Getting the ‘RIGHT’ Job

Your Work Friends Podcast: Getting the Right Job with James Hudson

Jobs aren’t magic…

And, they’re not always the right fit for you. Jobs are built, banded, and budgeted—before you ever apply. In this episode, we sit down with Talent Acquisition expert James Hudson (Regeneron, Nike, Levi’s, Net-a-Porter) to break down how jobs are created, how pay gets set, and how to land the role that actually fits you. Plus, we answer your biggest job search questions—and call out some wild hiring trends you should probably skip (yes, even that one with the parents).

Listen to the full episode here

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Francesca : 0:00

The fact that you can whisper to Alexa and she whispers back is a little creepy. I'm not gonna lie, it's a little creepy.

Mel : 0:08

Sorry to have taught you that, yeah so me and my son.

Francesca : 0:12

So now it's like yes, Francesca.

Mel : 0:18

I am banned from Portland.

Francesca : 0:36

Hello and welcome to your work. Friends were to HR leaders with no filter, but we're exposing the work stuff you need to know I'm Francesca and I'm Mel and Mel, how are you today?

Mel : 0:48

I'm doing great. It is beautiful morning in Portland. It's been Fantastic to spend a few days with you here, seeing the city, planning our year, so I'm excited for 2024. How?

Francesca : 1:00

are you? Yeah, mel made the truck out from Connecticut to to semi snowy, cloudy Portland Oregon.

Mel : 1:09

I've experienced all four seasons in three days. It's great.

Francesca : 1:12

That is Portland in winter. There you are, yeah. Well, now this week we had a really fantastic interview with James Hudson, who is a talent acquisition leader. He's held executive roles at places like Nike, leave eyes for over 21 netta portet and he's a contributor to Forbes, and I think he's just an all-around rad person. We talked to him this week about Getting a job, and not only getting a job, but getting the right job. Now, what did you think about our talk with him.

Mel : 1:44

I think it's so valuable the information that people will get out of this episode, just the tips, good practices, red flags to look out for and wonderful to meet James. He's fantastic yeah.

Francesca : 1:56

So here's the deal, folks today we're going to give you the interview with James Hudson, a talent acquisition vice president and leader. You'll be able to leave that episode understanding how jobs even become a job and how do you really get the right job For you. And we also asked an answer some of the burning questions you all have, like should you negotiate your offer and is it really all who you know? He answers all of that. We'll come back after the interview with our roast and toast. So here's our interview about getting the right job with James Hudson. We are super stoked to have James Hudson with us today. James, how are you this today? How are you today? What's going on?

James : 2:42

I'm pretty good. Yeah, first of all, thank you for having me on your show. It is an honor to be here. I just got back from a long trip over the holidays to Europe and I'm back in what is supposed to be sunny California and it's rain outside my window. So whilst I'm currently working on my job Outside my window, so whilst I'm grateful to be home, the the weather, it's a little bit of pathetic fallacy, it's yeah like outside and maybe I feel a little bit bleak inside.

Francesca : 3:09

But oh, you get past that today. You got to bring the energy, james. You can't, you can't bring the bleak energy. No, it's so funny. I think I'm just north of you up here in Portland. Mel and I are sitting up in Portland today. We're getting snow, you're getting rain, we're getting snow, we're getting snow.

Mel : 3:24

It's, it's coming. I did read, though, that in 40 days, the sunshine is going to stay out until 7 pm Again, so that's moving us from the sad era yeah.

Francesca : 3:34

I think we all needed to hear that today. I think I think James needs some sunshine in his soul. So there you go. You got 40 days to go, james. 40 days. Yeah Well, friends, we're stoked to introduce James to you today. James is a talent acquisition leader and has been an executive at places like Nike, levi's, netta Porte. He's also a pre-massive contributor on Forbes and an all-around rad person. And, james, you and I Overlapped when we were at Nike.

James : 4:04

We share that very unique trauma bond it.

Francesca : 4:07

We indeed do, and if you know, you know, you know, you know. So Today what we wanted to do is give everyone a survey of how this stuff works. How do jobs even come to fruition? How do they go from a concept to like a job board? How does someone find the right job for them Not just a job, but the right job for them, especially from your perspective? And then there's a lot of burning questions that are out there, so we'll do a quick round robin at the end to see what do you think about some of these burning questions. Everybody wants answers to. How does that sound? I'm gonna do my best to answer all these questions.

James : 4:42

Yeah, there will be a test. We will be grading you and judging you at the end.

Francesca : 4:45

So there you go. I'm just so, James. How did you even come into this space as a talent acquisition leader?

James : 4:55

You know, I've been leading talent acquisition teams for a long time now, for the best part of two decades. My last team at Nike, where you and I worked together, I had a team of our hundred recruiters that the team. Before that at Levi's, I had 60 recruiters working for me. So over the course of 20 years I've worked alongside hundreds, if not thousands, of recruiters and obviously met many more peers in the industry at events. And what have you? Of all those thousands and thousands of recruiters that I met, nobody ever intended to become a recruiter, and my story is no different. I fell into the profession Like everybody else appears to have done. If there's anyone out there that in high school, wanted to be a recruiter, please come and find me. I want to talk to you. So my actually, I actually think my story is pretty interesting in that In college, first time around my undergraduate degree, I worked on the shop floor at Gap and ice Dating myself.

James : 6:03

Here in the late 90s in Europe, gap a was expanding pretty quickly and B had fairly innovative approaches to how they manage their workforce, in that they recognize that a large percentage of the folks working for them would be part-time, transient workers, college kids what have you.

James : 6:25

In the UK, unlike here in the United States, it's pretty common to go quote-unquote out of state to college. Obviously we don't call them states but people. You know, people live in one part of the country and Go to college in a completely different part of the country. Back then the cost model was completely different. Our cost model in the UK now is Getting closer to the cost model here. Well, obviously, more frequently people tend to stay in state because it can be cheaper, cheaper, yeah, anyway, you, I like many people in the UK, my undergraduate degree was far from my home and Gap had this program where during term time you could work in your college store and during vacation time you could transfer your employment to your home store, and so they had this really flexible workforce that you could be employed year round.

Francesca : 7:18

Yeah, Get that discount too. Get that discount at home. Got to be looking right in those genes 1969.

James : 7:25

Yeah, that was cool in the 90s. Yeah.

Francesca : 7:27

I know, I know, I'm so what happened to Gap? Because I'm like, I'm still like is Gap still a?

James : 7:32

thing it's going to be. The new CEO just came over from Mattel and was responsible for the Barbie resurgence, so I'm excited.

Francesca : 7:42

I'm pulling for Gap. I'm pulling for Gap Gap banana. I'm athletic. Well, maybe I'm pulling for him all.

James : 7:47

Yeah, san Francisco hometown. Then in my last year of college I ended up moving to the team that hired the staff for all the new stores. So that was my first taste of interviewing and of hiring at scale, and I really enjoyed it, even though I was like 19 years old.

Francesca : 8:04

Making those decisions. I love it. What did you major?

James : 8:06

in.

Francesca : 8:06

Did you even major in HR, or are we Were you like mechanical engineering, my undergraduate?

James : 8:10

degree was art history. Nice, I didn't go back to business school eventually and get a proper degree in something sensible, but yeah, my undergraduate degree at art school was art history Not very useful at all. So, yeah, that was my first taste of hiring. Then, like very many British people, I took a year out after college and went traveling, and I actually stayed away for a year and a half. I spent six months in Southeast Asia and a year in Australia, and then when I got back to London a year and a half later, I had no money at all because I'd basically been on vacation for a year and a half and I have no idea what I wanted to do. And somebody said why don't you go work in recruiting? Because you've done that before and you'll make a ton of money. And I was like, oh OK, that sounds good. And so I interviewed with lots of different search firms in London, without really even knowing what executive search was, and landed a job with a search firm that operated in the sort of retail, head office, corporate retail jobs space, and so that was my first taste of professional recruiting. I did that for three years and what I learned was I loved the people side of search, but I didn't enjoy the cold calling and business development and sales that comes with agency recruiting, and so I knew that I wanted to make the transition to an in-house role so that I could keep the people side but lose the sales and business development element.

James : 9:37

I had just bought a house in London and one of my clients was at the time. This tiny little website had fewer than 200 employees, less than $40 million in revenue, but I just totally believed in what they were doing. Natalie, the founder, was just so visionary. Naomi, the head of HR, who I'd been working with as a vendor, I just adored her, and every week they would send out a list of all the open vacancies that they had and ask us and their other search partners which we could fill. And one week the list came through and they wanted their first in-house recruiter on a six month contract, and I knew that was it, and so I took a 50% pay cut and left a full-time job, even though I had a mortgage to pay, because I just really believed in what Netaporte were doing.

James : 10:30

And still, 20 years later, it's the best career decision I ever made, because when I joined it was this tiny, tiny company and I was just super fortunate to be right place, right time and to be able to grow with the organization for the best part of the near decade that I was there. We had triple digit year-over-year growth, so complete hypergrowth. We opened offices in New York, in Hong Kong, in Shanghai. We opened distribution centers around the world.

James : 11:02

I got to build out the internal recruiting function. In my first year there I hired 150 people on my own. By the time I left, nearly a decade later, we were hiring thousands of people every year and I established recruiting teams around the world. They sent me to business school and it was just the most amazing experience because I was having practical, real-world examples of everything that I was learning in school, because the business was growing so fast. We went through three rounds of M&A so I got to see both sides of the corporate transaction and I think everything that happened during that first decade then enabled me to make the transition to much larger scale quote-unquote corporate America where I've been ever since Right now.

James : 11:48

I'm resting, but yeah, well-deserved rest.

Francesca : 11:52

Well-deserved rest too. It's interesting, too, when you know you're running towards something right, even though it means a 50% pay cut, even though it means a smaller footprint, but then it turns into something exponential right, and it turns into something that sounds like it just married your gap experience, your agency experience, just from a global perspective too. Even that art history, I'm sure, came into play somewhere. Somehow. Design is design. And then you've gone on to things like Levi's, nike, et cetera too, and just kept on growing your career. It sounds like.

James : 12:28

Yeah, exactly, If Nettaporte hadn't grown so quickly, I don't think I'd have been able to make the transition from dot com to corporate America, just because of the scale and complexity.

James : 12:41

But by the time I left Nettaporte I had teams that I directly managed in Shanghai, Hong Kong, a very large team in London, I had a technical recruiting team in London and then a non-technical SGNA team in London and then another large team in New York.

James : 12:57

So because I'd already been able to have the global experience, the cross-border experience, multi-lingual recruiting experience, that then enabled me for my first big job, which was Levi's in Europe. So I moved to Levi's, moved me to Brussels, and so for two years I was crisscrossing Europe rolling out the workday technology and re-establishing the recruiting function in the region, and then from that job I was promoted to the head of recruiting role in California. So that brought me to San Francisco eight years ago now. And then my most recent job was head of talent acquisition for Nike's director consumer businesses worldwide. So, as you know, Nike's roughly $50 billion in revenue or it was maybe not this year and the director consumer piece was roughly half of that. And so my team worldwide hired 40,000 people a year for all of the satellite offices and stores around the world.

Francesca : 14:01

Yeah, this is the thing and one of the reasons why we wanted to talk to you today, because I think most people that don't sit in HR or sit in talent acquisition, I don't think most people understand how big and complex recruiting organizations, internally at companies, are. So if you're in a fortune, if you're trying to get a job at a Fortune 500, 1,000, 5,000 firm, you're going to be dealing with a very large team of people that are incredibly skilled at trying to find the best person for the role Sometimes, yeah.

Francesca : 14:34

Listen, there are some real dipshits out there. That's actually true in every single team and everybody knows that. But there are systematic tools, processes, procedures in order to find the right person for the role and, a lot of times, some great people and sometimes some dipshits. So one of the things that we wanted to jam with you about, james, was to kind of educate people on how does something go from a concept like we need somebody in this role to a job posting. I'm wondering if you can open the hood for us and just share. How does a job become a job? Almost like how does a bill become a bill. How does a job become a job?

James : 15:11

It's a great place to start, thank you, thank you. It's one of those areas where there's a ton of myth and misunderstanding. Quit. Let me caveat this by saying everything I'm going to say is from the perspective of large scale organizations, fortune 500 size companies and obviously in smaller organizations you know 100 people organizations everything is a bit looser.

James : 15:42

But the second that you get to any kind of scale, there is a huge amount of rigor and guardrails in how the business is run, and especially once that, because that business becomes publicly traded, there are rules and laws around what you can and cannot do, and that bleeds into every part of the enterprise and obviously HR is no different than any other part of the enterprise. There are rules, regulations and, in many cases, laws around what we can and cannot do. So caveat number one In any large organization there is a strategy which is, you know, often a three to five year plan, and there is an annual operating plan or budget, which is the shorter term, you know, six to 12 month horizon plan, and everything is captured in that plan. For most organizations, irrespective of industry, for most organizations the number one overhead is people. Yes, labor.

James : 16:48

The wage bill is the biggest expenditure and therefore subject to the largest amount of scrutiny. Organizations have a very clear idea at every point. So over the next 90 days, over the next 180 days, over the next year and over the next five years, what their wage bill is going to be. This is all a very long way of saying. Jobs are planned way in advance and as recruiting teams, we play a role in how those roles are brought to market. But we do not create those roles, we do not decide those roles. They're decided by at the highest level of the organization, then with the leadership teams within each function, with their finance teams way in advance, so that the biggest expense of the organization can be controlled and measured.

James : 17:49

In any normal established organization, 80% of jobs that are hired are going to be backfill or replacement for people that have left and roughly 20% are going to be net new headcount growth.

James : 18:03

That has been decided as part of the budget and strategy strategy process to decide we're going to grow this discipline or in this market or in this geography and therefore we need to add x amount of headcount so that 20% of headcount is pretty fixed because we've decided we need x amount of people in Germany or India or in data science, for example.

James : 18:28

The 80% is a little bit more ambiguous because obviously we don't know in advance who is actually going to leave, who's going to get another job, who's going to get promoted, what have you? But we know that in any given year, 20% of your workforce will leave one way or another, so you know that you're going to have to backfill 20% of people. So if your organization is 10,000 people, you know that in any given year you're going to have 2,000 vacancies to fill. You don't know exactly where they're going to be, but you can broadly assume, based on the size of the individual functions within your organization, we'll have 200 to fill in finance, we'll have 150 to fill in marketing, and so that's kind of at the highest level. What's going on with like how headcount is created and how roles come and go and exist within an organization?

Francesca : 19:21

Yeah, I think that's important, though, to know, because I just even know that most organizations are looking at like a 20% of the open jobs they have every year net new right we decide we're going to start making paper clips right Now we need paper clip makers, and we've historically been paper makers, for example. I think that's really important to know, especially because when people one of the questions we get a lot is especially around layoffs, for example, like how can people have open jobs and lay people off at the same time, and a lot of sometimes that's because a skill gap right, Because people we still need to hire the paper clip makers and we had to lay off the paper makers, if you will. So I think it's just helpful to have that context of how these things come into bear annually.

James : 20:05

Yeah, totally so. Then let's get into how the business is operating day by day.

Francesca : 20:11

Yeah.

James : 20:12

I'm running a team in finance and I know that for this quarter ahead I've got two net new headcount that have been assigned to my team that I can hire in this quarter. I can't hire them any sooner because the cost of that headcount is phased into the overall operating plan and if I'm the leader of that team and I want to hire those roles early, I can't just open them. I would have to get approval from either the leader of the function or maybe even up, depending on the size of the organization, maybe even up to C level. That's how tightly controlled costs are in most organizations. So even though the headcount exists, the headcount exists from a point in time, from a point in the budget, and if you can't even bring it forward because that would be adding more costs that wasn't planned for. So I think that's an important caveat that new headcount is phased and is hired when it's supposed to be hired Then if somebody resigns from the team and again, depending on the organization, it isn't even an automatic one-for-one approval that we could replace the finance manager that resigned.

James : 21:24

You often still have to go through an approvals process to get that role opened and the leader of your function may decide to reassign that headcount elsewhere and you might not get to backfill that role. But only after all that has happened does the role get passed to the recruiting team. The recruiting team just executes on a plan that has already been set. We're not responsible for creating headcount, for gatekeeping headcount, for deciding on which roles get filled. That is all done at the leadership and at the HR business partnering level.

Francesca : 21:58

Yeah, I think it's really important for people to know too, because a lot of times, when people interview for jobs, there's a difference between the hiring manager, the person that is going to be your boss, right and there's a and your recruiter. And this is why it's because the person that is going to be leading you is not the person that's going to necessarily be finding you and taking you through the acquisition process. Those are two separate people 100%.

Francesca : 22:21

Yeah, interesting. Yeah, the other thing I'm curious about is do you find that in most organizations like, for example, when I've been leading teams before I had $2 million for payroll, that was my payroll budget and I could decide how those roles and that pay was distributed among roles? Do you find, too, that when you have a job rec open that you're given a dollar amount? Like so, for example, you've got a job role open and this role cannot exceed $100,000 a year, $200,000 a year Are you typically also given a dollar amount too when the job rec opens? Just out of curiosity.

James : 22:59

So there's a few different things at play here. As the leader of the organization, it can happen in a few different ways. You can be given a total number $2 million and therefore you can hire 20 people $100,000, or you can hire two people at $1 million each. Yeah, in some organizations you're given both size and shape. You're given $2 million is your headcount budget, but you can only hire one leader, three managers and 10 associates, and so then that $2 million is already portioned out for you.

James : 23:37

Irrespective of how that happens to you as the leader of the organization, when you decide how your headcount budget is going to be spent for net new hires, those roles then need to be graded and leveled, because and again this is in larger organizations there are set bands and steps in the compensation framework and all roles are anchored to those bands and steps, and in a large organization there can there's typically 16 different steps in the pay hierarchy, so the bands run horizontally and then across the bands running vertically are job families, and so a level one role in finance will have a salary range and a level one role in marketing will have a salary range, and whilst they will be similar, they will not necessarily be identical because the ranges are anchored back to the organizational compensation philosophy, which is either tethered to the cost of living or the cost of labor in the market where the organization is either operating or hiring talent.

James : 24:54

So there's a huge amount of complexity in the background as to how roles are graded and priced and so as a recruiter, when you're given a live role, you know exactly where it sits in the organizational hierarchy it's a level five. It's a level five role in finance. So you know the salary band for that role. Roles are typically pegged at the midpoint of the range, so $125,000. So as a hiring manager, you will be told okay, you've got a level five role and it needs to come in at $125,000. But then your HR business partner might say well, actually the rest of your team is pretty legacy.

James : 25:47

And therefore their salary level are all around the sort of $115, $120,000. So you can't even go to midpoint. You can only go to 90% comp ratio for this hire to maintain internal equity. And so as a recruiter, when you get the live role, you get a lot of pieces of information about where this job has to land, whereas recruiters do not decide. We have to execute against what the budget is based on. All of those factors I've described.

Francesca : 26:20

Going back to what you started, this conversation with. This is so complex. It can get incredibly complex in terms of the amount of people in the room making the decisions from top to bottom. All the variables that we need to consider, even from bands that are well established to things like pay equity on a team to make sure that things are equitable and that you're also competitive right in the marketplace from a talent perspective. It's just really good to know, because if you've never been in HR or in talent acquisition or a hiring manager, most people don't know this and would be like well, I just want to make a million dollars a year, can you do that? It's like no, you're a level five in finance and this is the midpoint, and that's why Also good to know that there's just things like bands and pay equity as well, just to understand the lay of the land. I know, mel, you wanted to talk about finding a job, and not only finding a job, but finding the right job for you.

Mel : 27:16

Yeah, I really love earlier how we talked about your story, james, that you ran towards something that had a fire in you, and we want everyone to feel that way right, so want to make sure folks are finding the right job, not just landing a job, and would love your tips and tricks on that.

James : 27:32

A great question and it's, I think, very timely, in that we're living in an information age where we have far more transparency in all areas of our lives than we did even a decade ago, but there is still a degree of opacity around what it's like inside organizations. But yeah, we're also living in a time when we have five different generations in the workforce in some organizations, and the expectations of Gen Z are wildly different from even millennials, and I just think it's really interesting how these expectations and demands of the newer workforces are changing the work landscape and hopefully for the better, because what we have has not worked for so many different parts of society. Right, it's very clear that how we've run things up to now has not been great.

Francesca : 28:42

Yeah, it kind of sucked. I think this is the thing that a lot of people don't think about.

Francesca : 28:47

I was telling Mel this the other day when I first started working. So I'm 44, right when I first started working, my first job was at Accenture and I got a desktop and I remember I loved my time at Accenture. It's not an Accenture, but I remember being in the office and working until 10 o'clock at night and there was not a question of whether or not I was going to work. This is what was expected. You earn your stripes, you labor so you can get to that partner level. That was what was expected and I love the idea. We've been talking a lot on the pot around. Do we have to live like this? Do we need a dream of labor? And I feel like your Gen Z is coming in and being like guys. This blows what are we doing?

Mel : 29:26

Yeah, my favorite tic-tac recently was a young woman who just started her first full-time job and I really had empathy for her because she was like is this, it Is this life? I work, and then I have no time for my friends or any of my hobbies. I work, I come home, I go to the gym, I cook dinner, I go to sleep and it's like Groundhog's Day and she was having somewhat of a panic attack about it. Right, and she made a good point. Francesca, you and I have the same kind of history there. I also had a desktop in my first job in big law, working until 10, and then you get home and you're like just recycled. But we were always told this is what's expected. I really love that.

Mel : 30:06

Gen Z is bringing a different perspective and millennials started it a little bit. I like to see that Gen Z is really kind of demanding more transparency in the workplace, including recent laws around salary transparency, even in job descriptions. I think now it's more important than ever. How can people find the right fit? So one of the things that's an interesting topic to me is the legitimacy about what the culture is like, what you're going to experience in the workplace. How can people find that information out? So if a candidate's going out and they're researching different companies for the job that they're looking for, how do they know that that company is legit about what they're putting out there and it's not just kind of word, lip service, on their website?

James : 30:54

And what's great about? I mean, there are a lot of negatives to living in the information economy, but what's great about the information economy is that it was so much more networked than we ever were before. So my number one tip is obviously start by trying to connect with people on LinkedIn that work at the company or companies where you're hoping to work, and obviously try and connect with a cross section of folks, so people within your discipline. So if you're a marketing, obviously focus on the marketing team. But also, what's great about LinkedIn is LinkedIn will help you find the people that are most active on the platform. So go where it's warm, right? So if you want to work at Nike and actually the people at Nike that are most active on LinkedIn are in supply chain well, start there, right, because they still work at the organization. So target folks at the places that you want to work and start to make connections with them on LinkedIn, and then the more time that you spend with them virtually will hopefully lead to at least a coffee chat where you can ask them what it's really like. Tip number one yeah. Tip number two Glassdoor is a great resource.

James : 32:09

If you take it to the next level, glassdoor is like Yelp, right Right. It's polarized, in that you've got a lot of positive and a lot of negative, because those are the people that are mostly motivated to say something. So you have to be a little bit discerning when you're reading reviews on Glassdoor. Still will tell you that the average user reads six comments before they form an opinion. I would say, okay, read 30. Do you know what I mean? Like this is somewhere you're going to be spending 40 hours a week for the next two, three, five years. Like read as much as you can to get more of a sense of are these just angry people or is this a theme that may or may not be concerning to me? And then where it gets really interesting is last year Glassdoor launched really powerful new functionality, which hasn't had much airtime and I really wish more people knew about it, in that they allow you to slice the data by demographic and so on Glassdoor. Right now, you can see the average company rating for the employees that work there and it's out of five and they might have a 3.5 or a 4.0.

James : 33:30

And then what you can do is slice it by demographic and say well, what do women think? What do LGBTQ people think, what do people of color think and what's really? And I encourage everyone to go and try this. What's obviously really disappointing is that for virtually every company out there the underrepresented folks, their scores are always lower In every organization, even your dream organizations. Women, people of color, lgbtq folk consistently have a worse time than the general population. That sucks, but that's the society that we live in. What I encourage folks to do is look at the Delta. If you accept, rightly or wrongly, that it's always going to be lower for those of us that are not straight white men, look at the Delta and where the number is, particularly where the gap is particularly big. That might indicate not might it does indicate that that organizational culture is not somewhere that you would thrive, irrespective of how you identify. Do you want to work in a place where women, lgbtq folk and people of color consistently have a worse experience?

Francesca : 34:45

No, the answer is no, absolutely not. Don't go there. Yeah, exactly.

Mel : 34:52

Oh, I love that feature because I think it's incredibly important to gain that perspective, especially as a woman. If you're LGBTQ, if you're a person of color, being able to see what that experience is like it gives you that inside look into the culture.

James : 35:09

There's no smoke without fire, right? If there are consistently people saying really terrible things about the place that you want to work, there may be some truth in that. And then my last tip is if you get as far as an interview at your quote unquote dream organization, again, irrespective of how you personally identify, ask if the organization has ERGs employee resource groups and then ask as part of your interview process if you can meet with someone from that group either a group that you identify with or a group that you're an ally to and if they don't have ERGs, red flag number one. And if they have ERGs but won't let you speak to anybody, red flag number two. It tells you that something shady is going on and you don't want to work there.

Mel : 35:58

What other red flags should people look out for in the job description interview process? What are some things that stand out to you that folks can pay attention to?

James : 36:08

There's a ton of click-batey articles about these red flags in job descriptions, and I'm super wary of that because, again, coming from having worked in a side corporate America for a long time, I know that job descriptions can often be literally 10 years old and have been no relation whatsoever on what it's actually A what the job is or, b what it's like to work there, and so, yeah, you never know who wrote the job description or how old it is. So I don't know that there's anything super valuable that you can get from that. It's more what you can pick up on by people that are currently working there either what they're saying on review sites, what you're able to glean from them by networking on LinkedIn, or what you're able to discover during the interview process. I think that's your best barometer.

Mel : 37:05

That leads me to my next question. Around the interview process, you're in the interview, especially since a job description, as you said, it can be old. Sometimes they don't get updated for years, as you mentioned. So what are some questions candidates should ask in every interview to make sure that they understand what their duties will be? What does their day-to-day look like? What does the team look like? What are some things that they should ask, no matter what, just to get a very clear picture of the truth, of what their experience will be like in that position.

James : 37:38

Yeah, and before I even get into specific questions, I think it's about remembering and framing it in your mind that the interview is a two-way street.

James : 37:52

You're interviewing them just as much as they are interviewing you and what is scary. But what you have to get really good at is that when you come out of an interview and you think, oh hell, no, then you have to hold on to that. You have to be like no, trust it. Yeah, I have decided no, because, especially in a market like this, where it's so easy to fall into a scarcity mindset, we come out of an interview thinking that, ooh, I've got a bad feeling and then we talk ourselves into it because we need to get a job. Trust your instincts. If you get a bad feeling, there is a reason for that.

Mel : 38:30

Trust your gut. I've had that feeling before. Have you ever walked away from an interview process after an interview and just said no and sent them a note about it?

James : 38:41

I have done the opposite of that. I've done what I've told people not to do, in that, if you look at my career history, you'll see that I'm a tenure guy. I tend to stay around in places for a long time and wherever it's been a short tenure, it's because and there's only two of them it's because I found out too late that my personal values did not align to the values of the organization. And I had a very brief stint at Forever 21, which, since I left it, went bankrupt and is now owned by a VC firm. So I feel comfortable saying this. But when I went to interview at the HQ in Los Angeles, there were Bibles in the meeting room and I was like this is weird, like religion does not belong in the workplace.

Mel : 39:41

Absolutely not. That's strange, that's very strange.

James : 39:45

Yeah, and it's because the family that owned at the time were very strong believers in their faith, which is great. But that does not belong at work and obviously I ignored that giant red flag and was one of the more toxic environments I'd worked in because they were trying to mix their personal views with corporate America and those two things I will tell you.

Francesca : 40:10

That has been absolutely true for me too, like I've had two jobs that I knew in the interview process no bueno and they ended up being no bueno, and it's almost like dating. You know you date somebody and like week two you know week two like the thing that's going to end it. It's like food poisoning as well. Right, you can eat a whole day's worth of stuff, but you knew it was the fish. You know that's the same shit. It's the same shit. Love the advice. Don't do it.

Mel : 40:39

Just say no, just say no.

James : 40:41

Trust your instincts.

Mel : 40:42

I recently read that there's a proposal to pay people for their time in the interview process to avoid this type of thing. What do you think about that?

James : 40:58

I really strongly believe that if you are going to be setting folks any kind of take homework or any kind of lengthy assessment, you should pay them for their time.

James : 41:14

You certainly shouldn't be requiring people to give you their IP for free, right? However, having worked on the other side of the desk in corporate America, trying to bring any of that to life would be such a nightmare, both in America and in Europe, where we have different sets of rules and regulations. Like you're essentially trying to either payroll someone that's not already on the payroll or create, make a new vendor for someone that's not a vendor, and for anyone that's worked in corporate America, you know that doing either of those things is an administrative nightmare. So trying to get to a place where that happens at scale, I just don't see it happening anytime soon, because you know how are you going to pay hundreds or you know, in my case, hundreds of thousands of people that are going through an interview process, and not just the money, how are you going to fund it, which is question one. But even assuming there is a budget for it, how are you actually going to physically pay these people, right? Just, it's not going to happen.

Mel : 42:25

Yeah, that's complicated it can be. It's its own whole department just managing that alone.

James : 42:29

How are you going to ensure that they pay their tax so that they've identified you from their tax, are they?

Mel : 42:33

1099?.

Francesca : 42:36

Yeah, I feel like everybody's getting target gift cards Be happy.

James : 42:40

Even that's questionable right.

Francesca : 42:42

Yeah, there are rules.

James : 42:43

Yeah, yeah, like.

Francesca : 42:45

Oh yeah, you can't go over.

Mel : 42:46

Yeah, there's a lot of complication. It's interesting. I've heard that tossed around a few times now. It's an interesting concept.

James : 42:55

Nice idea. I just don't see it being executed at scale.

Mel : 42:58

Yeah, yeah. In terms of the inner how many interviews? How many is too many? What's what's a red flag a candidate should look out for In terms of you know, now you're on your 15th interview for this role. Is there a magic number or a place where you're like, if you're getting to this many interviews, you should probably hit pause? That should give you that's a red flag that you should look out for.

James : 43:26

I love this question because there is a clear, unequivocal answer which I wish more people knew. Over the course of three or four years, Google did a huge longitudinal study where they looked at tens of thousands of hires and hundreds of thousands of data points, and they were able to conclusively prove that the magic number for interviews is four, Because after four the quality of the decision making process does not improve enough to justify the initial, the further investment of time. The sweet spot for high quality decision making is for interviews, and so any forward thinking and well run TA function knows that because they've all read Laszlo Box book work rules. If you haven't read work rules, I encourage you to go out and read it. It's phenomenal, not just for hiring but just for how Google think about or thought about people back when Laszlo was running HR. So four is the magic number. Most places in corporate America, probably for senior level roles, probably still around six. Anything beyond that is just a joke.

Mel : 44:55

It's a waste. Yeah, it's a time waste. Well, we'll link to that recommendation in the show notes because that's a great recommendation for folks. So we'll do that. For job seekers, I read your post today on LinkedIn about the post pandemic job market, so I'd love to give space to talk about what job seekers should know about this post pandemic job market and finding success and finding the role that's right for them. What advice would you give?

James : 45:21

Sure, I think what's really interesting that's happening right now is a perfect storm that is exacerbating conditions that have been prevailing for a while. What I mean by that is, in the talent marketplace there has always been a signal to noise issue in that a decade ago, a job posting or job ad might receive 100 applications and in every part of the enterprise in every geography that I've worked in, the numbers are always the same. In aggregate, of those 100 applications, roughly 25 of them will meet the minimum criteria for the job and 75 are just not qualified at all. And part of the recruiters job is to separate the signal from the noise right to find amongst those 100 applications the 25 that qualified, to speak to those 25 people and decide of those 25 who were the six or seven that most closely match the brief from the hiring manager and take those into the process At the highest level. That's, you know, a big chunk of the recruiters job for dealing with inbound applications.

James : 46:42

And then we'll move on to today, where we are living in the after effects of the massive structural changes to work and labor that the pandemic created, the macroeconomic tsunami that we've all been through and the significant strides forward in consumer facing tech, which, to be clear, all good things. As a job seeker today, as an applicant, today, you have so many powerful tools that enable you to turbo charge your application process, which is fantastic. What that means, though, is that a because of the macroeconomic situation, be because more people have had a taste for remote or hybrid work and want to pursue that, see, because we've got so much more visibility in the age of information. And D because of the powerful tools that are now in the hands of everyday job seekers, application volume has gone up 10 or 100 X. So a job oh yeah, you could get 100 applications could now get 1000 or 5000. And those ratios are still the same. Of those 1000 applicants, still only 250 people are going to be qualified in 750 and not, but a recruiter cannot speak to all 250.

James : 48:02

No way, and so it's the signal to noise issue has just gotten so much worse. And, yes, you can send out more applications and send out more curated applications and send out better applications, but your chances of the application being seen by the right person have diminished exponentially.

Mel : 48:21

And so, what can they do?

James : 48:23

to navigate.

Mel : 48:24

What? What can candidates do to kind of cut through the noise, especially if they feel you know pretty strongly that they they fit the profile. How can they cut through that noise? I see on LinkedIn all the time you see how many folks have applied for the job, which can be super intimidating. So how can you kind of put yourself ahead of the pack if you're qualified?

James : 48:47

So there's a few things. That number that you see yeah, it's not the number of applicants. The number that you see is the number of people that have hit apply, oh OK, which is different from the number of applicants that are inside the ATS.

James : 49:03

That's misleading yeah well, it's not misleading. Okay, that's the data that LinkedIn have which is valid. That's a number of people that did click apply, but I can tell you from sitting on the other side of the desk that the attrition from apply to applicant is massive. Okay, in that, in a volume environment, so you know companies that are hiring 10,000 people a year or more the average pull through is 16% and in one place I worked that may be a place that someone else on this the pull through was 1%. Oh, wow. So for every 100 people that click apply, only one applicant made it into the ATS, into the applicant tracking system, because the application journey was so cumbersome that 99 out of 100 people gave up. In most places, it's 16 out of every 100 that will come through.

Mel : 50:07

So you do not be intimidated by that number. If it's a high number, that's good to know.

James : 50:11

Do not be intimidated, because most people won't complete the application.

James : 50:14

Okay, and of all the people that do complete the application, only 25% of them are going to be qualified, but, that being said, it can still be hundreds or thousands of people that do all of that Right. So there is still a signal to noise issue. It's just not as bad as it appears on the surface to the everyday user, but I see both sides and it is worse than it was before, and recruiters have this deluge of applications to deal with. So just submitting your application is no longer enough, because if you just submit an application, it might never get seen. So you also need to try to figure out who is the recruiter at the company and get in touch with them, and who is the hiring manager and getting in touch with them, and ideally get a referral from somebody that already works there, because candidates that are referred by existing employees often go into a fast track processing lane and your application is more likely to be seen Not guaranteed to be seen, just more likely to be seen. So you have to go the extra mile.

Mel : 51:25

Yeah, at a minimum if you have a referral. Typically my experience in the past is when I worked in TA2, if it was a referral coming in, at a minimum we had at least a one-on-one screening interview with someone from talent acquisition to meet with that candidate, just as a bare minimum.

James : 51:41

In larger organizations? Sure, in smaller organizations maybe not.

Francesca : 51:46

And you can use LinkedIn to do all of this. You can be using LinkedIn to figure out who the recruiter is, figure out who the hiring manager is, send them an email. Linkedin is a great product, but LinkedIn is your place. Where you'd want to do this, yeah, 100%.

Mel : 52:00

What if the recruiter is not listed on the job rec on LinkedIn? What's a good way to identify who the recruiter may be or to get in touch? What can people do?

James : 52:11

Yeah, and by searching LinkedIn right for recruiters at Nike, for recruiters at Apple and, bear in mind, at large companies, there will be hundreds of recruiters.

James : 52:24

And so then you need to figure out, okay, and recruiters are normally obviously very active on LinkedIn.

James : 52:32

So once you find people that you think are going to be in the right area, then you need to figure out okay, this person's a recruiter at Apple, but do they recruit product managers or do they recruit marketing folks?

James : 52:44

You need to figure out what their area is, and you can usually see that by what they say on their profile, all the types of things that they post, and the closest you're going to be able to get as a normal user is figuring out the recruiter at the company in the broad job family that you're targeting, and then reach out to that recruiter and say, hey, I've applied for this role, and give them the unique reference number or whatever you get from the applicant tracking system, explain in three very short bullet points why you've applied, why you're a fit, and ask them to connect you with the right recruiter.

James : 53:16

If they're not, obviously, just make their lives easier. Now you might still not get a response, but you will stand more chance of getting a response. If you work in supply chain and you reach out to a supply chain recruiter, they're more likely to respond because they'll be able to see that you're qualified for the job that you've applied for. And if you're consistently doing this and consistently not hearing, then maybe it's time to ask yourself are you being honest with yourself and the types of roles that you're applying for?

Mel : 53:46

Yeah, that's great advice. Just don't keep repeating the same thing if you're starting to see a trend for yourself.

Francesca : 53:56

There's a lot of just burning questions around getting a job and telling the acquisition, and so I thought let's do a rapid round with you. You can answer yes, no or a one word answer. Are you ready to play?

James : 54:09

Yes, I'm going to really struggle with one more answer, but I'm going to try.

Francesca : 54:12

Okay, I believe in you. I believe in you. So, rapid round with James about getting a job. James, is it all who you know?

James : 54:22

No.

Francesca : 54:24

Should you put the green banner on in LinkedIn if you want to get a job?

James : 54:28

100%, and let me talk about that later.

Francesca : 54:30

Okay, should you do a cover letter? Do cover letters matter anymore? No, should you customize your resume for each role?

James : 54:38

No.

Francesca : 54:38

Thank you notes Do we write them or not?

James : 54:40

Yes.

Francesca : 54:42

Should you negotiate your offer?

James : 54:43

Yes.

Francesca : 54:46

Should the interview process last no longer than 60 days.

James : 54:51

Depends.

Francesca : 54:52

Should you quit your old job before starting your new job?

James : 54:56

Ideally not All right.

Francesca : 54:59

I want to go back to. Should you put the green banner on if you're looking at LinkedIn, the open to work banner? This is such a hot topic. Thoughts.

James : 55:09

There has been so much clickbait around this and it infuriates me.

James : 55:13

I actually wrote a piece and included quotes from the LinkedIn product managers that built the feature. Let me say unequivocally there are, in fact, two features. There is the open to work functionality, which most people don't know about, and then there is the open to work green banner, and they do slightly different things and, as a job seeker, you may want to do one or both of them. So, first of all, there's the open to work toggle, which, in your settings, you can indicate two recruiters that you are open to work, and you can also detail where you're open to work so both in your hometown or if you're open to relocation and the types of work full-time, contract and job titles that will be of interest to you. If you click that toggle, it is only visible to recruiters, and what all of the data from LinkedIn shows is that folks that do that typically see an uptick of 40% of in-mails from recruiters. That's huge, that's significant. There is no reason, if you're looking for work, why you shouldn't do that.

Francesca : 56:31

Even if you're curious, like, even if you're curious, you're like I don't know if I want to see at this gig, just put it on.

Mel : 56:35

Yeah, Put it on all the time, potentially just to have conversations.

James : 56:39

Yeah, why not Right? And LinkedIn say but do not guarantee that it's not visible to recruiters at your own company.

Mel : 56:50

That's good to know it's only visible to recruit.

James : 56:52

They can't guarantee 100% accuracy. And so what? Even if a recruiter does see that you're open to work like it's not, unless you work somewhere that's really evil, it's not going to come back on you.

Mel : 57:02

Yeah, good work environment. I mean, as a leader, I think everyone should always have their ear to the ground, right? Never know when your dream job might happen. So good work cultures, I think, encourage folks to always keep their ear. You hate to lose good talent, but you also shouldn't deter anyone from having those conversations if you're in a good workplace 100%.

James : 57:24

So that's the open to work feature.

James : 57:25

You should absolutely use that.

James : 57:26

The Green Banner, which has obviously had tons of click baity articles and what's really annoying is that most of the people that have an opinion about it have never worked in HR or recruiting and have no business talking about this Again.

James : 57:39

What the data from LinkedIn shows is that system wide, folks using the Green Banner get 20% more in-mails from the entire LinkedIn user base, so not just from recruiters, but from folks across LinkedIn, and for most users that is going to be a good thing because, even though the in-mail is not coming from a recruiter, the more connections you can make and the more you can bring in broad in your digital footprint and it might be from the hiring manager, it might be from someone that works with the hiring manager that knows that that person is looking for the type of employee that you are. It is a good thing to get more inbound outreach across LinkedIn, especially if we go back to what I said before about the signal to noise issue. If you can be more discoverable to either recruiters or people that can influence the hiring decision, that is a very good thing. So you should unequivocally, in my view, use one or both if you are looking for work.

Mel : 58:42

That's good advice. We'll link to your post on that because I, like you, I hate the clickbait around it or the shaming that, like the weird shaming that was going on around it. It's like don't listen to the noise Do your thing.

James : 58:54

The former Google recruiter who now runs a small business in Salt Lake. I wish we could just say for what it is he runs a small business in Salt Lake. Good for him. He's not the king of recruiting. Right Opinions are not valid Right, right.

Francesca : 59:10

Well, they can be really harmful too, because I think the thing is, I feel like we're going to see more and more upticks on layoffs. Quite honestly, it's just going to be more. There's a running thought right now, quite honestly, around you're one quarter away, potentially, from getting laid off. That's literally how business is operating right now. People will be looking for work more and more. I feel like we're going to be flipping more and more into gig-type work or trading jobs more and more. We have to get used to this conversation that people are going to be open to work and then working, open to work and then working. There's no room for shame in this discussion. It's a marketplace. At this point, 100%.

James : 59:51

Yeah, I'd go back to what I said earlier that, yes, we are increasingly in a world where careers are not for life of course they're not and increasingly moving to an environment where people have side hustles and portfolio careers, and that is all a great thing. But ideally, when you move to your next job, you're hopefully going to be there for two or three years right, maybe four, maybe five, if you're going to be spending the next three years 40 hours a week somewhere. Invest some time in doing your research, doing all your due diligence. Think about how much time you spend researching your vacation or maybe that's just me, but what is the hotel like? All of that stuff? You spend hours and hours, yet people spend no time at all on researching the place that they're going to spend all of this time. Do your due diligence. Reach out to folks at the company, ask to speak to people in the ERGs, read the review sites, make an informed decision and don't be afraid to walk away.

Francesca : 1:00:59

I love that. Sage advice, sage advice. James, thank you so much for joining us today. It has been a pleasure. We'd love to have you back to talk about more subjects around acquisition and talent acquisition, but thanks so much for your time.

James : 1:01:11

Thanks, you're welcome. Thanks for having me, yeah.

Francesca : 1:01:16

So now it's time for our segment called Roast and Toast, where we roast some companies or individuals that need some light roasting and some that need some great toasting because they're doing it and doing it so well. And we're going to start with the toast. Who are we toasting this week?

Mel : 1:01:33

I have two toasts One for candidates, candidates that ask the tough questions and do their homework during the interview process. So toast to you Organizations who streamline the process I'm talking no more than four interviews and those who have a high touch of candidate care and transparency. Toast to those folks.

Francesca : 1:01:58

Love it. Yeah, I think that idea quite honestly of doing your homework. It is so easy to get swayed by your dream company or companies that you think are going to be an amazing employer. But sometimes just because the company is really sexy doesn't mean it's the right company, the right role or the right team for you. Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't. So doing your homework Huge.

Mel : 1:02:22

Huge yeah. Sometimes it's glitter on a pile of poop, so check it out Indeed it is.

Francesca : 1:02:27

Indeed, it is. That's awesome. Well, and today I am roasting, actually, an article that I saw in Business Insider, which brought up some memories. Here it is. This is it came out this week Some Gen Z job seekers are bringing mom and dad to interviews. Yeah, this is just a hard pass, people and, by the way, gen Z, not the only generation that has been doing that right.

Mel : 1:02:53

It is not just you, I know. Back in the early 2000s, when I was working in TA, I had a dad call me up asking for swag from the law firm I was at because his son was interviewing and he thought, well, I just want to represent like you do for colleges. I'm like not the same thing.

Francesca : 1:03:13

And I just was like candidates trust yourself.

Mel : 1:03:16

You got this you got this.

Francesca : 1:03:18

Yeah, that's my thing. This is not just a Gen Z thing. This is actually going on. It melts here very good for about 10 years a long time. We are seeing an uptick in it. Friends, don't bring mom and dad into the interview process. They're not going to be there with you for work. Don't bring them into the interview process. It's not a good look. It's only a good look when it's bring your mom and dad to work day. Yeah, yeah. That's the only time. That's the only time.

Francesca : 1:03:43

So, yeah, a light roast of bringing the parental units into the interview process.

James : 1:03:47

Just don't do it.

Francesca : 1:03:49

You want to bring them on a date. You want to bring them on an interview, and if you need me to explain that to your parents, have them call me. There you go, follow us, music Mel. How about that interview with James about getting the right job?

Mel : 1:04:04

Yeah, I mean, look, James is a huge expert in this space. He knows his stuff. I think if listeners walk away and implement just one thing that he shared, they're going to find different success in finding not just a job but their right job for them. So just loved it. So thankful he was able to join us and to share these tips with folks. How about you? Yeah, absolutely.

Francesca : 1:04:28

It kind of reaffirms my belief in why we even started the pod is because we really wanted to open the hood on how this stuff works and how you can actually use this knowledge to your benefit. So stoked to have him with us. Friends. Really thanks so much for joining us today. We're stoked to be back next week with New Week, new Headlines. Mel and I have been together this whole week planning out the year of the pod, and so we're stoked to be bringing not only New Week, new Headlines every week, but really rich topics like the one we brought today. Really cool guests like the one we brought today. Thanks so much for joining us. Like and subscribe wherever you listen to your podcasts. If it moves, you come over and say hi on Instagram, the tiktaks or LinkedIn, hit us up on yourworkfriends.com and if you found this episode helpful, please share with your work friends All right, take care, friend.

Mel : 1:05:20

Bye, friend, Bye friend. Also thanks for staying with us today.

Salary Negotiation: Earn What You Deserve

Your Work Friends Podcast: Salary Negotiation with Kate Dixon

Stop underselling yourself…

Did you know, if you never negotiate your pay, you could leave almost $1M on the table over your career. Yeah, that's an 'M' -  as in million.

So, we called up our friend, Kate Dixon - one of the leading experts in all things compensation. Kate is the author of "Pay Up" and "Name Your Price". She's also the founder of Dixon Consulting - a compensation and leadership coaching firm.  What we love about Kate (there are a lot of things to love about Kate, including her dog, Jeffrey), is that she consults with companies from Nike to Intel to Silicon Valley Start-Ups to architect their compensation strategies.  And, she also coaches executives and employees on how to get the best compensation package possible.  

We’re talking real-world strategies, how pay decisions actually happen behind the scenes, and what it takes to ask for more—without the awkwardness. If you're ready to own your value and earn what you deserve, this episode is for you.

Listen or watch the full episode here

---

Kate : 0:00

Fundamentally, the way that I look at it both pricing conversations with clients and salary negotiation is you're solving a business problem. That's what you're doing.

Mel: 0:27

We are your work friends, two HR friends who have no filter and are getting you through all the work shit. I'm Mel.

Francesca : 0:35

Hey, and I'm Francesca.

Mel: 0:37

Today we met with Kate Dixon. Francesca who's Kate Dixon?

Francesca : 0:42

She's the principal and founder of Dixon Consulting, a leadership development and total rewards consultancy. She's also the author of two books that honestly, everybody should read. One is called Pay Up Unlocking Insider Secrets of Salary Negotiations. This is the book that a lot of people use to figure out how do you negotiate your salary. The other, if you freelance or you're a contractor, name your price. We got to talk to her today about how do you go through earning what you deserve.

Mel: 1:10

Yeah, salary negotiations Hot topic. Good for everyone to know here's Kate. Hey, Kate Nice to see you. Hello girl. Good to see you too. We're so excited to talk about Comp with you today. I'm just going to jump right into it. Why does it matter that people know and negotiate their market rate?

Kate : 1:43

Oh my gosh, there's so many reasons. One of the things that people don't realize is that if you don't do a good job of it at the beginning of your career, it can impact you over your lifetime. Studies shows that over the lifetime of a woman's career, she can lose up to a million bucks. If you have that million bucks at your retirement, it's going to be a different retirement than if you don't have a million.

Francesca : 2:08

I have a huge, such a big interest.

Mel: 2:10

Huge, yeah. What assumptions are holding people back here in this space? What do you think holds people back?

Kate : 2:17

I think the biggest one is the assumption that I don't know enough to do it right. I don't want to make an idiot of myself, and so I'm not going to do it. I think that was probably the number one thing. I think that there's also this weird thing that people think about, that they're going to have their offer withdrawn if they negotiate, which is not true. But yeah, two big things.

Mel: 2:43

I believe it because I remember working in talent acquisition I could tell the hesitation to have the conversation and I think good recruiters will push you through that and then you'll have some who don't. They're like okay, that's what you accepted, though that's a great call out. We have this saying explained to me like I'm fine how the hell does comp work here? How does comp work? Walk people through? How does it even work?

Kate : 3:07

Comp went a lot right. So, basically, what happens in most companies is they create a job architecture. This is a leveling kind of a thing where you might have a professional, a senior professional, you might have a manager, a senior manager, director, those kinds of things. That's what we call a job architecture, and a lot of times when we're putting together job architectures, we're also putting together functions and families, and some companies pay differently based on the function and family, some don't. I'm really trying to encourage my clients to have a few differentiators based on function as possible, because we know that function is one of those artifacts of how we always have done things.

Kate : 4:00

There's a reason why finance and HR don't pay the same. It's because finance people used to all be dudes and HR people used to be all chip, and so what you're seeing in those functional differences is really the impact of gender bias in pay. So, anyway, I don't think that it's really worth carving out a lot of functional differences, although I have a client in high tech that's based in the Silicon Valley. They do software stuff, and so they have a specific structure for software engineers and then one for everybody else. So the job architecture has the different levels. It has different functions and families. And then what a comp person would do would be to look at a salary survey and this is a place where companies submit data about how they pay different jobs and then the company that's running the survey basically spits out a report that says, hey, this is about how much an accountant with zero to three years of experience makes in these different zip codes or these different areas, in these different types of organizations and that sort of thing. So what a comp person would do is say, oh okay, we have an accountant one and so we're going to match to this job in the salary survey and bring in all the data.

Kate : 5:30

They'll put together salary ranges either by job or by family and function or by level a number of different ways to do it but they'll come up with those salary ranges.

Kate : 5:42

Then they'll put on top of that some policies around. Here's how we want to pay people within a range. Typically they'll say entry to the bottom third of the range, for example, would be for folks who are new to this level with not a lot of experience doing this particular job. People around the middle would be seasoned folks who've been doing this kind of work for a while and have good, satisfactory performance. And then the top third of the range is typically folks who've been either at the same job for a while or have spectacular performance over time, and typically it's some sort of combination of the two. Sometimes you'll see people at the top of the range who have really unique skills that they're bringing into the organization with the assumption that they'll train other folks. Ai has been likely in recent years right, but it's typically at a new skill, super hot skill, and over time the premium that gets paying for that new hot skill regresses a little bit as more and more people get that skill.

Mel: 6:51

It's helpful to educate people on how is this stuff even determined. It's not a dartboard just to throw at certain ranges. There's a lot of research and thought that goes into it. The overall package of compensation is beyond just the salary. What else is typically included in a comp package that you can negotiate?

Kate : 7:10

It really depends on the level of the job. To be honest with you, most jobs and most companies have base pay and some sort of an annual bonus. Again, in the frontline roles you don't always see a bonus. Sometimes you'll see some sort of activity, commissioning kind of thing. That will happen, but there's usually a base and a bonus kind of thing. There's always going to be some sort of benefits health insurance, life insurance, dental. You might get a gym membership.

Kate : 7:45

As you go up in the organization, you tend to see other kinds of things like equity.

Kate : 7:51

When we say equity pay, equity is one thing, but equity we're talking about compensation can mean stock options or restricted share rights or things like that. In my startup clients a lot of times we'll talk about it as a percentage of ownership of the company and then, as you get even higher into the organization, we see things like long-term cash programs and things like that. So those are the main building blocks With negotiation. Typically we'll see some sort of sign on cash and we'll set sign on equity, depending on the type of organization. Again, high-tech organizations tend to have more of this sign on equity, especially for tech people, and if it's a company that's owned by a parent that's outside of the US sign on stuff is not very common. It's not very common to do sign on cash or sign on equity outside of the United States. Just know it's not kind of part of their lexicon typically. So I do have a company that is a client that is owned by a Japan parent and they are pretty disciplined about offering sign on cash and sign on options.

Mel: 9:09

It's good to know, if you're American and you expect that a sign on bonus would be something you're offered, and if they're not a US company and you're trying to negotiate, that it might be the wrong thing to negotiate, because that might it might be a little harder.

Francesca : 9:23

I've always wondered this and I would love to ask you, because you've seen it all Do you make more money over time going into a private company or a public one that gives you the RSUs or gives you the stock options? What have you found?

Kate : 9:36

I've developed my philosophy of over time on this, but one thing that I will tell you is that a good, strong company that has a history of gross equity that you get from that is probably going to be worth more in the long run than stuff that you get from a startup and people like, no, they told me I'm going to make $1 million. But what is true now that was not true even 15 years ago is that most startups wind up getting investment from PE firms and the PE firm. Their entire mission is to harvest value out of these companies that they invest in. That's what they're there for, that's what they're doing, and so, as a part of that harvesting, what I typically see is that the equity arrangements get changed pretty dramatically, especially for people who are not the founders.

Kate : 10:36

I've had clients who said, hey, I need you to help me negotiate my pay because we sold our startup to mega big fang company and I was told I was going to make millions out of this. And I actually made 20 grand and I worked 80 hour weeks for years to make this happen and we didn't get much of anything out of it, and that's because of the impact of PE firms. There's all kinds of different things that happen. But again, it's not saying don't work for startup, because one of the things that startups do better than any other company is provide boots on the ground development opportunities to learn a ton and get the opportunity to do a lot of stuff.

Kate : 11:21

Most startups that I have worked with, consulted with, they're all like oh, you're going to raise your hand? Great, have that. You want to write our report to our community? Yes, you go do that, and so the opportunity to really build a skill set unmatched, and so that's why you want to do it. Maybe it's to have a big title or have the whole CFO kind of experience. Could you do that at a big company with just a little bit of experience now, but you might be able to do it at a startup.

Francesca : 12:09

How does someone know what their market rate is?

Kate : 12:12

Yeah, there are a number of ways to look at it, and this is not about your worth as a human being. The work that you do for companies is worth Right Again, salarycom, indeedcom, glass door ladders, I mean there's all kinds of different ways your professional organizations that you belong to, alumni associations, all of these places are great places to collect data on pay, and one of the most effective ways to do it is to ask people, and there's a lot of of serving of little ditam池amerses.

Kate : 12:50

And it's hard to excuse making difficult money for them, because you may only use five different ways that you could do it, and one of the ways to find them is that's a new market to lucre fueron steer them to ask for more pay, which is hey, my research shows that jobs like this are getting paid between X and Y in the marketplace. How does that land with you? It's something that you could ask somebody who's doing the job that you're interested in today, and then they could go well, that's really high, or well, that's low, or maybe I should need to ask for a reason. But at least that can give you some of the guardrails around what's normal for what you're looking at.

Francesca : 13:37

Yeah, does it differ if someone's freelancing Freelancing?

Kate : 13:43

pay can be all over the place. Again, professional organizations can be really great. So, if you're a coach, icf does a survey every year and stuff like that. But, yes, do try to gather data because there are data sources out there. But it's really about the value that you're able to sell into the client, not necessarily XYZ dollars per hour, although some people do price stuff that way. I see some people getting big bucks in the consulting, freelance coaching space when they don't have a ton of experience, but there's a pretty good correlation. So if you've got a 20-plus year career in corporate America and now you're going to go out and be a consultant, you're probably going to get paid a lot more than somebody with the newly minted MBA. It's going to be different than somebody with an MBA plus. Yeah, that's super fair.

Francesca : 14:40

Kate, you've written several books Pay Up, name your Price, which I love too, because it also focuses on folks that are contracting in freelance. One of the things you talk about in both of those books and in your consultancy is this idea of mindset. Yeah, and I think about this conversation, especially today, as an international women's day. Today, this is when we're talking happy Friday, happy international women's day, and we're sitting in the year 2024. We're all sitting in the country of the United States and women, especially, are making 16% less on the dollar than men, and we also know pay discrepancies happen across every gender, race, ethnicity, you name it and everybody at some point needs to negotiate their salary. And I'm curious about mindset. When you're going into these conversations Wondering if you can talk about what do you coach people on in terms of getting into the right mindset as you're thinking about earning what you deserve?

Kate : 15:36

Yeah, I think it's really critical and a lot of people go, oh, I don't need that, that's woe was stopped.

Kate : 15:42

But fundamentally, the way that I look at it both pricing conversations with clients and salary negotiations is you're solving a business problem.

Kate : 15:54

That's what you're doing, and especially when you're talking about pay for yourself, it's so hard to get that emotional distance that is important when you're doing any kind of work at work. So creating that emotional distance is really important, and one of the ways that I coach people on doing that is to meditate for even 10 minutes before you get on a conversation with the person you're negotiating with and clear your mind as well as you can, and then, when you come out of that, really be intentional about how you want to show up. What do you want people to notice about you? And chances are pretty good it's going to be like hey, I'm a really valuable person, I bring valuable skills, I'm on it, I'm on my game, I'm cool, I'm great. Those are things that you want people to notice about you and if you can clear your mind of some of the assumptions about yourself and maybe the other person you're negotiating with before you get on that call, you're going to do a lot better.

Francesca : 17:00

Yeah, the energy you show up with will be different and more attractive. Quite honestly, yeah, yeah, I got it. One of the things I think about, too, is that you have the right to ask for something. Yes, and I've talked to so many people where I can't ask for that. What if they pull off the table? What if they say no? What if? Do you find that people are afraid to even broach the possibility that they deserve more, or that they deserve what they're looking for?

Kate : 17:28

Yeah, and there's some people who just think to themselves the person I'm talking with knows more about what I'm worth than I know. What I'm worth and what the person that you'll negotiate with does have more knowledge of is what's going on inside the company. And fair right, they should. But you may have a different take on what your value is in the marketplace. This idea of are we worth it? I don't know and I don't feel like I can ask.

Kate : 18:01

This is really deep-seated socialization. That's happened particularly with women, particularly with people of color, around money stuff. You should be grateful just to have an offer. No, that's not the full story. Yeah, I should be grateful for my offer. They're making you an offer because they see that you have value, and one of the things that I coach my clients on, too, is that sometimes the client company places a different value on the work that's being done than you do, and so in that kind of a case it may not be a match. When you think about a marketing person, where are they going to be most highly valued? I'm going to just tell you, I worked at Nike. It's going to be a place like Nike, they're grown for it.

Kate : 18:51

And if you're a marketing person, you're going to be like Nike. And if you're a tech person, you're going to want to go to Intel, and I've worked for both of these companies and I can tell you that a tech person in Intel is likely going to be more highly valued because the work is more highly valued and more tied to their line function, their intellectual property, than it is in a company like Nike. Again, if you're a marketing person and you're talking to Intel and Intel has great marketing people, don't get me wrong but if you're really thinking about premium package, because you're a premium talent, working for a high-tech company may not be the right match for you.

Francesca : 19:38

It's good to know to not get discouraged. If you go in and someone says we're going to pay you half of what you can get on the market somewhere else, it doesn't mean you're not valuable, it just means that they're not willing to pay that rate. Understanding your market rate in different markets is really important, yeah.

Kate : 19:56

I've had clients. People ask me this all the time. Oh, I saw the range posted. What I want is more than what's posted Generally. They're not going to go above the range, but if you really feel like, wow, this is a great match, and perhaps the potential employer may not be as connected to the marketplace as you are, it's okay to go in and say, hey, I really feel like this is a great match for me and I don't want money to get in the way of a good thing. You should know that my research is showing that jobs like this are paid like this in the marketplace.

Kate : 20:34

I had a client about a year ago who was faced with that and she was like hey, I'm in a good place. They approached me and I don't want to go to work for them for less than a good increase from the thing that I'm doing now. So she actually negotiated a 10% higher than the top of the range. Oh, wow, but I think, too, they hadn't really leveled the job appropriately and she was able to show hey, these are the technical things that you're asking for, and so this is how it should be paid in the marketplace. Is that a common thing to do? No, but it certainly does help. It's worth it.

mel: 21:17

Worth it to have a conversation. We always say that just have the conversation you never, know, you never know. I'd love to talk about the dos and don'ts of having this conversation In your practice. You talk about the four-part recipe on how to have this conversation. What is that? What is the four-part recipe?

Kate : 21:37

So the four-part recipe is pretty similar between internal conversations with your boss and external. The first part is about expressing delight. So thank you so much for taking the time to meet with me. I'm so glad that XYZ Company thinks it's as good of a match as I do. Right Done, express delight because your recruiter doesn't always know if you're going to say yes, you want to set it up? Hey, we got some breadcrumbs out there.

Kate : 22:09

So that's part one. Part two is asking questions, and this is not where you're going to ask for. What you want more of this is you're trying to clarify the offer letter and, psm, by the way, read every damn thing that comes with your offer letter Everything, yes, yes. All the attachments, the policies.

Mel: 22:31

Get out of highlighter. Print that baby out.

Kate : 22:34

Write all over it Because you don't want to waste your time or their time asking stuff that you already actually have the answers to and remember you want them to think good things about you. One of the classic questions that my clients ask is something around 401k match, because a lot of times they'll say we have a very generous 401k match but they don't say what it is in writing stuff and say, hey, I see that you got a 401k match. Could you help me understand what that looks like? And then what the recruiter talk? Let your HR person or the hiring manager, whatever talk about that. And again, there are psychological reasons that we have this recipe in this order. But one of those things is these should be answerable questions that the person that you're talking to should be able to answer off the top of their head or answer with a very quick look up, so that you're making progress toward this conversation. And the number three thing is making your request. Now, a lot of people think negotiation is you start with number three, but do not start with number three. Right, it's a business problem. You're solving the business problem. You want everybody on board, so follow the recipe and make your request, like if somebody wants to ask for more base pay. This is how I ask them to do it. So my research shows that jobs like these are paid between X and Y in the marketplace. Remember that from our previous thing about asking your friends, based on my fill in the blank, some special thing about you. I'm targeting the higher end of the range. How close can we get? And this is important, this whole thing. So my research shows, yes, they want you to have done some research, right, and we want to be basing it based on your research, not on, hey, it might historically been paid lower than the market and so I would like to get paid lower than the market again. No, we want to base it on the research. So my research shows the jobs like this are paid X between X and Y. You want to give them a range of places to be successful right, but you don't want this to be if I can't have a pony for Christmas, I don't want anything. You want them to be able to be successful in different ways and the range should probably be about 10% wide. Maybe it's 55 to 65 or 55 to 62. You could say mid 200s if you want to, but X and Y in the marketplace, based on my special thing about myself, right, based on my directly applicable experience, based on my if you're doing an internal, based on my outstanding track record, if you're just coming out of school, based on the fact that I went to Northwestern, based on my special thing, we're targeting the higher end of that range. Right, okay, we say mid 200s. Well, that's 230 to 270. So I would like to be up at the top and remember, if you're saying mid 200s, 230 to 270 is in your head, you want to make sure that 230 is not your basement. Right, you'd be happy with 230. Based on this, I'm targeting the higher end of that.

Kate : 25:51

This last piece is really important. How close can we get? Now, again, this is a collaborative way, it's not. Can you do this, right? And you're asking how close can we get? Because you don't want to guess, or no question, because that fires off really quickly in the brain. You want them to stop and listen to it. Close can we get? And then the most important piece of this question is what you do when you're done, and that is you be quiet.

Mel: 26:19

Faved you. Yeah, you're like sure.

Kate : 26:21

no, it's for a while they're thinking right, and you've asked them something that they have to think about and it's a multiple part question, and so you want them to have time to process this and chance are very good that they're not going to be able to give you exactly what you want in that conversation. It's not your goal to have them say, yes, you can have $270,000, right, right. Your goal that we offer them, but it's not reasonable. They always have to go back, just like car salesmen. They always have to go back to the manager and have that expectation. So you're making a request to maybe three tops I wouldn't make more than that and rank them in the order of their importance. And that's not just like well, gym membership Okay, good for you, but if you get an extra $5,000, you can pay for that, you can count it. So rank it in terms of like, volume and importance.

Kate : 27:21

So then, once you've made your request, then the fourth piece is ending on an up note, and there are a couple of different pieces of this right, and one of them is we know that the end of conversations is more important than the beginning in the middle. It's stupid, it's true. If you look at Yelp reviews, they're all about like took them 15 minutes to get my bill to me and then I got mad. So one star. Yes, I know making the request it's very hard, it's very emotional, but you're focused on having a good ending this conversation. Thank you so much for advocating on my behalf, did they think?

Kate : 28:00

they were going to advocate on your behalf. Maybe not, but thanking them for doing it.

Mel: 28:05

It's always a good thing. A little bit of thanks goes a long way.

Kate : 28:08

You both know this. We're not getting any love.

Mel: 28:12

No, they're in the middle getting beat up on both sides.

Kate : 28:15

We need help If you're recognizing what they're doing for you and appreciating that it goes a long way. Yeah, it goes a long way.

Kate : 28:22

Yeah, thank you so much for advocating on my behalf. Then you have to figure out when you're going to talk to them again, because people think that doing this negotiation is the hardest part of negotiation. No, it is waiting to hear back from the recruiter. That is the worst. People make up stories and they're head about how it works. You can take the lead on this. When would be good for us to talk again? The insolver recruiters are going to be great and they're going to say, oh yeah, let's talk again on Thursday. But if they don't say that, when would be a good time for us to talk Sounds like you've got some background stuff that needs to happen.

Kate : 29:05

I want to make sure that you have enough time to do that. What about next Wednesday? Does that sound like a good time for us to connect? Sure, I guess we could. I've got nine o'clock free. Can I send you an invite? Take some work off of your recruiters plate, because, guess what, they have 30 to 40 requisitions. You're not the only person that they're talking to, so make it easy for them and then you're done. Right, you've expressed your delight, you've asked your questions, you've made your quest and then you've ended. On an up note it's a recipe for success.

Mel: 29:43

Having a collaborative conversation and you're providing options, just like they've provided you with options, and it shows that you're willing to compromise. And it's a two-way street, go the long way and it's and you're poor recruiters. They're really trying. They do want the best for you and Kate to your good point. They're usually handling 40, 50 recs. They're having this negotiation conversation with a million candidates and going back and forth with hiring managers on what could move. So just a little bit of kindness goes such a long way. I have two follow-up questions. It sounds pretty clear and straightforward from your four-part recipe. This is what you should say. Don't deviate from this, because this is a solid plan. But what should you absolutely not say in these discussions?

Kate : 30:31

I have a number one thing you don't want to say for an internal conversation with your boss, and that is to use the word fair in any way, shape or form, because, even though it may be objectively true that it's not fair the way that you're being paid, what managers tend to hear with that is you, manager, are acting out of integrity and nobody wants to feel like they're not doing the right thing and you need your manager to advocate on your behalf. Just like the recruiter in the external scenario, your manager is going to be the one who's going to be advocating for your behalf in an internal scenario. So you don't want them to be mad at you or to think, oh my gosh, she thinks fair. I'm immediately thinking wasu and we're going to batten down the hatches and not talk about anything. That's not what this is about.

Kate : 31:31

So if you're really focusing on the external market and not, oh my gosh, my friend Mel is making 20,000 more than me and that is not fair. No, my research shows a job like these are being paid between X and Y in the marketplace. Based on my super awesome thing, I'm targeting the higher end of that range. How close can we get? That's a perfect, legit conversation to have with your boss, but it also pulls the focus away from their actions and protecting the company to what really they need to focus on is what's going on in the marketplace.

Mel: 32:12

Follow the formula it works, it works. You talked about gym memberships and getting clear on what you want to negotiate. Are there things you absolutely should stay away from negotiating?

Kate : 32:24

So the gym membership is actually a little foreign my side, because I did have an executive when I was internal to a company that shall remain nameless, who is an executive at a Fortune 100 company, I will say that and who wanted to negotiate every stinking thing in his package, including a gym membership. Dude, you're making so much money. This is worth maybe three grand to you, come on. So, yeah, if you're an executive, don't be negotiating the little things, because everybody will hate you for it, including yourself.

Kate : 33:03

When somebody says, okay, we've had enough, but benefits, you probably won't be able to negotiate anything with benefits because everybody's getting the same thing. You could try, but it's not even worth the effort. To be honest with you, what else do you not want to negotiate? I think that for the most part, work conditions again, some of them, whether or not it's hybrid or work from home situation those absolutely should be negotiated, but negotiate those after you figured out the package, especially if they've hinted through the job description or whatever, that people are part-time, working at home or whatever. Don't be negotiating work conditions before you do your other stuff. What have you all seen that you have with Regis?

Francesca : 33:51

There was an executive he had come from a very large technology company, was going to a smaller technology company that didn't have free food everywhere and asked for $10,000 a year for lunch stipend. And it was like, bro, you're making like $20 million a year, you don't need the $10,000 lunch stipend. Run for the border like all of us. You know what I'm saying.

Mel: 34:14

Get real. It sounds like people should be realistic. Focus on your base, focus on the right stuff. One thing that's come up for us recently and it would be fun to go down a rabbit hole to see what people have negotiated you must have some examples, kate, of like weird stuff you've seen negotiated and included. One of the things Francesca and I were talking about recently with all of the layoffs was can you negotiate your severance upfront? Is that something you can negotiate as part of your starting package? If I'm to be laid off within the first year or within the first two years, I'm given this package, an agreed-a-pound package, is that something you can negotiate?

Kate : 34:54

It depends on your level in the organization. Perfectly frank with you. When I'm working with C-suite folks, even in smaller organizations, that is always part of the conversation that we have. But typically below, I would say, a VP level, I haven't seen that because below the VP level there's usually some sort of a policy that's in place Even at the VP level. A lot of times there is too, but it is more common to negotiate it as part of your employment agreement, if you have one, and those typically don't start until VP level. But the same thing goes with relocation. If you're doing a relocation package, a lot of times there's some flexibility, but not a lot, because with larger companies they typically tier it based on the level of job that you're at. And another reason to do away with levels in my own bed. But until then, one of the crazy things I've seen I know somebody who had two great dates who could not fly because they you can't fly, you can't put them under the belt in the plane.

Kate : 36:07

There's biggest of the plane so you can't. But that person was able to negotiate renting a van. They used that as part of their moving. It seems fair. It seems fair.

Mel: 36:20

You want your pets or your loved ones. What do you do if you've done the research, you've done the four-part recipe, you've shared the research and they come back and say that's anecdotal information.

Kate : 36:36

It depends. One of the things that I advise people to do too, before they even get to negotiate, is figure out whether your bottom line is, and so you know. Sometimes the bottom line, the offer, is already in there, and so it's okay. If you can't negotiate anything, that's not necessarily a loss. But again, think about how the company is treating you through this process. If somebody told me that my research was anecdotal, I'd be a little pissed off. Yeah, do I want to work here. But if they're saying, hey, that's not consistent with what we're seeing in our salary surveys and you don't know all the stuff that's behind what they're putting in and they may be wrong in your opinion and you're not going to be able to come to an agreement, and that's okay. If they don't value the work the way that you want to be paid you feel like you should be paid then again it's not that it's a bad call by the company or a bad call by you. It's just not a match.

Mel: 37:57

Every company also has their own comp philosophy. So who's doing comp right?

Kate : 38:03

Oh, my gosh. I think it depends, and I wouldn't say that any one company is doing a super great job across the board. But my companies that are doing more in terms of salary transparency, pay transparency some of it is fair enough because they wanted to comply with the law. That's always a good thing. But a lot of my clients who are located in California, which is where the big pay transparency stuff is going on, they're being open about it all across the country, even where there's not pay transparency laws on the books, and I think it's just great and people are like oh, that's really simple pay transparency. But what it translates to a lot of different things that really are around health in this area, which is, hey, we're going to be really consistent with the way that we level our jobs, we're going to be consistent with the way that we pay our people. We're going to talk about pay with our employees. Those things are all really great.

Mel: 39:06

Are there any companies today that you're like man? They're really progressive here.

Kate : 39:10

Every single company, even companies that are doing well in this space, I'm sure have individuals that they are paying the way that they probably could, and so that's why I don't want to go. Hey, xyz Corp totally is nailing it, and then there's one person getting paid like crap.

Mel: 39:28

Yeah, they're like wait, I'm paying peanuts over here. You don't know your time. Yeah, I get it. I totally understand.

Kate : 39:35

Are there any companies that you guys would hold out as?

Mel: 39:38

good models in this space. When I think of like good practices, it's not different from what you've already mentioned. It's organizations that are making sure that they're looking at the research, probably in an annual basis, and making sure that people are in their comp ratio and in the market rate and they're really doing that analysis to make sure, if folks are under their market rate, that they're making them whole in some way and finding a way to do that. I think it's hard to get it perfect to make sure that you're trying and in your transparent about the steps you're taking to make it right. I think that's so critically important.

Francesca : 40:17

I've sat at tables where we're reviewing comp and there have been some companies I've worked with where we're not going to talk about things like pay equity, we're not going to have these types of conversations. And then I've also worked at organizations that are very open to that conversation and that might sound really basic, but the ability to even say, hey, we've got a discrepancy here. What can we do to start working towards bridging the gap? I applaud organizations that are willing to have that conversation, because not everybody is.

Kate : 40:45

And, ironically, some of the most transparent with pay organizations that are out there are actually governmental organizations. So, like, my first job out of drug goal was with the sting of Colorado and we had this book and you could look up everybody's spending. And now it's online, because that's how old I am, but we come from book era too. That's the way things work. It's everybody knows what everybody gets paid. There's really a lot of openness about that and people make it their business to know why things are the way they are. It's a really good model and people don't typically go oh yeah, the government. That's where I want to go for my party. They've been doing it and doing it well for years and years.

Francesca : 41:34

Yeah, the best learning and development organization is the military, so they get things right.

Mel: 41:39

They do get things right.

Francesca : 41:39

Yeah.

mel: 41:41

But the way that COMP is structured is also evolving over time. I'd love to understand from your point of view, how do you see COMP evolving and how would you like to see it evolve.

Kate : 41:54

Hmm, interesting, two different answers. I think so. One of the perspectives that I carry is that my company is a B corporation, so we're really all about people and planet and profit. So I work with lots of B-corp. I also work with lots of nonprofits. I also work for other companies too, but my perspective with the nonprofit and B-corp group these are mission focused organizations, purpose driven right, and I am seeing a lot of these companies shifting toward employee ownership, which I think is super cool, and there are more and more tools available for organizations that want to go this route than there have been before.

Kate : 42:41

It used to be a very daunting process and I'm not going to say it's easy now, but again, tons more resources, a lot more specialists consulting in that area. So that's one thing that I'm seeing evolve for purpose driven companies and it's pretty cool and also requires a completely different leadership model. Right, a few employees who are owning the company. They want to know the stuff. Right, it's like taking pay transparency to the next level, right? Not just pay transparency, it's P and L transparency and I just I think that's great, I think it's awesome, and I'm also seeing, with these companies purpose driven companies I'm seeing a trend toward really advancing the pay of frontline workers. One of my clients decided that they wanted a family housing wage to be their minimum wage. They pay over 2x what the market rate is for those jobs. That's amazing and I think it's terrific and appropriate. And our minimum wage has lagged from a federal perspective, even our state perspective. I'm in Oregon and, yeah, it's much, much higher than the federal, but I don't think it's kept pace especially with when you look at how our executive pay has shifted over time. So I'm digging those things and those are things that I would want to see every company shift toward.

Kate : 44:12

Well, another thing that I'm thinking about is how have the systems of bias and oppression contributed to our pay program? So I think about antiprecipate a lot, and what can we do to move away from that? One of the things that I try to work with my clients on is removing individual performance as a factor that's going to determine pay. Do you want to still keep track of what people are doing and how they're doing it? Absolutely, that's fine. But we know that it's bias the way that we look at performance. Performance standards for women are substantially narrower than the most for men. For people of color, it's very dramatically different, that behaviors that are okay in the dominant culture are not okay in some of these cultures that have been marginalized by the dominant culture. How can we make pay less problematic from those kinds of perspectives? So that's what I'm really focusing on these days.

Francesca : 45:17

What would be your definition of anti-oppressive pay structures, because I don't think a lot of our listeners know what that is?

Kate : 45:24

Yeah, Well, it's actually a term I came up with. It's some different avenues that we look at in terms of what determines pay. So levels, so the more levels that you have, the more likely it is going to impact people who've been marginalized by the systems, because at every inflection point where you're moving from one level to another, you have this kind of this filtration system that's built in, this social system that's built in, and women, people of color, differently-abled folks, lgbtqia plus folks, they find it harder to get to that next level and I think that's honestly that's going to be the last one to fall, because we think, of course, ceos should make more than frontline workers, but pay is a social construct. We made it up.

Mel: 46:18

It's not like there's a law about that, yeah, it could be revolutionary and change it and blow it up.

Kate : 46:26

And I sit on a group with a woman who's a CEO of a B Corp who pays everyone in her entire organization the same, including herself. That's right, though, yeah, 100% anti-oppressive right, because everybody gets it right. So levels are one, functions are another one. We talked about that a little bit ago. Individual performance as a determiner of pay that is huge, and that's probably the number one thing that I'm trying to communicate with my clients is hey, you know what? The government does a great job here. They have step stuff, and I get a lot of pushback. But oh, what about performance? Because that we have to make sure our shiny stars get more.

Kate : 47:13

There's some myth around individual performance in my mind, because no person's an island. If you've got somebody who's doing really terrific work, chances are they've got a really terrific team that's surrounding them, and the big archetype of this is sales. Dude, right, and sales are trillion, trillion widgets, and it's like this rugged, individualist thing and it's a myth, right, it's not a real, true thing, because they've got somebody who's vetting all the leads for them. They've got somebody who's arranging their travel, they've got really great products behind them. All of these things are conspiring to help this sales person be excellent, and it's not that they don't have any value, and they may be fantastic at creating the kind of relationships that lead to long-term success. So I don't want to take away from that. Should we be paying that person 3x what other people get? I don't know. I don't think so. Probably not.

Mel: 48:16

Yeah, it makes sense because, to your good point, they're not an island. They have a whole team of people setting them up for success. So, although they help close the deal, at the end, it's all of the steps that led up to that, though, that really helped play into it. So everyone has an equal role in that success.

Kate : 48:32

I really like that concept and there are a couple of other factors too around antipressive pay, things like making sure that people have access, like right now. We talked earlier about the things that are different as you go up the scale and having only executives being able to participate in equity programs or long-term incentive programs. I think that's silly, because people who are on the front line are doing things that are going to impact the long-term success of the company, and LTI tends to be one of the big wealth building vehicles for people, and if you just say, okay, 90% of our population doesn't even have access to that, so go away, that's not great, and when I worked at Intel, they gave every single person stock options and they don't do it anymore that way, but it created this completely different mindset for people who are on the manufacturing floor. That was tremendous and very good for the business. I'd love to see LTI if you're going to use it everywhere.

Francesca : 49:37

Walmart started to do that in terms of options to make their store managers owners in the company. Great, that's the kind of movement we love to see 20K in options which can be, over time, life changing for a lot of people, especially when we think about retirement or having a savings nest.

Francesca : 49:54

The other thing I think about. May I tell a story? I'm going to go on a scenic route and then I'll come back. Mel knows the story. I have two master's degrees. This is not a brag, this is just more funny than anything. I like to be in school. If I won the Lotto I would just go back to school. I love it. But my first master's degree was from Northern Illinois University. My second is from Northwestern. Why am I sharing that? Because when I went to Northern it was if you get a job, you may see this, and at Northwestern is when you're a chief marketing officer. This is what you'll see. And I think the idea of setting a band and saying this is the step, and here's the bar for everybody to hit, here's the bar, as opposed to paying for performance which, to your very good point, can be riddled with bias, and this is a team sport. It's a really interesting inverse, because what I have found is when you say here's the bar and it's an attainable bar, most people will meet it. Yeah, yeah, it gets like.

Kate : 50:57

Everybody wants to come to work and do a good job, right? Nobody comes in and say, hey, I want to be an asshole today.

Francesca : 51:03

There's that one guy the one who's going to come in.

Kate : 51:07

But people love success and they want to get the heart of success and they want to contribute to the success of the organization and they're kept in the loop about what's going on. And again, this is back to some of the things that employee owned companies do. If people are brought along in that venture, yeah, they're going to respond. The problem, like with employee engagement in general and I've done a ton of employee engagement research over my career, which I do like a weird geek about and I love. People need to understand that North Star. They need to feel like what they're doing matters and the more visibility you can create for that, the better it goes. Yeah.

Francesca : 52:11

So, kate, we have something we like to do with all our guests called Wrap it Round. We're going to give you a few questions. What's something that everyone should write into their offer letter?

Kate : 52:21

I don't know, because I work with people at all different levels of the organization. So what's really appropriate for my executive clients? Probably not the same as for my recent college grad, even our recent college grads. I would advise them to ask for a sign-on bonus and, if you don't know what to ask for, 10% of your starting salary, your base pay.

Francesca : 52:44

I like that 10% number, maybe not the use of the company jet, if you're just spitting off, I got it. What's the biggest mistake people make in negotiations?

Kate : 52:54

I think, just accepting the offer on the spot, even if you ultimately accept it and don't negotiate it, because a lot of times what companies will do is try to do what I call the pre-offer. If we said $60,000 right now, could you say yes right now? And it's not a car right? Let me see everything in writing and read about the benefits, because you may find that there's some significant gap that you don't know. So don't say yes on the spot.

Francesca : 53:22

This could be work-related. It could not be. But what do you love to negotiate, oh God?

Kate : 53:27

I love negotiating pay. Now I don't really negotiate my consulting rates or anything, and there's a whole reason behind that, but I just I love salary negotiations so hard and everybody should ask me about it because I will tell you. I will tell you all the things and I think it's super fine. My son is like my hype man and so he makes all of his friends call me and yeah, let's talk about it. So I love paying the compensation.

Francesca : 53:53

I really do. You should have like a ticker tape of how much money you've gotten people Like 70 billion served. I love that.

Kate : 53:59

I should, because, like my top one, I ever did a million and a half.

Mel: 54:05

Wow, get out of here.

Kate : 54:10

I was walking with a little swagger there for a second. We should, oh man.

Francesca : 54:15

Kate, we need to talk. Yeah, the trinities. This might be a very philosophical, perhaps a stoic question, but what should you never negotiate?

Kate : 54:26

in life, never negotiate things that don't really matter. We talked about the little things in an offer. It doesn't matter. Let go, you can use your energy better elsewhere.

Francesca : 54:39

Yeah, I love that so much of life is energy management, isn't it? Yeah, yeah, listen. I think everyone should read. Payup Name your prices are amazing books for everyone to read. Kate got into some of these things today. But, kate, I'm curious what other book would you recommend everybody read?

Kate : 54:57

One that is just on my mind recently because I heard the author speak yesterday is called Career Forward and it's by Christiana Giesmit Giesmit's. She it's terrific. It gives you lists of things that you can do and think about in your career to manage your career better, and it's really good.

Francesca : 55:16

One is you'd mentioned meditating in terms of getting into that mindset. Do you also recommend that folks have a hype song? I know a Nike there there's like the hybril. We get that sort of thing. But should people have a hype song?

Kate : 55:26

So my son was a baseball player and so he always got to pick his walk on song every season, and I love that. I think it's a great idea because we know our neural pathways. Sound allows us to dip into that space pretty easily, so maybe it's a walk on song, maybe it's the song that you play to calm your nerves or whatever, but however you want to show up in that moment, pick a playlist or a song or whatever to play beforehand. I love that idea.

Francesca : 55:58

What's yours If you had a walk on song, what would it be? I think it depends on what it was walking on to.

Kate : 56:04

This was like totally silly, but I love the song Happy. It was one that I played over and over when I was running half marathons and stuff, and so it just has all this good vibe. It's a jam. What's yours? I have to know that.

Francesca : 56:22

I have two. One is let's Dance by David Bowie just a jam. Two is Nas made you look which is a stuff I probably thought. No, what's your theme song?

Mel: 56:35

Oh my God, I was just thinking of Rihanna's bitch, better have my money. That's probably really inappropriate. That's her salary negotiation.

Kate : 56:46

I don't know, I think it's good.

Francesca : 56:52

This has been so wonderful. Let's talk with you today. Thank you so much for sharing your expertise with us, my great pleasure.

Kate : 56:59

Thanks for having me.

Francesca : 57:08

Thanks so much for joining us today and subscribe. Wherever you listen to podcasts, you can come over and say hi to us on the TikToks and LinkedIn community. Hit us up at yourworkfriendscom. We're always posting stuff on there and if you found this episode helpful, share with your work friends.

Mel: 57:25

Thanks, friend.