procter & Gamble was a form of disloyalty. She made it a point to distance herself from people at other manufacturers, people who had left Procter & Gamble, and especially from corporate recruiters.

On the day that she and I shared the cab ride, she had left Procter and Gamble, gone to another company, and had left that second company.  She was now unemployed and had few contacts who could help her.

She said that there was a certain irony in her sharing a ride with me, a corporate recruiter she would have avoided ten years earlier.

She said that being at that trade show and talking with the few people she did know, she realized that she had cut herself off from opportunities that were available to many of her peers who had done a better job of staying in touch with business associates throughout the industry.  She was very talented and yet did not have a workable network.  She had never collected cards.

Today there are many ways to collect cards.  At trade shows, people pick up cards from vendors and competitors.  On the Internet, it is fairly easy to build a network by joining professional groups that are ostensibly designed to provide helpful information.  Around the office there are people you can always get to know better.

The person who told me to be a card collector many years earlier was a master at what bright Internet people (LinkedIn, Twitter, Google, Facebook)today have turned into huge enterprises: that is, the enterprises of helping people collect cards.

Interview Tips: the Chemistry of the Job Interview

For some hiring managers, the chemistry of the job interview influences hiring decisions as skills.  Hiring decisions have so much to do with chemistry that personal chemistry might be the biggest element in the interview process.  Think about it.  The interviewer has read your resume.  This person must have some reason to believe that you are qualified for the job.

I have heard more than one hiring manager say that they have made their decision within the first five minutes.  They spend the rest of the time reconfirming their decision.

Therefore, from there, the interviewer is interviewing you to learn five things:

    1. Confirm the details from your resume
    2. Determine whether you can successfully apply your skills to the job you are seeking
    3. Get an understanding of your interest in the job and whether the job is a fit for you
    4. Evaluate your reliability and your potential
    5. Decide if your personal chemistry will mix with the culture or personal chemistry of the company.

If you spend an hour interviewing for a job that matches your skills and qualifications, the factor that determines whether you get the job is whether you have the chemistry to fit into the company as well as other candidates.

Therefore, put effort into putting your best foot forward and making a great first impression.  Show an interest in the interviewer and in the hiring company.  Use open gestures.  Sit up straight and comfortably.  Smile.  Show the interviewer you have prepared for the interview by talking about the things that interest you about the company.  Have a meaning list of questions and ask them as the interview progresses.

When you meet the interviewer, you should smile.  Give them a firm handshake.  Listen to what the interviewer is discussing.  Listen to what the interviewer is asking you to discuss, and just be honest.  Your smile, your interest, and your chemistry will increase your chances of getting the job.

Our Mission

OUR PURPOSE AND MISSION
The purpose of our company is to provide career solutions for the CPG Industry. We want to help you help you find the right job or to help you find the right person if you are looking to hire someone.
INDUSTRY EXPERTS
Secondarily, we provide information to help you stay informed and are as ready as possible to speak as an expert on the consumer products industry. That is the reason that you will see trends in business, marketing, and media as well as career information.

6 Steps to Making a Great Job Interview Impression

Great Job Interview Impression

Fine tuning your ability to make a great job interview impression will make you more competitive against other applicants.

Dress the part.

If you are going to meet people for the first, dress appropriately.  If you are going to a swimming party, take a bathing suit.  If you are going to a job interview, wear a business suit.

Be Odorless.

Aftershave or perfume may smell great to you, but also may annoy other people.  If you are wearing aftershave or perfume on your hands and leave those smells on the hands of the people you meet, you will offend some people.  I have having breakfast at a national sales meeting for Polaroid Corporation, and two women at the table were talking about the lack of professionalism of one of the men at the meeting.  They said that his wearing aftershave into the meeting rooms was unpleasantly distracting and unprofessional.  Everything that I have read about aftershave and perfume for business meetings says that you might as well have body odor as applying a distracting perfume or aftershave.  Neither one will make people want to meet you again.

Be Prepared.

Always have an agenda for your meetings.  Ask yourself, “What things do I hope to do in this meeting?”  Write them down.

Focus on Listening.

“We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak.” Epictetus

Listen to what other people have to say and respond in ways that help them feel you have connected with them and their message.  If you have things that you want to say, you may find that those things are better said at another time that will allow you to make a point and not distract from the impression you want to make.

Sit up straight straight, open your arms, and smile.

Actors are professionals at communicating a message through body language and facial impressions.  With simple gestures, sometimes with no dialogue, an actor is able to project an image of a character who is powerful, weak, sad, happy, confident, uncertain, and so on across the range of character traits and emotions.

Make Eye Contact

Most people look at another person’s eyes.  I have read that for some people looking at a person’s nose is easier.  If you have difficulty making eye contact, just pick a point on a person’s face and softly focus at that spot.  I have found that if I am paying attention to what a person says, I will forget that I am looking at a person’s eyes.  Rather I tend to have a broader focus of the person’s entire face.

Give Compliments that are In Line with Your Meeting

When you make relevant, positive comments about the interviewer’s career or education, the company’s performance or the workplace appearance, you show interest in the person and in the company.

Resumes Employers Will Want to Read

Resumes Employers Will Want to Read: Working through stacks of resumes, hiring managers and recruiters spend just seconds on deciding whether to save you resume or delete it.  Job seekers must know how to write resumes employers will want to read.

I based the following information on feedback I have received from hiring managers, staffing managers, and other recruiters.  I have also discussed resumes with hundreds of applicants.  These are suggestions only, but the layout is a working format.

A resume is a job application.  You list the jobs you have had, where you performed those jobs, and when you had those jobs.

If you replace the information below with your information, you will have written a resume.

Sample Resume

CONTACT INFORMATION

Your name
Street address City, State Zip
Phone
Email address

OBJECTIVE AND SUMMARY

Stating an objective or a giving a summary at the beginning of the resume is common practice. However, stating an objective or providing a summary is optional.

EMPLOYMENT HISTORY

There is no sentence structure in a resume. The wording in a resume is simply a series of statements of actions and accomplishments.

For example, this is a sentence: I doubled the company’s sales in 6 months.

This is resume wording: Doubled company’s sales in 6 months.

The history in a resume is just a list that includes employment periods, performance, skills, responsibilities, accomplishments, and education.

(Most recent job first)

Company Name, company Location,   From -To

Most recent title, location,  From – To

Use bullet format.

•        List things you have accomplished. Do not waste space on your just giving a job description. List things that showed that you made a difference in the positions you held.

•        Use facts—for example, exceeded assigned sales goal by 30%, reduced costs, promoted people, saved time, increased productivity, etc.

•        Employers and recruiters search their databases for specific words, so list successes with specific industry words or functions. Include the actual name of your product categories, product names, sales accounts, functions (e.g., Profit & Loss, Market Research or Software Names, New Product Development, Market Insights, Innovation), etc.

Next list previous titles at this company and again list successes and accomplishments in bullet format.

Then include Previous Companies going back in time from most recent.

EDUCATION

Normally, education goes at the bottom of the resume. People who have recently received an educational degree or credential that alters their employability might consider putting education at the top of the resume.

Other items that might go at the bottom of the resume are awards, extra skills, volunteer work or perhaps some relevant college employment.

HOW TO SHORTEN YOUR RESUME FOR READABILITY

Hiring managers only spend seconds looking at each resume. They are going through stacks of resumes, often in documents that have to be opened one at a time.

Avoiding the following items might make the difference as to whether your resume even gets read.

  • Objective Summary Titles
  • Hobbies References
  • References available on request
  • Compensation
  • Long paragraph formats
  • Long-winded discussions of core responsibilities
  • Too many details on jobs with well-known functions
  • Details on jobs that date back in time
  • Paragraph formatting
  • Third person reference
error: Content is protected !!