The curious case of dropping Job offers or taking up Counter offers

I haven't had many heart breaks in my life, as compared to my my recruitment career of 7+ years. I am sure there might be other who might not have that much, or may be, just a little heart breaks, and would love to know what did they do differently, to not have such heart breaks.

Today, I am sharing something which, almost, every recruitment professional has experienced, at least once in their recruitment career, if not more.

As a recruiter, we invest a lot of emotion, time, money and effort in recruiting a candidate, and the whole cycle takes approximately, 120 to 200 days, from the 1st call we make till the time he/she joins and spends a good amount of time in the new organisation.

When a candidate gets an offer, after investing so much of emotion, time, money, and effort, do you think it is acceptable, when that candidate has to reject the offer, just because he/she has been offered a better salary/designation by his current employer, or accepting a better counter offer, and not join the client organisation, which was the first one to get him/her through to the company?

I would love to hear from you, as to what should be done incase of a candidate taking up another offer and not going ahead with the current offer.

Thanks for your time in reading this.