Let me tell you a lil' story about corporate optionality going spectacularly right.
I was advising a candidate -- we’ll call them S -- who was deep in the interview process with a company we will call Company F. Everything was going smoothly: great alignment, solid performance, clearly headed to reach the final stage.
Then, out of nowhere but somehow right on cue, Company G appeared. (In certain industries, F and G live in each other’s dumpsters. If one moves, the other rattles the lid.)
G reached out with a shiny new role and promised to move fast. S was excited about the role at F, but was also very curious about exploring the role at G. Candidate S told F that G had entered the chat.
Normally, that’s risky. Tell one company about another too early and they may decide you’re about to get snatched and stop investing in you. S hadn't asked for my opinion, he just informed me he had told F about G sliding in their DMs. Good thing that S hadn't asked for my opinion too, because it turned out that it was a good move for S (and I'd have advised against it),
Within twenty-four hours of hearing that G was sniffing around, the famously lumbering F turned into a cheetah. They skipped three stages of their process, scheduled the final interview for S with a VP on a Friday night, and pre-cleared compensation.
The recruiter said, almost verbatim:
“If I can fast-track you so you can take the final tomorrow and we get you an offer by Monday —- and it’ll be a very good offer -— could you respond quickly?”
What Company F was doing was pure strategy. They didn’t want to match optionality; they wanted to kill it before it solidified.
They weren’t worried about money —- they and G constantly spar over comp and if there is one thing that they know about each other, it's how and how much they put into their offer and their levels. F probably knew exactly how much G would end up offering. What F was worried about was imagination.
Once a candidate starts picturing themselves somewhere else, money might not be enough.
So F moved fast, closed hard, and made an offer by Saturday. The offer was outstanding. S asked me whether and how much to negotiate, and I told them something I almost never say:
“Take it as is. They want you to close fast, and they are making sure you know you're at the top of their range. They're not joking. Go thank G and tell them maybe in a few years.”
The lesson
Optionality isn’t only about numbers, it's crucially about possibility in every sense of the term. And from the recruiting company's perspective, it’s the moment they realizes you might imagine a life that doesn’t include them. If they want you, it is, indeed, what they fear most
If a company knows it only has to compete on compensation, it still feels in control. That's especially true when you're dealing with larger corporates where competitors have been going through each other's trash for years and they know everything about scales and pay levels.
But if it senses you’re weighing two stories -- two futures -- then speed becomes its only defense before the totality of an offer -- the compensation, yes, but also the teams, the corporate environment, the market, the culture, the projects... things that are squishy, but that, ultimately, make 'the role'.
The real power of optionality is that it moves the other side to act quickly before a negotiation becomes a lot harder than just money