Is a paid non-compete from a non-competitor a reasonable reason to delay start date?

Question

At my current employer in the US, I have a paid non-compete agreement (basically garden leave). If I leave the company, I am prohibited from working with a competitor for 9 months, but receive my current salary and benefits during this period, minus any income earned from employment by non-competitors.

I'm considering leaving my current industry, and have been applying to jobs at companies that would not be considered competitors. I'd appreciate a long leave in between jobs for travel and professional development, plus the idea of working when I would get paid roughly the same amount if I didn't isn't appealing. So, my ideal start date would be really late. But I'm not sure how to bring up this idea with potential employers when I'm interviewing. Answering "When can you start?" with "2 weeks and 9 months from now" after getting an offer seems like it wouldn't go over well, especially at a company that isn't used to contracts like this.

I'm currently not planning to bring up the non-compete until I've completed my interviews and am negotiating an offer. This makes sense to me because I won't know how much I'm willing to budge on my start date for any particular company until late in the interview process anyway. If this is a faux pas, let me know.

Obviously some of this will vary between companies and industries, but in general, is a paid non-compete from a non-competitor a reasonable reason to delay my start date? Is this something I should expect to need to compromise on?

Additional info:

• In my state, non-competes are enforceable.
• For the purposes of this question, assume that my current employer won't nullify the non-compete agreement. They are highly unlikely to do this due to some additional non-work-related restrictions in it.
• I'd rather not burn any bridges while interviewing in a new industry, since there's a good chance I'll apply to some of these companies again in the future if rejected.

Answer 1

but in general, is a paid non-compete from a non-competitor a reasonable reason to delay my start date?

No. This is a fairly unusual situation. It also doesn't matter much WHY you want a later start date. The start date itself is likely to be a show stopper, regardless of what the reason is.

Is this something I should expect to need to compromise on?

Depends on what you want. In the US, the likelihood of getting an offer with a start date 9 months from signing is VERY low.

The standard expectation is that you can start 2-4 weeks after the offer is signed. You can try to negotiate more, but that depends a lot on how desperately the company wants you. Most employers will just keep looking for someone is who is available sooner.

Your best shot here is probably to resign, take the garden leave and start looking for real 6-8 month into your paid vacation. How much "margin" you want to put in here depends job availability in your field + location and your personal risk tolerance.

If you want to an offer in hand before you quit, you will quite likely have to compromise a lot on a start date.

Answer 2

This is likely to be an instant "no" from most employers.

And because of that, they're going to be very annoyed if you waste their time going all the way through a series of interviews and negotiations only to drop it on them at the last minute.

If you're going to keep applying you should declare this up front. You'll get lots of no's. But you won't burn any bridges and can still reapply later if they're still looking.

From there I'd say you have 2 options:

1. Just take a break. Say 3 months and then start applying. 3 month notice periods are common, 6 months are less common until you get to senior levels but not unusual, and it may take you a while to find a good role anyway. So this would put you back in "normal" territory.

2. Find a recruiter who specialises in your role/industry. This is exactly the kind of situation a good recruiter is there to solve: Knowing who's hiring who is after your skill set and experience and who is flexible enough to accommodate your timeline.

Answer 3

I'm currently not planning to bring up the non-compete until I've completed my interviews and am negotiating an offer. This makes sense to me because I won't know how much I'm willing to budge on my start date for any particular company until late in the interview process anyway. If this is a faux pas, let me know.

You can ask for anything you like.

But as a hiring manager, I have never attempted to hire someone where I was willing to wait 9 months for them to start. Two weeks would be normal. Four weeks might be acceptable. But 9 months would not be viable.

Everywhere I have worked, I had to write out a requisition justifying the need for a new hire. If I didn't really need someone for 9 months, the requisition would have been rejected.

Your best bet would be to take as much "garden leave" as you desire, then apply for jobs near the end of your planned leave. You risk being unemployed for longer than you would like, but that way potential employers wouldn't reject you due to having to wait longer than they want.

Be prepared to explain during the interview process why you are taking all this time off. Some employers won't care at all, others will.