Here’s what keeps happening: A recruiter spends weeks landing you a solid job offer. You say yes, shake hands, celebrate the news. Then Monday rolls around, and suddenly you’re texting to say you’re staying put—your current boss magically found budget for that raise you’ve been asking about for two years.

The Real Issue Nobody Talks About

Sarah, a recruiter in Douala, tells me she’s had this happen four times in the last six months alone. She finds someone the perfect role, preps them for interviews, negotiates the salary up by 18%, gets the offer signed. Then the candidate uses that offer to leverage more money from their current employer and disappears.

The hiring manager is frustrated. The company wasted time and resources. Other qualified candidates moved on to different opportunities. And Sarah? She spent 40 hours on someone who never planned to leave in the first place.

This pattern has become common enough that some recruitment agencies—particularly in competitive markets like Lagos, Nairobi, and parts of Southern Africa—are starting to use contracts that include counteroffer clauses. These agreements say: if you use an offer we secured to get a raise elsewhere, there’s a fee involved.

Now, whether this approach is legally enforceable depends entirely on your country’s employment and contract laws. Cameroon, for example, has specific labor regulations that govern recruitment practices. Anyone entering these agreements should verify what’s actually permitted in their region before signing anything.

What Actually Goes Into Securing An Offer

Most candidates don’t see the behind-the-scenes work. They see the final offer letter and think: “Great, my recruiter sent my CV and I got the job.”

What really happened?

Your recruiter rewrote sections of your professional summary to highlight transferable skills the hiring manager cared about. They had three separate phone calls explaining why your short stint at that previous company wasn’t a red flag. They researched the company’s salary bands, knew which benefits were negotiable, and pushed for a higher starting figure than you would’ve asked for yourself.

They also put their reputation on the line. When a recruiter recommends you, they’re telling an employer: “I trust this person. They’re serious. They won’t waste your time.”

Then you use that offer as leverage to stay exactly where you are.

You gained something tangible—better pay, renewed respect from your boss, maybe even a promotion timeline you didn’t have before. All of that came from someone else’s professional effort.

Why The Traditional Model Doesn’t Cover This

Recruitment has always worked the same way: employers pay placement fees when someone gets hired. The recruiter earns nothing if the candidate doesn’t take the job.

This made sense when most candidates engaged in good faith—when people explored new roles because they genuinely wanted to leave.

What’s shifted?

More candidates now treat the recruitment process as free career consulting. They’re not necessarily job hunting. They’re testing their market value. Once they have proof of that value in the form of a written offer, they take it back to their current employer and negotiate.

Some recruiters I’ve spoken with estimate this happens in roughly one out of every four or five active searches. The exact percentage varies widely depending on industry, seniority level, and regional job market conditions. There aren’t large-scale verified studies on this, but it’s mentioned often enough in recruitment circles that agencies have started responding.

Hence the counteroffer clauses.

What This Costs Beyond Lost Commissions

When someone backs out after accepting an offer, the damage spreads.

For the hiring company: They’ve already told other candidates the position is filled. They’ve allocated budget. They’ve planned onboarding. Now they’re back to square one, except their best candidates from the first round have accepted other roles.

For other job seekers: That opening you used as a bargaining chip? It’s back on the market, but now the hiring manager is cautious, skeptical, moving slower. The next person who applies faces tougher questioning because someone else damaged the trust.

For the recruiter: Beyond the financial hit, there’s reputational damage. Employers start doubting the quality of candidates that recruiter brings. Future placements get harder.

In Cameroon’s job market—where roles in IT, finance, healthcare, and engineering are highly competitive—these delays can seriously impact business growth. Companies can’t afford to run hiring processes two or three times for the same position.

How Some Agencies Are Responding

A handful of agencies have started implementing what they call Candidate Representation Agreements. These contracts outline expectations upfront, including clauses about counteroffer scenarios.

Here’s what these typically include:

Clear Intent Confirmation: The candidate confirms they’re genuinely exploring new opportunities, not just testing salary benchmarks.

Counteroffer Acknowledgment: If the candidate uses an offer to secure a raise or promotion elsewhere, they agree to pay a service fee—usually 10-15% of the offered salary.

Good Faith Clauses: Legitimate changes of heart are handled differently than deliberate leverage plays. Context matters.

Again, enforceability depends on local laws. Some countries allow these agreements. Others don’t. Anyone signing one should get legal advice first.

What Candidates Should Consider

If you’re genuinely open to leaving, work with recruiters transparently. If you’re happy where you are but curious about your market value, be upfront about that. Some recruiters offer salary benchmarking as a separate paid service.

What damages trust is using someone’s professional effort as a free negotiation tool without acknowledging the value created.

Think of it this way: if you hired a consultant to develop a business strategy and that strategy helped you secure better vendor contracts—even if you didn’t implement the full plan—you’d still pay for the consulting work. The outcome was valuable. The effort produced results.

Recruitment operates on similar principles.

FAQ

Q: Is it legal for recruiters to charge candidates counteroffer fees? It depends entirely on your country’s labor and contract laws. Some regions permit these agreements if both parties sign voluntarily. Others don’t. Always verify local regulations before signing anything.

Q: How common is this practice? Still relatively uncommon, but growing in competitive markets. Most traditional agencies still operate on employer-paid models. Counteroffer clauses appear more often in executive search or specialized recruitment.

Q: What if I genuinely changed my mind after getting the offer? Legitimate changes happen. The distinction is whether you used the offer to extract a counteroffer from your current employer. Most contracts account for good-faith withdrawals differently than strategic leverage plays.

Q: Do these fees actually get paid, or are they just threats? Some agencies enforce them through legal channels if the contract is valid. Others use them more as deterrents. Enforcement varies widely.

Q: How much would I owe if I triggered this clause? Most agencies implementing this charge 10-15% of the offered salary, mirroring what they would’ve earned from the employer-side placement fee.

Where This Leaves Everyone

Look, recruitment is changing. Candidates have more information, more leverage, and more options than ever before. That’s mostly a good thing.

But professional relationships require reciprocity. When someone creates measurable value for you—whether you ultimately use that value the way they expected or not—acknowledging that value matters.

For recruiters, the old model of absorbing all the risk while candidates hold all the cards isn’t sustainable. Some form of accountability makes sense.

For candidates, the message is straightforward: engage honestly. If you’re testing the market to get a raise, be transparent about that. If you’re genuinely exploring new roles, great—commit to the process with integrity.

For employers, tighter hiring processes and clearer communication can reduce these scenarios. When good candidates slip away because internal raises suddenly materialized, it often signals deeper retention issues worth addressing.

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