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Earlier this year, David Ain was happily employed as vice-president of corporate development at Indigo Books & Music Inc.

"It was a phenomenally exciting space, I'd been given a series of intriguing strategic roles," he says.

Then, out of the blue, he was approached to join the Toronto practice of executive recruitment firm Egon Zehnder International.

Until that moment, Mr. Ain says, such a career switch had never occurred to him. "I was monogamous . . . but they had me on hello."

Mr. Ain had worked in a series of consulting and management roles, but never as an executive recruiter. So the offer to join Egon Zehnder came as a shock, "a good shock" -- or, what Georgetown University described in a study this week as one of those "unsolicited-job-offer shocks."

Mr. Ain says the opportunity to work as an executive recruiter, "getting high-quality people into strategic roles," combines all the elements of planning and team building that he loved in his previous positions with Indigo and, prior to that, as an executive in the warehousing business and a Toronto-based consultant with Boston Consulting Group.

He was not unhappy, he says, "but no other offer could compete."

Indeed, more good people leave their jobs because of shocks -- either positive or negative ones -- than because of dissatisfaction with their employers, Georgetown University professor Brooks Holtom says in a study published in the United States this week in the fall issue of Human Resource Management Journal.

"Contrary to conventional wisdom, accumulated job dissatisfaction is not the immediate cause of most voluntary turnover. Job dissatisfaction is a factor, but to focus on it as the dominant cause of most turnover is incomplete and limited," Prof. Holtom writes.

"Instead . . . turnover is often triggered by a precipitating event (for example a fight with the boss or an unexpected job offer) that we call a 'shock' to the system."

Talented employees are experiencing more of those positive jolts these days in the current robust hiring climate, says Ralph Shedletsky, managing director of Toronto-based career consulting firm Knightsbridge GSW.

"When a recruiter calls and the market is more robust, a whole bunch of factors play in: If I can earn more money, why not? If the environment is going to be better, for sure," Mr. Shedletsky says.

Prof. Holtom says that, as employees feel more confident about leaving, employers will have to fight harder to keep them.

But it is not always competing job offers that have them heading for the doors, he says. Other events also precipitate "shock-induced turnover" -- for instance, a spouse is transferred, an application to adopt a child comes through, an elderly parent falls ill, or a company is in the midst of a merger or acquisition that leaves employees uncertain about their futures, Prof. Holtom says.

Toronto-based industrial psychologist Guy Beaudin says there is often little an employer can do once a valued worker is seriously considering another job offer. If it has gone that far, "there is something that has broken in the psychological contract between the employer and the employee," he says.

From a career management standpoint, he says, employees should try to establish the type of relationship in which they can have a steady dialogue with their employers about what is working and what could be working better for them. A strong relationship between employees and managers also makes it easier to manage those external shocks that come along.

"If you don't have that kind of relationship, it's very difficult to have an honest discussion when these shocks occur and you have 24 hours, 48 hours, a week or two to make up your mind," says Dr. Beaudin of RHR International, a firm of organizational psychologists.

In the current job market, good employees have more leverage and should realize they may be able to negotiate accommodations with their employers rather than quit a job they enjoy, Prof. Holtom says.

For instance, employees with unexpectedly heavy child care or parent care responsibilities might be able to negotiate more flexible hours, he says. Employees whose spouses have been transferred might be able to retain their jobs by telecommuting. Those whose jobs are affected by a merger or takeover are within their rights to ask where they will fit into the restructured organization. And employees who have received a competing offer might be able to negotiate a counteroffer to make them stay, he says.

"The primary prescription for managers," he says, "would be to stay close enough to their employees so that when a shock like the spouse being transferred comes up, hopefully the organization could intervene positively."

vgalt@globeandmail.ca