If you’re on the market for another position, trust yourself and your potential new employer that you will receive the right offer for the right job with the right company AT THE RIGHT SALARY.
Two things provided the impetus for this article. One was as a response to this article, https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/job-hunting-better-price-yourself-like-house-liz-ryan?trk=prof-post , and the other was the acceptance of a job offer by a candidate at a salary level 7.5% lower than his current salary through my office last week.
Liz Ryan’s article seemed to portray recruiters and employers as predators. I can’t think why, I’m a lovely guy, just ask my mum. Seriously, telling a recruiter your salary information “gives the employer negotiating leverage over you” is flat out nonsense. Salary information is just about the only hard and fast quantifiable metric to measure a level of seniority in a particular role as it not only reflects where you are in your career as measured by your current employer but also by previous employers. It also measures a level of specialization in a certain area.
For example, I’ve just completed an assignment for a Java Developer at a salary of $70,000 while a colleague is currently undertaking an assignment that contains the same job title but is paying up to $115,000. Is one employer predatory and one excessively generous? Of course not, the $45,000 word is “visualization”. It’s an application of the development environment that is quite rare and specialized.
There is a big difference between somebody who has 10 years’ experience and somebody who has done the same thing 10 times over for 10 years, the latter shows no career progression so that will be reflected in a lack of salary progression.
The reality is that most of my clients don’t care what you’re making now for two simple reasons. Their salary brackets are governed largely by those very same salary surveys that Ms Ryan notes and they have to work with internal salary equity.
The candidate that accepted a job at a lower salary did so because he saw the benefits outside of the benefits package as it were. The environment offered a larger IT shop so more career growth potential and greater technical challenge. After a few years in his current role he proved my often said line that candidates join a company for the money but stay for the job. Candidly, he was bored so he started passively looking around; he had no intention of jumping out of the bored frying pan into the tedious fire.
The money always takes care of itself, you will find your level. Neither I nor my clients are predators. Granted, for me it’s just a commission cheque but I’m fully aware of the responsibility that goes with that commission cheque to not place candidates in jobs that they just won’t stick at (partly because I hate doing the job a second time after a candidate leaves!!!). By the same token, all of my clients have a very well thought out HR policy of Respect in the Workplace. That respect has to extend to potential employees. Just as it has to extend to customers, vendors and every other corporate contact.
Make sure it’s the right job for you. Remember, if you’re doing it for the money then you’re only going to like your job on the 1st and the 15th of the month. That will get old in a hurry.
