Job Hacking

re: Tell me what it's going to take to hire you...

HR Capitalist gives some good advice regarding the whole question of revealing your salary history.

Now, I know there are those among you who don't want to talk about salary until the end of the recruiting process. You think it should be the last thing to do before accepting the offer.

In thinking about this frame, I circle back to many of the business deals I've been involved in. In every case, there is always a discussion of the price range up front. Otherwise, how do you know if you should continue the discussion, engage in all the people internally that are needed to make the deal happen?

Exactly.

In line with Kris's thinking, be prepared to have the discussion regarding the range, but don't assume that's the end of the discussion. It's just the start.

p.s. Yes, I'm still one for understanding the outcomes, statistically from all the approaches to this problem.

re: The real reason employers want your salary...

Nick continues to beat the drum on your salary as part of the hiring process, and good for him! And, HR Capitalist has a pretty good idea about how HR should approach the general problem that asking for Salary during the interview process.

Getting back to Nick's post, he points out something that few employees, let alone employers think about. However, some parts of a company do, and it works like this:

• We are making $X revenue
• We have Y employees
• Y / X = Our revenue per person

In other words, most companies think about their payroll & benefits costs exactly the same way the finance industry thinks about mortgage backed securities. You know, those things that helped bring down our economy?

Put it this way, the benefits and risks for any one employee don't actually show up in most financial calculations about the company, just like the risks & rewards for a mortgage loan that is part of a mortgage backed security.

OOPS!

Given the failures we've seen in the financial sector, this is a place I'd love all those heavy thinkers at SHRM to spend some cycles making better stuff happen for us. I think they're about to not have to worry so much about a unionized workplace.

The challenges with Affiliation

One of the threads out there in blog-land and periodical-land is that HR Cannot Be Trusted.

HR Capitalist has a nice post about trusting the person, not the HR organization.

All this hubbub points out an interesting problem that we all face at some point in our career: You are affiliated with a group that's got brand challenges. So, what do you do?

New name?

New processes (New math? New Metrics?)?

Change what your org does?

Change how your org interfaces within the company?

Any, all. Just don't stand there like a bump in the road!

So, what is Hardwick up to anyway?

Earlier this year, I wrote about my career shift, and at the time I really couldn't say much about what the company I joined was up to.

Yesterday, a story was posted from a public source. Check out this post at IO9

re: What does 'career growth' look like?

Got a good question in response to my post, Well then, what is time again?

NotLooking wants to know if there is career growth for those individual contributors in the Development world, from the eyes of the hiring manager or recruiter.

Dang straight there is.

For me, when I read a Developer's, or Tester's, or Program Manager's resume, and especially one where the candidate has been at it for more than 5 years, I want to see evidence of learning and maybe more importantly curiosity. Having said this, the evidence of these two items is different between a Contract Cowboy Coder and a Sr. SDE who jumps jobs after 2 or so major releases of a product.

The evidence I look for includes things like learning new languages, jumping into developing on new platforms, teaching adjunct programming classes, getting a degree. To me, this is evidence of self-directed growth.

One of the most remarkable interviews I conducted was with a very seasoned developer who had completed his J.D. a month or so before. I was interviewing this candidate for a Sr. SDE role, and of course I had to ask as to why he was pursuing a Development role when he had just completed his law degree. He said it was because he studied law to bring deeper understanding to his coding as he had noticed similarities in the construction of legal documents and software.

That's career growth.

Prepping for the interview

Matt's got some helpful thoughts in Interviews: Are You Proving Your Case?

One thing to keep in mind about prepping for an interview is Google. And LinkedIn. And Facebook.

For every interview, you should have done some quick searches on all the names of all the people you'll be meeting with. What are their backgrounds? Where have they worked? What has their career trajectory been like? Where have they lived? What are their hobbies? What do you have in common with them? How can you phrase your responses to more adequately align with what they know?

Then, spend some time thinking forward. Remember, the hiring manager doesn't just want you for the immediate role, they are also thinking about you beyond this moment, and also about how your selection will improve them over time.

It's like a former boss of mine says, "Once on my team, always on my team". Remember, it works both ways, so select your bosses wisely (when you can).

re: Seth on Salaries

Once again, Seth has a great and timely post on Salaries.

Gives us more fodder regarding the Salary negotiation discussion. I love the notion of salaries as a signalling mechanism.

What should you do when the market is broken? Great question!

The interview musings of a CEO

This Sunday's NY Times has a thought-provoking interview with Anne Mulcahy, CEO of Xerox.

For you job hunters, Anne answers a number of questions regarding things she's looking for in a candidate, and a bit about her approach to interviews. Anne is clearly a good interviewer, and her thoughts on this topic are useful for both job hunters and hiring managers.

Asymmetrical Warfare is to the Department of Defense as Salary Negoitaition is to...

Ryan, over at The Idealistic Investor, wrote a reply comment to one of my posts regarding telling firms your salary history, and in it he noted that absent better data, e.g. a study, he would apply what he knew regarding asymmetrical information in the market in his next negotiation.

This is a very timely point. If you want to know more about the background details on this, check out the 2001 awards for Economics by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, or the entry on Information Asymmetry in Wikipedia.

Unfortunately, salary should not be on the list of asymmetries.

Oh, it should have been in 1973, or 2001, on question. But now, with firms like Payscale (Way to go Mike!) providing EVERYONE with salary data that is reasonably accurate, especially in the Software/Internet talent market, we are in a situation where other bits of candidate information may be more indicative of these asymmetries (e.g. candidate is on anti-depressants, or the boss has been served with papers regarding a sexual harassment complaint for the 2nd time, etc).

I would still like to hear from candidates who have been through an offer negotiation process since 1/1/09 to see what they have to say about how they handled the question from the recruiter, "What is your current salary?", and what the end result of that conversation was, e.g. did they get the offer. It would be even better is someone had the following story, "This sounds like the beginning of the negotiation, and I've researched your firm, and the market, and I believe a reasonable salary range for this role is $80 - 100K, and based on what I can do for your firm as evidenced by my past work, I'm looking for $95K". And then stuck to this opening position without giving up their salary info.

What do you travel with?

I was drinking my morning coffee, watching the fog, and reading through my daily blogs. Saw that Tom Peters had several posts, he tends to post in clumps, and eagerly dove in.

One of his posts, Roadwarrior Tip #1: DIY! is interesting on several levels, and I'll let you go find out why, but it was a couple of side points that caught my attention and bear illumination.

Tom apparently travels with a Swiss Army Knife and ziplocs. Who knew?

I am a big fan of these two items when I travel, though obviously the Swiss Army Knife has to travel in my checked luggage when I fly. I would add one other item to Tom's list, and most especially for Tom considering the main point of his post, and that's exam gloves, you know, the medical kind.

re: Ziplocs
I dunno if you know this, but gallon-size ziplocs easily hold 8 x 11 paper. I've found these to be invaluable on my excursions into the decidedly dirty & wet world that lies outside of the usual office. For example, I commonly carry my Boy Scout paperwork in them when in the field. And, like file folders, they are very handy for keeping things organized.

re: Swiss Army Knife
There are a number of good selections here, and my personal fav is Huntsman model. But then, I have this notion that the saw is super-helpful when constructing an emergency shelter, and maybe you don't have that need ;-). For the road warrior set, I reccomend one with scissors, bottle-opener, can-opener, knife blade, and the corkscrew. And, add in the mini-scredriver on the corkscrew, and the retractable pen in place of the toothpick.