I am always looking at the market, checking out opportunities, considering options. Even if it is for the sake of knowing where I stand today. Recently I was contacted by a recruiter with an opportunity in a medical field. I expressed interest, and when I found out that it will be “starting the whole thing from scratch”, I decided to pursue it. Well, the recruiter played the game the way they always do: this is a one in a life time opportunity, I don’t think you really need to look at the numbers too close, and that the benefits will outweigh the step back in initial income. But just to set my own expectations, I confirmed with the recruiter, that it will be at least a 6-figure compensation package, plus benefits.
All is well, I am competing with 4 other guys, and the company picks me and the other 2 as finalists. That’s when it became “interesting”. The recruiter told me “a story”, that the hiring manager went with salary expectations to her boss, and the boss said: “What? 100K?” So the hiring manager (supposedly) goes back to the recruiter and tells her: “My boss just flipped, so we can do 98K. 100 is just too much.”
I am listening to all this, and cannot believe my ears (the conversation was over the phone). The recruiter tells me that it’s only $200 a moth less, and that it should not be a deal breaker for me. I am thinking: “Why should it be a deal breaker for the employer? If they really want an expert in the field, why does it matter for them so much that he/she would be getting $200/month more? But if it does matter so much, why don’t they lower their expectations, and settle with a 2-3-year experience guy for $65K?”
At the end it finally hit me, that either my recruiter was lying to me from the very beginning, or the potential employer was not really serious as to what they expected from candidates. So, to make it fare for everybody, at least in my mind, I played out a scenario putting my self into the employer’s shoes.
If I am looking for the “top-of-the-line” expert, then the first thing I do is establish the budget. If I am hiring myself, then I can be a lot more lenient in terms of a range, because I won’t have to pay anybody a percentage of my future employee’s income. The next thing to do is to determine the caliber of an expert I will need for the job. That part is an endless series of situations that are specific to an employer. But let’s say for the argument’s sake, that I need someone on a higher end of scale. Now I am ready to check the price for such talent. I look at the national numbers first, simply because there is a possibility that you won’t be able to find a “top-of-the-line” resource locally. At this point I may flip, but at least I know what to expect if I have to “ship” my talent from elsewhere. The next step would be to check the local market, and see what the prices are for such talent around the neighborhood. If I am still “shocked” over the cost, then I have a choice of lowering my expectations. In this case I can skip the national salary research, because chances are very high, that I can find the lower end candidates locally.
But if what I see is reasonable, and mostly within the budget that I allocated, then my last thing to do is to determine, to the best of my abilities, that candidates that I am bringing in as finalists, are really the ones that I am willing to work with, for years to come (or whatever the case might be). At this point I know their expectations, they know the range I am willing to give them, and it all comes down to “who’s the best for the job”.
Having said all this I am even more convinced that there is something fishy and even maybe dishonest that went on here. Being once a hiring manager myself, I followed the steps above several times, and they never failed. It doesn’t mean they are bullet-proof, but at least I was demonstrating honesty to my potential subordinates from the very beginning, and was not leaving the penny-pinching bargaining process till the very end, when the candidate already invested considerable amount of time on interviews, and has already written a notice letter to the current employer.
So, the question to the reader is, – is it just me or there is something fishy in here?
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