Job ads rarely list salaries here, either. It’s part of the corporate mentality of trying to take advantage of employees, and forces us to do a ridiculous little dance of, “Well, how much were you offering?”
“Well, how much were you looking for?”
with neither side trying to blink because companies also love to undercut their employees (make the rookie mistake of naming a figure less than they had in mind, and that’s your new salary). It’s complete and utter bullshit.
Why don’t you just aim high and haggle down? I swear, some people would rather have every single decision in life already made for them so they can just follow a prescribed path and not worry about it. I don’t know how you sleep at night.
That’s what you should do, unless you’re Diogenes the Cynic, in which case you accept the job no matter what they offer, I guess.
Big big danger sign for me. Possibilities:
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The HR person was a twit, having a bad day, or incredibly pushy and bossy. In which case I wouldn’t want to work there.
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The HR person was not actually a full-time employee of the company but a headhunter who gets a bonus for getting someone hired and would be happy with any warm body. In which case I wouldn’t want to work there, as I’m not just any warm body.
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The HR person was under orders from the manager to get someone in immediately to fill an immediate need. In which case I wouldn’t want to work for them because if they’re that disorganised that they so desperately need someone right now and can’t wait 48 hours, I’d likely end up spending my whole working day running from artifical emergency to artificial emergency and never get any real work done. No thanks.
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The HR person was just a recruiter, and knows the company is in financial trouble, but your don’t, in which case I wouldn’t want to work there.
Basically, I wouldn’t work at this company unless I was truly desperate, and only then long enough to get something else going and leave.
Normally I’m in agreement with you, Dio, but not this time. Employment is a two-way street; if the employer likes you and wants you to work there, they want you to work there a long time and to be happy about it. It’s impossible to make a snap decision about something so life-changing… what if, a few months down the road, you realize that you’ve made a mistake in accepting the job because you were pressured into making a decision right then?
A month or so ago, I was offered two different jobs (one my recruiter had found for me, the other I’d found on my own). I told them both that I needed some time to think it over, and I spent two weeks mulling over the decision. I also talked to my current employer- not to negotiate for more money, but to find out if their future plans would be good for my career. I ended up accepting the slightly-lesser-paying offer, simply because I thought the project would end up being better for me in the long-term.
A nice surprise- after I emailed the other company a gracious “no thanks” letter, they called me up and told me that if I changed my mind any time within the next few months, the offer was still open. That was unexpected. 
By the way, I don’t think that, once you’ve been offered another job, you should negotiate with your current employer. At that point, they know you’re unhappy and looking for another job, and while they may end up enticing you into staying, odds are they’re going to start looking for someone to replace you soon afterwards. As my first boss in this industry told me, years ago, “Never accept a counteroffer to stay.”
This fascinates me. You actually apply for jobs without knowing what they’re paying?
Granted, I haven’t applied for a job in over 20 years (not counting one where they approached me unsolicited), but it seems like a gigantic waste of time to apply for jobs without knowing whether the payscale is appropriate for you.
Go to monster.com or some similar site, and look at the jobs. Most don’t have any indication of salary level. Many that do are extremely broad. Same goes for most of the professional want ads in the paper. It’s the usual practice today.
Because if you aim too high, you price yourself out of their range. It’s not always easy to figure out exactly how much you should ask for, especially if it’s a new area or a new position.
I’ve interviewed at several places, and have received offers from them… but the offers were quite a bit under what I’m making now. I’m in a very specific field- there’s really only a handful of people who do what I do- but the salaries vary wildly. I’ve never had a clue on how much they’re going to offer me until they make the offer- that’s why I let them know, right up front, how much money I’m currently making, so they don’t waste my time.
At a certain point, all salaries are negotiable. There are trade offs (vacation vs pay) or stock options and the like. If I’m applying for a job I’ll have done my research and know the pay range for that type of position in that company. But until I get a written offer there is no sure thing.
Do you own your company? No matter how good a manager you are, and no matter how loyal employees are, when corporate says you have to lay people off you have to lay people off. The lack of loyalty comes from the disappearance of lifetime employment (and I started with the Bell System, so I know about that attitude.) Even companies now say you are responsible for your career.
If you do own your company, and an industry downturn made you unable to make payroll, what would you do? In today’s world nothing is guaranteed, and employers and employees realizing that is just commonsense.
First of all, employers interview more than one person, and employees interview more than one company. Are you you saying that you should accept the first offer given?
But more importantly, it is not all about money. Most people leave companies because of bosses and culture, not dollars. (The source is a course for managers I took in my company.) Even if you got two offers for the same money on the same day, they won’t be equivalent.
I don’t see how you could possibly know corporate culture before you send in a resume. I got flown first class across the country to interview at a place which was a total mess. (I thought I was going to be made VP at least - it turned out this was part of a defense contractor who was used to spending money like a drunken sailor.) One place I interviewed out of grad school turned out to be a death march project. How was I supposed to know that before applying?
But forget about what is good for the employee - the policy of the company in the OP is bad for the company. Assuming there isn’t a critical need (and the company didn’t get back immediately, so there shouldn’t be), and the person getting the offer is on the top of the list, one of three things can happen if an immediate answer is required.
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The person takes it - but would take it even if given a day. What is gained?
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The OP case, where someone who might have taken it given time to decide refuses it. The company has just lost its top choice. Taking it and refusing it 24 hours later is the same.
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The person takes it under pressure, works for a while, and decides the company sucks. Then the company has to interview again, and is much worse off.
Actually, if I were the OP, as soon as I got off the phone with HR, I’d call the hiring manager and ask if this was really company policy. I’d say I’m probably interested, but need a day to think it over. I’ve heard of some HR people (not our Harriet!) being unreasonable. If the manager says that HR is crazy, and goes to bat for you, then the company is a keeper. You don’t work for HR after all.
In college I was an intern at a small (<200) privately owned software company. The owner prided himself on fair and considerate treatment of employees: open books, flexible hours, etc. While I was there, it was a point of pride that in 15 years no one had ever been laid off . It really was a great company, they had more than one husband-wife team, many people brought on their friends. Anyhow, the company closed a few years back for financial reasons, teh internets claim that everyone lost 2 weeks pay on the way out.
Well, a lot of jobs don’t have payscales. They have budgets, and a $500,000K can be spent on 5 employees at $100K or 10 employees at $50K. Employees aren’t some pegs that fill slots – there’s stuff that needs to be done and if it’s clear that the existing team is not able to handle it or will not be able to handle in the near future you start hiring and you restructure based on what kind of people you manage to find. Often times you have to settle for overpaying somebody who’s underqualified simply because of time constraints and that you can’t spend 8 months hunting for people.
In general I’m of opinion that if your job can be reduced to a payscale and a fixed job description and anybody who can fulfill all the requirements of the job description can replace you 100%, then, no offense, but your job sucks and you can probably be replaced with a very small and efficient Japanese robot.
Well, a lot of jobs don’t have payscales. They have budgets, and a $500,000K can be spent on 5 employees at $100K or 10 employees at $50K. Employees aren’t some pegs that fill slots – there’s stuff that needs to be done and if it’s clear that the existing team is not able to handle it or will not be able to handle in the near future you start hiring and you restructure based on what kind of people you manage to find. Often times you have to settle for overpaying somebody who’s underqualified simply because of time constraints and that you can’t spend 8 months hunting for people.
In general I’m of opinion that if your job can be reduced to a payscale and a fixed job description and anybody who can fulfill all the requirements of the job description can replace you 100%, then, no offense, but your job sucks and you can probably be replaced with a very small and efficient Japanese robot.
Yes. Usually, I’ve owned them jointly with family members. My current one is just a little bookstore, but they’ve been as big as 160 people.
Been there twice and made payroll out of my own personal bank account. We came close to it another time, but we saw it coming, and yes we had to lay off some people.
Of course. Did I ever say otherwise?
“Loyalty” doesn’t mean an employee will lay down his life for the company, or that the company will go bankrupt to avoid missing a paycheck. It means that the employee isn’t shopping around for other jobs while the manager is counting on him for a critical project. It means that the manager doesn’t lay people off just because the profit isn’t good enough this month. Layoffs happen these days when the margin slips a bit, and I call that disloyalty to the employees. A layoff should only happen when it’s required to prevent the company from losing money and potentially going under.
Of course employees get recruited. If the offer is really good, then a good employee would tell the recruiter “I have to finish what I’m working on and give my current employer a chance to find a replacement for me.” A disloyal employee would jump ship and leave the employer hanging.
I had just been working for Cisco about 6 months when they had their first layoff. I got a severance package worth about 4 months pay, and they provided job counseling and help with preparing resumes. That’s a loyal employer. I left a job with a company my brother and I used to own after we’d sold it. I gave 4 months notice and hired & trained my replacement, even though I’d already stayed as long as my contract required. That’s a loyal employee.
What the hell are you talking about? Did I indicate anywhere in my post that this was giving me trouble sleeping at night, or that I want every decision in my life made for me? It’s a bullshit practice that companies do here, and have for a long time, but it hardly affects my life at all.
And for the record, if you aim too high, you can also screen yourself out and get a nice, unexplained, “Thank you for coming in. We’ll be in touch.”
I don’t think I’ve ever applied for a job where the payscale was listed. And yes, I’ve been burned a couple times, the most recent being about 4 years ago. Went through several interviews, was getting excited about working at the place, but when it came down to the last interview and they offered less than I made twenty years ago it was really hard not to get angry with the guy. Given that he presented himself as an industry leader, he should have known what industry wages were and not wasted both our time.
I have many years of HR related experience and maybe can offer some insight (based on the assumption we are speaking of positions above entry level) The application/interview/selection process is not one and the same with the offer process.
I’ll agree with an earlier comment that it doesn’t sound like this HR rep gave a hoot about which candidate on their list filled the position. As someone with experience in this field, this completely floors me. Even if they were hiring multiple candidates for the same type of position, you would still extend offers and see who accepts. To demand an answer on the spot is extremely unprofessional.
I may be wrong, but I think this is a reflection of the firm’s general attitude and you’ve saved yourself much future agony by declining.
Well, I agree with you, but that kind of environment is rare these days. When my current employer canceled a project, they had to layoff a lot of people, but they had a massive job fair, to find places for as many as possible. It disrupted my life for a week, but it was well worth it.
However we’ve all seen case of companies shipping jobs to India, laying off people to make the stock price go up, etc. If you’ve seen people escorted out the door on an hour’s notice, you are not going to be as willing to give more than the standard two weeks notice - especially if you wind up taking over the supposedly critical job the laid off person was doing.
I left AT&T during the trivestiture - voluntarily, and with a very nice package. I worked for what would become Lucent. There was a massive job cut, much through incentives, not because there were too many people but because a smaller payroll would make it easier to sell. My whole management chain disappeared, as well as most of the smarter people working for me. They decided to outsource almost all software, including a package that was vital to our internal customers. (They changed their minds.) It was clear that the ptb cared nothing at all for the work, but only for the numbers. Plus, given the time we had to leave and announce our leaving, and the number of days we had to take off or lose, most people were at work for only a day or two over the two weeks of supposed notification time. One big reason I left was that I figured the new smaller place would be a disaster. Given a situation like that, why would any of those remaining be loyal? And AT&T gave a very nice severance package. Lot’s of people get less.
Over the past 20 years many loyal employees have gotten screwed. Companies have squandered the loyalty that used to exist, so it’s not surprising that even people working for good companies are cynical. Not to mention the places where the top execs get big bonuses after employees get laid off or take salary cuts.