What Color Is Your Parachute? (29 page)
Read What Color Is Your Parachute? Online
Authors: Richard N. Bolles
Once you’ve made a guess at what the employer’s range might be, for the job you have in mind, you then define your own range
accordingly
. Let me give an example. Suppose you guess that the employer’s range is $36,500 to $47,200. Accordingly, you now
invent
an “asking” range for yourself, where your
minimum
“hooks in” just below that employer’s
maximum.
And so, when the employer has stated a figure (probably around his or her
lowest
—i.e., $36,500), you will be ready to respond with something along these lines: “I understand of course the constraints under which all organizations are operating, considering this brutal economy, but I believe my productivity will be such that it would
justify
a salary”—
and here you mention a
range
whose bottom figure hooks in just below the top of their range, and goes up from there, accordingly, as shown on the diagram above
—
“
in the
range
of $47,000 to $58,000.”
It will help a lot during this discussion, if you are prepared to show in what ways you will
make money
or in what ways you will
save money
for that organization, such as would justify the higher salary you are seeking. Hopefully, this will succeed in getting you at least nearer to the salary you want.
Daniel Porot, the job-expert in Europe, suggests that if you and an employer really hit it off, and you’re
dying
to work there, but they cannot afford the salary you need, consider offering them part of your time. If you need, and believe you deserve, say $35,000, but they can only afford $21,000, you might consider offering them three days a week of your
time for that $21,000 (21/35 = 3/5). This leaves you free to take work elsewhere during those other two days. You will
of course
produce so much work during those three days per week, that they will be ecstatic about this bargain.
Salary negotiation with this employer is not finished until you’ve also addressed the issue of so-called
fringe benefits
. “Fringes” such as life insurance, health benefits or health plans, vacation or holiday plans, and retirement programs typically add anywhere from 15 to 28 percent to many workers’ salaries. That is to say, if an employee receives $3,000 salary per week, the fringe benefits are worth another $450 to $840 per week.
You should therefore, before you walk into the interview, know what benefits are particularly important to you, so you remember to ask what benefits are offered—and negotiate if necessary for the benefits you particularly care about. Thinking this out ahead of time makes your negotiating easier, by far.
Finally, you want to get
this
summarized, in writing. Always request
a letter of agreement
—or employment contract.
Many executives unfortunately “forget” what they told you during the hiring-interview, or even deny they ever said such a thing.
Also, many executives leave the company, and their successor or the top boss may disown any
unwritten
promises:
“I don’t know what caused them to say that to you, but they clearly exceeded their authority, and of course we can’t be held to that.”
All of this, of course, presumes that your interview, and salary negotiation, ends up well. There are times, however, when all seems well, then all of a sudden and without warning it comes totally unraveled. You’re
hired, told to report next Monday, and then get a phone call on Friday telling you that all hiring has been put, mysteriously, “on hold.” You’re therefore back out “on the pavement.” Having seen this happen so many times, over the years, I remind you of the truth throughout this book:
successful
job-hunters and career-changers
always have alternatives.
Alternative ideas of what they could do with their life.
Alternative ways of describing what they want to do right now.
Alternative ways of going about the job-hunt (not just the Internet, not just resumes, agencies, and ads).
Alternative job prospects.
Alternative “target” organizations that they go after.
Alternative ways of approaching employers.
And so on, and so forth.
What this means for you, here, is: make sure you are pursuing more than just one employer, until after you start your new job.
TARGET SMALL ORGANIZATIONS
Were I myself looking for a job tomorrow, this is what I would do. After I had figured out, using
here
, what my ideal job looked like, and after I had collected a list of those workplaces that have such jobs, in my chosen geographical area, I would then circle the names and addresses of those that are
small
organizations (personally I would restrict my
first draft
to those with twenty-five or fewer employees)—and then go after them, in the manner I have described in previous chapters. However, as the dot-com bubble back in 2000 taught us, small organizations can sometimes be fraught with danger (
a nova-like birth, a sudden black hole death
), I would look particularly for small organizations that are
established
or
growing
. And if “
organizations with twenty-five or fewer employees
” eventually didn’t turn up enough
leads
for me, then I would broaden my search to “
organizations with fifty or fewer employees
,” and finally—if that turned up nothing—to “
organizations with one hundred or fewer employees
.” But I would
start
small. Very small.
Remember, job-hunting always involves luck, to some degree. But with a little bit of luck, and a lot of hard work, plus determination, these instructions about how to get hired and negotiate a salary should work for you, as they have worked for so many hundreds of thousands before you.
Take heart from those who have gone before you, such as this determined job-hunter, who wrote me this heartfelt letter, with which I close:
Before I read this book, I was depressed and lost in the futile job-hunt using Want Ads Only. I did not receive even one phone call from any ad I answered, over a total of four months. I felt that I was the most useless person on earth. I am female, with a two-and-a-half-year-old daughter, a former professor in China, with no working experience at all in the U.S. We came here seven months ago because my husband had a job offer here.
Then, on June 11th of last year, I saw your book in a local bookstore. Subsequently, I spent three weeks, ten hours a day except Sunday, reading every single word of your book and doing all of the flower petals in the Flower Exercise. After getting to know myself much better, I felt I was ready to try the job-hunt again. I used Parachute throughout as my guide, from the very beginning to the very end, namely, salary negotiation.
In just two weeks I secured (you guessed it) two job offers, one of which I am taking, as it is an excellent job, with very good pay. It is (you guessed it again) a small company, with twenty or so employees. It is also a career-change: I was a professor of English; now I am to be a controller!
I am so glad I believed your advice: there are jobs out there, and there are two types of employers out there, and truly there are!
I hope you will be happy to hear my story.
1.
One job-hunter said his interviews
always
began with the salary question, and no matter what he answered, that ended the interview. Turned out, this job-hunter was doing all the interviewing over the phone. That was the problem. Once he went face to face, salary was no longer the first thing discussed in the interview.
2.
Reprinted by permission of Paul Hellman, author of
Ready, Aim, You’re Hired!
and president of Express Potential (
www.expresspotential.com
). All rights reserved.
1.
The title of this poem is “The Road Not Taken,” from
The Poetry of Robert Frost
edited by Edward Connery Lathem, published by Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1916, 1969. Incidentally, the late M. Scott Peck’s classic,
The Road Less Traveled
, took its title from this poem.