Heh!
Ignorarance of a company’s pay scale has twice in a row gotten me in at a higher salary than my peers. Not knowing what to expect, I quoted regional average plus 10%, and wound-up in the upper third of my payband. In each case, my peers were starting at regional average Minus 10%-15%.
You can be damn sure I kept that quiet! No purpose in being resented on the first day…
Just last week I had an interview with a non-profit-- going by the ad, it was a nifty communications gig involving writing their newsletter, being a liason between their brances and getting paid about $8k more than I’m making now.
So I go in, and the first thing each of the people I’m introduced to asks me is, “Have you seen the job description?” and of course I say yes, in Perky Professional Mode, but when I mention that I saw it on their web site, they all sort of smile sheepishly and say, “Um, well, here’s a copy of it.”
Why, what’s this I see? I’d be supervising a new department that is also somehow in charge of all your insurance and tax issues? Accounting? You want me to do accounting for a multi-million dollar foundation? Hmm, ya think maybe you should have mentioned that in the ad in the first place? Did you miss the part where my resume mentions nothing, zip, nada about me having an MBA?
The interview itself went surprisingly well, though-- I knew I wasn’t really qualified for the real job, and I was pretty relaxed 'cause I figured it didn’t matter!
Well, what the heck did they think THAT would accomplish, Rosebud? What a great way to waste everybody’s time! All I can think is that they had someone really incompetent writing the ad, or they changed it completely after the ad was already running. But that still doesn’t explain calling you in for an interview when they KNOW that you don’t have the qualifications they need. This is very strange. Who knows? Maybe you actually got the job, and they plan to put you through MBA school.
Really. I got no trouble with both parties in a negotiation wanting to maximize what they get out of the other, but it helps if you don’t openly show your scorn for the employee while s/he is still an applicant.
In my perfect world I’d enact as part of the labor laws a section to the effect that every help-wanted ad or job listing must explicitly include a salary range, subject to negotiation. No “commesurate with experience”, abso-freakin’-lutely NO “you tell us first”. Employer tips hand right off the bat, end of furshlugginer story.
Of course, in my perfect world I would be able to park for free and Julie Strein would be my personal assistant, but, hey…
As long as we’re complaining about job ads, I see ads all the time that ask for salary requirements that don’t even say who the potential employer is.
So they wanna know everything about you, and how much $$ you want, without telling you who they are.
In any event, as an earlier poster suggested, it’s a useful screening tool. I’d rather not work with anyone who’s such a pain-in-the-ass control freak that they must run blind ads asking for salary requirements.
And I agree that the game employers play where they try to get job applicants to under-value themselves is counter-productive. I’m not an expert on management, but an employee who respects his or her employer is so much more productive that there’s no way it’s worth risking damaging that relationship by playing salary games.
Oh and by the way, I can attest that some ads are in fact phony. A family member of mine was offered a position at a prestigious university. After he accepted, he was told that the position would have to be advertised for a few weeks, which was done. Then he was given the job.
Presumably, all the CV’s that were received were thrown in the trash.
Another source of phony ads is headhunters who want to expand their resume file.
Of course, all this is really frustrating for job-hunters.
Thank you for coming in today, Mr. Neptune. I see from your resume that among your extensive software engineering experience is some work for an insurance company. Have you ever considered selling insurance?
Let’s not not forget the practice of placing ‘employer not listed’ Help Wanted ads that are actually teases for the military. I know for a fact that the Navy does this, and I’m reasonably sure that the other services do it, too.
In my industry a fair proportion (most?) of the job movements come about via recruitment consultants. This has its pluses and minuses - certainly it was nice when I changed job last year to be able to phone an expert and get him to do the work for me.
One minor downside, for example, is semi-regularly being bothered in our places of work by recruitment consultants touting for business. Not many of us see this as particularly appropriate!
One other downside is in job adverts. Most of the job advertisements in the trade magazine are placed by the recruitment agencies. However for some reason - presumably the desire to avoid people circumventing them - these recruitment agencies ads don’t mention the employer. We therefore get a lot of:
Nearly qualified pensions actuary
Home counties
£35k - £45k
As a consequence I know not a few people that have responded to one of these adverts only to discover they were appying for their own job.
pan
Quote by Lucwarm:
I used to work in Academia and can also attest to this. They are usually required by law to advertise. My pull out of my butt statistic based on personal observation with my own university is that 50-70% of all ads for faculty positions are not real. Not real being that you have no chance since they know who they will hire or virtually no chance since there is a 'strong inside candidate.
What really makes this malicious is that many time they will have someone come in from far away, at their (candidates) own expense of course in order to make the fake search look more real to avoid legal trouble. This is theft and criminal action in my opinion and royally pisses me off.
When invited for an interview, I started refusing any invite where the school refused to pay any part of the costs of the trip. Another thing I would do is call the main prof in charge of the process and say that you really are interested in the job but that finances are extremely tight and it would be very bad if the position was fake. Say that this is off the record and ask if the position has a ‘strong internal candidate’ or favorite and was it worth the risk to go. Many times, their voice would lower and tell you that that was the case.
Oh, also those looking in Academia, a lesser but still there item you need to watch out for is the White-Male-need-not-bother-apply ads. The way around this is like the above but ask if the department is actively looking to diversify and if this position has been identified as a way to do this.
They know why you are asking and many will inform you so long as you ask in a way in which they can answer without hetting into trouble.