w**z
发帖数: 8232 | 1 http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20131217070749-52594
IVO, a programmer: Ivo Sega here.
CAROL, a company recruiter: Hi Ivo! It's Carol from Vector Industries.
Thanks again for coming out to meet everyone last week. Josh, our CTO, was
really happy to meet you.
IVO: No problem. I was happy to meet him too. You've got some interesting
projects going on. It could be a lot of fun to tackle one of them.
CAROL: I'm glad to hear it. Can you come back and meet more of our team next
Tuesday at three p.m.?
IVO: I'll have to check. I have some things I have to do on Tuesday
afternoon. Can I ask you a related question?
CAROL: Shoot.
IVO: I want to check on the salary range for this position, so that I don't
waste your time or Josh's if we aren't in the same ballpark. Are you the
right person to have that conversation with, and is this a good time to do
it?
CAROL: I can get into that topic. What were you earning at Sonic Systems?
IVO: In this job search I'm focusing on jobs in the ninety-five to a hundred
-kay range. If this job is in that ballpark, it makes sense for me to come
back for a second interview. Is this position in that salary range?
CAROL: That could stretch the budget a little bit, but it isn't out of the
question. What were you earning over at Sonic?
IVO: You know Carol, the key for me is to make sure we're close enough to
continue the conversation. It sounds like we are. Do you want to double-
check that salary range with Josh before we set something up?
CAROL: I can do that, but I can't help but notice you're avoiding my
question. Do you want to share your last salary with me?
IVO: I really don't, because that information isn't relevant to our
conversation and frankly I'm not going to ask Josh what he paid the person
who had this job before me. You've got confidential information that you can
't share, and I'm in the same position. Over the years I've had royalty
arrangements and incentive programs and base salaries that all made sense
for me and the organizations that paid me at the time. I wouldn't expect any
of those arrangements to map to your situation, and that's why I like to
check the salary for each new gig against what I need to earn.
CAROL: I know that some of our departments do salary-history checks as a
part of their background check. Would you give us permission to verify your
past salaries at Sonic and your other employers, and/or could you bring us a
W-2 if we needed it? I'm just checking. I don't know Josh's thoughts on
that issue.
IVO: Thanks so much for asking, Carol. I definitely wouldn't be comfortable
with that. Like I said, I'm not asking Josh to open the vault and tell me
what he pays my prospective co-workers or what he pays the contractors who
work for him now. That isn't any of my business, and I feel that my past
salary information is confidential too. I'm sure you understand.
CAROL: You're not the first person who's shared that point of view with me,
and I do understand. Some of our managers are pretty old-school in that
respect. I will pass on the information to Josh and confirm that he wants to
do a second interview, and my gut says that he will.
IVO: That sounds fine. I'll wait for your call.
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When I was a kid working at Burger King, the minimum wage was $2.75 an hour.
I didn't last long at that job. I got fired for calling in sick to go see
the rock band Boston play at Madison Square Garden. Nonetheless, if the US
Federal minimum wage had risen at the same rate as inflation, it would be
over $20 an hour by now, instead of seven dollars and change.
What does that tell you? Real wages have dropped like a stone since I rocked
out with my North Jersey homies in the nineteen-seventies. Annual salary
increases at most large and medium-sized employers have plummeted or
disappeared altogether. That means your best hope for keeping your income in
line with the cost of living is to change jobs every now and then.
There's only one problem with that plan. When you apply for a job at a new
company, their first question to you is likely to be "What were you earning
at your last job?" The less you earned, the smaller your new job offer is
going to be. Your past, unexciting wages will dog you forever!
If you were earning $52,000, your new job offer might come in at $53,500. If
you earned two hundred and forty-five thousand dollars a year, expect a job
offer around two-sixty. Notwithstanding the exacting pay grades, salary
charts and ranges laid out by bureaucrats the world over, the strongest
predictor of a new hire's starting salary is whatever he or she was earning
at the last job.
That's discouraging - and pathetic! If an organization doesn't know how to
value your talents other than by looking at what somebody else paid you in a
completely different situation, they don't know squat about the talent
market. How are you ever going to increase your earnings if every time you
change jobs, you get a tiny raise over what they paid you at the last place?
Drinking toxic lemonade over the years, we've gotten used to the idea that
the question "What were you earning before?" from a prospective employer is
perfectly reasonable. It's not, of course. Your personal finances are your
business.
When we call the plumber because our tub drain is clogged, we don't ask "
What did you charge the guy down the block to unclog his drain last week?"
If we do, the plumber is going to say "My rate is $95 an hour. Do you want
me to come over, or not?"
Plumbers have avoided the weenification process the rest of us have
subjected ourselves to. I'm generalizing, of course - I haven't met every
plumber in the world - but my impression is that plumbers and other
tradespeople are way ahead of the suit-and-tie crowd when it comes to saying
what they think. They don't become mealy-mouthed and hesitant the way
business people so often do when they really should speak up, on the job
search or on the job.
They don't fawn and grovel the way job-seekers have been taught to do, and
are still being encouraged to do by experts who tell them to please everyone
, say anything, and be anyone the employer wants them to be, just to get the
job. That's what passes for job search advice today -- advice about how to
scrape and bow and beg for a job. Sickening, isn't it?
We can de-weenify ourselves any time we want. The first step in draining the
toxic lemonade from our veins, of course, is to realize it's there.
For some reason nearly all of us have come to believe that the most
intrusive personal questions are perfectly fine when they're asked in the
context of a recruiting process. That's ridiculous. You already know my
feelings about the heinous interview questions "With all the talented
candidates, why should we hire you?" and "What's your greatest weakness?"
The question "What were you earning before?" (or the variation "What are you
earning now?") falls into the same category. These are all questions that
one adult lacks the social right to ask another. Yet we happily bleat "Oh, I
was earning sixty-eight five over at Miles Prower Products" because we
believe that in the hiring process, employers have the upper hand.
Employers will have the upper hand in your job search as long as you give
them it to them. When you decide that you have something valuable and unique
to bring to your next organization -- when you really believe it, and act
out of that conviction -- you'll quickly move past the managers who don't
deserve you, and focus on the ones who do.
You won't hand over confidential information about your past salaries,
because that's nobody's business but your own.
Here's what you'll do, instead. You'll give your prospective next boss the
information s/he really needs to make the Go/No Go decision, which is your
target salary level. With that number, your boss or recruiter can quickly
determine whether it makes sense to keep talking with you or not.
They don't need your past salaries to make that call. So why hand your
personal information over? Here's a script to illustrate how your
conversation might go.
RRRRRRRRRRRING!
IVO, a programmer: Ivo Sega here.
CAROL, a company recruiter: Hi Ivo! It's Carol from Vector Industries.
Thanks again for coming out to meet everyone last week. Josh, our CTO, was
really happy to meet you.
IVO: No problem. I was happy to meet him too. You've got some interesting
projects going on. It could be a lot of fun to tackle one of them.
CAROL: I'm glad to hear it. Can you come back and meet more of our team next
Tuesday at three p.m.?
IVO: I'll have to check. I have some things I have to do on Tuesday
afternoon. Can I ask you a related question?
CAROL: Shoot.
IVO: I want to check on the salary range for this position, so that I don't
waste your time or Josh's if we aren't in the same ballpark. Are you the
right person to have that conversation with, and is this a good time to do
it?
CAROL: I can get into that topic. What were you earning at Sonic Systems?
IVO: In this job search I'm focusing on jobs in the ninety-five to a hundred
-kay range. If this job is in that ballpark, it makes sense for me to come
back for a second interview. Is this position in that salary range?
CAROL: That could stretch the budget a little bit, but it isn't out of the
question. What were you earning over at Sonic?
IVO: You know Carol, the key for me is to make sure we're close enough to
continue the conversation. It sounds like we are. Do you want to double-
check that salary range with Josh before we set something up?
CAROL: I can do that, but I can't help but notice you're avoiding my
question. Do you want to share your last salary with me?
IVO: I really don't, because that information isn't relevant to our
conversation and frankly I'm not going to ask Josh what he paid the person
who had this job before me. You've got confidential information that you can
't share, and I'm in the same position. Over the years I've had royalty
arrangements and incentive programs and base salaries that all made sense
for me and the organizations that paid me at the time. I wouldn't expect any
of those arrangements to map to your situation, and that's why I like to
check the salary for each new gig against what I need to earn.
CAROL: I know that some of our departments do salary-history checks as a
part of their background check. Would you give us permission to verify your
past salaries at Sonic and your other employers, and/or could you bring us a
W-2 if we needed it? I'm just checking. I don't know Josh's thoughts on
that issue.
IVO: Thanks so much for asking, Carol. I definitely wouldn't be comfortable
with that. Like I said, I'm not asking Josh to open the vault and tell me
what he pays my prospective co-workers or what he pays the contractors who
work for him now. That isn't any of my business, and I feel that my past
salary information is confidential too. I'm sure you understand.
CAROL: You're not the first person who's shared that point of view with me,
and I do understand. Some of our managers are pretty old-school in that
respect. I will pass on the information to Josh and confirm that he wants to
do a second interview, and my gut says that he will.
IVO: That sounds fine. I'll wait for your call.
No one is going to overvalue your services, but plenty of people will
undervalue them. You have to value them first, and valuing yourself includes
knowing when to say "I'm not comfortable with that request."
When you find your voice, your muscles grow. When you cave and cower and
pretend that going along with any off-the-wall request or demand is the safe
-- and therefore best -- option, your flame will shrink.
You will take less and less appealing and lucrative projects because you won
't know where your own bottom line is. That is the opposite of empowerment.
You will be a pawn in somebody's else game until the day you say "No." You
will find your line in the sand, that day.
You will find that keeping your head down and going along with presumptuous
requests -- whether someone wants your salary history or expects you to work
until midnight on your birthday -- is not a viable career strategy. It's
bad for your income, your health and your precious fuel tank. Your parents
didn't raise you to be a wuss, did they? You can start draining the lemonade
from your veins right now.
You'll be happy when a recruiter or hiring manager says one day "What, you
won't share your past salary information? Well, you're out of the running
here, in that case!"
You'll be elated to hear that, because you'll know that you would have hated
working for people who value your privacy so little and whose gauging-a-
candidate's-market-value skills are so weak. What could you learn from such
people? If you're not learning, your flame is dimming, and you don't have
time for that!
If you balk at our script and think "That will never work in real life," be
assured that this approach works brilliantly for job-seekers every day, but
only for people who have healthy self-esteem. If you have been so beaten
down by the Godzilla world that you believe you have no power in the
employer-employee equation, then your fearful conscious brain is going to
scream "I could never say that!" That's okay. It takes time to build your
mojo after it's been squashed.
You can keep your compensation history to yourself, the way every plumber
and consultant does. Your muscles and mojo will grow when you do. It's a new
day, and the Human Workplace is already here. Will you rise to the occasion
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