OK, so I did the interview thing and negotiation thing and now have in my hand an offer letter for a job with management authority, a 37% increase in pay, and amazing growth potential.
In what order do I notify my current stick-in-the-mud management of my offer, give two weeks notice, accept the new offer, and entertain any counteroffers? Is there an accepted protocol or procedure for doing this? Am I supposed to offer my current employer a chance to counter the offer before accepting the new one?
I don’t want to burn any bridges, because it’s possible I may want to work here again. But I doubt that my current employer will offer me a management position and even if they do match the salary, it’s not about the money. Not entirely.
I’ve thought about a list of demands for my current employer to meet that would keep me around. But I doubt they’d do it in good faith and I might find myself first on the layoff list when the time comes. Right now they’re desparate for good engineers and me leaving will only be more bad news for them.
I let them know I wanted more responsibility and significantly more pay, almost a year ago. But they gave me only a token increase and increment in my salary and classification. Do I owe them a second opportunity to match what I’m worth, or should I just tell them sayonara?
“Never quit a job until you already have a new one.”
In other words, accept the offer first.
Next, call a meeting with your supervisor and tell him or her that you have accepted a position at another company. Explain that you have enjoyed your time at the company, but that the other company is offering you 37% more than you’re currently making, and that you will have management authority. Present your current employer with a letter announcing your intention to resign two weeks from the day of your meeting, and that you will be glad to help train your replacement. Your employer may decide to give you two weeks’ pay in lieu of notice, in which case you’ll have a nice little holiday.
I envy your position. I’m still looking for a more suitable situation.
Dear $MANAGER:
In order to further my career development and pursue new opportunities, I have accepted a position at $NEW_COMPANY, which will require me to leave my employment with $CURRENT_COMPANY. My last day of employment at $CURRENT_COMPANY will be $DATE.
I would like to thank you and all of my coworkers for making my employment at $current_company enjoyable and rewarding. Please let me know if I can be of any particular assistance during this transitional period.
Sincerely.
bughunter
I’ll second Jonny’s advice not to resign until you have the new job in hand. The new company can wait 2 weeks for you to start. If they say they can’t, you probably don’t want to be working there anyway.
As far as entertaining a counteroffer, that’s certainly your perogative; however, in my experience those who accept the counteroffer generally become less satisfied with their job.
Unless there’s some reason you haven’t mentioned for wanting to remain at your current job, forget the counter-offer. Management that has to be essentially blackmailed into giving you a raise/responsibility isn’t worth hanging around for.
Just write the letter, give them your two weeks, and move on.
The above advice sounds perfect. Accept the new job offer, then give verbal and written notice specifically noting your end date. If you have a supervisor between you and higher management, tell them first out of courtesy.
The only thing I would add is to be sure of your notice requirement before setting a start date with your new employer. It could be longer than 2 weeks depending upon your level in the company.
This is exactly what I was going to say. If you think you’d be happy in the new position, don’t give your current employer the choice to match the offer. Informing your current employers that you’re leaving for a better position with a higher salary focuses on the new opportunity and implies nothing bad about the current company, thus leaving your future relationship with them intact. If you allow them to scramble to come up with a competitive position and salary so you can decline it, it’s a direct rejection which could hurt your future relationship with them.
Thanks for the advice, all. You provided a necessary sanity check since this is the first time I’ve actually found a new job before losing my old one.
Yes, that’s basically how I’ve handled it so far. I have the offer, and have informally told them that I’ll accept, and given them an unofficial start date.
All I haven’t done is send them a formal letter saying “Yes, I accept your revised offer and will start on November Eleventeenth.”
And I will do that before I give notice to my current employer. I am on paid family leave this week, and my supervisor is on vacation all week. So I am going to wait until next Monday to give two weeks’ notice.
I thought about what it would take to keep me… and they’re not likely to meet it. It’s not just money and management offers. They’d have to change their business strategy and corporate culture. So I’m going to take your advice and not even suggest they have an opportunity.
And thanks especially to jweb for providing the boilerplate for my resignation letter.
Two suggestions, these are things I learned the hard way.
first off and this is very important, if you new job says that they just can’t wait the two weeks for you to give notice DO NOT TAKE THE JOB. Run. Run fast, run far. You will be sorry if you don’t. Ask me how I know this.
Secondly, do not offer your current employer a chance to counter offer, and if they do give you a counter don’t take it. from you OP it sounds like you are tired of them
If you are tired of them now, you will still be tired of them with a raise.
I agree with everything that has been said here. When I gave notice at my former job, I spoke to a manager that knew it wasn’t a great fit for me the day before I was to give notice. It made me confident when I actually gave my notice. Actually, it made it really easy, as he told the big boss before I did (with my permission).
You don’t even really need to say in the letter of resignation where you will be moving. Keep it brief, and don’t explain your reasons in the letter. As I understand it, if there are ever legal problems with your leaving, you’ll be much better off if your letter is brief and to the point.
It isn’t always true, but is often enough to be something to think about, that if they counteroffer and you accept, they won’t really trust you any more. Your company has had a year to address your concerns. If they haven’t cared enough to do it in the past, they will only make enough concessions to keep you.
You have just discovered Trick #1 in the Evil HR Handbook, bughunter. I have been through this quite a few times, including the variation in which you demand a raise and after a couple of weeks of stalling get a “we just increased your salary (under 2%) effective last Monday. What did you come in here to talk about ?”.
Follow the advice in this thread about the simple resignation letter. Resist all your irrestisible urges to turn the resignation letter into some sort of soapbox or confessional. Do that at the bar, not in writing.
Do NOT tell them why you are leaving, or where you’re going. Simply state that you are resigning, effective date XX.
Do NOT entertain counter offers by your current employer. Recently, a friend of mine had another job offer lined up, and she told her current employer she was giving her notice (her contract required minimum one month’s notice). Her employer immediately said, “What will it take to keep you here?”, so she pulled out her list of demands. Employer agreed to every single one, and she told the offer company, “No thank you.” Less than two months later, her employer has gone back on every single thing they said they’d do, and now she’s stuck, having passed on the other job offer.
Not much aditional info to add here. What you could do is the following:
Negotiate a better position from your current employer - DO NOT TELL THEM ABOUT THE OTHER OFFER. The other offer is there so YOU know you have leverage. Assuming that you can’t or don’t want to degotiate a settlement IN WRITING…
Accept the other offer
Set a start date - allow 2 weeks+ whatever time off you might want. Another thing to consider is your vacation time or any options of vesting 401k. You don’t want to quite a month before those options or 401k employer contributions are vested.
2 weeks before you would like to leave, give your notice to your boss or any managers who you are working on projects with. Don’t give like 6 weeks notice.
Your letter should be simple and to the point (I a, terminating my employment on x date). It’s not literature.
If you have an exit interview, simply give non-committal or vague answers.
As a side note, I had to replace a guy on my last job when he left the company. One of our team mates was like:
Teammate “You can call him if you have any questions”
Me “Well, actually he left the company”
Teammate “That’s ok, he still has an obligation to help us”
Me “Well…actually he doesn’t. See that’s what ‘leaving the company’ means. We stop paying him. He stops working on projects.”
It’s really up to you if you want to help out people from your company after you leave. I generally don’t and give them a polite “I am no longer with the firm and don’t think it would be appropriate for me to work on that”.
Agreed - no need to mention the other company or anything else. Maybe you could say “I have accepted a position at another company and will be leaving on XX.” but that’s all you need, apart from the “I have enjoyed bla bla”.
General wisdom: if you accept a counter-offer to stay, it’ll be years before you get another raise. Believe me, I know this.
As an HR person let me say that the one very important thing is before you resign your current position, MAKE SURE YOU HAVE READ, SIGNED, AND RETURNED YOUR OFFER LETTER/PACKAGE FROM NEW COMPANY.
If new company hasn’t given you one, GET ONE. If they balk, pass on their offer.
**ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS ** get job offers and the conditions of the job offer in writing. Some employers are quick to yank away what they dangled in front of you in an interview to snag someone if it’s not in writing.
And yes, a simple “I resign my position of ***** effective *******” will suffice. You do not need to go into details.
Yeha, let me just emphasize the following - if it’s not in WRITING, it didn’t happen.
And NEVER try to leverage you new offer against your current company. The best you can hope for is some shut-up money and the worst is that they will keep you on long enough to transition any work away from you and then get rid of you.
Remember that you owe absolutely no loyalty to your company outside of basic etiquete or anything you may have agreed to in your non-compete agreement (and even then it’s iffy). You can quit a job a month after joining or you can even recind your job offer acceptance (one lesson I learned the hard way, if you are looking at multiple companies, don’t try to string them along until all the offers are in. Just take the first offer you like and then quit if something better shows up. )
There was the poor bastage in a company I worked for that accepted a counteroffer. He was smiling and happy until he found out that he wasn’t receiving a bonus (the company didn’t pay as well as others bad had a nice ~20% bonus per year norm). In addition, a few months later when he was due for a raise the response was “you already received a raise”.
However, I have seen people take counteroffers and be very happy.
I think one has to judge the seriousness of the counteroffer. If it is a hastily thrown together raise that barely meets (or heaven-forbid) is lower than your new offer where you still have the same (or Cheers-like name promotion) title but have the same responsibilities then I would pass.
Some companies, though, really do want to keep you but they have their own schedule for your advancement – which is too slow for your liking. When you give notice, they then genuinely move fast in making sure you stay with a real raise and a true promotion (your job duties significantly change). Judging the reaction, staying is a possibility.
I also want to reemphasize people saying not to request a counter-offer. If asked, say you were offered a position for a higher salary and duties. Nothing more.
Be wary of attempts to get you to stay just so they can find your replacement on their timeline. Be wary of ‘name promotions’ (where you are ‘promoted’ on one day but when you come in the next day you are doing the same thing)…and the next day…and the next…
Once I applied for a position, and they could not wait for me to give notice. Guss what they turned out to be scum sucking assholes. One other time a company made me an offer, and again they could not wait. I passed. I found out a couple of moths later that they also were scum sucking assholes.
In my limited experience only scum sucking assholes will insist on you starting right away, and not giving you time for notice to your existing employer.
