Job Hacking

Do you know the 2 best ways to stand out?

I've been doing some recruiting for my team at Smith & Tinker, and the process has (again) been very revealing regarding those who stand out and those who do not.

The good news is that I have met several very fine potential adds to my team. Very fine!

The bad news is that I have met a whole bunch of folks who do not know what it takes to be seriously considered for a new role.

Here are the attributes of the folks that stood out in a negative sense:

• Did not have at least 90% of the qualifications for the job.
• Mispelngs on their resume.
• Wrote an objective statement that was all about what they wanted, and not about what I wanted.
• Had not visited our company website.
• Had not visited the Nanovor Game Website
• Had not played the Nanovor OBG, even though it's FREE.
• Had not visited my linkedin profile.
• Had not read my blog.

Summing all that up, these folks were simply completely uninformed about the job, the company, and their potential new boss. This makes it highly unlikely that they would be considered for the role.

The attributes of the folks who ended up on my short list, or the first way to stand out:

• Resume met the job requirements
• Quick to understand resume
• Had visited our company website
• Had visited the Nanovor website
• Had watched the Nanovor videos
• Had played the Nanovor OBG
• Knew something about me and the Officers of the company because they had researched us online.

And the second reason they stood out? They have been playing online & offline games for some years, and had a real passion about games and insights into how people have fun. That's right, the second attribute that's key to standing out is passion.

Are these two attributes really that uncommon? Yes, unfortunately!

Are you up for a mental challenge?

In my experience, there is one thing that is hardest for candidates to figure out.

Do you know what it is?

It is considering yourself as a product. Stepping outside the boundaries of self, and into the world of how others see you. From many different frames of reference:

• Your online profiles
• Your resume
• Your handshake
• Your greeting
• Your elevator pitch
• Your interview
• Your cocktail party conversation
• Your interview clothes
• etc

This is a very difficult challenge.

Seth has a helpful take on this, albeit from a Marketer's perspective, Sell like you buy. Should be required reading for all job hunters - go read it now!

So you want to know how to get a recruiter to call you?

HR Capitalist has just posted some good ideas about getting a recruiter to pay attention to you as a candidate.

But I warn you. It will require reserearch, googling, and dare I say it, marketing.

Here's the piece on the Art of Getting an Interview...

The line I like the best: ANY MEANS NECESSARY. 

The #1 Candidate Challenge

What is the hardest thing all Candidates have to face down?

Is it:

1. Treating the job search like a job?
2. Networking?
3. Applying for jobs through Applicant Tracking Systems, ATSs?
4. Getting a clear answer as to why you were not selected?
5. Getting a recruiter on the phone?

Nope, none of the above.

The hardest thing is to market yourself. 

Colleen has this concept nailed, "Marketing is the truth of you,translated into the language of them".

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.

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 are you on, and how come you're not sharing?

Once upon a time, during a time of high national unemployment, a Developer was looking for work.

He found an ad for a Web Development role. He applied. He heard nothing back.

He was profoundly confused, because he was a very good developer. All his co-workers liked and respected him. He wrote tight code.

He contacted a recruiter buddy of his, one of the few recruiters he respected. And he asked, "Why is it that I, a respected Developer, am not hearing back from this firm to which I applied. I'd be great for the role."

The recruiter said, "Why do you think you would be good in this role?"

The developer said, "That's simple. I'm really good at C++, and Java is the required language and they are very similar, so I should be able to handle this job, no problem."

The recruiter laughed.

Gang, in times like these there are several things that are true:

1. A lot of people are applying for open Dev roles, in some cases because they are out of work, and in some cases because they fear being let go. This leads to a heightened sense of oversupply, and employers feeling that they should be much tighter on matching applicants to role requirements.
2. Your resume needs to be an EXACT MATCH for the role requirements. This will put you ahead of 90% of the other applicants. EXACT MATCH means that you are using the terms in the ad to describe yourself, not your perception of what those words mean.
3. The people getting hired for open roles these days tend to not only be an exact match per requirements, they also bring more to the table than the requirements. Your resume should illustrate this, and you should be prepared to speak to it in your interviews.

Now, you can convince yourself all you want that by being busy, and taking action by applying to open roles that you're doing what you need to do to get a job. The reality is that in this day and age, you need to do more than just be busy. You also need to be precise in your identification of a likely match.

Is Brad Pitt worth $20MM?

So, our wonderful little debate about talking about your most recent Salary History is starting to gain some momentum, and I'm actually getting mis-stated or mis-quoted, so things are going to plan.

(You know you've made it when press-type people mis-state what you said for their own purposes. "Hey ma, top of the world!")

The latest take is from Team Taskmaster, who is introducing the art of negotiation into this via the advice of a former buddy, Brazen Careerist.

To me, negotiation regarding your overall comp is a slippery slope for a number of reasons (which doesn't mean you shouldn't do it, just know where the potholes are). The biggie is that we all tend to get very tied up into knots about our salary and our ego. Second, most people hate to negotiate. And then, there's that other thing, which is whether you value yourself enough.

To all that I ask, "Is Brad Pitt worth $20MM??" Actually, I'm sure it's more, but that's what IMDB has for what he made in Mr. & Mrs. Smith.

The answer is yes, of course, because that's what the market pays.

What does the market say you're worth?

That's easy, go to www.payscale.com and ask it.

The little nit in all this is that right now, there is significant downward pressure on salaries right now. So, whatever info you get from payscale is going to be lagging the market.

The other little nit is that the person on the other side of the negotiation table probably isn't being too hard on you, in part because they have to work with you when the negotiation is all done.

But, if they were to get all hard-ass on you, they'd say this, "Right now, I'm going to pay you $1 per year. You need to prove to me I should pay you more through the value your work brings to my company."

I'm certain that Brazen Careerist can tell you exactly what she's worth across all the professions she's had. Brad Pitt certainly can, And, Nick probably can, too. Laurie's in HR, and self-admittedly not good with numbers, so she's a little questionable ;-).

But, the real question is, can you?

It is the end result that matters

It seems that we've got ourselves something of a situation here, whether to disclose salary info in an interview or not.

Nick's view is "Don't Disclose" (and, he has some good reasons for it). Laurie's view is "Let's shake up this HR world" (and, she has good reasons for it), and I say, "Let's get some more research to support those approaches" and, surprise, I have good reasons for this).

Also, I'm going to take strong issue with anyone who says that, "Three years ago, I got a great raise because I did x, y and z, so that's what you should do now", and that would be The Idealistic Investor. I mean, I'm glad he was successful with this approach, but we're in a new world gang, let's get over yourselves (whet the economy turns around, we can agree to revisit, o.k.?).

Now, I can absolutely point to similar instances that Nick points out. And, I've also got instances where the candidate disclosed their current salary, and their desired salary ('cause I always ask for both), and I disclosed the range for the role, and the candidate was looking for WAY more than the range, so we were at a mismatch, and we went our separate ways, only to have the candidate come back around and tell me they really wanted the role and would take a lower salary. And, I've also been in the situation where the candidate would not disclose, but he agreed to the range of the role, and when it came to the negotiation, he wouldn't accept anything less that $5k over the max end point of the salary range (what a waste of time that was!). And, I've also had candidates come in way low on their salary (non-profit, or highly comped w/equity) and I've had to educate them that for this role they are applying for, the salary is more like x - y, which gave them a nice salary bump, thank you very much.

My hunch is that both Nick and Laurie have similar examples they can cite. But, this is not enough evidence to say to a bunch of people in the broad population of the U.S.: Don't disclose your current salary. Think about it, would you recommend the same approach to a Factory Line Worker, as a Recent College Grad, as a Lead Scientist, as a Rainmaking Sales Person?

OTOH, it IS enough information to create a study that helps you, the job hunter of 2009, come up with a reasonable answer to this thorny question. It would be even better if it helped HR Pros to form up on a better process solution. I'm a big fan of holistic solutions!

I would love the following advice, designed to maximize the job hunter's salary and/or overall comp, based on evidence from people who have landed roles since 1/1/2009:

• If you are a CxO candidate, try A.
• If you are top-1% candidate, applying for a role at a company with a dedicated, rigorous HR/Recruiting function, here's what you do: B.
• If you are top-1% candidate, applying for a role at a company without a dedicated, rigorous HR/Recruiting function, do this: C.
• If you are an 85% - 99% candidate, applying for a role at a company with a dedicated, rigorous HR/Recruiting function, use D.
• If you are an 85% - 99% candidate, applying for a role at a company without a dedicated, rigorous HR/Recruiting function, go with option E.
• If you are everyone else, applying for a role at a company with a dedicated, rigorous HR/Recruiting function, just take the offer.
• If you are everyone else, applying for a role at a company without a dedicated, rigorous HR/Recruiting function, just accept the offer.
• If you are a company which is trying to make the recruiting process more streamlined and less messy, how do you go about qualifying someone to make sure they are the right person for the role with respect to compensation?

Of course, the problem with this is that everyone can think of reasons why they are a 1%er. And nobody will put themselves in the 'everyone else' category.

But, if you gave this study & steps to a good recruiting function, I bet we'd see something other than a one-size-fits-all strategy, which would probably be an improvement over what we have now!