Articles From the Team
Things not gone to plan?
It’s a common occurrence for a candidate to make the decision to look for a new role and go through the entire process and secure a new job that either pays more, is closer to home, has better hours or a combination of all these factors only to then elect to remain with their existing employer.
All of the hard work’s done and you’ve secured a new role. The time, effort and energy has been expended and it’s time to resign but when you do you end up having an honest and frank appraisal with your supervisor. They want you to stay and hadn’t realised there was either one factor, or a quite possibly more, which was making you unhappy to the extent that you want to leave. These conversations can be both productive and cathartic. Despite their best efforts supervisors have a number of plates to spin and, either rightly or wrongly, can for the most part be forgiven for having their attention directed to other areas of the business rather than solely focused on you. It is, after all, not fair to expect a supervisor to micro manage each team member for every minute of the day to measure happiness and satisfaction.
It’s at these times that that an open and honest discussion can take place about a candidates frustrations, be it either salary, long term aspirations or career development. Quite often a personal development plan can be agreed between candidate and supervisor to ensure that a candidate remains with the firm and their role/package/prospects are enhanced somehow to give them a new lease of life. This is generally very good for the candidate, the supervisor and the long term success of the organisation.
What, however, happens when none of the promises materialise? What are candidates to do when they’ve turned down an offer from a prospective employer only to be given empty promises. “Your pay will be reviewed in 6 months”, “the next team manager will definitely be you”, “we’ll give you more complex work” are some of the assurances given and if and when they materialise that’s fantastic but, if they don’t, then candidates can quite rightly feel aggrieved. Candidates then find themselves in a worse position than they were in just before resigning. The trust between them and their employer has broken down, quite possibly irretrievably so, leading to a greater level of unhappiness in their role. They also feel they may have annoyed the potential new employer by turning them down and perhaps also feel a little bit embarrassed about going back to the same recruiter to advise that in fact they’d made a mistake in choosing not to accept an offer.
These scenarios, whilst unfortunate, are by no means fatal. As long as candidates can revert to their original recruiter and be honest about what’s happened there is usually a very good chance that the recruiter can liaise with the prospective employer and explain the situation. Mistakes happen but pretty much most situations can be salvaged. If an employer has yet to fill the role that you initially turned down there is always a chance that the old offer can be resurrected. The best way of doing this is being honest with your recruiter. Honest as to why you turned down an offer in the first place and honest enough to disclose what happened afterwards.
The alternative is to start the entire process again with an entirely new recruiter and the only guarantee with doing so is that the amount of time it takes from extracting you from your current, more unenjoyable role, has just got a whole lot longer.
For more information please contact Matt Robinson or visit our BCL Legal.