Rivals receive an attractive outside offer that does not exist, set up through a recruiter or shell firm, and anything they say or do while pursuing it becomes evidence of disloyalty.
An example
Passed over for chief technology officer in March, the vice president of engineering at an enterprise software company had said as much to two colleagues. In April a recruiter called about a chief technology officer role at a well-funded data company. The firm had a website, a one-page product description, and no employees on any professional network he could find. The recruiter asked for a frank account of what was wrong with his company's roadmap and how his team would react if he left. He shared a slide of next year's priorities to show his thinking. Two weeks later the role was on hold. In June his chief executive mentioned, in a one-on-one, that he had heard the roadmap was being shopped around. The vice president's budget review was moved up a quarter.
Why it works
By comparison with a phantom offer, more glamorous and better paid, the current job looks worse, and the discontent remains after the offer evaporates. Staying becomes costlier, because engaging, taking calls, sharing strategy to seem credible, complaining about the employer, produces evidence of disloyalty that whoever arranged the offer can use. The response is captured before the person can verify the offer or take anything back. Behind it sit a convincing accomplice, a target ambitious enough to engage and too poorly connected to check, and visible frustration the offer can play to.
The thinking behind it
George A. Akerlof In The Market for "Lemons": Quality Uncertainty and the Market Mechanism (1970), Akerlof shows how a buyer who cannot check quality is exposed to whoever can. The target of a fake offer cannot check it before responding, and the response is captured first. The defense removes the asymmetry: verify the firm through your own contacts before you say anything you would not want repeated inside your own company.
Sun Tzu (Sunzi) The Art of War, of uncertain date and traditionally attributed to Sun Tzu, advises appearing unable when able and holding out baits to draw an opponent where you want them. A phantom offer is a bait in that sense, drawing the rival into acts that can be used against them. The text is a strategist's classic read for its maxims, and is cited here for its plain description of the move.
Warning signs
An unsolicited approach arrives from a firm with no verifiable footprint, timed to visible frustration such as a missed promotion. The recruiter is more eager for strategic detail, confidential plans, or complaints about your employer than for your record. The process stalls once you have shared something. Afterward, someone inside seems to know about your conversations.
How to defend yourself
Check before you engage, and share nothing you would not want read aloud at your own company.
- Verify any unsolicited offer through your own industry contacts: who funds the firm, who works there, whether anyone you know has met them.
- Keep confidential information out of every conversation with a recruiter, whatever the role.
- Disclose the approach to your leadership, briefly and early. Disclosure is the standard counter, and it turns the trap back on whoever set it.
- Treat an offer that resists verification as suspect by default, and as a clue to who in your environment wants you gone.
How a leader shuts it down
Make it policy that unsolicited outside approaches can be disclosed upward without penalty, and treat disclosure as loyalty. Give no weight to disloyalty evidence that comes from an outside approach whose origin you cannot trace, and ask who supplied it. A fabricated offer exposes the people behind it to legal risk, so handle any sign of one as a conduct matter.