Robert Half's 2026 Salary Guide found that 85 percent of employers extended a counteroffer to a departing employee in the past year, and more than a third now view it as a genuinely valuable retention tool rather than a stopgap. At the same time, nearly a third of the people who accepted those counteroffers left within 12 months anyway. For eCommerce hiring managers, that gap between "it feels like it worked" and "it actually worked" is exactly where a search you thought was closed quietly falls apart.
This matters more in eCommerce than in a lot of other functions right now. Talent for Amazon and marketplace operations, retail media, DTC growth, and AI-era merchandising is still tight even after a wave of corporate layoffs at large retailers, and a hiring manager who has spent six weeks getting a strong candidate to a verbal yes can lose that candidate in a single conversation with their current manager.
Why Counteroffers Are More Common in eCommerce Hiring Right Now
Counteroffers rise when a market gets tighter for specific skill sets, and that is exactly what has happened in eCommerce. Layoffs at Amazon and other large retailers have added candidates to the pool, but the people already performing well in scarce roles, VP-level eCommerce leaders, experienced Amazon managers, retail media specialists, are more valuable to their current employer than ever, not less. When one of them hands in notice, the current employer often has more urgency to keep them than a hiring manager expects, especially if backfilling that role would take months.
Robert Half's research points to the same conclusion recruiters have seen anecdotally for years: money alone rarely explains why someone starts interviewing. Career progression, culture, and day-to-day engagement tend to be the deeper drivers, and a raise addresses none of them. That is precisely why so many people who accept a counteroffer are back in the market within a year.
What Actually Happens After a Candidate Accepts a Counteroffer
Separate research from Achievers found that about 55 percent of employees who receive a counteroffer accept it, and the reasons they give for staying are rarely about the money itself. Comfort and familiarity with the current role, a sense of job security, discomfort with change, and existing relationships with coworkers all rank above compensation as reasons people stay put. That is useful context for a hiring manager, because it means the counteroffer conversation the candidate has with their current employer is often more emotional than financial, and a pure comp match on your side will not necessarily win it.
| What's Happening | What It Usually Means | What to Do |
|---|---|---|
| Candidate goes quiet after resigning | Their manager has likely opened a counteroffer conversation | Reach out directly and calmly, don't wait for them to resurface |
| Candidate asks you to "match" a new number | Their employer countered on comp specifically | Revisit whether comp was ever the real driver, ask what changed |
| Candidate cites a new title or promotion | A structural counteroffer, harder to compete with directly | Reinforce the growth path and scope of your role, not just pay |
| Candidate accepts, then reneges before starting | The counteroffer landed after your offer was already accepted | Move to your next candidate immediately, keep the door open professionally |
How to Reduce the Odds Before It Ever Happens
Hiring managers cannot prevent every counteroffer, but three things reliably lower the odds one succeeds. First, benchmark compensation before the offer stage so the number you extend is not visibly beatable with a quick internal adjustment. Second, compress the time between final interview and offer, since every extra week gives the current employer more opportunity to notice the resignation is coming and prepare a response. Third, surface the non-compensation reasons a candidate is looking, growth path, scope, team, flexibility, earlier in the process, so those factors are already part of the decision by the time an internal counteroffer arrives.
Asking this plainly, before an offer is extended, does two things. It surfaces whether compensation was ever the real driver, and it gets the candidate thinking through their own answer before they are put on the spot by their current manager. Candidates who answer quickly and confidently are far less likely to be swayed later.
When the Counteroffer Lands After They've Already Accepted Yours
The hardest version of this is the reneg: a candidate accepts your offer, and days later calls to say their current employer came back with something better. This is where pipeline discipline matters most. Hiring managers who close out every other candidate the moment they get a verbal yes are the ones most exposed when a reneg happens, because there is nothing left to fall back on. Keeping a strong runner-up warm until a start date has actually been honored is not a lack of confidence in your top choice, it is basic risk management in a market where 85 percent of employers are actively countering.
eCommerce is a small enough industry that a candidate who reneges today is often a candidate worth staying in touch with. Respond professionally, note the door is open for the future, and move to the next name on your list rather than restarting the search from scratch.
What This Means If You're Closing a Candidate This Quarter
The data does not suggest hiring managers should panic about counteroffers, but it does suggest treating a verbal acceptance as the midpoint of a close rather than the end of one. Build in urgency, address the non-financial reasons a candidate is moving, and keep your pipeline warm until the offer is actually honored. For more on structuring an offer that is harder to counter in the first place, see our post on how to structure a competitive offer for an eCommerce leadership hire, and for context on why speed matters this much, see how long an eCommerce search should actually take. If you're navigating a search where a counteroffer risk feels high, reach out directly, or learn more about how we run searches through our direct hire recruiting page.