…the cost of YOUR vacancy
If you hire people, you need to read this.
If you ever look for a job, you need to read this.
I have discussed more than 23,000 job openings with employers since 1973. I have worked on search assignments from everything from an hourly maintenance person for a third shift manufacturing environment to presidents and CEOs. Most hiring authorities, from the third shift maintenance supervisor to members of the board, feel like they are very good at hiring (when they’re really not) and that it will only take 45 days to fill the lower to medium salary range positions and 90 to 120 days to fill the higher-level positions (the reality is more like 90 to 120 days on the lower to medium salaried positions and 150 to 180 days for the higher positions – totally unrealistic).
Even though every hiring authority starts out with good intentions, the hiring process drags on for way longer than everyone imagines it will. The major reason for this? People are afraid of making a mistake. In spite of what anyone says, most hiring authorities really don’t like hiring. Now very few managers will ever admit that they downright hate hiring and they’ll tell you that it’s “just part of the job,” but in their hearts they don’t like it. Why? Because when people make a poor hiring decision literally everybody knows it and sees it and that manager is being judged based on that poor decision.
Accounting managers are hired because they’re good at managing the accounting function. If they make an accounting mistake, few people may know it and, if it’s caught in time, it can be erased and rectified. An engineering manager is hired to manage the engineering function and the people that are in the department. If an engineering mistake is made even a reasonable amount of quality control can discover it and fix it. A sales manager who is hired to manage sales can even afford to lose a sale and make it up by making more sales.
But when one of these managers makes a bad hire, most everyone in the company can see it and, since it takes forever to get rid of most bad hires the manager is looked upon as a doofus because he or she hired one. And since the mistake of a bad hire can’t be quickly and easily rectified, the “mistake” walks around the company reminding everyone what a doofus the hiring authority was to hire them in the first place.
In all my years of recruiting I don’t think I’ve ever had a company looking to hire a manager and have, as part of its criteria for hiring, “documentable success in hiring excellent and productive subordinates.” And even if they did, it certainly is difficult to get an objective evaluation of a person’s ability to hire. A manager’s ability to recruit, hire and retain good employees should be one of the main considerations in hiring any manager. But it’s not. It is assumed that any manager with subordinates is good at hiring. But they’re not… most of the time.
So, hiring cycles drag on and on and on. What everyone thinks will take 30 to 45 days takes four to six months because people don’t like doing it and, in their hearts, they know they’re not very good at it. Ninety-nine percent of the hiring authorities in the United States have absolutely no idea the cost to their company that a vacancy has over even a short period of time. Numerous studies, especially one at Harvard University, find that the average value of a productive employee is roughly two and a half times their salary rate. For revenue producing employees, the cost of that vacancy is phenomenal.
On top of the fact that when a vacancy occurs, “It couldn’t have come at a worse time… I’m going to have to get people in the department to cover for this person until I find a replacement, and they are going to be pissed… I’m going to have to do the work this person was doing until I find a replacement.” There are a ton of other emotionally charged feelings… and they’re all bad. They perseverate, “We don’t want to make a mistake… We don’t want to make a mistake… We don’t want to make a mistake… We don’t want to make a mistake… I can’t hire now, I have to do my job… I can’t hire now, I have to do my job… I can’t hire now I have to do my job” when the truth is that it is simply easier to postpone hiring and (much easier) to do the day-to-day job. So, hiring drags on.
I have provided a table that we give to our clients to help them realize, on top of everything else, what a vacant position actually cost them. It sobers them up real quickly. Highlight this address and go to:
http://bit.ly/1TtLK06
Put in the salary range of any vacancy you might have and see what it’s really costing you and your company. If you’re looking for a revenue producing candidate, like sales, the formula is even more dramatic.
So, if you’ve been looking for an assistant controller at a $90,000 salary for eight weeks, you have cost your company $34,615.00. If you’ve been looking for an accountant or production manager who left your company four weeks ago at a $50,000 salary, it has cost your company $14,423.00. And, as you know four weeks can go by in a heartbeat.
If you are a candidate, you can use this table to help you get a job. Last week, one of our sales candidates was in the final interview process with one of our clients. He was interviewing with a VP of sales, his boss and the vice president of finance. Each interview was a “one on one.” As he wrapped up each individual interview, he said, “I want to leave you one last thing,” and he handed each one of the interviewing authorities a small piece of paper with the figure of $93,307.00 written on it. As they looked at it, wondering what it was, he calmly stated, “The quota for this territory is $1.2 million and this is the amount you are losing every month by not having me in this job.” He then paused and asked, “When can I go to work?” Guess who got hired?
Well, I’m sure you get the idea. Most hiring managers are so close to the forest they miss the trees. The cost of a vacancy is real and can motivate managers to take action.
Prayer and your job search
I happen to be a real big fan of prayer. Fortunately, I grew up learning to do it, maybe not even realizing what a phenomenal impact it had on my life. In spite of my belief in it, I have tried to objectively investigate over the years the effectiveness of prayer on the part of job seekers. Now, I don’t ask every candidate that I’ve ever interviewed if they pray. I’ve got enough of a challenge in trying to listen to them and help them find a job. But when you consider that I’ve interviewed more than 26,000 candidates since 1973 and been successful at placing more than 10,000 of them, you can imagine that I often get into some pretty serious conversations with candidates about some of the things they do to cope with the emotional anxiety of finding a job.
I’ve written before about the fact that looking for a job, next to death of a spouse, death of a child, death of a parent, coupled with divorce is one of the most emotionally challenging things we do. I’ve observed thousands of different ways that people cope with the emotional strain that is caused by the job search.
Maybe it’s because I look for it and am very sensitive to it, but I’ve come to the conclusion, after listening to so many people, that prayer has a significantly positive and uplifting impact on the emotional challenge of finding a job. I am absolutely convinced that it does.
What’s even more interesting is that I have been able to find that there is one certain manner of prayer that seems to be most effective. This will blow your mind, but based on what I’ve listened to from my candidates, it is a fact. There are some people that pray for outcomes. Actually pray that they find a job. But what seems to be most effective is to pray for acceptance of whatever happens in the job search process.
People who pray for outcomes that may not come about don’t get the interview or the job they prayed for, and can have a tendency to become disappointed that “God did not give them what they wanted.” This makes prayer a very difficult, quid pro quo with God. Then, when the outcome isn’t experienced, there’s bound to be disappointment, and maybe disappointment in God.
The people that seem to get the most out of prayer are those people who pray for acceptance of whatever happens. They pray something along the line of, “Dear Lord, grant me thy peace and thy mercy, thy will be done.” They pray to do their best in every job search endeavor. They pray for guidance and help in writing the best resume they can, they pray to get as many interviews as they possibly can and they pray, especially, to perform well on those interviews and pray to perform well for each interview to the next step. They don’t pray so much for a positive outcome of each event as much as they pray that they do the best they can in the process of finding a job and accepting the result for just what it is, whether they get the job or not. If they don’t get the job, they pray for more enlightenment or to learn from their mistakes or to do better the next chance they get.
St. Ignatious of Loyola prayed for what he called “holy indifference”. It is detachment… remaining indifferent to the results…accepting rejection…refusal…and being ignored…accepting being lied to…being forgotten…and all of the other things that wind up happening in a job search.
My wife, Chrissy, calls it ”holy acceptance”. It is accepting what you may not like and can’t control …not getting what you want, but wanting what you get. It is the serenity prayer: “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, Courage to change the things I can, And wisdom to know the difference.” Or the prayer of St. Theresa: “May you trust God that you are exactly where you are meant to be!”
One of my teachers, Jim Rhone, used to say, “Don’t pray that life will get easier, pray that you will get better.” This is a perfect prayer for a job search.
Well, I’m sure you get the point. Now, I’m not trying to go from teaching to preaching. I’m not trying to sell you that prayer in a job search or anything else like it is going to revolutionize your endeavor. But I am here to testify that I’ve seen prayer make a phenomenal difference in people’s job search.
“Take this job and shove it… I ain’t working here no more…”
(Johnny paycheck, circa 1977)Candidate comes to my office this week says, “it felt so good. It felt so very good when I told these guys that they could take their job and stuff it where the sun don’t shine. I explained to them that I’d had enough. I just couldn’t take it any longer. There browbeating and taking advantage of me and all the other employees in the company just had to stop.
“Hell, nobody else in the company had the guts to do it… those weaklings. And while I was telling them to stuff it, I enlighten them as to what they could do to change things so they wouldn’t lose people like me. That they ran a disgraceful company and they should be ashamed of themselves. They just sat there and looked so surprised. Those fat som-bitches acted like they didn’t have any idea what I was talking about. What a joke! It felt so good to tell them I was leaving.”
Well that was eight months ago and our candidate is still looking for a job. He didn’t think he would have any trouble finding a job. He didn’t think about what was that happen when he left like that…the kind of reference he might get. In fact, our candidate didn’t really think at all.
He thought he had a job lined up with a friend at church that had given him a “we’re always hiring at our place just give me a call” comment. In eight months he’s only had three interviews and he didn’t even come close to getting the job. On top of having a difficult time in finding a job, he’s really embarrassed about the way he quit. He says that he knows that the people he told what they could do with their job know that he’s out of work and are really laughing.
Here’s the lesson, the matter how mad or frustrated you get don’t tell people what they can do with their job until you found a new one. Bite your tongue. Calm down and endure. Find a job before you leave this one. You never know how long it’s going to take to find a job. The people that this guy told off don’t really care about why he left. They aren’t going to change the way they do things because of any employee leaving.
Our poor candidate is in a world of hurt and most of it he created for himself.
… You want how much?
There was an article in last week’s Wall Street Journal about how high salaries haunt some job hunters and eliminate them before they barely get started interviewing. The article claimed that:
- Human resources executives say that asking about pay right off the bat helps contain compensation costs, insures that candidates have reasonable expectations and spares recruiters chasing prospects they can’t afford.
- Focusing on compensation history “holds down wages because now the jobs are being filled by people with lower salary expectations”… “We have a whole generation of people who are permanently adversely affected.”
- Finance chiefs are probably looking ahead and saying they want to keep the escalation of labor costs from going up in a way that will put pressure on earnings.
- Employers may feel they can lowball applicants because they believe there is still a surplus of qualified candidates.
- Workers over 45 years old take a bigger hit than workers under 35 years old
- Some employers hesitate to hire at far below a past salary, concerned that the employee would resent earning so much less. (…and therefore leave or look for another job with a higher salary.)
The conclusion of the article is that when job candidates are asked what they want to earn and then tell a perspective employer what their desire is, they get eliminated.
Unfortunately, what the article doesn’t tell the prospective job seeker is how to deal with this issue. Here are ways a job seeker can deal with this question and keep themselves in contention for the job.
- When asked, “What kind of money are you looking for?”, don’t try to guess what’s on the mind of the interviewer. Answer the question by stating something like, “In my last position I was earning $XXXXX. I’m not as concerned about what the starting salary is as I’m concerned about the opportunity in my ability to perform. My experiences have been that if I give good service, the money is going to take care of itself.”
- Don’t pay any attention to what a “published” salary might be. Just because an organization publishes a certain salary doesn’t mean they’re going to pay that.
- Quit thinking that people are trying to “lowball” you are anybody else. When you deal from a defensive attitude like that you won’t negotiate very well.
- Remember to communicate that money is the fourth or fifth reason that people work. The company, what they do, the people… all are a lot more important than just money.
- Quit thinking that just because you’ve made a certain amount of money that you “owe it to yourself and your family to get an increase.” An increase may not be what the market will bear. A lateral move or even a step backwards in salary is common in today’s market.
- Communicate as much as you can that you are “open” regarding money. You might even give an example like, “In the last two jobs that I’ve had I started out at a lower salary than what I had made before and I wound up getting salary advances because of my performance. Again, I’m not as concerned about the entry salary as I am about the company, the people and the opportunity. If all of those things work well, the money usually works itself out.”
It doesn’t take a mental giant to know that older employees, because they usually make higher salaries, are more likely to take less money in finding a new job than younger workers. But that’s not because they’re older, it’s because they have been making more money. A “younger” candidate making more money than a hiring organization might want to pay will have the same problem.
For a while, companies will try to “contain” salaries and earnings. But as candidates become harder to find and the job market gets better, these companies will have to pay more and increase starting salaries to compete for good candidates. It happens every time we come out of a recession.
A job seeker’s pay history may very well be a challenge to deal with. But if it’s handled the right way, it can become no more than a minor issue.
The Stockholm Syndrome and your job…
The Stockholm syndrome, according to Wikipedia “is a psychological phenomenon in which hostages express empathy and sympathy and have positive feelings toward their captors, sometimes to the point of defending and identifying with the captors. These feelings are generally considered irrational in light of the danger or risk endured by the victims, who essentially mistake a lack of abuse from their captors for an act of kindness.“
Few people want to admit that this syndrome applies to them and their job. At least three or four times a month, I personally, get calls from potential candidates who, upon listening to their story, convince me that they suffer from this syndrome. There are a lot of really goofy companies out there that are run by a lot of goofy people who border on abusing the people that work for them and with them. The abuse ranges from things like taking advantage of people and their willingness to help to verbal and even psychological abuse. Over the years I’ve even known some candidates to tolerate having things thrown at them by their immediate supervisors. (… Don’t laugh, there are still some idiots out there that do things like this and some people are too afraid to look for a job and put up with it.)
At least 50% of the time as these potential candidates tell me why they need to leave where they’re at, they mumbled something along the line of “… I can’t believe that I stayed here and put up with this for as long as I have.” They then proceed to justify their staying in an abusive situation by expressing their “empathy and sympathy and positive feelings toward their captors” even defending why the company and the people that run it do what they do. They just don’t want to admit that they work for idiots and they shall left a long time ago.
Often, these potential candidates have felt that they needed to stay where they were out of loyalty. Often their company is in terrible financial shape and they begin to look for a job way too late. We have to caution them to watch out saying in an interview, “I should’ve seen this coming year or so ago. I mean, the signs were there… I just didn’t want to see them.” A candidate’s business acumen is seriously questioned in a situation like this.
I realize that looking for a job isn’t fun. In fact it’s a job in itself and if you already have a job it’s like having two jobs. No one likes looking for a job. But staying in a work relationship like this is idiotic too. On top of that, it’s very hard to explain to a prospective employer if you stick around that kind of a relationship for very long.
So at the first sign of anything you think you have to rationalize about your employer start thinking about how you’re going to exit. Don’t get caught in the Stockholm syndrome.
Here’s Why You Should Take Every Interview Available to You
most of the candidates that we work with are presently have a job and interviewing is a hard thing to do. Let’s face it interviewing is a pain in the butt and even though it’s a necessary evil nobody really likes doing it. Michael was an exceptional candidate and two years ago we got them an interview that he really didn’t want to go on.
he actually fought us on it. He said he knew the company, they were a competitor, they had a tremendous amount of turnover, that he never go to work for him and on and on. We convinced him that nobody knows anybody like they think they do and he at least ought to go on the interview and talk to them. He even mumbled something like, “well I guess if I don’t go, you won’t get me other interviews?” we assured him that that’s not the case, but he ought to go on the damn interview.
he went. He really liked the guy he was talking to and wasn’t as unhappy with the company as he thought he would be. He went through a number of interviews, personality surveys and corporate visits. He got the offer but turned it down because we found him a better opportunity. fair enough.
Two years later Miguel decides that he needs to look again. His present company had changed hands and were now being purchased by a private equity company and there was just way too much up in the air about what was going to happen. Being good recruiter’s, we began by looking at the company’s we had referred him to once before.
of course we contacted the company he got the offer from a couple of years ago. Things have really changed. They had a new CEO and a new executive vice president of sales.. Sometimes timing is everything. The new EVP had recently let the manager in the Dallas office go and happen to need a new Regional Director.
the EVP interviewed Miguel on his way through Dallas the Monday after we called him. Not only was the EVP thrilled with Miguel’s experience and background, but some of the managers at corporate, whom he had interviewed with a couple of years ago, remembered him as stellar. It didn’t hurt that his psychological testing that he had done before predicted success.
Within one week of learning of Miguel’s availability, our client hired him as a regional director.
Lesson: … Interview with anybody that even might be interested in your skills or experience. Making a good impression. You never know if you might be speaking to them again.
