Amateurs.
You use the offer to leverage a raise or promotion out of your current employer. Then you take that back to the new company and tell them you need more to beat the unexpected promotion at your current employer!
In all seriousness, the general consensus is that if you have to threaten to leave to get a raise or promotion, it’s probably not a great long-term fit. From what I understand, people tend to leave shortly after a counteroffer anyway.
Based on the workplaces I’ve been in, I’d say it’s a bad bet. Most employers figure (and these are all examples bosses have told me happened to them) if you give them an ultimatum once, you’ll do it again, or you’ll hang around just long enough to line up a few thefts from your client list and not only quit but take a few clients with you, or try to take another good employee with them, or some other dirty trick a loyal employee like you would never even think of doing.
It’s a shock for anyone to find out their employer doesn’t think they’re indispensable, but I’ve seen top performers, long-time company fixtures and people who claim they “know where all the bodies are buried” walked out the door.
I think the best advice you’ve gotten here is first you need to actually wait for the offer from C that was Spice Weasel. Yeah, do not screw yourself over. You never know what may happen.
The other was from Pork_Rind. Go in with a plan. I’m ready for this, this is what I envision.
Best of luck, keep us posted.
I suspect he was the kind of guy who though all employees were cogs who could be easily replaced at a moment’s notice. I wonder how that worked out.
Amusingly enough, about four months after he laid me off, he, himself, was informed, by the CEO, that his services were no longer needed.
Pretty much everyone in the division hated him, and had little respect for him. The entire senior management of that organization was an old boys’ network of classic, toxic sales guys, which is how I think my former boss got the job in the first place. When he got canned, it was mostly because he couldn’t figure out how to turn a profit, other than by reducing headcount.
The tactic you describe is good negotiating practice. Unfortunately the vast majority of Americans have no clue how negotiation works,and generally take the most basic skills as rudeness. It is extremely important to know your partner, and everyone in their approver chain. Anyone along that chain who doesn’t know the game can take things wrong and put an end to the discussion. “No” always feels safe. People who don’t know how to negotiate feel manipulated by the process and will tend to run with emotion instead of intellectually analyzing the deal and choosing what is best for them. It’s a real shame, because very important decisions are often made in this manner.
So I said all that to say this: Who are the people in the approval chain? What do you know of their negotiation skills? Their business savvy? Their emotional maturity? If anyone in that chain falls lower than a 6 out of 10 on any one of those scales, then don’t try it.
Given that there seems to be at least one emotionally immature one, I’d say set your sights on Job C. You may find yourself re-applying for job B (from outside) in a year or two. I’ve worked in many companies where the only way to improve one’s lot was to leave and come back. No one in upper management could see the problem, apparently.
It’s important to have an excellent understanding of your place in My Company, and how My Company views your place. Where I used to work, there was a fairly standard job rotation schedule where trainees would change jobs every 12-18 months, journey level employees changed every 3-5 years, supervisors every 5-7 years, and managers every 7-10 years (although probably half the managers retired before their first mandatory rotation simply due to age). My second manager had been in his job for probably 15 years, and every time the subject of his moving to another position came up, he made a big deal of checking his retirement calculations. That was enough to get the Principal to back down and let him stay for another year or so before broaching the subject. One of that manager’s subordinates tried that when his own, supervisor-level rotation was due, and the Principal basically told him, we’d like to keep you but you’re not irreplaceable. IIRC, he left, and was replaced within a few weeks.
Many years later, I was on another side of this game. I had interviewed a candidate that I thought was absolutely stellar - she hit all the key notes. The next day, I called to offer her the job. She accepted. The day after that, she called me back and said her current employer was giving her a raise and she’d be staying with them, not joining us. I mentally put her name on the “do not hire EVER” list, and moved to the next candidate. Who worked out great, as it happened.
My son-in-law, who is German, had two job offers, one he like more than others. He told them that he had another offer which “he could not believe.” The people he liked bumped his starting salary. In fact, the other offer was unbelievably bad.
This kind of stuff drives me crazy. Why? How dare this employee do what is best for them? How cheeky to find a way past the brick wall HR has built between them and a decent raise? Whether you realized it or not, you were part of a huge conspiracy that keeps employees stuck in low-level earning positions for the benefit of corporate profits.
while overall true, there is a huge “gotcha” in there, that I don’t see addressed:
when you get a written job offer (in my environment), it is always with a very clear and shortish period of validity.
casually formulated: “We will reserve this job for you for 48 hours, period that ends monday, 9.00h am. If we have have no written confirmation by then, that offer expires”. Companies do that for very obv. reasons.
So, negotiating with you current employer is one thing, doing it with the clock running against you, is a different kettle of fish - your current employer of course knows that and can play that against you.
I concur.
I remember i was at a discussion about Resumes once- one HR person said if the resume isnt on good quality paper, obviously they dont care, so i toss it
Another said- “if the resume is on quality paper they are more about stlle than substance, so i toss it”.
This is why HR people shouldnt be in charge of hiring decisions.
I think the first response, by @Spice_Weasel nailed it. While some have said you need to be careful as you may not be as indispensable as you think, that’s true regardless.
IME it’s important to see work as the business transaction it is. I’ve seen people pass up great opportunities out of some feeling of responsibility or loyalty to the company they’ve worked for for X years, and the people that rely on them…only to get unceremoniously booted later as part of a “restructure” or some equally dumb reason.
You need to be in a position of knowing your value and therefore being able to know it’s their loss if they ever were to fire you, and knowing what options are out there. And I think this is healthy even if it’s a job you thoroughly enjoy and intend to keep for life.
I was too immature in my job to realize I was hating the player not the game.
There’s another thing to consider. I worked in broadcasting and marketing, two careers notorious for turnover at every level of a company. The companies I worked for expected their employees to constantly be on looking for better jobs, and made little to no effort to counteroffer or try anything else to retain someone. Sure, working conditions were good, salaries were at or even above industry averages, and it wasn’t like they were trying to push people out the door. But if their salary schedule was a two percent cost of living adjustment and you got an offer of a three percent bump, they’d not only tell you to take it, they’d throw you a going away party.
Average salaries were in the sub-pitiful range when I worked in broadcasting.* The only way to better yourself was to move up and out. Turnover at some places was incredible.
*remembering my entry pay of $550 a month.
To me, accepting an offer then declining it later isn’t a good practice. If the candidate had taken the offer to their current employer & worked out a better deal for themselves, then declined the offer, fine, them’s the breaks. But accepting the offer then declining it, leaves the hiring company, who was acting in good faith, holding the bag. In this case it was only a day later, so it wasn’t terrible, but I’ve seen someone accept an offer, negotiate a start date a month out, never show up, and call 3 weeks later to say they were now declining the offer. You better believe when he called a year later to see if we were still interested we told him No.
Where I work, this is basically the only way to get improved terms without going through a lengthy and convoluted promotion process. Persuasion is nothing, but hard data is magical. So you get the written offer, present it to your boss, and say “company X thinks I’m worth 20% more. What do you think?”
There are no guarantees with this. Your relationship with your manager is important, and the conditions at your company are important. It’s imperative that you do have a live offer that you’re ready to action. If you do succeed, you’ll be simultaneously seen as more valuable but less loyal, so your employment enters a greater risk/reward phase where your performance will need to support the value you negotiated. It’s helpful if you can tell your manager, if you give me this 20% and a title and some resources, here are some additional things I can do for you.
That’s just the situation at my employer. Your situation is really what matters here, but hopefully this gives you some added food for thought.
You have no leverage with respect to Job B. You have already applied for it “several times” and have been rejected. That is, for whatever reason, they don’t believe you are good fit for that job. Your telling them you have received another offer and will be leaving unless you are considered for Job B will not change their minds, because that possibility was always implicit anyway. At will employees can always leave at any time for a new job.
Now, if you want to use your offer for Job C as leverage to get a raise or better working conditions for Job A that you currently have, well that might be a possibility, depending on how valuable you are to the company. In any event, don’t make that play until a) you have offer for Job C in hand, and b) you are fully willing to take Job C if your requests are not met.
While I’m in HR, I don’t work compensation, but I can tell you we’re probably not the ones who created the brick wall. While we can advise management as to the current salary range for similar positions in our area, we don’t control how they budget their line of business. We don’t really control how they run their line of business either.
A manager who views you as disloyal because you left for a better opportunity is a bad manager. You’re better off searching for greener pastures.
That is a giant assumption. One that IMO / IME is rarely true.
IMO the most likely reason our OP has been turned down for Job B is solely that they finally found a sucker willing to work Job A and they don’t want to re-open that position. Or the manager of Job A doesn’t want to send one their best workers somewhere else. Or the manager of Job A doesn’t like the manager of Job B and is spiting them.
The idea of a objective evaluation of the candidate’s fit versus job B’s requirements being the main factor is laughably naïve for internal transfers.