July 21, 2014 at 07:16How to discuss money at an interview if you hire someone and a little about working with people
Friends, thanks for the comments on the article “How to Discuss Money at the Interview: Negotiation Strategy for the Applicant” . In the interval between the trainings, we managed to catch Dmitry Kotkin, the head of our negotiation programs, so that he would cover the topic of discussing money at an interview from the employer:
Honestly, I haven’t met “Inclusion in the life of the company” before, except in the form of a tour of the company. But the idea, IMHO, is interesting. In any case, we will be grateful for your feedback.
And under the cut answers to questions in articles about the discussion of money + a little reflection on why there is a sense of injustice in the revision of salaries.
This fairly typical story can be illustrated by the following diagram. To build it, we need to introduce two variables (measured in parrots unknown to science):
We can argue that with some error at the time of hiring, these things coincide. The manager gives the person a job offer (offer), where it says: “Dear friend, we value you so much money.” The employee ponders for some time, and then puts the signature: “I agree!”
What happens next? Further work begins. A person does something well, the manager thinks: “Well done!” And then one day the employee does not do what he promised. For example, he does not run three tests.
The manager thinks: “Here is a bad person, he promised - and he didn’t!” And he puts the employee a minus in karma. The employee himself is also thinking something ... What exactly? “Well, I didn’t run the tests, but ZATO helped my colleagues with the build!” That is, a plus sign puts himself in karma.
Have you noticed that we evaluate our slips and slips of other people a little differently? If we are late somewhere, we rarely say to ourselves: this is because I am not a mandatory or punctual person. Traffic jams, gray metro line and other circumstances are usually to blame.
If someone is late for us (especially for an interview), we immediately draw a conclusion about the nature of the person: not required and generally does not respect the time of other people. Therefore, the fact that the employee and the manager diverge in the behavior of the employee is not particularly surprising.
Further, the employee brings some kind of idea. And he thinks to himself: “Well, the idea came up sensible”. The manager at that moment thinks: “It would be better if I drove tests, I better worked.”
Somewhere their opinions will go one way, somewhere they will again disperse. Something will be voiced, something will remain in the manager’s head.
And then they meet six months or a year later at the time of the salary revision:
And the manager voices his decision: “Based on the results of the work, we decided to give you X money.” What does the employee feel at that moment? Depends on the gap X and Y, but if this gap is large, then it will be a sense of injustice.
Injustice arises when EXPECTATIONS diverge from REALITY.
Once again: injustice is born out of a divergence of expectations and reality. (Incidentally, this is precisely why the main rule of formal certification in large companies is that a person’s assessment cannot be unexpected for him.)
Interestingly, this diagram has exactly the opposite effect. At the time of the actions of the company's management and the manager himself, employees think something about the management. And managers also think something about themselves. Moreover, they can think both in one direction, and in very different directions.
What does this gap lead to? To what Robert Sutton described very correctly: “People come to work for a company, but leave a specific manager.”
Which of all this can we draw conclusions?
“What I need to do to grow to ...” is about that. This is just one form of clarifying expectations. The rules of the game would be nice to know at the very beginning. And if no one in the company knows them, then here is a good point to formulate and coordinate them.
When was the last time you asked your supervisor what he thinks about your work? You can hope that if something goes wrong, he will come and say. But hope is not the most sustainable plan.
Meet and talk. In the entire history of our trainings, there was exactly one case when a person received a hard negative at such a meeting. He quit right there. And it's good that I talked. Otherwise, he could waste his time, energy, energy in vain.
We constantly conduct research - 80% of managers do not communicate regularly with their employees one on one. Many meet once every six months or once every three months.
Look, in six months too much can happen to a person. He may become interested in work, and he may be sick of it. A man can get married and get a divorce. He may not agree with organizational changes, and sincerely do not understand why we needed these new idiotic reports.
Too many factors that we don’t see can affect a person’s productivity, motivation, or the pleasure he receives from work. We look at a person through the door peephole of plans, the click of the version control system and the window of the jir, trying to form our opinion about the person on them.
(If the specifics are interesting, then pretty good, as it seems to us, we managed to cover the tools for meetings 1: 1 in the free video course “Management Tools” (available for registration))
Many pleasant things follow from this, such as:
In addition, you understand what to expect from whom and can plan your actions, communications, expectations. At a new job, many things will be reset to zero. For what - for the sake of money? Is it worth it to first discuss comparable money at your place of work, while maintaining your reputation and credibility?
This is not an obligation “let me work 2 times more”. And this is not about the amount of work. This is about the type of work. Maybe (and most likely), a person earns such money in your company in a different position.
This is the point of discussion. Because if in your company such money cannot be earned in principle, then no one will force you to work 16 hours a day.
Schedule a 1: 1 meeting with your boss and prepare FACTS and DATA, why you think you are being underestimated. In addition to the facts themselves, consider the impact that your results have on the work of the project, team and company.
Good wording when talking:
You should not expect an IMMEDIATE effect from the conversation, because the actions of the boss depend on many circumstances, for example, on the system of reviewing salaries in the company. In addition, he will need to somehow convince the director to part with the money. And for the director, this news will most likely be unexpected. And your boss will need time to pick up the arguments. What is worth the wait? It is worth waiting from the head of SPECIFIC promises about his actions.
At the beginning of my career as a business coach, I performed wherever I was invited. We have now begun to sort it out with grub, because the number of invitations has exceeded the limit on available time. And then I was glad of any invitation, even to speak for free at a meeting of the community of right-button testers of the city of Stary Oskol. Because I was telling people useful things and I knew that sooner or later it would come back - people are growing, they are having new opportunities.
If you do not have job offers right now, and you are not sure that you will easily receive it, go to any meeting. Even if people like you, but they cannot offer you money that suits you right now, they will remember you. And they will call when they have money. Or they will invite you with consulting, which is also not bad.
If now you have suggestions, or have firm confidence in your own value, then IMHO will be a good wording: “I must admit, now I have several invitations for interviews, and I have to prioritize. Could you briefly describe the responsibilities and salary framework for this position? ”
This is a normal wording, because with it you EXPLAIN WHY you start a conversation about money.
At one of the trainings, we were once asked: “What questions cannot be asked to the customer?” This question warmed up my brain. I had never thought about this before. And then, it seems to me, I found the answer. You cannot ask a question if you cannot explain why you are asking it.
So here: "I have several invitations for interviews, and I have to prioritize my time." The question must have a reason why you are asking. So that a person does not think that you only think about money.
It turned out a rather long answer to those questions that caught my eye in posts about discussing money:
Someone will say that part of the answers are not about that, and we really went into the topic of working with people. But probably this is no accident, since, in our opinion, all these issues are too closely interconnected. We hope that all these reflections turned out to be useful and allowed us to draw the right conclusions about our reality. In any case, success and we look forward to your feedback!
PS Friends. TOMORROW we still release our new negotiating product “Negotiator's Handbook”. The last three articles were written just at the time of its creation. We invite everyone who wants to deal with the topic of negotiations in the pre-registration form (which gives additional bonuses and special conditions for participation.)
Honestly, I haven’t met “Inclusion in the life of the company” before, except in the form of a tour of the company. But the idea, IMHO, is interesting. In any case, we will be grateful for your feedback.
And under the cut answers to questions in articles about the discussion of money + a little reflection on why there is a sense of injustice in the revision of salaries.
Case of life. At one of my first jobs, an opportunity arose to raise salaries for employees. The company was at that stage of maturity when salaries were revised using the Leninist squint method (you squint and look at whom to raise how much).
And so I (an experienced manager, it's been a year already!) Roughly figured out whom to raise by $ 200, to whom by $ 100. He painted everything, gave it to the director and, pleased with himself, returned to work.
Finally, the day came when everyone was paid new salaries. And this day was a very good lesson for me. Because right in the morning Pasha broke into my office. Pasha asked a question for which I was not very ready:
- Sasha, why did everyone raise their salaries by $ 200, and to me by $ 100.
- Pash, firstly, not all for $ 200, and secondly, why do you raise your salary by $ 200? You have not shown miracles in writing tests over the past six months
- How for what ?! Last month I hung on the phone with the customer, solved his problems on the XYZ project, helped my colleagues there run our tests ...
They started to figure it out ... After a short time I realized that I simply don’t see so many tasks of Pasha. And well, they should have been in a plan, so no ... Which, in general, is not surprising when your team is under 20 people, you try to manage everyone, plus you have tremendous managerial experience in one year.
It’s good that Pasha came, we found out and restored justice. But he could not have come. And then, suddenly, unexpectedly for myself, I would lose a good engineer who, rightly, would start to tell everyone around me what kind of manager I am not very good.
This fairly typical story can be illustrated by the following diagram. To build it, we need to introduce two variables (measured in parrots unknown to science):
- Waiting for the employee, how the manager should evaluate him
- Real assessment by employee manager
How employee expectations and manager ratings diverge
We can argue that with some error at the time of hiring, these things coincide. The manager gives the person a job offer (offer), where it says: “Dear friend, we value you so much money.” The employee ponders for some time, and then puts the signature: “I agree!”
What happens next? Further work begins. A person does something well, the manager thinks: “Well done!” And then one day the employee does not do what he promised. For example, he does not run three tests.
The manager thinks: “Here is a bad person, he promised - and he didn’t!” And he puts the employee a minus in karma. The employee himself is also thinking something ... What exactly? “Well, I didn’t run the tests, but ZATO helped my colleagues with the build!” That is, a plus sign puts himself in karma.
Have you noticed that we evaluate our slips and slips of other people a little differently? If we are late somewhere, we rarely say to ourselves: this is because I am not a mandatory or punctual person. Traffic jams, gray metro line and other circumstances are usually to blame.
If someone is late for us (especially for an interview), we immediately draw a conclusion about the nature of the person: not required and generally does not respect the time of other people. Therefore, the fact that the employee and the manager diverge in the behavior of the employee is not particularly surprising.
Further, the employee brings some kind of idea. And he thinks to himself: “Well, the idea came up sensible”. The manager at that moment thinks: “It would be better if I drove tests, I better worked.”
Somewhere their opinions will go one way, somewhere they will again disperse. Something will be voiced, something will remain in the manager’s head.
And then they meet six months or a year later at the time of the salary revision:
And the manager voices his decision: “Based on the results of the work, we decided to give you X money.” What does the employee feel at that moment? Depends on the gap X and Y, but if this gap is large, then it will be a sense of injustice.
Injustice arises when EXPECTATIONS diverge from REALITY.
Case of life. One familiar director of the company once shared such a story (hereinafter referred to as the first person). A year and a half ago, I hired a new engineer. The man turned out to be cool! Immediately fit into the team, immediately began to burn! This was my first time at all, it was really cool!
After a couple of months, it was time to pay annual bonuses. I shove everyone three bucks into envelopes and think: how much to give to a person? One side. he worked only two months ... On the other hand, a person really burns. Let, I think, I will do him well - in short, put him three pieces too. I give the man an envelope - he rejoiced terribly ... A
year passes. I give everyone envelopes with three pieces. I give this engineer an envelope, he looks there and disappointedly:
- Why so little?
- Why not enough?
- Well, how ... Then I worked for two months, and there were three pieces, and now I worked for 12 months, and again three pieces ... Where is the justice ?!
- So then I just wanted to encourage you ...
- Clearly ... It seems that the purchase of the cottage will have to be postponed ...
As the man explained this to his wife, I don’t know ...
Once again: injustice is born out of a divergence of expectations and reality. (Incidentally, this is precisely why the main rule of formal certification in large companies is that a person’s assessment cannot be unexpected for him.)
Interestingly, this diagram has exactly the opposite effect. At the time of the actions of the company's management and the manager himself, employees think something about the management. And managers also think something about themselves. Moreover, they can think both in one direction, and in very different directions.
What does this gap lead to? To what Robert Sutton described very correctly: “People come to work for a company, but leave a specific manager.”
Which of all this can we draw conclusions?
Conclusion number 1. At the start of work, clarify expectations.
“What I need to do to grow to ...” is about that. This is just one form of clarifying expectations. The rules of the game would be nice to know at the very beginning. And if no one in the company knows them, then here is a good point to formulate and coordinate them.
Conclusion number 2. Communicate with your boss 1: 1 at least once every two weeks.
When was the last time you asked your supervisor what he thinks about your work? You can hope that if something goes wrong, he will come and say. But hope is not the most sustainable plan.
Meet and talk. In the entire history of our trainings, there was exactly one case when a person received a hard negative at such a meeting. He quit right there. And it's good that I talked. Otherwise, he could waste his time, energy, energy in vain.
3. If you are leading someone, communicate with your employees 1: 1 at least once every two weeks.
We constantly conduct research - 80% of managers do not communicate regularly with their employees one on one. Many meet once every six months or once every three months.
Look, in six months too much can happen to a person. He may become interested in work, and he may be sick of it. A man can get married and get a divorce. He may not agree with organizational changes, and sincerely do not understand why we needed these new idiotic reports.
Too many factors that we don’t see can affect a person’s productivity, motivation, or the pleasure he receives from work. We look at a person through the door peephole of plans, the click of the version control system and the window of the jir, trying to form our opinion about the person on them.
(If the specifics are interesting, then pretty good, as it seems to us, we managed to cover the tools for meetings 1: 1 in the free video course “Management Tools” (available for registration))
4. If you are doing your job well, then your current job already has at least two advantages over a new one.
- Reputation in the eyes of management
- Authority in the eyes of colleagues
Many pleasant things follow from this, such as:
- You need to spend less on convincing people of your ideas.
- Less control applies to you
- Fewer conflicts happen
In addition, you understand what to expect from whom and can plan your actions, communications, expectations. At a new job, many things will be reset to zero. For what - for the sake of money? Is it worth it to first discuss comparable money at your place of work, while maintaining your reputation and credibility?
5. “Is it possible to do something in our company to make that kind of money?” Is just a question.
This is not an obligation “let me work 2 times more”. And this is not about the amount of work. This is about the type of work. Maybe (and most likely), a person earns such money in your company in a different position.
This is the point of discussion. Because if in your company such money cannot be earned in principle, then no one will force you to work 16 hours a day.
6. If you now have a feeling that you are being underestimated - discuss this.
Schedule a 1: 1 meeting with your boss and prepare FACTS and DATA, why you think you are being underestimated. In addition to the facts themselves, consider the impact that your results have on the work of the project, team and company.
Good wording when talking:
- “I now have the feeling that my work is underestimated. Not in terms of what I'm going to leave, but this feeling, honestly - affects the work. Therefore, I came to discuss. ”
- “Perhaps not all of my work is visible, let me tell you what was done ...”
- “I understand that the revision of salaries is not an easy topic, but what do you think about this?”
You should not expect an IMMEDIATE effect from the conversation, because the actions of the boss depend on many circumstances, for example, on the system of reviewing salaries in the company. In addition, he will need to somehow convince the director to part with the money. And for the director, this news will most likely be unexpected. And your boss will need time to pick up the arguments. What is worth the wait? It is worth waiting from the head of SPECIFIC promises about his actions.
7. Regarding the discussion of money at the beginning of the interview or before the interview - it all depends on the demand.
At the beginning of my career as a business coach, I performed wherever I was invited. We have now begun to sort it out with grub, because the number of invitations has exceeded the limit on available time. And then I was glad of any invitation, even to speak for free at a meeting of the community of right-button testers of the city of Stary Oskol. Because I was telling people useful things and I knew that sooner or later it would come back - people are growing, they are having new opportunities.
If you do not have job offers right now, and you are not sure that you will easily receive it, go to any meeting. Even if people like you, but they cannot offer you money that suits you right now, they will remember you. And they will call when they have money. Or they will invite you with consulting, which is also not bad.
If now you have suggestions, or have firm confidence in your own value, then IMHO will be a good wording: “I must admit, now I have several invitations for interviews, and I have to prioritize. Could you briefly describe the responsibilities and salary framework for this position? ”
This is a normal wording, because with it you EXPLAIN WHY you start a conversation about money.
At one of the trainings, we were once asked: “What questions cannot be asked to the customer?” This question warmed up my brain. I had never thought about this before. And then, it seems to me, I found the answer. You cannot ask a question if you cannot explain why you are asking it.
So here: "I have several invitations for interviews, and I have to prioritize my time." The question must have a reason why you are asking. So that a person does not think that you only think about money.
Instead of a conclusion
It turned out a rather long answer to those questions that caught my eye in posts about discussing money:
- How to discuss money with management or why do careers sometimes stop?
- How to discuss money at the interview: negotiation strategy for the applicant
Someone will say that part of the answers are not about that, and we really went into the topic of working with people. But probably this is no accident, since, in our opinion, all these issues are too closely interconnected. We hope that all these reflections turned out to be useful and allowed us to draw the right conclusions about our reality. In any case, success and we look forward to your feedback!
PS Friends. TOMORROW we still release our new negotiating product “Negotiator's Handbook”. The last three articles were written just at the time of its creation. We invite everyone who wants to deal with the topic of negotiations in the pre-registration form (which gives additional bonuses and special conditions for participation.)