# Counteroffer

A counteroffer is a response to a job offer that proposes different terms, usually a higher salary, made either by a candidate negotiating with a prospective employer or by a current employer trying to keep an employee who's resigned to take another job. The two situations use the same word but work differently.

Which one applies changes what's actually being negotiated and who's asking for what.

**Counteroffer** — A counteroffer refers to two related but distinct situations. The first is a candidate counteroffer: after receiving a job offer, a candidate responds asking for different terms, most often a higher base salary, but sometimes a signing bonus, more equity, or a different start date, and the employer decides whether to accept, meet partway, or hold at the original offer. This is a normal part of negotiation. The second is an employer counteroffer, sometimes called a retention counteroffer: an employee resigns to take a job elsewhere, and their current employer responds by offering more money or other changes to try to keep them from leaving. This kind happens after a resignation has already been submitted, not during a hiring negotiation, and it puts the employee in the position of deciding between the new opportunity and an improved version of the job they were already planning to leave. The two share a structure, one side responds to a stated position with different terms, but a candidate countering a new offer is negotiating between two roles, while an employee weighing a retention counteroffer is deciding whether to stay somewhere they'd already decided to leave.

Retention counteroffers carry a common piece of practical advice: accepting one doesn't always resolve whatever made someone want to leave in the first place, and the reasons behind a resignation often resurface later. On the candidate-negotiation side, a counteroffer is generally lower risk, since it's simply part of settling final terms before anyone has resigned from anywhere.

## Frequently asked questions

### Is a counteroffer the same whether it comes from a new employer or a current one?

No. A candidate counteroffer happens during negotiation with a prospective employer before accepting. A retention counteroffer comes from a current employer after an employee has already resigned.

### Is it normal to counteroffer a job offer?

Yes, within reason. Employers generally expect some candidates to negotiate rather than accept the first offer, particularly on salary, as long as the counter is grounded in realistic market expectations.

### Should someone accept a retention counteroffer from their current employer?

It depends on the situation, but a common caution is that the underlying reasons someone wanted to leave, if they weren't only about pay, often don't fully go away just because the employer offered more to stay.

## Related pages

- [Offer letter](/glossary/offer-letter)
- [Signing bonus](/glossary/signing-bonus)
- [Browse open roles](/jobs)

## Handle the offer stage with confidence

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