Selling Yourself to Management

As I said in my last post, as a recruiter, I am not actually seeing any evidence of a Recession outside of the financial industry. However, many of the strategies that protect you in a bad market also improve your status with in a good market.

• Network to keep your value, your brand, visible at all times with your present management and clients. Networking builds bridges to get things accomplished on an every day basis. You should be networking at 2 or 3 title levels above you as insurance if your boss leaves the company. Network with other departments. Network with people junior to you as they may have very different philosophies towards work.
• Look for opportunities to demonstrate how you made (or can make) the company money, saved the company money or made it more efficient. Praise co-workers frequently and tell their bosses. Increase visibility and momentum for your entire team.
• Improve the quality of your written and oral presentation to be a more effective advocate of your ideas. Dress and act more professionally.
• Volunteer to be on committees or projects where you can showcase your thought leadership across the company. Mentor co-workers, help your boss on his/her pet project.
• If you are telecommuter make extra effort to remind teammates you are mission-critical. Be in the office often to build the interpersonal bonds.
• Create opportunities to solicit written feedback on your performance. Send status reports. Ask for signoff on future project methodology. On projects just completed ask your boss if he/she would add anything the next time. The paper trail can be used at review time to remind your boss of the great work you did and, not incidentally, that he/she signed off on your methodology. If you ever lose your job in a large RIF, you have a collection of emails at home you may be able to use to get a job in another department or at least use to find another job. You can use the same method with stakeholders in other departments.
• In a slow or negative economy, especially at a public company, bonuses are easier to negotiate than raises (because bonuses affect the stock price less.) Raises are more likely indexed to company performance and merit bonuses are less wide spread amongst employees. This is not the time to demand a raise or you will leave. This not the best time to be the most expensive person at your band/grade level. This is the time to be more flexible with your employer to give him more room to maneuver and keep you if cuts do happen.

Jobs to Target

As a recruiter, I am not actually seeing any evidence of a Recession although that may change. I am seeing a mixed market, but that has been true since 9/11/01. The most obvious exception is the Financial companies which have been disproportionately affected by the mortgage market defaults. Whether or not we evolve in to a Recession, many of the strategies that protect you in a bad market also will help you get ahead and be more promotable than your co-workers in any market.

These are the more secure roles and companies to target if possible:

• The companies and product groups which cannot afford NOT to innovate continuously or they risk falling behind their competitors. Examples are medical device companies in highly competitive sectors (e.g.,pacemaker companies) or companies with computerized technology or internet services (.com) offerings.
• The Products and Projects which are more visible in a company and are the largest revenue generators, flagship products (most well-known brand names), and new Products which will improve the company’s share of market or open a major new source of revenue as assuming the project has adequate funds available for investment.
• Avoid projects which are nice-to-have but not mission critical. For instance, upgrading software for the back office accounting department is probably not critical unless there are new guidelines like Sarbannes Oxley. Upgrading Customer Service is probably not mission-critical to a company in tough times unless they have had a massive customer problem with product safety or efficacy.
• Seek roles that are in revenue generating departments such as Product Manager. If you are a Marketing Communications professional, focus on service companies versus industrial companies. Marcomm is more critical to a service company. In an industrial environment where there are not elaborate solutions offerings, Marcomm is a cost or support department.
• Seek roles visible to the outside world such as the Manager of Investor Relations, or FDA compliance. This would not be a good time to seek Employee Relations or Team Building roles which are far more likely to be considered a luxury in a business downturn. On the other hand, if Employee Relations is your #1 fantasy, seek the companies where it is more important. A retailer, for instance, has lots of employee turnover, high absenteeism and low employee engagement levels. In that environment Employee Relations is relatively more important.
• Industrial companies adding services/solutions offerings. Many industrial companies are seeing margins fall because of cheaper goods likes sensors being made in Asia. To compensate these companies are adding value and revenue by adding services like remote monitoring of equipment so a customer has less risk of down-time for repairs.
• Companies with “brochureware” websites are adding CRM (Customer Relationship Management) layers. For instance, you may receive an email that offers white paper for free if and only if you fill out 10 points of information that enables a salesperson to call you with some prior knowledge of your business needs. There is a huge move to have integrated media layers (promotions, loyalty efforts, etc.) point the customer back to the website and to interact with it as part of the sales process.
• If you are a web programmer, learn SilverLight which will enable TV-like Rich Media ads on the internet starting this fall, compliments of Microsoft. The growth of such ads will be explosive. These ads will be targeted to your personal internet habits just like ad banners are now.

What are your salary requirements?

It makes many job applicants very uncomfortable when I tell them the best answer is usually not to answer the question as asked.

“But she asked me! She is the Director of HR, I can’t show disrespect!”

Why is it better not to answer directly?

1. The best salesperson lets the client reveal what he/she is willing to pay before the salesperson finalizes his/her prices.
2. If you were in charge of a multi-million dollar project on behalf of a company, top management would WANT you to negotiate and not cave in the first round of conversation with a vendor. They would be less likely to hire an executive who is afraid to negotiate.
3. Salaries and other items in the salary/bonus/benefits packages are almost always somewhat negotiable. Telling you they aren’t is a common negotiating tactic but not necessarily the truth.
4. Lowering your salary demands does not make you more desirable as a candidate.

So, what are your salary requirements?

The best answer is always “Salary negotiable based on other considerations.”

Now, this is hard to do when applying through a corporate HR portal and you are confronted with an HR form that asks for a specific number, but the correct thing to do is to fill in the space with $1 (yes, one dollar) or as a second choice your absolute minimum salary and in the next available space where you can insert a comment, add the statement “Salary negotiable based on other considerations. I can hear some of you gasping, but read on.

Junior HR folk love these forms because it avoids a more involved discussion and causes many applicants to name their lowest price, which saves the company money (but may not snag the best candidate.) If the company considers you a serious contender, if they are really interested in hiring you, the conversation will continue. The strategy does not change for contract versus permanent job negotiations.

The client can usually be more negotiable with things other than salary, especially in a public company where the COG or Cost Of Goods which includes salaries affects the quarterly stock price. The different salary package items come out of different pockets in the budget and the constraints on paying for your education, for instance, may not be nearly as tight as the base salary.

Here is how you DO answer the question of desired salary:

• There are a lot of things that matter to me in this proposed relationship beside the salary. Salary is important, yes, but also important are the responsibilities of the role for the first year. The potential growth of the role in later years. How often I will receive performance reviews. Having a bonus or commission plan that will compensate me as a high performer versus other people. Being on a cool project. Gaining more experience in X. A chance to finish my Masters/PhD. An opportunity to work with Y. The strategy is to name things that are important to you but also make you more marketable to them. Saying “more vacation” is okay only if bundled with things that suggest you will increase your value to them over time.
• “By the way, I am talking to other companies so I know what my value in the market place is. ” You need to say this even if, in fact, you aren’t totally sure what your market value is. This statement causes the listener to offer you at least the market average for your performance level if he expects to have a chance to obtain you. You use that strategy to find what you are worth in the market place. If you don’t like the initial answer you hear, you can always reply with an answer like “Gee, I am hearing much higher salary bases. What else do you have to negotiate with? I want to make this a win-win for both of us.”
• The goal is to keep the conversation open with no absolutes on your part if you really want the job. You want to give them the maximum amount of room to maneuver so they can bargain with whatever they have available to bargain with.

Let’s talk about the current market.

We are beginning to hear the word “Recession.” As of this writing, the market is soft in some places, like financial firms, but overall it is not a bad market.

If you are a Product Manager tied closely to the ROI (Return On Investment) or profit of your company’s most important product lines, it is still a very good market.

On the other hand, if you are in a cost/support department and cannot demonstrate your contributions to the company’s success, you may think it is a soft market.

The solution is to make sure you know how to be an advocate for your skills to the right listener. (A career counselor can teach you those strategies.)

Be Prepared

On the day you receive the formal offer, you need to be prepared to give a clear yes or no to their dollar/benefits package with no more than 24-36 hours delay. This is a test of executive character and decision making.

The company should not make the offer until they know that the company and the role are of real interest to you. They will hold off if you are in the middle of negotiations with another company. (The right job is the one you would choose if the money offers from both companies were equal, so they will avoid a money competition.)

They should not make an offer until the hiring manager/recruiter knows what a viable offer is. Well before this stage you need to have thought through what is the ideal package, what is an acceptable package, and what is the offer below which you walk.

You need to be ready to negotiate like a well-prepared executive who they can trust to make decisions on their behalf and keep business moving forward with a smile on everyone’s face.

Have fun!