Money Talk

I was looking for work a couple of years ago. I went to interview for a job that seemed to fit my skills very well. When I arrived, I was impressed by the offices of the small, young company. The company was founded by a man that had been successful at another well known company, the name of which I have forgotten.

The Human Resources lady and I got along very well. She knew the basics of the job I would be doing, but the manager to which I would be reporting was taking a couple of days off. Suddenly the demeanor of the HR lady changed. I could almost feel it. What the heck had happened? What had I said? She was still polite and said she would pass my résumé to the manager, but I could sense that something had gone very wrong.

I went home and immediately sent the HR lady an email. You know, the customary "thanks for talking with me" email. She replied that she, too, had enjoyed our talk and would let me know the outcome the following week. I knew she was just being polite, and that I would not hear anything more about that job.

What went wrong? I racked my brain for days trying to figure out what I had said, but I didn't figure it all out until some time later. A friend of mine had applied for the job and then suggested it to me. He mentioned in passing that the salary was around $25,000 a year. Bingo! In my interview, while talking about my previous job, I had mentioned what I had been making, which was much more than $25,000 a year. At that point, I indirectly told the HR lady that the job she had was not in my salary range.

Everyone is looking for something from a job, but the common denominator, the thing we are all looking for is M-O-N-E-Y. Money, money, money. Money is something we all have to have to get by no matter what we are looking for in our job. But following my law of opposites (everything usually works just the opposite of what you might think), you have to at least act like money is not the point. In other words, don't mention money until you have to. I think I heard someone say "don't mention money until they are pushing you out the door".

However, some interviewers, especially the HR people who are trying to filter you out, will ask you point blank what you were making in your last job or what you are expecting to make in your next job. The best answer is an honest answer, but no answer is even better. Remember, good employers like to top what you were making in your last job. They like to give you a raise -- a salary increase -- no matter why you left the last job. They know you feel rotten about losing your last job in spite of your totally positive attitude. So they want you to start your new job feeling just as positive because you got a salary increase.

As a contractor, it might help to state your previous salary in terms of dollars per hour. Figure that out before the interview. If you were making X dollars a year, that is roughly X/2000 per hour. Why 2000? There are 52 weeks in a year, but you probably took two weeks of vacation and holidays (yeah right). So let's say 50 weeks in a year multiplied by 40 hours per week equals 2000 hours. Therefore, your hourly rate was (yearly salary) divided by 2000 hours. For example, if you were making $50,000 a year, that would be approximately $25 an hour. If you were making $75,000 a year, that would be approximately $37.50 an hour. If you are like me, you had to get the calculator out for that second one. So do the math ahead of time. It gets easier if you just drop the thousands (000) and divide by 2.

You need to be familiar with that calculation when you look at the want ads, too. If a job is listed as $27 an hour, that is roughly $54,000 a year, unless it is a part-time job.

Remember also that benefits, like healthcare insurance, 401K, paid vacation and sick days, and so on, have to be considered in your salary negotiations. If you are a contractor and have to provide your own insurance, you may require more per hour than an employee with benefits.

If you are wondering what to say in a job interview and what not to say in a job interview, I would suggest that you do a Google search for "things to say in a job interview". You will get a ton of advice. However, I will tell you to stay away from the subject of salary (money) as long as possible. Besides, you want to make such a good impression in the job interview that money will be no object. The employer will have to have you at any cost. Money will be no object. OK, that is not likely to happen, but there is a possibility that they could meet your requirements even though the job was advertised at a lower rate than you were hoping for, especially if no rate was advertised (DOE).

The interview is a major part of the process of finding a job. The bottom line for finding a job is money, at least for most of us. You would think money and salary should be the main topic of the interview, but nothing could be farther from the truth (remember my law of opposites). Have a figure in mind before you go into the interview, but do whatever it takes not to mention it until you have to because you may have to revise it along the way. As you find out more about the job, your salary demands might increase just to work there. As the interviewer finds out more about you and all that you will bring to the job, they may be willing to pay you more than they had planned to pay someone less extraordinary.

Let A Better Job Find You

Have you ever noticed how things usually work just the opposite of how you have always heard they work? This seems to be more and more the case. I'm thinking that maybe everyone just gets tired of being predictable. So they do things just the opposite of the way everyone thinks they are supposed to do it. Whatever "it" is. Of course, here "it" is getting a job.

I just read an article this morning that advised me not to look so hard for a job. For years, all I have heard is, when you are unemployed, your job is Finding a Job. That article said look for a couple of hours a day and then do something else, something positive, something you love to do, and to get with other people that like to do whatever it is you are doing. The idea is to stop trying so hard to find a job and let the job find you.

If you think about it, when you look at the job posting websites, it really only takes a couple of hours (if that long) to look at the new postings that are posted each day. How many times have you been looking at the postings and realized that you are looking at the same postings you have been looking at for the last week or two. I mainly look at Indeed.com. They seem to eventually pull new ads that have been posted elsewhere. So I see some new ads, but they are already several days old. It seems like I am seeing new postings, but not really.

Most of us feel like we should be looking for a job constantly. Especially if we have other family members depending on us to find a job. It gets almost addictive, which seems to be true of almost anything we do repetitively day after day. I have heard people say they can't sleep for thinking about job hunting, or they wake up earlier than usual thinking about job hunting.

That article I read did not really surprise me. I have been telling just about everyone that you can look for a job until you're blue in the face, work on your resume and cover letter until it's immaculate, and do every other thing that the professionals suggest, and still not get a job. Or you get a job because the guy at the grocery store told you where his brother-in-law just went to work. "I think they're hiring!"

The new theory is that you can burn out, get depressed, and become irritatingly boring if you overdo the job hunt. However, don't fall prey to the other extreme. You know, doing everything you can think of except searching for a job, like cleaning the garage or painting the house. The things you should do instead of searching for a job should compliment your job search. They should put you in contact with others that like to do what you like to do. That sort of thing. I am using my not-searching-for-a-job time to try and figure out another way to make a living. You know: blogging, learning to buy and sell on ebay, learning to be a webmaster, and so on. You might want to take a class to learn a new computer skill or whatever. Who knows, you might meet your next office mate at that class.

Also, keep in mind that the reason you are not at your old job may be another one of those deals that do not work the way you think it should work. In days gone by, the best employees were kept and the lesser employees received the pink slip. These days, you may have been terminated because you were at the top of the heap. Your employer may have realized that you had gone as far a you could go in your job. There were no more raises they could give you. You had to go, for your own good, someplace where they could give you new duties and pay you more. Plus, your old employer saves on your high salary and new opportunities open up to the junior employees that do the same things you did.

The point here is, you might want to look for a job that pays more and that will cause you to have to stretch your abilities. In other words, you will become the junior employee in a job that eventually pays more than your old job. This has unintentionally happened to me several times thanks to people who think about things like that. While I was looking for another job just like the one I had, my future employers were smart enough to see my potential for doing a job that offered me new challenges and more money. I say gear up. You can always gear down.

Some think that we live in a new age. Others say we live in a time where right is wrong and wrong is right. I don't know about all that, but I do know things often work just the opposite of the way we think they will work. We think we were laid off because we were doing a bad job when, in fact, we were doing too good a job. We ask for less money and less responsibility when we should be asking for more, more, more.