When I Was Finally Offered the Job Description I Created Myself

More than ten years ago, I wrote a job description for myself.

Eighteen months later, my employer finally offered it to me.

There was just one problem.

I had already resigned.

At the time, I was a department manager with a lot of responsibility. During our peak season, my team grew to 75+ team members. I led supervisors, lead associates, and associates. I worked with third-party vendors, staffing agencies, major shipping carriers, and other suppliers and partners.

And when I stepped into the role, there was a lot to clean up.

Spending wasn't being tracked the way it needed to be. There were compliance concerns. Employees weren't always being advocated for. Processes needed structure and accountability.

I came in and started implementing the changes that got things organized.

Then, about halfway through my first year, I noticed something else.

There were significant pay discrepancies among members of my team.

People doing similar work weren't necessarily being compensated similarly. Some were making considerably more than others.

It was an equity issue.

I raised the concern, and eventually HR and my leadership team asked me to help update the job descriptions for my department.

I took that work seriously.

I documented what people were actually doing, not simply what an outdated job description said they were doing. I included responsibilities, expectations, performance metrics, and even estimates of how much time should be spent on different areas of the job.

That review included my position, too.

HR conducted a formal job evaluation based on the work we had documented.

And the evaluation confirmed what I had suspected.

Several positions were underpaid. Some of the hourly and lead roles needed to be reevaluated. The leadership positions were underpaid.

And my own role had grown well beyond the manager-level position I held. Based on the scope and responsibilities, it should have been classified at a higher leadership level, somewhere in the senior manager to director range, with compensation to match.

We had done the work.

We had the documentation.

We had the findings.

And then...

Nothing.

For months, silence.

I asked what was happening.

I was initially told it was still being reviewed and that a plan hadn't been determined.

When performance review time came around, I asked again.

I was still advocating primarily for my team because that's what started this entire process. There were people working for me who were not being compensated fairly for the work they were doing.

Eventually, I was told the changes weren't going to happen right now.

So I asked the next logical question.

When will these changes happen?

I couldn't get an answer to that either.

And unfortunately, no answer is an answer.

Me during this chapter of my career.

The company had been given the opportunity to look at the positions, evaluate the work, identify the inequities, and correct them.

They chose not to act.

That told me everything about the organization and my leadership within the organization that I couldn't unknow or unsee.

So, I started looking for another job.

I interviewed with several companies and eventually accepted an offer I was genuinely excited about.

Then I did what I believed was the professional thing to do.

I gave my notice.

I wanted to leave well. I created a transition and succession plan. I thought about what my team would need, what information needed to be knowledge transferred, and how I could make my departure as smooth as possible.

I had even planned when and how I would tell my team.

Then my boss called me.

Don't tell them yet.

My immediate manager’s boss wanted to meet with me first.

Suddenly, I was being called into the office of my skip-level leader.

I had worked for this organization for years.

I had never been inside that office.

And now I was sitting there 1:1 while this leader told me how much I was needed. How valuable my contributions were. How much I had done for the organization.

Then came the question:

Would I consider a counteroffer?

The offer they put in front of me was THE job description I had created ~18 months earlier.

The higher-level role.

The title.

The additional compensation.

All of it.

I wish I could tell you that sitting in that office felt validating.

Part of me certainly recognized what was happening.

I was finally being acknowledged.

I was finally "good enough" to be invited into that room.

But there was something so hollow about it.

It didn't even feel like it was about me.

The organization had already known what the role required.

They had already evaluated it.

They had already determined that the scope justified a higher-level position and additional compensation.

Nothing about my work had suddenly changed because I resigned.

The only thing that had changed was that I was leaving.

I asked for time to consider the counteroffer.

The next morning, I returned to that office and explained why I didn't believe accepting the counteroffer was the right decision for me, my family, the department, or the company.

I appreciated the offer. I valued the relationships I had built there. I expressed that gratitude to my skip-level leader.

But I declined.

I went back to my office believing I had handled a difficult situation with grace, thoughtfully, and professionally.

Later that day, my direct manager called me.

She had been told I accepted the counteroffer during my first meeting, then returned the next morning and changed my mind.

That wasn't what happened.

And suddenly, the same moment that had briefly felt like recognition felt very different. Worse than hollow…

I remember wondering why I had even taken the meeting at all.

Looking back all those years later, I understand something about that experience that I couldn't fully articulate at the time.

One of the hardest parts of experiences like this isn't always the job itself, or the difficult circumstances you find yourself in.

It's the isolation.

When something doesn't feel right in your career, you can spend an incredible amount of time wondering whether you're the only one who sees it.

Maybe I'm expecting too much.

Maybe I should be more patient.

Maybe this is simply how companies operate.

Maybe I should be grateful they finally offered me what I asked for.

Maybe I'm making too much of this.

And when you think you're the only person having the experience, you don't always talk about it.

So you don't process it.

You carry it.

Alone.

That's one of the reasons I'm sharing more stories from my own career now.

Because I know I'm not the only person who has been told how valuable they are only after they decided to leave.

I'm not the only person who advocated for change, watched an organization acknowledge the problem, and then watched nothing happen.

I'm not the only person who has sat in a room receiving the recognition they once wanted and discovered that, when it finally arrived, it felt empty and shallow.

And if you've experienced something similar, you're not the only one either. You are not alone.

Sometimes the most important information an organization gives you isn't contained in a performance review, a job description, a promotion, or even a counteroffer.

Sometimes it's in what they were willing to do only after you decided to leave.