Negotiate Your Salary

Okay, I know I typically post about job searching.  It’s what resume writers do, right?  Not exactly.  While resume writers are experts on how to consturct interview-winning (not job-winning) resumes, they offer a host of other services as well.  One of the services that many resume writers include is helping you to advance your career within your current place of employment.

This means that once you have a job, your relationship with your resume writer should not be over.  In fact, you should stay in constant contact with your resume writer, if she or he offers consulting services.  One such opportunity is salary negotiation.

There are typically three times when you should attempt to negotiate your salary.

1. When you are offered a job.
2. Each year following your hiring anniversary.
3. After accomplishing a monumental feat that has dramatically increased the productivity or profitability of your company.

Let me explain.  When you first accept a job, you are negotiating the perks of your career – things like medical, child care and home benefits.  These are the deciding factors as to whether or not you will accept the offered position.

Each year following your anniversary, you should have gained some leverage as an employee and have aided in the advancement of the company and therefore should be compensated, at the very least, by an annual raise.  If your company does not offer an annual raise or fails to give you the raise you expect, then you have to negotiate your salary to a mutually satisfactory amount.

After accomplishing a monumental feat, such as creating a system that allows your company to efficiently  increase output by 78% or incresasing profits by $5 M, you have proven yourself as a favorable employee and should give your employers approximately a month to decide to compensate you.  If they fail to do so, especially if after such a profitable accomplishment you are receiving offers from other companies, then it’s time to have a salary negotiation talk.

How do you conduct a salary negotiation talk?

Come with a list of benefits! Not for you – for your company.  Have at least ten, preferably 20, benefits that you have provided the company in measurable terms.  For example, if you are the sales manager and you have increased employee attendance by 50% and decreased sales returns by 25%, these are measurable numbers.  An employer can grasp your efficiency as a leader because employers understand numbers.  If on the other hand, all you can say is “I like working with the company and everyone always seems to smile at me,” then your employer will not take you seriously and you will fail to negotiate anything.  In fact, you may even have given him reasons to doubt you as an effective employee.

Have a list of demands! No, you are not negotiating a hostage situation, but you are negotiating for your livelihood.  Come prepared with reasonable expectations for a salary increase.  Some employees may not want additional money, but may want to negotiate other changes.  For example, years ago, I worked in sales for a sightseeing agency.  After working there for only a month, I had managed to become the top seller in the department, had a higher close rate on incoming phone calls, and had manged to receive five commendations from three customers and two corresponding brokers.  Instead of negotiating for a higher income, I was able to negotiate my work schedule to accommodate my other responsibilities outside of work.

Be prepared to walk. I know it sounds awful.  Who wants to start looking for a job all over again?  But I’m going to let you in on a little secret.  The list of benefits you created wasn’t just for your employer, it was also for you.  It was my way of letting you know that once you see how much value you have brought to your company, you now know your unique value proposition as an employee.  These qualities are the assets you will bring to any company that chooses to hire you.  If your employer fails to meet your demands and will not negotiate any favorable terms to satisfy you, then you now know your value as an employee and can choose to find a new place of employment.   You will not quit immediately.   Instead, you will continue working, while you look for a new company that will compensate you for the value that you will bring to their company.

Salary negotiation is tough for many people, particularly if you are very humble and meek.  Yet, you deserve compensation for all the benefits you bring to your company.  Your employer should agree if you follow the above three steps.

If not, then as always, good luck on your job search.

Ayesha Long

www.AyeshaWrites4u.com

Stepping Up to a Better Career with Professional Resume Services

*** Be sure to go to Ayesha Writes 4 You’s website and schedule your Free Resume Consultation. From now until August 15th, you can get 15% off any resume package. So go to www.AyeshaWrites4u.com to get started now!

One Step to Ace Your Interview

Your interview will get you a job.  There is really no big secret here.  We know your cover letter and resume open the door for the interview.  We know that after the interview, following up will let the employer know that you are still interested and will keep you fresh in his mind.  But really, once you are in front of your employer, it is time to put the nail in the coffin.

So why do people fail to impress their employers during their interview?

Simple!  They forget about their most valuable asset as an employee – their unique value proposition.  Your unique value proposition also known as your UVP is the quality that you possess that differentiates you from the competition.  An employer wants to know that out of the hundreds of candidates applying for a position, you are the best.

How do you let an employer know that you are the best?

Come prepared with your unique value proposition already written out on a notepad.  There are two ways of doing this:

1. List three qualities you feel make you a great candidate such as being visionary, team-oriented, or a trouble-shooter.
2. Come prepared with three scenarios that identify your qualities.  Each of these scenarios should follow the three tiered approach I call problem, solution, impact.  Using this approach, you think of three situations where your previous company had a problem that you or your team solved and the impact it had on the company.

Which method is the best?

I suggest doing both.  When you list your three unique values, under each one should be a Problem, Solution, Impact scenario demonstrating that quality at work.

For example, as a teacher, I felt that one of my strongest traits was motivating children to succeed.

The scenario I would use to demonstrate my unique value proposition of motivation would be:

When I was in the classroom as an elementary teacher, students were not reading the mandated 25 books a year that were expected of them by the school (problem).  After speaking with several teachers, I discovered the problem was that many teachers were only checking the number of books read right before report card time, leaving the children with approximately three months of unaccountability between each report card period. To fix this problem, I decided to hold reading conferences with every child each week and to have them hold on to their books until I had recorded them being finished.  This way, I was able to track their reading and intercept if there was a problem (solution). By the end of the school year, all of my students had read the 25 books and at least one-third had read over 50 books.  Their reading levels also jumped three to four levels and they all left reading above grade level (impact).

Notice that by having your three unique values and those three scenarios written out in this format, you can be prepared to answer several “tricky” interview questions such as:

Tell me more about yourself.

Answer: I often look for situations where I can troubleshoot.  For example…

Can you think of a time you noticed a problem and you solved it?

Answer: Actually, yes.  In fact, just last year there was a situation where…

Why do you think you should be hired above all the other candidates?

Answer: I have the ability to notice a problem and to offer solutions where I can not only utilize my talents, but also unite the entire team to work on a cause.  For example…

What do you think is your best quality as an employee?

Answer: As an employee, I believe that it is my job to support the organization towards increased productivity and effectiveness.  I often look for ways to eliminate problems and to promote efficiency.  In fact…

What is your worst quality?

Answer: I sometimes have the ability to rock the boat if I notice that something is amiss. For example…

With each of these questions, you have an answer because you know your unique value proposition as an employee.  You can ace any interview because you know what differentiates you from the competition.  Your competitors will not be as prepared and will stumble around these questions.  Yet, you will be poised, confident, and prepared, which are all the traits an employer looks for in a prospective employee.

As always, good luck with your job search.

Ayesha Long

www.AyeshaWrites4u.com

Step Up to a Better Career with Professional Resume Services
*** Also be sure to go to Ayesha Writes 4 You’s website and schedule your Free Resume Consultation. From now until August 15th, you can take advantage of our Summer Discount and get 15% off any resume package. So go to www.AyeshaWrites4u.com to get started now!

You’re too old to be hired???

One of the most ironic things about finding employment is that experience is always considered an advantage when someone is seeking employment.  Yet if you have too much experience, those same businesses from five years ago that were banging on your door asking you to work with them are now too busy to even interview you.  If you have over twenty years experience in your field and are not a C-level executive, experience becomes a barrier.  More factually, it’s not the experience, it’s your age.

Something about being older than most of your cohorts will turn employers off from employing you.  Unfortunately, they have biases due to increasing health issues and stubborn attributes that are often associated with older employees.  So how do you fight age discrimination?  How do you get an employer to look at your age and experience as an asset as opposed to a liability?

Our guest blogger, Kevin Donlin answers this question in his article, “How to Get Hired Faster by Overcoming Obstacles Like Age Discrimination”.  Before turning over the realm to Kevin, I want to point out that many of us know these answers.  It will be the same time and time again.  You must always sell the positive and forego the negative.  If you are unsure how to do this, hire a professional.  If you want to attempt to do it yourself, be sure to click on the link for The Guerrilla Job Search DVD at the end of Kevin’s blog post.

As always, good luck on your job search.

Ayesha Long

www.AyeshaWrites4u.com

Step Up to a Better Career with Professional Resume Services
*** Also be sure to go to Ayesha Writes 4 You’s website and schedule your Free Resume Consultation. From now until August 15th, you can take advantage of our Summer Discount and get 15% off any resume package. So go to www.AyeshaWrites4u.com to get started now!

How to Get Hired Faster by Overcoming Obstacles, like Age Discrimination

By Kevin Donlin

I got an email last week from Jim S. in New York. His job-search question may not apply exactly to you, but the mind-set I suggest to solve it should.

So, if you give me two minutes here, I’ll show you two ways to get hired faster, by playing to your strengths, and offering employers the equivalent of “found” money.

Ready?

Jim writes:

“I have been a self-employed residential general contractor with some commercial supervision experience for 35 years. Last fall I had heart surgery and as a consequence, I am no longer able to meet the physical demands of the job. How do I best convey this situation to a potential employer and still get in the door?”

When Jim asks, “How do I best convey this [health] situation to a potential employer and still get in the door?” what he’s really asking is: “How can I bring up my health problems and still get an interview?”

This is common, backwards thinking.

Instead, of worrying about how to confess a negative, Jim should build a case for his strengths until they overcome any resistance in the minds of employers.

Here’s the question that Jim (and you) should ask instead: “How can I appeal so strongly to an employer’s self interest that any issues about my physical condition won’t matter — they’ll want to hire me for my brains and not my body?”

Put another way, there must be some management function Jim can perform in construction that can leverage his 35 years of industry experience and knowledge, without requiring hard physical labor. He should examine his work history until he can picture a suitable job.

Better yet, he should call past supervisors, vendors, and clients, remind them of the good things he did for them, then ask: “Given my knowledge and experience, what leadership role do you see me playing for an employer?”

This is one way to overcome obstacles of physical condition, age, etc.

To learn more about how to use Guerrilla Job Search tactics in your job search, click here.

Online Scammers are still at it…

On Tuesday, I wrote the blog post “You’ve found a job…or not?”. In this post, I wrote about clear cut signs to tell if a prospective company is legitimate or if it is a scam.  Due to the number of employment scams that have increased in the past year, I felt it was necessary to let my readers know of these predatory practices.  It’s no longer investment scams that people must fear.

Now people are benefiting from the media’s constant display of unemployment rates, job seekers restlessness at not finding employment, and the lack of positive responses employees are getting after sending out hundreds of resumes.  Even worse, there are thousands of employees fearful of being laid-off or fired in the near future and they too are adding to the droves of people now seeking new employment.  With that said, there is a multitude of people that predatory companies can target to profit from other people’s suffering and desperation.

Yesterday, the New York Times discovered the same predatory phenomenon occurring throughout the internet.  I decided to share this article with you because while the tips are helpful, the most shocking aspect is the profile of Claude Vera, a employment scam victim who now owes Chase $6,700.

What makes this scam so profound is that Claude was actually paid by the company.  They sent him money orders to purchase the laptops and other materials he would need in order to begin working for the company.  Yet, after requesting these items and conducting wire transfers,  he never received the materials because the money orders were COUNTERFEIT  or had been USED  prior to being received by Claude!

Apparently, the number of on-line scams have increased exponentially and even sites like scam.com or Phishbucket.org cannot discover a scam until someone has complained of being scammed.   My hopes is that by reading this blog and the linked article, you can avoid being a victim of a fraudulent company.

For the second time this week, I am asking all my readers to trust your instincts.  Finding a job is hard work.  Even more difficult is bouncing back from the financial setback of falling into an employment scheme that can wreak havoc on your savings, credit, and dealings with banks and reputable companies in the future.  Avoid being like Claude Vera, whose Chase account is now in collections because he failed to see beyond his current economic situation and allowed his emotions to put him in an even worse situation.

I highly recommend reading the New York Times Article, “Online Scammers Prey on the Jobless“  because it offers some great information, including the names of companies that have been identified as scams and additional tips on how to neutralize the effects of being contacted by a scam company.

As always, good luck with your job search and be careful.

Ayesha Long

www.AyeshaWrites4u.com

Step Up to a Better Career with Professional Resume Services
*** Also be sure to go to Ayesha Writes 4 You’s website and schedule your Free Resume Consultation. From now until August 15th, you can take advantage of our Summer Discount and get 15% off any resume package. So go to www.AyeshaWrites4u.com to get started now!

Networking 101

We’ve heard it said time and time again, “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know.” What does that have to do with job searching?  Everything!  In one of my favorite books, Outliers: The Story of Success, Malcolm Gladwell discusses ways to dissect the classification of success and how we categorize people who are intelligent or financially savvy.

In one chapter, he discusses a man who ranked in the top 97% of the world according to their IQ’s.  Instead of working in the sciences or technological fields, as most would expect of someone so intelligent,  the man was a lumber worker.  While blue collar work is vital to our community, it’s not what we expect of  anyone who is among the 3% of most intelligent people in the world.

So what happened to this man?  The same thing that has happened to job searchers all over the world.  He lacked the one basic skill necessary to advance his career – social skills.  Yes, he was highly literate – could read expansive texts, could remember geographical locations, yet he couldn’t get further in his career.  He dropped out of college because his professors wouldn’t allow him to change his schedule.  A feat most of us have done at some point in our academic careers – whether in high school, secondary or post-secondary school.  Yet, here is this man with this enormous brain power and he fails to achieve the success many of us would imagine someone with such a high IQ would achieve – all because he failed to relate to people and become socially adaptable.

Yes, some people are naturally social butterflies.  They walk into a party knowing only the host and within fifteen minutes, it seems that they have been lifelong friends with everyone at the party.  They leave the party with dates scheduled and a host of new acquaintances.  These people are typically the most successful in their job search.  People are impressed with their communication skills and even if they aren’t the hardest workers, they have the ability to charm people into believing they are.

This is the skill that all job searchers must activitate.  Within each of us is a social butterfly waiting to come out.  If you are serious about your job search, you must step out of your comfort zone and reach out to employers to get a job.  You have to network and network hard to get the results that you want.

Not sure where to start?  Here are a few starting points to get you prepared to step out and get the career you deserve -

• Start slow. If you are not the most vocal person, but have a good eye on design and writing, join social networks that allow you to reconnect with old friends and make some new ones.  A great place to start is LinkedIn.com, which is meant for business networking.  Through your network of friends, let them know you are job hunting and be sure to post your resume in the best light possible so that potential employers will be willing to contact you.

• Make a list and check it twice. Make a list of your closest friends.  Then expand that list into people who are casual acquaintances, but you see them fairly often.  Contact everyone on that list including your beautician, barber, and mailman.  These people know the pulse of the community and are one of the firsts people to hear any new information that may be relevant to your job search.

• Attend job fairs. Job fairs are often advertised in your city’s local employment guides and will host dozens if not hundreds of employers willing to hire employees on the spot.   By attending job fairs, you can not only meet potential employers, but you should also network with other job seekers.  Often when you attend job fairs, people are afraid of networking with each other in the fear that the person they are befriending is fierce competition.  On the contrary, these other job seekers might have information on the companies that they are leaving and might be able to give you insight into these companies – insight that might make you interested in joining their old company. If there reason for leaving is strictly personal and they still have some good contacts, have them send in a positive word to their old employer and then follow up yourself.

• Cold Call. This is the hardest aspect of networking, but achieves the highest rate of success.  Look in your yellow pages, on-line, and throughout your community for companies of interest.  Then get on the phone and call them!  Yes, you can send your resume and cover letter like everyone else – but as we all know, if everyone’s trying to get through the front door, then the person coming through the back will have the greatest success.  This person stands out and gets noticed, which is exactly what you want to do.  Call the company, ask if they are hiring.  If they say yes, introduce yourself and ask if it’s possible to schedule an interview to come in and discuss the opportunities available.  If they say no, introduce yourself and ask if it’s possible to send in a cover letter and resume just in case something comes up in the future.  Then every one to three months follow up with the company and let them know you are still interested.  Even if you have found a different position, it is still always good to keep your options open, particularly if this is your dream company.

Remember that networking is vital to all aspects of our lives, and is especially essential to job searching.  If you remain professional and always project a professional image, you should be able to find a job in no time!

As always, good luck with your job search.
Ayesha Long

www.AyeshaWrites4u.com

Step Up to a Better Career with Professional Resume Services
*** Also be sure to go to Ayesha Writes 4 You’s website and schedule your Free Resume Consultation. From now until August 15th, you can take advantage of our Summer Discount and get 15% off any resume package. So go to www.AyeshaWrites4u.com to get started now!