Monthly Archives: February 2021

Can your employees wear “Trump” masks? What about “BLM” masks? #HRFamous

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On episode 51 of The HR Famous Podcast, long-time HR leaders (and friends) Tim Sackett, Kris Dunn, and Jessica Lee come together to discuss what will be appropriate to wear to the office in the future, Whole Foods’ company culture, and the new jobs sprung by the pandemic, including “Head of Remote.”

Listen (click this link if you don’t see the player) and be sure to subscribe, rate, and review (Apple Podcasts) and follow (Spotify)!

Show Highlights:

2:00 – The triple Timmy touch is out to play today!

4:45 – Are we going to expect our employees post-pandemic to return to formal workwear? Tim thinks that more formal dress will come back naturally.

8:30 – Tim thinks that his outfits are all about the shoes. He’s also anti-tights in the office for all people.

11:00 – KD thinks that what is office appropriate also depends on what people can afford. Oftentimes we approve of the higher-end leisurewear but not the cheaper versions of the same product.

13:15 – Whole Foods was brought into court recently for reprimanding employees who wore face masks with Black Lives Matter logos on them.

14:30 – Tim thinks that Whole Foods will come to the conclusion that they need to give everyone the same face mask for uniformity. He sees this as a customer-service issue since customers need to be able to quickly and easily identify employees in the store.

17:30 – JLee brings up how Whole Foods has always had a strong people-centric culture and she thinks this is a shift for them from a culture perspective. The company has grown and is now a part of Amazon and they’re not as small as they once were.

19:30 – KD mentions that the Whole Foods near him in Birmingham is close to the Amazon distribution center that is currently voting on if they want to bring in a union.

22:00 – Do you feel guilty using Amazon’s one-day shipping? KD feels some guilt but JLee doesn’t feel any.

23:45 – Does your family have a shared Amazon Prime account? Tim’s family shares an Amazon account and he finds himself accidentally purchasing stuff that his kids put in the cart.

27:00 – JLee recently saw a job title that reads “Head of Remote.” She asks Tim and KD what they think the responsibilities of this job are.

30:15 – KD thinks this position sounds like a senior director of HR. The crew thinks it probably reports up to a CHRO.

31:30 – KD tells the tale of the flavored water machine in his office that arrived right before the pandemic hit. The machine displays the environmental impact and sadly they haven’t saved many trees since no one has been using it!

Why Does Spam Recruiting Work?

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I just got done deleting the 17th phishing email from my personal email inbox today. Comcast, Amazon, Princes from far-off lands, I’ve never been more popular and, apparently, soon to be rich!

I was asking our Cyber Security company why phishing is still such a big deal. I mean don’t we all know by now that some Nigerian Prince isn’t going to give us a million dollars, or that Amazon doesn’t send us emails asking for our credit card numbers, or passwords!? There is no way someone can be this stupid, right!?

Apparently, I’m way wrong, we are all still a lot stupid! 

The reason phishing and spam are not because they are really tricking us. It’s the sure volume of messages and cadence. While we can all spot a fake fairly easily, can you always spot a fake when it’s sent a thousand times, all different times, with all different designs and strategies. Scammers will send a million to get one click. That one click will pay off.

Therein lies the strategy of why Spam Recruiting still works. It’s not about being good, or the best, it’s about being there all the time, knowing a certain percentage of the time will be the right time! Do we like it? Well, I guess that depends on who you are. If you happen to be that one person who gets the spam recruiting message at the exact time you’re desperate for a job, then yes, you will like it!

If you are the superstar performing software engineer getting twenty spam recruiting messages a day, you hate our industry!

Spam Recruiting Works Because It Works Some of the Time

I have never met one American-based TA Leader who believes that Off-Shore Recruiting firms (you know the off-shore RPO spam emails you get constantly all day long) actually are good. For the most part, they don’t recruit, they spam. Because they pay next to nothing to their workforce, they can spam a whole bunch and still make money, even if the entire process truly sucks.

They don’t have to be good. When you’re being paid like $10 a day, all you have to do is spam a couple of thousand people a week to get one placement a month and you’re making a profit for the “man”! Any company engaging in off-shore recruiting for hiring in the U.S. is basically engaging in slave labor. But, I digress. Back to crappy recruiting.

Bad recruiting is a lot like bad sex. If you really need a job, you don’t care how you get it. Which perpetuates you just continuing to be bad.

Spam recruiting works, and will always work, because the world will always have candidates who just need a job. They don’t care that you’re awful at your job. They don’t care that you are spamming them. All they care about is getting the job. Also, if you do care. If you do hate bad spammy recruiters. It turns out you also are fine with them being awful when you’re out of a job!

Spam works because we are all vulnerable at some point. It feeds on us being weak, naive, and desperate. But, at the end of the day, it works. It doesn’t work well. But it does work. And that sucks.

The Weekly Dose: @Pandologic – The Job Advertising Platform

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Today on the Weekly Dose I review the programmatic job advertising platform, Pandologic. Programmatic job advertising has been around now for a decade, but still, it hasn’t caught on as it has with our Marketing peers who have been using the technology successfully to lure customers for decades.

95% of Talent Acquisition job advertising budget is still mostly spent on traditional types of job posting products: Indeed sponsored jobs, LinkedIn job postings, ZipRecruiter, other job boards, some radio, some TV, billboards, a sexier career site no one sees, etc. 95%! 

For the most part, TA hasn’t changed how we advertise for jobs in decades. 

While there are a number of programmatic job advertising tools on the market, Pandologic has truly gone all-in on utilizing artificial intelligence to make their technology more efficient and easier to use. One of the reasons so many great TA shops haven’t yet tested using Programmatic Job Advertising is that it quite frankly seems complex. And while the science behind can be complex, Pandologic has made a simple and intuitive platform that any TA pro can easily use to get better results on their job postings.

I like to think of Pandologic as Programmatic 2.0. It’s not just about distribution (traditional programmatic – put the job everywhere at once), but the utilization of AI-driven decision-making of when and where. Precisely placing your jobs in front of the kind of job seeker you’re looking for when they’re engaged on the internet.

What do I like about Pandologic?

  • Really the only fully-automated programmatic job advertising platform. You can set it and forget it, many of the programmatic tools take some constant watching.
  • Pandologic’s AI will constantly make micro-adjustments to get the best results, including constantly testing and making small language changes to your posting to get the best results.
  • Full AI, no human in the loop. You set your campaign goals and it goes out and gets the applicants.
  • An overall reduction in job advertising spending for the same traffic you have now or increased traffic for the same spend.
  • Easily integrated with your ATS to pull in job postings.

I’m a big fan of programmatic job advertising technology. I think too many TA leaders continue to play this game trying to figure out which “site” is the best one for them, getting into long-term relationships that cost too much money and quite frankly are inefficient. At the end of the day “advertising” is about the best results for the lowest cost.

One word of caution that I constantly try and educate TA pros and leaders on. Programmatic isn’t a silver bullet for hard-to-find talent. If you need Software Engineers in a market where there are very few Software Engineers, Programmatic technology can’t magically make Software Engineers where there are no Software Engineers! But, it can help get your job advertising in front of those few, for less money.

Pandologic for the most part is an enterprise-level TA tool. More than likely they are best utilized with organizations that hire at volume, 500+ hires per year, or it also would work for organizations hiring less, if the vast majority of roles are similar in nature (I.E., we hire 200 Nurses a year, etc.) I think every enterprise and large volume TA shop should be testing Programmatic in 2021.

The Single Most Desired Trait Employers Want: Being an Adult!

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Don’t buy into the hype! “Oh, just do what you love!” That’s not being an adult, that’s being a moron! Just do what makes you happy! No, that’s what a child does.

“Tim, we just want to hire some ‘adults’!” I hear this statement from a lot of CEOs I talk with currently!

That means most of the people they are hiring, aren’t considered adults by these leaders. Oh, they fit the demographic of being an adult from an age perspective, but they still act like children!

I tell people when I interview them and they ask about our culture I say, “We hire adults”.

That means we hire people into positions where they are responsible for something. Because we hire adults, they take responsibility for what they are responsible for. If I have to tell them to do their jobs, they’re not adults, they’re children. We don’t employ children.

I think about 70% of the positions that are open in the world could have the same title –

“Wanted: Adults”.

Those who read that and got it could instantly be hired and they would be above average employees for you! Those who read it and didn’t understand, are part of the wonder of natural selection.

How do you be an Adult?

– You do the stuff you say you’re going to do. Not just the stuff you like, but all the stuff.

– You follow the rules that are important to follow for society to run well. Do I drive the speed limit every single time? No. Do I come to work when my employer says I need to be there? Yes.

– You assume positive intent on most things. For the most part, people will want to help you, just as you want to help others. Sometimes you run into an asshole.

– You understand that the world is more than just you and your desires.

– You speak up for what is right when you can. It’s easy to say you can always speak up for what is right, but then you wouldn’t be thinking like an adult.

– You try and help those who can’t help themselves. Who can’t, not who won’t.

My parents and grandparents would call this common sense, but I don’t think ‘being an adult’ is common sense anymore. Common sense, to be common, has to be done by most. Being an adult doesn’t seem to be very common lately!

So, you want to hire some adults? I think this starts with us recognizing that being an adult is now a skill in 2021. A very valuable skill. Need to fill a position, maybe we start by first finding adults, then determining do we need these adults to have certain skills, or can we teach adults those skills!

The key to great hiring in today’s world is not about attracting the right skills, it’s about attracting adults who aren’t just willing to work, but understand the value of work and individuals who value being an adult.

I don’t see this as a negative. I see it as an opportunity for organizations that understand this concept. We hire adults first, skills second. Organizations that do this, will be the organizations that win.

The Motley Fool has a great section in their employee handbook that talks about being an adult:

“We are careful to hire amazing people. Our goal is to unleash you to perform at your peak and stay out of your way. We don’t have lots of rules and policies here by design. You are an amazing adult and we trust you to carve your own path, set your own priorities, and ask for help when you need it.”

You are an amazing ‘adult’ and we trust you…

If only it was so simple!

Build the Perfect Recruiting Stack for a Hybrid World!

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Talent acquisition has a major problem looming just over the horizon: Executives are preparing for business to accelerate in the near future and part of their plan is that talent acquisition professionals will be able to turn hiring on like a light switch. Unfortunately, the vast majority of talent acquisition departments do not have processes and technology systems in place to move this quickly.

On top of that, many of us had to reduce our recruiting budgets and teams! Now, the CEO comes down to your office and she says, “Hey! We’re getting the band back together! Get ready to hire 500 people by the end of the year!”

What are you going to do? 

Step 1: Sign up for my free webcast this week! Feb. 25th at Noon ET, 9 am on the West Coast – You get SHRM credit and a whole bunch of valuable information from yours truly!

Step 2: After the webcast – just do what I tell you! It’s super easy. Like only two steps to be super awesome at recruiting!

We will look at a bunch of strategies and technologies that organizations are using to get ready to hire in this crazy new hybrid world of work. Plus, the number one technique being used by organizations to eliminate ghosting by candidates.

Come learn how to build a light switch for your TA department and put your executive’s minds at ease for your talent attraction and hiring for 2021 and beyond.

REGISTER HERE!  (Free eBook for 5 tips for better Diversity Hiring as well!)

Thanks to Oracle Recruiting Cloud for sponsoring this SHRM Webcast!

What was the hardest manual labor job I’ve ever had?

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I was a “Picker” for a large supermarket chain in their warehouse on the second shift. What’s a “Picker”? I Picker was a position that would take an order from one of the grocery stores that used our warehouse, and I would drive around on a pallet jack and physically pick all the cases and items going to that store on a semi-truck.

A pallet jack isn’t a Hi-Lo, it’s more like a “Lo-Lo” it held two wood pallets, just off ground-level and the goal was to build those pallets up to six-eight feet, wrap them tightly in plastic shrink wrap, and then load them onto the truck. Some orders took 15 minutes to fill, some took over an hour, every single one was different.

The warehouse was giant. Like ten football fields with aisle after aisle of products, you would find in a large grocery store. Some heavy, some light, all shapes, and sizes. It was a Union shop, but I was a temp summer worker. So, most of the workers were full-time, long-term Union workers, over 90% men. My Dad was an executive in the offices of this company. A family friend was the Union Steward in the warehouse.

This job taught me that I didn’t want to work manual labor my entire life! 

But, it also taught me to respect the true value of manual labor jobs.

It also taught me so much about life, work, and fitting in on the job:

  • Instantly the union guys knew my Dad was in management, and boy did I catch sh*t for that! I quickly learned to have tough skin and you better give back as well as you were getting in that environment.
  • About a month into this job I came home at 2 am and woke up my Dad crying telling him I was going to college (Yes! Crying. It wasn’t my proudest moment, but it was memorable!). It was physically hard! It was hot. It was dirty. I didn’t want to go back in. I was working next to guys who had been doing that job for twenty-plus years!
  • A Union-shop has formal and informal rules. To survive you must quickly learn the informal rules or you won’t last. I was told specifically to slow down my work pace or all four tires of my car would be slashed. Even though I wasn’t even making rate and all the full-time union guys ran circles around me!
  • After you filled an order you had to go get another. There was one lady who did this, behind a glass window in an air-conditioned office. You could feel the cold air through the hole in the glass. Very quickly you learned there were easy orders and hard orders, and orders you could more easily make “rate” on. The lady was a big girl, normal looking, middle-aged, to see all of us guys sweet up to her like she was a runway model trying to get easy orders, boy that was a site! Always be super nice to the person doling out the work!
  • You need to find your tribe. I wasn’t the only summer temp, college kid, there were a bunch of us and we found early on it best we stick together. We ate lunch together, found each other on breaks, helped each other when we could. The union guys weren’t going to help.
  • Hard-ass manual labor jobs are marathons, not sprints. We worked 8-hour shifts, but almost every night had to do mandatory 2-4 hours of overtime. They wouldn’t tell us if we were working or not, because if you knew you had to work 12 hours that night, you were not working fast!
  • I was 18, the legal drinking age in Michigan was 21. After our shift on payday, all the guys would go to a bowling alley down the street that was open until 2 am. They would cash our checks and let us drink like men. Young guys would be drunk after two beers and the union guys would take the summer guys’ cash when they were in the bathroom and give it to the waitresses! Always keep your cash in your pocket!
  • Second-shit sucks! You go in around 3 pm, if you’re lucky you get out at 11 pm or midnight. Go home, can’t sleep, finally, get down around 3 am, wake up at noon the next day and basically start it all again.
  • Union or Non-Union manual labor shops are really going to test you. The fact is, they want to work with people who are going to work. Really work! If you don’t carry your weight, eventually it will come back to more work on everyone. So, they push you to try and quit because they only want people around them that really want to be there or have to be there, but show up and work!
  • I had so much fun at that job with probably the most diverse workforce I’ve ever been in. We were all in the middle of it and equally giving each other sh*t constantly. All of which would have gotten us all canceled and fired today. It was in many ways a brotherhood. What happened on the floor, stayed on the floor. Very much workers vs. management.

I think every single kid, male and female, right after high school, but for sure before they graduate college should have to work a manual labor job. Too many kids come into the work world with this warped perception of what work is, and too many look down on the millions of workers truly busting their backs doing the work you don’t want to do.

At the very least, I would prefer to hire a kid with a solid degree from a state school who I know worked a manual job or two in their life, then a perfect student from Harvard who never got dirty. Our society has in so many ways devalued ‘real’ hard work, manual labor, no-skill, low-skill.

What was that hardest manual labor job you ever worked?

Netflix Inclusion Report & @hirevue Facial Recognition #HRFamous

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On episode 50 of The HR Famous Podcast, long-time HR leaders (and friends) Tim Sackett, Kris Dunn, and Jessica Lee come together once again to discuss Netflix’s 2021 inclusion report, facial recognition software in interviewing, and the scam psychic that’s terrorizing JLee’s neighborhood!

Listen (click this link if you don’t see the player) and be sure to subscribe, rate, and review (Apple Podcasts) and follow (Spotify)!

Show Highlights:

2:20 – Do you know where the DMV area is? That’s where JLee says she is from when asked.

3:00. – Jlee has a scam psychic in her neighborhood and everyone is activating their Ring doorbell to find out who it is. Discussion of psychics naturally follows.

6:30 – KD asks Tim how frustrated he gets when people in his inner circle don’t share his passion for his favorite streaming shows/movies. The gang agrees there should be codes where you can force someone to watch a show a limited number of times per year.

10:00 – Netflix released their first-ever inclusion report in mid-January. KD addresses it as a masterstroke in communication and controlling the narrative in HR comms. They announced that women make up half of their workforce, even in leadership and executive roles.

12:00 – JLee thinks Netflix is doing good work in the DEI space. She cites a webinar they hosted about being black in HR and how it felt authentic and not too sales-y.

14:30 – Tim says that demographic data are very important in controlling the narrative they want to spin.

18:20 – Tim poses the question “do we know that Netflix is good for women”? He doesn’t think they are a tech company so the numbers could be low for the entertainment/media industry.

21:00 – KD brings up how they led with their best numbers when discussing their numbers on race and ethnicity that came later in the report.  He allows notes that the data they did provide in charts is hard to follow compared with the numerical data in tabs that companies like Google provided.

26:00 – KD asks JLee how she feels about the accuracy of facial recognition. She gets annoyed when her phone doesn’t recognize her face in the morning sometimes.

27:30 – Hirevue just discontinued facial recognition as a sorting feature in video interviewing. They felt that this feature could help give a better pool of candidates than without, but it started to raise some issues, namely the world crushing people for features like this without apology.

31:00 – Tim thinks the technology worked too well and that scared away many companies. There were just some concerns that the facial recognition software would raise some physical-attribute-related issues. KD wonders aloud how well the tech actually worked, and a discussion of whether facial tics and frowns was a knockout feature or note ensues.

34:00 – Did you love the button at the bottom of old iPhone models? Tim misses his button on his newer iPhone.

Maybe, involving everyone, isn’t the answer!

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There is an African Proverb that says:

“If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together” 

It’s the paradox we face as leaders right now. We are forced to move fast because the world is moving fast. We are also forced to believe we must involve everyone. Yes, we want to go fast, and yes, we want to go far!

Typically, that turns into something like this. Boss lady calls a meeting of the team. Everyone jumps on the Zoom call and the lady boss says, “Hey, we need to make some changes” based on some market/industry/tech change. “So, we are going to use this time to brainstorm and make some decisions on what we should do.” We’ve all been in these meetings.

The other way this can go is, no meeting, Boss lady brings in a few confidants on the team, gathers some information, and then she just makes some decisions. Good or bad, she’s the boss, and she’s paid to make these decisions. A little old school, we are told this isn’t really how it should be done anymore.

The reality is, both actually work, differently. One is fast, one will go far, and we need both.

As a leader, sometimes the best course of action is to just make the call if there is a need to move fast. Look, we have a new product launch that got moved up and we need to be fully staffed in four months. I’m pulling in a few, or one, people who can handle this item and I’m getting out of their way. Go make this happen!

We understand, as leaders, this might piss some folks off. “Well, no one asked my opinion on this!” Yes, you are correct, and by your reaction, I can see I made the right decision by not pulling you in, we desperately needed to move fast! I wasn’t looking for input, I was looking for fast results.

Then, we have times when what we are trying to do will have a long-term impact on our organization. A bunch of moving pieces, multiple stakeholders. Moving quickly, while desirable, might not be the best course of action. We need to hear folks, and folks need to be heard. We want to go ‘far’ with this project.

My leadership comfort zone has always been to go fast. If you’re fast, you can course-correct with the extra time. If you go slow, my belief was, the decision will most likely be made for you. As a leader, were you hired to make decisions, or have decisions happen to you? Now, this isn’t really the case, but man that sh*t sounded good on my PowerPoint slide deck!

“If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” 

Both strategies are correct. Both have a purpose of when to be deployed. Too often, we tend to stick with the one strategy that we feel most comfortable with as leaders. It’s important we understand what we are most comfortable with because that is also our blind spot. I have to remind myself constantly, to slow down, when it’s right, so we can go far.

I’ve worked with a ton of leaders, who were most comfortable with going together, truly believing they were being the best leader. In the end, they failed because while they were well-liked, they didn’t execute fast enough for what the business needed.

The Lies We Tell in HR and Talent Acquisition!

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Everyone lies, right? I mean a little. Not bad lies. It’s like the lies we tell those we love to not hurt their feelings, or we believe the lie we are telling is really a victimless crime. You know the kind of lies I’m talking about:

  • Does this dress make me look fat? (Of course not…the dress has nothing to do with you looking fat…)
  • Ordering take-out food, then putting in normal dishes and making them believe you cooked it.
  • Buying new clothes, then bringing them home in dry cleaners plastic, to make it look like it is just stuff from the cleaners, and you really didn’t go buy stuff your budget couldn’t afford! (I have the shoes I buy shipped to my office and then wear them home!)
  • What size are you? (Oh, I’m a size 3! Only at Chico’s!)

Clearly, there are different types of lies.  The ones above, while clearly hiding the truth, aren’t meant to cause pain to the parties involved, and probably, in the end, trying to hold the peace within the relationship (i.e., that what they don’t know, won’t hurt them).

Then, there are those lies (Damned Lies) that will send you directly to hell, don’t pass go, don’t collect $200.  Those are the ones that cause people to lose their jobs, their families, their dignity, and pretty much anything of value.  I think we all agree, these are the “real” lies that get people into trouble.

The problem is, our “little lies”, like those listed above, tend to be the entry drug of lies, that lead to the damned lies.  Boy, this gets really confusing, especially trying to explain this to your kids! “No, Timmy, it’s not okay to lie! But you told Daddy we didn’t buy anything today and you bought that stuff at Lulu!”

Then, we have those lies we tell in HR and TA.  These are lies meant to primarily avoid conflict, protect feelings, protect privacy, protect relationships, etc. You know these –

HR and TA Lies:

Employee: How am I’m performing, and is my job in jeopardy? (bad performer)

HR: You’re really working hard and giving great effort. As of right now, there are no plans to let you go (but 15 min. after you leave I’ll have the plan).

Candidate: Do you have any room for negotiation? 

TA: We can’t move an inch, we’ve completely maxed out what we can offer you. (But, if you decline the offer more money will magically come flying out of my butt!) 

Employee: Can I still sign up for insurance, I forgot to sign up before the open enrollment deadline!?

HR: Of course not, it’s against the federal law, marshall law, the world health organization, and Rule 3 of the Secret Society of Evil HR Pros, and not to mention the Geneva Convention! How could you be so stupid?! We reminded you 87 times via email. We’re very sorry but the government will not allow us to help you! (Or, if we really like you and you’re a valuable employee who is hard to replace, “theoretically” we could fire you on Friday, and hire you back on Monday, backdate your paperwork and sign you up. But don’t tell anyone, it’s just our little secret!)

The last one I like the best, probably because I see it happen in every (yes, I mean every) company I’ve ever worked in or with!

What lies do you tell in HR & TA?

Should You Ever Ask About Pay During a Job Interview?

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NO! YES! I DON’T KNOW! WHY ARE WE YELLING!?

This question gets asked so often by all levels of individuals who are going through a job search. Entry levels to seasoned professionals, no one really knows the correct answer, because, like most things in life, it depends on so many factors!

First off, you look like an idiot if you show up to an interview and in the first few minutes you drop the pay question!

“So, yeah, before we get too deep into this, how much does the job pay!?” 

Mistake #1! 

First, if you’re asking about what the job pays in a real face-to-face interview, or virtual interview, you’re doing it wrong! The time to ask about pay, is almost immediately, even when you’re desperate for the job. Usually, this happens during a screening call, email, text message from someone in recruiting or HR. Talent Acquisition and HR Pros expect this question, so it’s really not a big deal.

The problem we get into is this belief that somehow asking about pay and salary looks bad on us as a candidate. “Oh, all you care about is the pay and not our great company!?”

Mistake #2! 

Actually, TA and HR would prefer to get this big issue out of the way, right away, before they fall in love with you and find out they can’t afford you. Doesn’t matter if you make $15/hr or $100K per year, everyone involved needs to understand what it’s going to take to hire you. As a candidate, even when you desperately want the job, you still have power. You can still say, “No”.

The best thing you can do is get the pay question out of the way, up front, so both you and the company can determine if you will truly be the best hire. The worst thing that can happen during an interview, is you both fall in love with each other, then at the end find out it won’t work financially! That’s a killer!

Mistake #3! 

As a candidate, you get referred to a position and you have a pretty good idea of what the pay will be. Your friend works at the company, even in the same position, and makes $45K, so you’re not going to ask because you feel you already know.

The problem is, the company might not see your experience and education the same as your friends, or the market has shifted (like a Pandemic hit, and now the market pays less for your skills). For whatever reason, you are thinking one number and they are thinking another. This gets awkward when it all comes out at the end of the hiring process.

So, once again, be transparent. “Hey, my friend actually referred me and loves her job and the company. She also told me what she makes. I’m comfortable with that level, but I just want to make sure we are on the same page for a starting salary/wage before we keep going.” Simple. Straight-forward. Appreciated.

Yes, ask about Pay! 

Yes, ask about pay, but “no” don’t ask about pay as the last step of the interview process. Calm down, you’re not some wolf of Wall Street expert negotiator who’s going to wow them with your brilliance and get $100K more than others doing the same job. Most jobs have a set salary range that is pretty small, so you might get a little movement, but there is really no need to play hardball.

In fact, from a negotiation standpoint, getting your figure out early with a statement like, “I just want to make sure we are in the same park, I’m looking for $20-22/hr in my next job. Does this position pay that?” Gives you and the company some room to negotiate, but it’s a safe conversation since you both put some bumpers around where that conversation will go.

Also, if you decide you want more, it’s a great starting point. “Yes, I really like the job and the company and I’m interested in working for you. I know I said I was looking for $22/hr, but Mary told me I would also be doing “X” and honestly, I think that job pays a bit more than $22/hr. Can we discuss?”

Discussions of pay can be difficult because we often find talking about how much money we make taboo. I blame our parents! They never talked to us about it and if the subject was ever brought up, we got hushed immediately! Raise your hand if you knew what your Dad made when you were 12! Not many hands are up!

The reality is, it should be a very transparent, low-stress conversation. This is where I am. This is what I want from this job. Are we on the same page?